Amos 5:6

5:6 Seek the Lord so you can live!

Otherwise he will break out ¹  like fire against Joseph’s ²  family; ³ 

the fire ⁴  will consume

and no one will be able to quench it and save Bethel. ⁵ 

Amos 7:4

7:4 The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw ⁶  the sovereign Lord summoning a shower of fire. ⁷  It consumed the great deep and devoured the fields.

[5:6]  ¹ tn Heb “rush.” The verb depicts swift movement.

[5:6]  ² sn Here Joseph (= Ephraim and Manasseh), as the most prominent of the Israelite tribes, represents the entire northern kingdom.

[5:6]  ³ tn Heb “house.”

[5:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “it”; the referent (the fire mentioned in the previous line) has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[5:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “to/for Bethel.” The translation assumes that the preposition indicates advantage, “on behalf of.” Another option is to take the preposition as vocative, “O Bethel.”

[7:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “behold” or “look.”

[7:4]  ⁷ tc The Hebrew appears to read, “summoning to contend with fire,” or “summoning fire to contend,” but both are problematic syntactically (H. W. Wolff, Joel and Amos [Hermeneia], 292; S. M. Paul, Amos [Hermeneia], 230-31). Many emend the text to לרבב אשׁ, “(calling) for a shower of fire,” though this interpretation is also problematic (see F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Amos [AB], 746-47).