4:6 “But surely I gave 1 you no food to eat in any of your cities;
you lacked food everywhere you live. 2
Still you did not come back to me.”
The Lord is speaking!
4:9 “I destroyed your crops 3 with blight and disease.
Locusts kept 4 devouring your orchards, 5 vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees.
Still you did not come back to me.”
The Lord is speaking!
4:11 “I overthrew some of you the way God 6 overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. 7
You were like a burning stick 8 snatched from the flames.
Still you did not come back to me.”
The Lord is speaking!
7:1 The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw 9 him making locusts just as the crops planted late 10 were beginning to sprout. (The crops planted late sprout after the royal harvest. 11 )
“Look, I am about to place tin among my people Israel.
I will no longer overlook their sin. 12
8:2 He said, “What do you see, Amos?” I replied, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me, “The end 13 has come for my people Israel! I will no longer overlook their sins. 14
1 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).
2 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.
3 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 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).
5 tn Or “gardens.”
6 tn Several English versions substitute the first person pronoun (“I”) here for stylistic reasons (e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT).
7 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.”
sn The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is described in Gen 19:1-29.
8 tn Heb “like that which is burning.”
9 tn Heb “behold” or “look.”
10 sn The crops planted late (consisting of vegetables) were planted in late January-early March and sprouted in conjunction with the spring rains of March-April. For a discussion of the ancient Israelite agricultural calendar, see O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 31-44.
11 tn Or “the mowings of the king.”
sn This royal harvest may refer to an initial mowing of crops collected as taxes by the royal authorities.
12 tn Heb “And I will no longer pass over him.”
13 tn There is a wordplay here. The Hebrew word קֵץ (qets, “end”) sounds like קָיִץ (qayits, “summer fruit”). The summer fruit arrived toward the end of Israel’s agricultural year; Israel’s national existence was similarly at an end.
14 tn Heb “I will no longer pass over him.”