Amos 4:3

4:3 Each of you will go straight through the gaps in the walls; ¹ 

you will be thrown out ²  toward Harmon.” ³ 

The Lord is speaking!

Amos 7:17

7:17 “Therefore this is what the Lord says:

‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the streets ⁴ 

and your sons and daughters will die violently. ⁵ 

Your land will be given to others ⁶ 

and you will die in a foreign ⁷  land.

Israel will certainly be carried into exile ⁸  away from its land.’”

[4:3]  ¹ tn Heb “and [through the] breaches you will go out, each straight ahead.”

[4:3]  ² tn The Hiphil verb form has no object. It may be intransitive (F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Amos [AB], 425), though many emend it to a Hophal.

[4:3]  ³ tn The meaning of this word is unclear. Many understand it as a place name, though such a location is not known. Some (e.g., H. W. Wolff, Joel and Amos [Hermeneia[, 204) emend to “Hermon” or to similarly written words, such as “the dung heap” (NEB, NJPS), “the garbage dump” (NCV), or “the fortress” (cf. NLT “your fortresses”).

[7:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “in the city,” that is, “in public.”

[7:17]  ⁵ tn Heb “will fall by the sword.”

[7:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “will be divided up with a [surveyor’s] measuring line.”

[7:17]  ⁷ 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).

[7:17]  ⁸ tn See the note on the word “exile” in 5:5.