Amos 5:11

5:11 Therefore, because you make the poor pay taxes on their crops ¹ 

and exact a grain tax from them,

you will not live in the houses you built with chiseled stone,

nor will you drink the wine from the fine ²  vineyards you planted. ³ 

Amos 7:17

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

‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the streets ⁴ 

and your sons and daughters will die violently. ⁵ 

Your land will be given to others ⁶ 

and you will die in a foreign ⁷  land.

Israel will certainly be carried into exile ⁸  away from its land.’”

[5:11]  ¹ tn Traditionally, “because you trample on the poor” (cf. KJV, ASV, NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT). The traditional view derives the verb from בּוּס (bus, “to trample”; cf. Isa. 14:25), but more likely it is cognate to an Akkadian verb meaning “to exact an agricultural tax” (see H. R. Cohen, Biblical Hapax Legomena [SBLDS], 49; S. M. Paul, Amos [Hermeneia], 172-73).

[5:11]  ² tn Or “lovely”; KJV, NASB, NRSV “pleasant”; NAB “choice”; NIV “lush.”

[5:11]  ³ tn Heb “Houses of chiseled stone you built, but you will not live in them. Fine vineyards you planted, but you will not drink their wine.”

[7:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “in the city,” that is, “in public.”

[7:17]  ⁵ tn Heb “will fall by the sword.”

[7:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “will be divided up with a [surveyor’s] measuring line.”

[7:17]  ⁷ 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]  ⁸ tn See the note on the word “exile” in 5:5.