2:11 I made some of your sons prophets
and some of your young men Nazirites. 1
Is this not true, you Israelites?”
The Lord is speaking!
3:1 Listen, you Israelites, to this message which the Lord is proclaiming against 2 you! This message is for the entire clan I brought up 3 from the land of Egypt:
3:15 I will destroy both the winter and summer houses. 4
The houses filled with ivory 5 will be ruined,
the great 6 houses will be swept away.” 7
The Lord is speaking!
“Sovereign Lord, forgive Israel! 8
How can Jacob survive? 9
He is too weak!” 10
7:4 The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw 11 the sovereign Lord summoning a shower of fire. 12 It consumed the great deep and devoured the fields.
7:9 Isaac’s centers of worship 13 will become desolate;
Israel’s holy places will be in ruins.
I will attack Jeroboam’s dynasty with the sword.” 14
8:9 In that day,” says the sovereign Lord, “I will make the sun set at noon,
and make the earth dark in the middle of the day. 15
1 tn Or perhaps “religious devotees” (also in the following verse). The Hebrew term נָזִיר (nazir) refers to one who “consecrated” or “devoted” to God (see Num 6:1-21).
2 tn Or “about.”
3 tn One might expect a third person verb form (“he brought up”), since the
4 tn Heb “the winter house along with the summer house.”
sn Like kings, many in Israel’s wealthy class owned both winter and summer houses (cf. 1 Kgs 21:1,18; Jer 36:22). For a discussion of archaeological evidence relating to these structures, see P. King, Amos, Hosea, Micah, 64-65.
5 tn Heb “houses of ivory.” These houses were not made of ivory, but they had ivory panels and furniture decorated with ivory inlays. See P. King, Amos, Hosea, Micah, 139-48.
6 tn Or “many,” cf. NAB “their many rooms.”
7 tn The translation assumes the form is from the Hebrew verb סָפָה (safah, “to sweep away”) rather than סוּף (suf, “to come to an end”), which is the choice of most versions. Either option effectively communicates the destruction of the structures.
8 tn “Israel” is supplied in the translation for clarity.
9 tn Heb “stand” (so ASV, NAB, NASB, NRSV).
10 tn Heb “small.”
11 tn Heb “behold” or “look.”
12 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).
13 tn Traditionally, “the high places” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV); NLT “pagan shrines.”
14 tn Heb “And I will rise up against the house of Jeroboam with a sword.”
15 tn Heb “in a day of light.”