Drought

Drought in Palestine was not merely a climatic event but was understood in the covenant framework as a consequence of faithlessness to the LORD. The Mosaic law explicitly listed the withholding of rain and the hardening of the skies "like bronze" among the covenant curses for disobedience (Deut. 28:23–24). The agricultural calendar depended on two rainy seasons: the early rain (yôreh, October–November) for plowing and planting, and the latter rain (malqôsh, March–April) for ripening the grain. Absence of either caused crop failure and famine.

Elijah's three-and-a-half-year drought under Ahab (1 Kgs. 17:1; James 5:17) was a direct challenge to Baal, the Canaanite storm-and-rain deity whose cult Ahab promoted—if Baal controlled the rain, the drought was a public demonstration of his impotence. Haggai 1:10–11 connects the post-exilic community's drought to their failure to rebuild the temple. Jeremiah 14 is a sustained lament over drought as divine judgment. Psalm 32:4 uses the image of a summer's drought to describe the spiritual desiccation of unconfessed sin.