Amos 4:6

4:6 “But surely I gave ¹  you no food to eat in any of your cities;

you lacked food everywhere you live. ² 

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

Amos 4:9-11

4:9 “I destroyed your crops ³  with blight and disease.

Locusts kept ⁴  devouring your orchards, ⁵  vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:10 “I sent against you a plague like one of the Egyptian plagues. ⁶ 

I killed your young men with the sword,

along with the horses you had captured.

I made the stench from the corpses ⁷  rise up into your nostrils.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:11 “I overthrew some of you the way God ⁸  overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. ⁹ 

You were like a burning stick ¹⁰  snatched from the flames.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

Jeremiah 23:14

23:14 But I see the prophets of Jerusalem ¹¹ 

doing something just as shocking.

They are unfaithful to me

and continually prophesy lies. ¹² 

So they give encouragement to people who are doing evil,

with the result that they do not stop their evildoing. ¹³ 

I consider all of them as bad as the people of Sodom,

and the citizens of Jerusalem as bad as the people of Gomorrah. ¹⁴ 

Hosea 7:10

7:10 The arrogance of Israel testifies against him,

yet they refuse to return to the Lord their God!

In spite of all this they refuse to seek him!

[4:6]  ¹ tn The Hebrew construction is emphatic (pronoun + verb). It underscores the stark contrast between the judgments that the Lord had been sending with the God of blessing Israel was celebrating in its worship (4:4-5).

[4:6]  ² tn Heb “But I gave to you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of food in all your places.” The phrase “cleanness of teeth” is a vivid way of picturing the famine Israel experienced.

[4:9]  ³ tn Heb “you.” By metonymy the crops belonging to these people are meant. See the remainder of this verse, which describes the agricultural devastation caused by locusts.

[4:9]  ⁴ tn The Hiphil infinitive construct is taken adverbially (“kept”) and connected to the activity of the locusts (NJPS). It also could be taken with the preceding sentence and related to the Lord’s interventions (“I kept destroying,” cf. NEB, NJB, NIV, NRSV), or it could be understood substantivally in construct with the following nouns (“Locusts devoured your many orchards,” cf. NASB; cf. also KJV, NKJV).

[4:9]  ⁵ tn Or “gardens.”

[4:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “in the manner [or “way”] of Egypt.”

[4:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “of your camps [or “armies”].”

[4:11]  ⁸ tn Several English versions substitute the first person pronoun (“I”) here for stylistic reasons (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

[4:11]  ⁹ tn Heb “like God’s overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.” The divine name may be used in an idiomatic superlative sense here, in which case one might translate, “like the great [or “disastrous”] overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

[4:11]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “like that which is burning.”

[23:14]  ¹¹ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[23:14]  ¹² tn Or “they commit adultery and deal falsely.” The word “shocking” only occurs here and in 5:30 where it is found in the context of prophesying lies. This almost assures that the reference to “walking in lies” (Heb “in the lie”) is referring to false prophesy. Moreover the references to the prophets in 5:13 and in 14:13-15 are all in the context of false prophesy as are the following references in this chapter in 23:24, 26, 32 and in 28:15. This appears to be the theme of this section. This also makes it likely that the reference to adultery is not literal adultery, though two of the false prophets in Babylon were guilty of this (29:23). The reference to “encouraging those who do evil” that follows also makes more sense if they were preaching messages of comfort rather than messages of doom. The verbs here are infinitive absolutes in place of the finite verb, probably used to place greater emphasis on the action (cf. Hos 4:2 in a comparable judgment speech.)

[23:14]  ¹³ tn Heb “So they strengthen the hands of those doing evil so that they do not turn back from their evil.” For the use of the figure “strengthen the hands” meaning “encourage” see Judg 9:24; Ezek 13:22 (and cf. BDB 304 s.v. חָזַק Piel.2). The vav consecutive on the front of the form gives the logical consequence equivalent to “so” in the translation.

[23:14]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “All of them are to me like Sodom and its [Jerusalem’s] inhabitants like Gomorrah.”