Amos 7:1-7

Symbolic Visions of Judgment

7:1 The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw ¹  him making locusts just as the crops planted late ²  were beginning to sprout. (The crops planted late sprout after the royal harvest. ³ ) 7:2 When they had completely consumed the earth’s vegetation, I said,

“Sovereign Lord, forgive Israel! ⁴ 

How can Jacob survive? ⁵ 

He is too weak!” ⁶ 

7:3 The Lord decided not to do this. ⁷  “It will not happen,” the Lord said.

7:4 The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw ⁸  the sovereign Lord summoning a shower of fire. ⁹  It consumed the great deep and devoured the fields.

7:5 I said, “Sovereign Lord, stop!

How can Jacob survive? ¹⁰ 

He is too weak!” ¹¹ 

7:6 The Lord decided not to do this. ¹²  The sovereign Lord said, “This will not happen either.”

7:7 He showed me this: I saw ¹³  the sovereign One ¹⁴  standing by a tin ¹⁵  wall holding tin in his hand.

[7:1]  ¹ tn Heb “behold” or “look.”

[7:1]  ² sn The crops planted late (consisting of vegetables) were planted in late January-early March and sprouted in conjunction with the spring rains of March-April. For a discussion of the ancient Israelite agricultural calendar, see O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 31-44.

[7:1]  ³ tn Or “the mowings of the king.”

[7:2]  ⁴ tn “Israel” is supplied in the translation for clarity.

[7:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “stand” (so ASV, NAB, NASB, NRSV).

[7:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “small.”

[7:3]  ⁷ tn Or “changed his mind about this.”

[7:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “behold” or “look.”

[7:4]  ⁹ 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).

[7:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “stand.”

[7:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “small.”

[7:6]  ¹² tn Or “changed his mind about this.”

[7:7]  ¹³ tn Heb “behold” or “look.”

[7:7]  ¹⁴ tn Or “the Lord.” The Hebrew term translated “sovereign One” here and in the following verse is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay).

[7:7]  ¹⁵ tn The Hebrew word אֲנָךְ (’anakh, “tin”) occurs only in this passage (twice in this verse and twice in the following verse). (Its proposed meaning is based on an Akkadian cognate annaku.) The tin wall of the vision, if it symbolizes Israel, may suggest weakness and vulnerability to judgment. See S. M. Paul, Amos (Hermeneia), 233-35. The symbolic significance of God holding tin in his hand and then placing tin among the people is unclear. Possibly the term אֲנָךְ in v. 8b is a homonym meaning “grief” (this term is attested in postbiblical Hebrew). In this case there is a wordplay, the אֲנָךְ (“tin”) of the vision suggesting the אֲנָךְ (“grief”) that judgment will bring upon the land. See F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Amos (AB), 759. Another option is to maintain the meaning “tin” and understand that the Lord has ripped off a piece of the tin wall and placed it in front of all to see. Their citadels, of which the nation was so proud and confident, are nothing more than tin fortresses. The traditional interpretation of these verses (reflected in many English versions) understands the term אֲנָךְ to mean “lead,” and by extension, “plumb line.” In this case, one may translate: “I saw the sovereign one standing by a wall built true to plumb holding a plumb line in his hand. The Lord said to me, ‘What do you see, Amos?’ I said, ‘A plumb line.’ The sovereign one then said, ‘Look, I am about to place a plumb line among my people…’” According to this view, the plumb line symbolizes God’s moral standards by which he will measure Israel to see if they are a straight or crooked wall.