Do they not see that they are tried once or twice every year (with different kinds of calamities, disease, famine? Yet they neither repent nor do they learn a lesson (from it).
Meaning:-
Calamity: an event causing great and often sudden damage or distress; a disaster.
famine: a severe shortage of food, as through crop failure or disaster.
Explanation: Their hypocrisy is exposed over and over again. “every year once or twice” – Yet, in spite of their infidelity, one or two chances are given them every year. The door is not closed to them. Yet they deliberately turn away, and take no heed of all the warnings which their own nature and the teaching and example of good men should give them.