Amos 7:4-6

7:4 The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw ¹  the sovereign Lord summoning a shower of fire. ²  It consumed the great deep and devoured the fields.

7:5 I said, “Sovereign Lord, stop!

How can Jacob survive? ³ 

He is too weak!” ⁴ 

7:6 The Lord decided not to do this. ⁵  The sovereign Lord said, “This will not happen either.”

[7:4]  ¹ tn Heb “behold” or “look.”

[7:4]  ² 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]  ³ tn Heb “stand.”

[7:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “small.”

[7:6]  ⁵ tn Or “changed his mind about this.”