Text -- Amos 7:15-17 (NET)

7:15 Then the Lord took me from tending flocks and gave me this commission, ‘Go! Prophesy to my people Israel!’ 7:16 So now listen to the Lord’s message! You say, ‘Don’t prophesy against Israel! Don’t preach against the family of Isaac!’ 7:17 “Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the streets and your sons and daughters will die violently. Your land will be given to others and you will die in a foreign land. Israel will certainly be carried into exile away from its land.’”

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Amo 7:15

¹ tn Heb “from [following] after.”

² tn Heb “and the Lord said to me.”

NET Notes: Amo 7:16

¹ tn The verb, which literally means “to drip,” appears to be a synonym of “to prophesy,” but it might carry a derogatory tone here, perhaps alluding to the impassioned, frenzied way in which prophets sometimes delivered their messages. If so, one could translate, “to drivel; to foam at the mouth” (see HALOT 694 s.v. נטף).

NET Notes: Amo 7:17

¹ tn Heb “in the city,” that is, “in public.”

² tn Heb “will fall by the sword.”

³ tn Heb “will be divided up with a [surveyor’s] measuring line.”

⁴ tn Heb “[an] unclean”; or “[an] impure.” This fate would be especially humiliating for a priest, who was to distinguish between the ritually clean and unclean (see Lev 10:10).

⁵ tn See the note on the word “exile” in 5:5.