Imamat 26:26

26:26 When I break off your supply of bread, ¹  ten women will bake your bread in one oven; they will ration your bread by weight, ²  and you will eat and not be satisfied.

Mazmur 105:16

105:16 He called down a famine upon the earth;

he cut off all the food supply. ³ 

Yeremia 37:21

37:21 Then King Zedekiah ordered that Jeremiah be committed to the courtyard of the guardhouse. He also ordered that a loaf of bread ⁴  be given to him every day from the baker’s street until all the bread in the city was gone. So Jeremiah was kept ⁵  in the courtyard of the guardhouse.

Yeremia 38:9

38:9 “Your royal Majesty, those men have been very wicked in all that they have done to the prophet Jeremiah. They have thrown him into a cistern and he is sure to die of starvation there because there is no food left in the city. ⁶ 

Yehezkiel 4:16-17

4:16 Then he said to me, “Son of man, I am about to remove the bread supply ⁷  in Jerusalem. ⁸  They will eat their bread ration anxiously, and they will drink their water ration in terror 4:17 because they will lack bread and water. Each one will be terrified, and they will rot for their iniquity. ⁹ 

Yehezkiel 14:13

14:13 “Son of man, suppose a country sins against me by being unfaithful, and I stretch out my hand against it, cut off its bread supply, ¹⁰  cause famine to come on it, and kill both people and animals.

[26:26]  ¹ tn Heb “When I break to you staff of bread” (KJV, ASV, and NASB all similar).

[26:26]  ² tn Heb “they will return your bread in weight.”

[105:16]  ³ tn Heb “and every staff of food he broke.” The psalmist refers to the famine that occurred in Joseph’s time (see v. 17 and Gen 41:53-57).

[37:21]  ⁴ tn Heb “And/Then King Zedekiah ordered and they committed Jeremiah to [or deposited…in] the courtyard of the guardhouse and they gave to him a loaf of bread.” The translation has been structured the way it has to avoid the ambiguous “they” which is the impersonal subject which is sometimes rendered passive in English (cf. GKC 460 §144.d). This text also has another example of the vav (ו) + infinitive absolute continuing a finite verbal form (וְנָתֹן [vÿnaton] = “and they gave”; cf. GKC 345 §113.y and see Jer 32:44; 36:23).

[37:21]  ⁵ tn Heb “Stayed/Remained/ Lived.”

[38:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “Those men have made evil all they have done to the prophet Jeremiah in that they have thrown him into the cistern and he will die of starvation in the place where he is because there is no more food in the city.” The particle אֵת (’et) before “they have thrown” (אֵת אֲשֶׁר הִשְׁלִיכוּ, ’et ’asher hishlikhu) is explanatory or further definition of “all they have done to” (i.e., the particle is repeated for apposition). The verb form “and he is sure to die” is an unusual use of the vav (ו) consecutive + imperfect that the grammars see as giving a logical consequence without a past nuance (cf. GKC 328 §111.l and IBHS 557-58 §33.3.1f).

[38:9]  sn “Because there isn’t any food left in the city” is rhetorical exaggeration; the food did not run out until just before the city fell. Perhaps the intent is to refer to the fact that there was no food in the city for people so confined (i.e., in solitary confinement).

[4:16]  ⁷ tn Heb, “break the staff of bread.” The bread supply is compared to a staff that one uses for support.

[4:16]  ⁸ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[4:17]  ⁹ tn Or “in their punishment.” Ezek 4:16-17 alludes to Lev 26:26, 39. The phrase “in/for [a person’s] iniquity” occurs fourteen times in Ezekiel: here, 3:18, 19; 7:13, 16; 18: 17, 18, 19, 20; 24:23; 33:6, 8, 9; 39:23. The Hebrew word for “iniquity” may also mean the “punishment for iniquity.”

[14:13]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “break its staff of bread.”