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

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!

Amos 4:11

4:11 “I overthrew some of you the way God ⁶  overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. ⁷ 

You were like a burning stick ⁸  snatched from the flames.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

Amos 5:18

The Lord Demands Justice

5:18 Woe ⁹  to those who wish for the day of the Lord!

Why do you want the Lord’s day of judgment to come?

It will bring darkness, not light.

Amos 7:14

7:14 Amos replied ¹⁰  to Amaziah, “I was not a prophet by profession. ¹¹  No, ¹²  I was a herdsman who also took care of ¹³  sycamore fig trees. ¹⁴ 

Amos 7:16

7:16 So now listen to the Lord’s message! You say, ‘Don’t prophesy against Israel! Don’t preach ¹⁵  against the family of Isaac!’

Amos 8:12

8:12 People ¹⁶  will stagger from sea to sea, ¹⁷ 

and from the north around to the east.

They will wander about looking for a revelation from ¹⁸  the Lord,

but they will not find any. ¹⁹ 

Amos 8:14

8:14 These are the ones who now take oaths ²⁰  in the name of the sinful idol goddess ²¹  of Samaria.

They vow, ²²  ‘As surely as your god ²³  lives, O Dan,’ or ‘As surely as your beloved one ²⁴  lives, O Beer Sheba!’

But they will fall down and not get up again.”

Amos 9:4

9:4 Even when their enemies drive them into captivity, ²⁵ 

from there ²⁶  I will command the sword to kill them.

I will not let them out of my sight;

they will experience disaster, not prosperity.” ²⁷ 

Amos 9:9

9:9 “For look, I am giving a command

and I will shake the family of Israel together with all the nations.

It will resemble a sieve being shaken,

when not even a pebble falls to the ground. ²⁸ 

Amos 9:15

9:15 I will plant them on their land

and they will never again be uprooted from the ²⁹  land I have given them,”

says the Lord your God.

[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.”

[4:11]  ⁵ tn Several English versions substitute the first person pronoun (“I”) here for stylistic reasons (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

[4:11]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ tn Heb “like that which is burning.”

[5:18]  ⁷ tn The term הוֹי (hoy, “woe”) was used when mourning the dead (see the note on the word “dead” in 5:16). The prophet here either engages in role playing and mourns the death of the nation in advance or sarcastically taunts those who hold to this misplaced belief.

[7:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “replied and said.” The phrase “and said” is pleonastic (redundant) and has not been included in the translation.

[7:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “I was not a prophet nor was I the son of a prophet.” The phrase “son of a prophet” refers to one who was trained in a prophetic guild. Since there is no equative verb present in the Hebrew text, another option is to translate with the present tense, “I am not a prophet by profession.” In this case Amos, though now carrying out a prophetic ministry (v. 15), denies any official or professional prophetic status. Modern English versions are divided about whether to understand the past (JB, NIV, NKJV) or present tense (NASB, NEB, NRSV, NJPS) here.

[7:14]  ¹¹ tn Heb “for.”

[7:14]  ¹² tn Heb “gashed”; or “pierced.”

[7:14]  ¹³ sn It is possible that herdsmen agreed to care for sycamore fig trees in exchange for grazing rights. See P. King, Amos, Hosea, Micah, 116-17. Since these trees do not grow around Tekoa but rather in the lowlands, another option is that Amos owned other property outside his hometown. In this case, this verse demonstrates his relative wealth and is his response to Amaziah; he did not depend on prophecy as a profession (v. 13).

[7:16]  ¹¹ 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).

[8:12]  ¹³ tn Heb “they”; the referent (people) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[8:12]  ¹⁴ tn That is, from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Dead Sea in the east – that is, across the whole land.

[8:12]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “looking for the word of.”

[8:12]  ¹⁶ tn It is not clear whether the speaker in this verse is the Lord or the prophet.

[8:14]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “those who swear.”

[8:14]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the sin [or “guilt”] of Samaria.” This could be a derogatory reference to an idol-goddess popular in the northern kingdom, perhaps Asherah (cf. 2 Chr 24:18, where this worship is labeled “their guilt”), or to the golden calf at the national sanctuary in Bethel (Hos 8:6, 10:8). Some English versions (e.g., NEB, NRSV, CEV) repoint the word and read “Ashimah,” the name of a goddess worshiped in Hamath in Syria (see 2 Kgs 17:30).

[8:14]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “say.”

[8:14]  ¹⁸ sn Your god is not identified. It may refer to another patron deity who was not the God of Israel, a local manifestation of the Lord that was worshiped by the people there, or, more specifically, the golden calf image erected in Dan by Jeroboam I (see 1 Kgs 12:28-30).

[8:14]  ¹⁹ tc The MT reads, “As surely as the way [to] Beer Sheba lives,” or “As surely as the way lives, O Beer Sheba.” Perhaps the term דֶּרֶךְ (derekh, “the way”) refers to the pilgrimage route to Beersheba (see S. M. Paul, Amos [Hermeneia], 272) or it may be a title for a god. The notion of pilgrimage appears elsewhere in the book (cf. 4:4-5; 5:4-5; 8:12). The translation above assumes an emendation to דֹּדְךְ (dodÿkh, “your beloved” or “relative”; the term also is used in 6:10) and understands this as referring either to the Lord (since other kinship terms are used of him, such as “Father”) or to another deity that was particularly popular in Beer Sheba. Besides the commentaries, see S. M. Olyan, “The Oaths of Amos 8:14” Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel, 121-49.

[9:4]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “Even if they go into captivity before their enemies.”

[9:4]  ¹⁸ tn Or perhaps simply, “there,” if the מ (mem) prefixed to the adverb is dittographic (note the preceding word ends in mem).

[9:4]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “I will set my eye on them for disaster, not good.”

[9:9]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “like being shaken with a sieve, and a pebble does not fall to the ground.” The meaning of the Hebrew word צְרוֹר (tsÿror), translated “pebble,” is unclear here. In 2 Sam 17:13 it appears to refer to a stone. If it means “pebble,” then the sieve described in v. 6 allows the grain to fall into a basket while retaining the debris and pebbles. However, if one interprets צְרוֹר as a “kernel of grain” (cf. NASB, NIV, NKJV, NLT) then the sieve is constructed to retain the grain and allow the refuse and pebbles to fall to the ground. In either case, the simile supports the last statement in v. 8 by making it clear that God will distinguish between the righteous (the grain) and the wicked (the pebbles) when he judges, and will thereby preserve a remnant in Israel. Only the sinners will be destroyed (v. 10).

[9:15]  ²¹ tn Heb “their.” The pronoun was replaced by the English definite article in the translation for stylistic reasons.