The day you begin cultivating, you do what you can to make it grow; the morning you begin planting, you do what you can to make it sprout. Yet the harvest will disappear in the day of disease and incurable pain.
“The way you have lived and the things you have done will bring this on you. This is the punishment you deserve, and it will be painful indeed. The pain will be so bad it will pierce your heart.”
They sow the wind, and so they will reap the whirlwind! The stalk does not have any standing grain; it will not produce any flour. Even if it were to yield grain, foreigners would swallow it all up.