Famine

Passages on this topic

From Nave’s Topical Bible (1896), a historical reference index. The groupings are Nave’s; the verses are shown in the text used across this site.

Pharaoh forewarned of, in dreams

• Genesis 41 After two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing beside the Nile, when seven cows, sleek and well-fed, came up from the river and began to graze among the reeds. After them, seven other cows, sickly and thin, came up from the Nile and stood beside the well-fed cows on the bank… (whole chapter)

Described

• Deuteronomy 28:53–57 Then you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you. The most gentle and refined man among you will begrudge his brother, the wife he embraces, and the rest of his children…
• Isaiah 5:13 Therefore My people will go into exile for their lack of understanding; their dignitaries are starving and their masses are parched with thirst.
• Isaiah 9:18–21 For wickedness burns like a fire that consumes the thorns and briers and kindles the forest thickets, which roll upward in billows of smoke. By the wrath of the LORD of Hosts the land is scorched, and the people are fuel for the fire. No man even spares his brother. They carve out what is on the ri…
• Isaiah 17:11 though on the day you plant you make them grow, and on that morning you help your seed sprout — yet the harvest will vanish on the day of disease and incurable pain.
• Jeremiah 5:17 They will devour your harvest and food; they will consume your sons and daughters; they will eat up your flocks and herds; they will feed on your vines and fig trees. With the sword they will destroy the fortified cities in which you trust.”
• Jeremiah 14:1–6 This is the word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought: “Judah mourns and her gates languish. Her people wail for the land, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem. The nobles send their servants for water; they go to the cisterns, but find no water; their jars return empty. They are as…
• Jeremiah 48:33 Joy and gladness are removed from the orchard and from the fields of Moab. I have stopped the flow of wine from the presses; no one treads them with shouts of joy; their shouts are not for joy.
• Lamentations 1:11 All her people groan as they search for bread. They have traded their treasures for food to keep themselves alive. Look, O LORD, and consider, for I have become despised.
• Lamentations 1:19 I called out to my lovers, but they have betrayed me. My priests and elders perished in the city while they searched for food to keep themselves alive.
• Lamentations 2:11–22 My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city. They cry out to their mothers: “Where is the grain and wine?” as they faint like the wounded in the stre…

Sent as a judgment

• Leviticus 26:19–29 I will break down your stubborn pride and make your sky like iron and your land like bronze, and your strength will be spent in vain. For your land will not yield its produce, and the trees of the land will not bear their fruit. If you walk in hostility toward Me and refuse to obey Me, I will multi…
• Deuteronomy 28:23–24 The sky over your head will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron. The LORD will turn the rain of your land into dust and powder; it will descend on you from the sky until you are destroyed.
• Deuteronomy 28:38–42 You will sow much seed in the field but harvest little, because the locusts will consume it. You will plant and cultivate vineyards, but will neither drink the wine nor gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. You will have olive trees throughout your territory but will never anoint yourself…
• 1 Kings 17:1 Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was among the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there will be neither dew nor rain in these years except at my word!”
• 2 Kings 8:1 Now Elisha had said to the woman whose son he had restored to life, “Arise, you and your household; go and live as a foreigner wherever you can. For the LORD has decreed that a seven-year famine will come to the land.”
• 1 Chronicles 21:12 between three years of famine, three months of being swept away before your enemies and overtaken by their swords, or three days of the sword of the LORD— days of plague upon the land, with the angel of the LORD ravaging every part of Israel.’ Now then, decide how I should reply to Him who sent me.”
• Psalm 105:16 He called down famine on the land and cut off all their supplies of food.
• Psalm 107:33–34 He turns rivers into deserts, springs of water into thirsty ground, and fruitful land into fields of salt, because of the wickedness of its dwellers.
• Isaiah 3:1–8 For behold, the Lord GOD of Hosts is about to remove from Jerusalem and Judah both supply and support: the whole supply of food and water, the mighty man and the warrior, the judge and the prophet, the soothsayer and the elder, the commander of fifty and the dignitary, the counselor, the cunning ma…
• Isaiah 14:30 Then the firstborn of the poor will find pasture, and the needy will lie down in safety, but I will kill your root by famine, and your remnant will be slain.

Cannibalism in

• Deuteronomy 28:53 Then you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you.
• 2 Kings 6:28 Then the king asked her, “What is the matter?” And she answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son, that we may eat him, and tomorrow we will eat my son.’

Righteous delivered from

• Job 5:20 In famine He will redeem you from death, and in battle from the stroke of the sword.
• Psalm 33:19 to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine.
• Psalm 37:19 In the time of evil they will not be ashamed, and in the days of famine they will be satisfied.

Figurative

• Amos 8:11 Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land — not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.

Instances of

In Canaan

• Genesis 12:10 Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.
• Genesis 26:1 Now there was another famine in the land, subsequent to the one that had occurred in Abraham’s time. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines at Gerar.
• 2 Samuel 21:1 During the reign of David there was a famine for three successive years, and David sought the face of the LORD. And the LORD said, “It is because of the blood shed by Saul and his family, because he killed the Gibeonites.”
• 1 Kings 17 Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was among the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there will be neither dew nor rain in these years except at my word!” Then a revelation from the LORD came to Elijah: “Leave here, turn eastward, and h… (whole chapter)
• 1 Kings 18:1 After a long time, in the third year of the drought, the word of the LORD came to Elijah: “Go and present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain upon the face of the earth.”
• 2 Kings 6:25–29 So there was a great famine in Samaria. Indeed, they besieged the city so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter cab of dove’s dung sold for five shekels of silver. As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, “Help me, my lord the…
• 2 Kings 7:4 If we say, ‘Let us go into the city,’ we will die there from the famine in the city; but if we sit here, we will also die. So come now, let us go over to the camp of the Arameans. If they let us live, we will live; if they kill us, we will die.”

In Jerusalem, from siege

• 2 Kings 25:3 By the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine in the city was so severe that the people of the land had no food.
• Jeremiah 52:6 By the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine in the city was so severe that the people of the land had no food.

In Egypt

• Genesis 41:53–57 When the seven years of abundance in the land of Egypt came to an end, the seven years of famine began, just as Joseph had said. And although there was famine in every country, there was food throughout the land of Egypt. When extreme hunger came to all the land of Egypt and the people cried out to…

Universal

• Acts 11:28 One of them named Agabus stood up and predicted through the Spirit that a great famine would sweep across the whole world. (This happened under Claudius.)