Blasting

In the UPDV "blasting" names two related things: the scorching ruin of crops by hot wind or blight, sent on the land as a covenant judgment; and, figuratively, the violent exhalation from Yahweh's nostrils that piles up seas, lays bare foundations, and consumes the wicked. The same Hebrew imagery — a destructive blast of breath — links the agricultural curse to the divine action behind it.

Blight as Covenant Judgment

Blasting belongs to the standard list of agrarian disasters Yahweh threatens against a disobedient covenant people. In the Deuteronomic curses it stands alongside disease and drought: "[The Speech of] Yahweh will strike you with consumption, and with fever, and with inflammation, and with fiery heat, and with drought, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they will pursue you until you perish" (De 28:22).

Solomon's dedication prayer takes the same list and turns it forward into intercession. When the curses come, the temple is the place to which a stricken Israel may turn: "If there is in the land famine, if there is pestilence, if there is blasting [or] mildew, locust [or] caterpillar; if their enemy besieges them in the gates of their land; whatever plague, whatever sickness there is" (1Ki 8:37).

Yahweh's Hand Behind the Blight

The prophets read the failed harvest as a deliberate strike, not a natural accident. Through Amos, Yahweh names himself as the agent and points to the unlearned lesson: "I have struck you⁺ with blasting and mildew: the multitude of your⁺ gardens and your⁺ vineyards and your⁺ fig trees and your⁺ olive trees has the palmer-worm devoured: yet you⁺ have not returned to me, says Yahweh" (Am 4:9).

Haggai uses the same triad — blasting, mildew, hail — to interpret the post-exilic community's frustrated labor. The empty grain and ruined vines are not bad weather but a summons: "I struck you⁺ with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the work of your⁺ hands; yet you⁺ did not [turn] to me, says Yahweh" (Hag 2:17).

The pattern across these passages is consistent. Blasting is one of Yahweh's instruments; its purpose is to bring his people back; the proof that the chastening has failed is that the harvest is destroyed and the people still do not return.

The Blast of Yahweh's Nostrils

The figurative use carries the same picture — a violent, scorching exhalation — into the language of theophany and warfare. At the Red Sea the waters obey not a wind in general but a blast traceable to Yahweh's own breath: "And with the blast of your nostrils the waters were piled up, The floods stood upright as a heap; The deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea" (Ex 15:8).

David's song of deliverance (in two parallel forms) makes the same connection between cosmic disturbance and the divine breath. The sea floor and the world's foundations are exposed when Yahweh breathes out in rebuke: "Then the channels of the sea appeared, The foundations of the world were laid bare, By the rebuke of Yahweh, At the blast of the breath [Speech] of his nostrils" (2Sa 22:16). The Psalter version preserves the same image: "Then the channels of water appeared, And the foundations of the world were laid bare, At your rebuke, O Yahweh, At the blast of the breath of your nostrils" (Ps 18:15).

The Blast That Consumes

Job's friend Eliphaz extends the figure from sea to the wicked themselves. The same divine breath that strips the deeps also undoes the proud: "By the breath of God they perish, And by the blast of his anger are they consumed" (Job 4:9).

Read together, the agricultural and the figurative uses are a single picture. Yahweh's breath, when turned in judgment, withers crops, exposes foundations, and consumes those who do not return.