Amos 6:8-14
Evangelical Heritage Version
Certain Destruction for Proud Israel
8 The Lord God swears by himself,
declares the Lord, the God of Armies:
I detest the pride of Jacob,
and I hate his citadels,
so I will hand over the city and everything in it.
9 If ten men happen to survive in one house, they will die. 10 When a relative who burns the bodies[a] comes to take away the bones from the house, he will say to whoever remains in the recesses of the house, “Is there anyone else still with you?” And they will say, “No one.” And he will say, “Silence! For you must not invoke the name of the Lord!”[b]
11 Look, the Lord is indeed giving a command, and he will smash the largest house into fragments and the smallest house into splinters.
12 Do horses run on a rocky cliff?
Does anyone plow the sea with an ox?[c]
Yet you turn justice into poison
and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood.
13 You are rejoicing over Lo Debar.
You are saying, “Was it not by our strength that we captured Karnaim for ourselves?”
14 Indeed, I am about to raise up a nation against you, O house of Israel,
declares the Lord, the God of Armies.
They will oppress you from Lebo Hamath to the Canyon of the Arabah.[d]
Footnotes
- Amos 6:10 Or who prepares bodies for burial
- Amos 6:10 Verses 9 and 10 are difficult. Translations vary greatly.
- Amos 6:12 The translation follows a re-division of a word of the Hebrew text. The main Hebrew text reads does one plow with oxen, a reading which calls for the answer “yes,” but which does not fit the context. Another solution is to repeat the object rocky cliff from the first half of the verse: does one plow a rocky cliff with oxen?
- Amos 6:14 Lebo Hamath is far to the north in Syria. The Arabah is the rift between the mountains of Edom and the mountains of Sinai, south of Israel.
The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.