Amos 4:9-10

4:9 “I destroyed your crops ¹  with blight and disease.

Locusts kept ²  devouring your orchards, ³  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. ⁴ 

I killed your young men with the sword,

along with the horses you had captured.

I made the stench from the corpses ⁵  rise up into your nostrils.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

[4:9]  ¹ 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]  ² 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]  ³ tn Or “gardens.”

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

[4:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “of your camps [or “armies”].”