Amos 7:8

7:8 The Lord said to me, “What do you see, Amos?” I said, “Tin.” The sovereign One then said,

“Look, I am about to place tin among my people Israel.

I will no longer overlook their sin. ¹ 

Amos 8:2

8:2 He said, “What do you see, Amos?” I replied, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me, “The end ²  has come for my people Israel! I will no longer overlook their sins. ³ 

Zechariah 4:2

4:2 He asked me, “What do you see?” I replied, ⁴  “I see a menorah of pure gold with a receptacle at the top and seven lamps, with fourteen pipes going to the lamps.

Zechariah 5:2

5:2 Someone asked me, “What do you see?” I replied, “I see a flying scroll thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide.” ⁵ 

[7:8]  ¹ tn Heb “And I will no longer pass over him.”

[8:2]  ² tn There is a wordplay here. The Hebrew word קֵץ (qets, “end”) sounds like קָיִץ (qayits, “summer fruit”). The summer fruit arrived toward the end of Israel’s agricultural year; Israel’s national existence was similarly at an end.

[8:2]  ³ tn Heb “I will no longer pass over him.”

[4:2]  ⁴ tc The present translation (along with most other English versions) follows the reading of the Qere and many ancient versions, “I said,” as opposed to the MT Kethib “he said.”

[5:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “twenty cubits…ten cubits” (so NAB, NRSV). These dimensions (“thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide”) can hardly be referring to the scroll when unrolled since that would be all out of proportion to the normal ratio, in which the scroll would be 10 to 15 times as long as it was wide. More likely, the scroll is 15 feet thick when rolled, a hyperbole expressing the enormous amount and the profound significance of the information it contains.