Amos 4:1-3

4:1 Listen to this message, you cows of Bashan ¹  who live on Mount Samaria!

You ²  oppress the poor;

you crush the needy.

You say to your ³  husbands,

“Bring us more to drink!” ⁴ 

4:2 The sovereign Lord confirms this oath by his own holy character: ⁵ 

“Certainly the time is approaching ⁶ 

when you will be carried away ⁷  in baskets, ⁸ 

every last one of you ⁹  in fishermen’s pots. ¹⁰ 

4:3 Each of you will go straight through the gaps in the walls; ¹¹ 

you will be thrown out ¹²  toward Harmon.” ¹³ 

The Lord is speaking!

Amos 4:6-12

4:6 “But surely I gave ¹⁴  you no food to eat in any of your cities;

you lacked food everywhere you live. ¹⁵ 

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:7 “I withheld rain from you three months before the harvest. ¹⁶ 

I gave rain to one city, but not to another.

One field ¹⁷  would get rain, but the field that received no rain dried up.

4:8 People from ¹⁸  two or three cities staggered into one city to get ¹⁹  water,

but remained thirsty. ²⁰ 

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:9 “I destroyed your crops ²¹  with blight and disease.

Locusts kept ²²  devouring your orchards, ²³  vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:10 “I sent against you a plague like one of the Egyptian plagues. ²⁴ 

I killed your young men with the sword,

along with the horses you had captured.

I made the stench from the corpses ²⁵  rise up into your nostrils.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:11 “I overthrew some of you the way God ²⁶  overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. ²⁷ 

You were like a burning stick ²⁸  snatched from the flames.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:12 “Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel.

Because I will do this to you,

prepare to meet your God, Israel! ²⁹ 

[4:1]  ¹ sn The expression cows of Bashan is used by the prophet to address the wealthy women of Samaria, who demand that their husbands satisfy their cravings. The derogatory language perhaps suggests that they, like the livestock of Bashan, were well fed, ironically in preparation for the coming slaughter. This phrase is sometimes cited to critique the book’s view of women.

[4:1]  ² tn Heb “the ones who” (three times in this verse).

[4:1]  ³ tn Heb “their.”

[4:1]  ⁴ sn Some commentators relate this scene to the description of the marzeah feast of 6:3-6, in which drinking played a prominent part (see the note at 6:6).

[4:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “swears by his holiness.”

[4:2]  sn The message that follows is an unconditional oath, the fulfillment of which is just as certain as the Lord’s own holy character.

[4:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “Look, certainly days are coming upon you”; NRSV “the time is surely coming upon you.”

[4:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “one will carry you away”; NASB “they will take you away.”

[4:2]  ⁸ tn The meaning of the Hebrew word translated “baskets” is uncertain. The translation follows the suggestion of S. M. Paul (Amos [Hermeneia], 128), who discusses the various options (130-32): “shields” (cf. NEB); “ropes”; “thorns,” which leads to the most favored interpretation, “hooks” (cf. NASB “meat hooks”; NIV, NRSV “hooks”); “baskets,” and (derived from “baskets”) “boats.” Against the latter, it is unlikely that Amos envisioned a deportation by boat for the inhabitants of Samaria! See also the note on the expression “fishermen’s pots” later in this verse.

[4:2]  ⁹ tn Or “your children”; KJV “your posterity.”

[4:2]  ¹⁰ tn The meaning of the Hebrew expression translated “in fishermen’s pots” is uncertain. The translation follows that of S. M. Paul (Amos [Hermeneia], 128), who discusses the various options (132-33): “thorns,” understood by most modern interpreters to mean (by extension) “fishhooks” (cf. NASB, NIV, NRSV); “boats,” but as mentioned in the previous note on the word “baskets,” a deportation of the Samaritans by boat is geographically unlikely; and “pots,” referring to a container used for packing fish (cf. NEB “fish-baskets”). Paul (p. 134) argues that the imagery comes from the ancient fishing industry. When hauled away into exile, the women of Samaria will be like fish packed and transported to market.

[4:2]  sn The imagery of catching fish in connection with the captivity of Israel is also found in Jer 16:16 and Hab 1:14.

[4:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “and [through the] breaches you will go out, each straight ahead.”

[4:3]  ¹² tn The Hiphil verb form has no object. It may be intransitive (F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Amos [AB], 425), though many emend it to a Hophal.

[4:3]  ¹³ tn The meaning of this word is unclear. Many understand it as a place name, though such a location is not known. Some (e.g., H. W. Wolff, Joel and Amos [Hermeneia[, 204) emend to “Hermon” or to similarly written words, such as “the dung heap” (NEB, NJPS), “the garbage dump” (NCV), or “the fortress” (cf. NLT “your fortresses”).

[4:6]  ¹⁴ 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]  ¹⁵ 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.

[4:7]  ¹⁶ sn Rain…three months before the harvest refers to the rains of late March-early April.

[4:7]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “portion”; KJV, ASV “piece”; NASB “part.” The same word occurs a second time later in this verse.

[4:8]  ¹⁸ tn The words “people from” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[4:8]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “to drink.”

[4:8]  ²⁰ tn Or “were not satisfied.”

[4:9]  ²¹ 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]  ²² 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]  ²³ tn Or “gardens.”

[4:10]  ²⁴ tn Heb “in the manner [or “way”] of Egypt.”

[4:10]  ²⁵ tn Heb “of your camps [or “armies”].”

[4:11]  ²⁶ tn Several English versions substitute the first person pronoun (“I”) here for stylistic reasons (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

[4:11]  ²⁷ 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]  sn The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is described in Gen 19:1-29.

[4:11]  ²⁸ tn Heb “like that which is burning.”

[4:12]  ²⁹ tn The Lord appears to announce a culminating judgment resulting from Israel’s obstinate refusal to repent. The following verse describes the Lord in his role as sovereign judge, but it does not outline the judgment per se. For this reason F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman (Amos [AB], 450) take the prefixed verbal forms as preterites referring to the series of judgments detailed in vv. 6-11. It is more likely that a coming judgment is in view, but that its details are omitted for rhetorical effect, creating a degree of suspense (see S. M. Paul, Amos [Hermeneia], 149-50) that will find its solution in chapter 5. This line is an ironic conclusion to the section begun at 4:4. Israel thought they were meeting the Lord at the sanctuaries, yet they actually had misunderstood how he had been trying to bring them back to himself. Now Israel would truly meet the Lord – not at the sanctuaries, but face-to-face in judgment.