Amos 4:3-13

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!

Israel has an Appointment with God

4:4 “Go to Bethel ⁴  and rebel! ⁵ 

At Gilgal ⁶  rebel some more!

Bring your sacrifices in ⁷  the morning,

your tithes on ⁸  the third day!

4:5 Burn a thank offering of bread made with yeast! ⁹ 

Make a public display of your voluntary offerings! ¹⁰ 

For you love to do this, you Israelites.”

The sovereign Lord is speaking!

4:6 “But surely I gave ¹¹  you no food to eat in any of your cities;

you lacked food everywhere you live. ¹² 

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:7 “I withheld rain from you three months before the harvest. ¹³ 

I gave rain to one city, but not to another.

One field ¹⁴  would get rain, but the field that received no rain dried up.

4:8 People from ¹⁵  two or three cities staggered into one city to get ¹⁶  water,

but remained thirsty. ¹⁷ 

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:9 “I destroyed your crops ¹⁸  with blight and disease.

Locusts kept ¹⁹  devouring your orchards, ²⁰  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. ²¹ 

I killed your young men with the sword,

along with the horses you had captured.

I made the stench from the corpses ²²  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 ²³  overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. ²⁴ 

You were like a burning stick ²⁵  snatched from the flames.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:12 “Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel.

Because I will do this to you,

prepare to meet your God, Israel! ²⁶ 

4:13 For here he is!

He ²⁷  formed the mountains and created the wind.

He reveals ²⁸  his plans ²⁹  to men.

He turns the dawn into darkness ³⁰ 

and marches on the heights of the earth.

The Lord, the God who commands armies, ³¹  is his name!”

[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”).

[4:4]  ⁴ sn Bethel and Gilgal were important formal worship centers because of their importance in Israel’s history. Here the Lord ironically urges the people to visit these places so they can increase their sin against him. Their formal worship, because it was not accompanied by social justice, only made them more guilty in God’s sight by adding hypocrisy to their list of sins. Obviously, theirs was a twisted view of the Lord. They worshiped a god of their own creation in order to satisfy their religious impulses (see 4:5: “For you love to do this”). Note that none of the rituals listed in 4:4-5 have to do with sin.

[4:4]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew word translated “rebel” (also in the following line) could very well refer here to Israel’s violations of their covenant with God (see also the term “crimes” in 1:3 [with note] and the phrase “covenant transgressions” in 2:4 [with note]; 3:14).

[4:4]  ⁶ sn See the note on Bethel earlier in this verse.

[4:4]  ⁷ tn Or “for.”

[4:4]  ⁸ tn Or “for.”

[4:5]  ⁹ sn For the background of the thank offering of bread made with yeast, see Lev 7:13.

[4:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “proclaim voluntary offerings, announce.”

[4:6]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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.

[4:7]  ¹³ sn Rain…three months before the harvest refers to the rains of late March-early April.

[4:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “portion”; KJV, ASV “piece”; NASB “part.” The same word occurs a second time later in this verse.

[4:8]  ¹⁵ tn The words “people from” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[4:8]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “to drink.”

[4:8]  ¹⁷ tn Or “were not satisfied.”

[4:9]  ¹⁸ 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]  ¹⁹ 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]  ²⁰ tn Or “gardens.”

[4:10]  ²¹ tn Heb “in the manner [or “way”] of Egypt.”

[4:10]  ²² tn Heb “of your camps [or “armies”].”

[4:11]  ²³ tn Several English versions substitute the first person pronoun (“I”) here for stylistic reasons (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

[4:11]  ²⁴ 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]  ²⁵ tn Heb “like that which is burning.”

[4:12]  ²⁶ tn The Lord appears to announce a culminating judgment resulting from Israel’s obstinate refusal to repent. The following verse describes the Lord in his role as sovereign judge, but it does not outline the judgment per se. For this reason F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman (Amos [AB], 450) take the prefixed verbal forms as preterites referring to the series of judgments detailed in vv. 6-11. It is more likely that a coming judgment is in view, but that its details are omitted for rhetorical effect, creating a degree of suspense (see S. M. Paul, Amos [Hermeneia], 149-50) that will find its solution in chapter 5. This line is an ironic conclusion to the section begun at 4:4. Israel thought they were meeting the Lord at the sanctuaries, yet they actually had misunderstood how he had been trying to bring them back to himself. Now Israel would truly meet the Lord – not at the sanctuaries, but face-to-face in judgment.

[4:13]  ²⁷ tn Heb “For look, the one who.” This verse is considered to be the first hymnic passage in the book. The others appear at 5:8-9 and 9:5-6. Scholars debate whether these verses were originally part of a single hymn or three distinct pieces deliberately placed in each context for particular effect.

[4:13]  ²⁸ tn Or “declares” (NAB, NASB).

[4:13]  ²⁹ tn Or “his thoughts.” The translation assumes that the pronominal suffix refers to God and that divine self-revelation is in view (see 3:7). If the suffix refers to the following term אָדַם (’adam, “men”), then the expression refers to God’s ability to read men’s minds.

[4:13]  ³⁰ tn Heb “he who makes dawn, darkness.” The meaning of the statement is unclear. The present translation assumes that allusion is made to God’s approaching judgment, when the light of day will be turned to darkness (see 5:20). Other options include: (1) “He makes the dawn [and] the darkness.” A few Hebrew mss, as well as the LXX, add the conjunction (“and”) between the two nouns. (2) “He turns darkness into glimmering dawn” (NJPS). See S. M. Paul (Amos [Hermeneia], 154), who takes שָׁחַר (shakhar) as “blackness” rather than “dawn” and עֵיפָה (’efah) as “glimmering dawn” rather than “darkness.”

[4:13]  ³¹ tn Traditionally, “God of hosts.”