Amos 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Amos speaks against the wealthy women of Samaria, called "cows of Bashan," who press down the poor, and he announces that they will be dragged away through broken walls. He then mocks the worship at Bethel and Gilgal, and lists five disasters God says he sent (hunger, drought, blight and locusts, plague and war, and an overthrow like Sodom and Gomorrah) each ending with the line that Israel still did not return to him. The chapter closes with a warning to Israel to prepare to meet God, and a short piece of praise naming the one who forms the mountains and makes the wind.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • A command is given to hear this word.
   • The ones addressed are called cows of Bashan.
   • Those addressed are on the mountain of Samaria.
   • Those addressed oppress the poor.
   • Those addressed crush the needy.
   • Those addressed say to their lords, Bring, and let us drink.
2. 4:2
   • The Lord GOD has sworn by his holiness.
   • Days are coming upon those addressed.
   • They will be carried away with hooks.
   • Their posterity will be carried away with fish hooks.
3. 4:3
   • Those addressed will go out through breaches in the wall.
   • Each one will go out straight ahead of her.
   • They will be cast out toward Harmon, a term whose meaning is uncertain and which may name a place or a fortified building.
   • The LORD declares this.
4. 4:4
   • A command is given to come to Bethel and transgress.
   • A command is given to multiply transgression at Gilgal.
   • A command is given to bring their sacrifices in the morning.
   • A command is given to bring their tithes every three days.
5. 4:5
   • A command is given to burn a thank offering from what is leavened.
   • A command is given to proclaim freewill offerings.
   • A command is given to make the freewill offerings publicly heard.
   • The children of Israel love to act in this way.
   • The Lord GOD declares this.
6. 4:6
   • God gave them cleanness of teeth in all their cities.
   • God gave them lack of bread in all their places.
   • They did not return to God.
   • The LORD declares this.
7. 4:7
   • God withheld the rain from them when there were still three months until the harvest.
   • God caused rain to fall on one city.
   • God caused no rain to fall on another city.
   • One field was rained upon.
   • The field that was not rained upon withered.
8. 4:8
   • Two or three cities staggered to one city to drink water.
   • They were not satisfied.
   • They did not return to God.
   • The LORD declares this.
9. 4:9
   • God struck them with blight and mildew.
   • The locust devoured the abundance of their gardens and vineyards and fig trees and olive trees.
   • They did not return to God.
   • The LORD declares this.
10. 4:10
    • God sent pestilence among them in the manner of Egypt.
    • God killed their young men with the sword.
    • Their horses were taken captive along with the slain.
    • God made the stench of their camps rise into their nostrils.
    • They did not return to God.
    • The LORD declares this.
11. 4:11
    • God overthrew some among them as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
    • They became like a firebrand snatched out of the burning.
    • They did not return to God.
    • The LORD declares this.
12. 4:12
    • God will do thus to Israel.
    • Because God will do this to Israel, Israel is commanded to prepare to meet its God.
13. 4:13
    • There is one who forms the mountains.
    • He creates the wind.
    • He declares to man what his thought is, and it is not specified whether the thought is man's or God's.
    • He makes the dawn into darkness.
    • He treads upon the high places of the earth.
    • His name is the LORD, the God of hosts.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1

Bashan was a fertile grazing region east of the Jordan River, famous for its unusually well-fed cattle; calling these women "cows of Bashan" pictures them as sleek, pampered animals. Samaria was the capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel, built on a hill, so "the mountain of Samaria" means the city itself. The word rendered "husbands" is the ordinary Hebrew word for "lord" or "master", which a wife could use of her husband; the King James "masters" keeps the wider sense.

4:2

Assyrian and Egyptian art shows prisoners of war being led away by ropes attached to hooks or rings through the lip or nose, and captives were sometimes dragged off like a catch of fish. "Posterity" in the King James means descendants, or simply the last ones left.

4:3

When a besieged city's wall was broken through, survivors escaped through the gaps rather than the gates. The last word of the verse is uncertain in Hebrew: it may be a place name, Harmon, otherwise unknown, and the King James translators guessed at "the palace" instead. Nobody knows for certain what it means.

4:4

Bethel and Gilgal were the two main worship sites of the northern kingdom, both busy and popular. The command to go there and sin is sarcastic: it is an invitation phrased like the summons a priest would call out to worshipers. A "tithe" is a tenth of one's harvest or livestock given as a religious due. The Hebrew here says literally "every three days", which is absurdly frequent and part of the mockery; the King James "after three years" reflects the law that set the tithe on a three-year cycle.

4:5

Yeast was normally kept off the altar fire, though leavened loaves did accompany a thanksgiving sacrifice as a gift to the priests. A "freewill offering" was a voluntary gift, given beyond what was required, and by definition private generosity, which is why announcing it out loud is the point of the jibe.

4:6

"Cleanness of teeth" is an idiom: teeth stay clean when there is no food to put between them. It means famine, not hygiene.

4:7

In this climate the rain came in two seasons, and the later rains falling about three months before harvest were what filled out the grain. Losing them meant losing the crop.

4:8

Towns stored water in wells and in cisterns, which were pits cut in rock to catch rain. When those ran dry, people had to walk to a town that still had water left.

4:9

"Blasting" is the scorching of grain by a hot dry east wind off the desert; mildew is the fungus that ruins damp grain. "Palmerworm" is one of several King James words for locusts, insects that strip vegetation bare in swarms.

4:10

"After the manner of Egypt" points back to the plagues that struck Egypt in the exodus story, which had become a byword for devastating epidemics. The stench is that of unburied bodies in a defeated army's camp.

4:11

Sodom and Gomorrah were cities destroyed by fire in Genesis, and their name became shorthand for total, sudden ruin. A "firebrand plucked out of the burning" is a stick snatched from a fire, saved, but charred and useless.

4:12

The threat is deliberately left blank: "this" is never specified. The phrase "prepare to meet your God" uses the language of getting ready for a formal encounter, as Israel prepared to meet God at Sinai, and also of an army mustering to face an enemy in the field. Both senses are available in the Hebrew.

4:13

These lines have the shape and rhythm of a hymn, and may be a piece of an existing song quoted here. "What is his thought" is ambiguous in Hebrew: it can mean God revealing his own thought to man, or God telling a person what that person is thinking. "High places of the earth" means the ridges and summits of the land. "God of hosts" means commander of armies, the massed forces of heaven, and sometimes the stars.