Amos 7:17

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

‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the streets ¹ 

and your sons and daughters will die violently. ² 

Your land will be given to others ³ 

and you will die in a foreign ⁴  land.

Israel will certainly be carried into exile ⁵  away from its land.’”

Amos 8:10

8:10 I will turn your festivals into funerals, ⁶ 

and all your songs into funeral dirges.

I will make everyone wear funeral clothes ⁷ 

and cause every head to be shaved bald. ⁸ 

I will make you mourn as if you had lost your only son; ⁹ 

when it ends it will indeed have been a bitter day. ¹⁰ 

[7:17]  ¹ tn Heb “in the city,” that is, “in public.”

[7:17]  ² tn Heb “will fall by the sword.”

[7:17]  ³ tn Heb “will be divided up with a [surveyor’s] measuring line.”

[7:17]  ⁴ 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]  ⁵ tn See the note on the word “exile” in 5:5.

[8:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “mourning.”

[8:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “I will place sackcloth on all waists.”

[8:10]  ⁸ tn Heb “and make every head bald.” This could be understood in a variety of ways, while the ritual act of mourning typically involved shaving the head (although occasionally the hair could be torn out as a sign of mourning).

[8:10]  ⁹ tn Heb “I will make it like the mourning for an only son.”

[8:10]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and its end will be like a bitter day.” The Hebrew preposition כְּ (kaf) sometimes carries the force of “in every respect,” indicating identity rather than mere comparison.