meeting their covenantal obligations, of which the tithe was the most tangible example. The tithe had to be brought into the temple ‘storehouse’, from where it could be dispensed as required to the priests and Levites and to the poor of the community. If the people of Judah returned to the Lord in this concrete way, under the terms of the Mosaic covenant they could expect equally tangible agricultural blessings. These would come as the Lord opened the ‘floodgates of the heavens’—a pictorial way of