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.
1 tn Heb “behold” or “look.”
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).