What Does Amos 3:13 Mean?
Hear and respond, and bear witness in the house of Jacob, says the Lord GOD, the God of hosts.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Hear ye, and testify in the house of Jacob, saith the Lord GOD, the God of hosts,THE KEY
The verse binds hearing to testimony: what reaches the ear becomes a witness within the very house that hears it.
THE MEANING
This word meets the reader inside a named house and calls for hearing that answers in testimony. The LORD of hosts is the speaker, so the witness lands within the community it addresses.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that hearing is passive reception with no public consequence. Here, hearing is joined to testimony.
THE ROOT
שִׁמְעוּ
shimʿu
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, heed, and respond to what is heard.
“Hear and respond” in this verse is shimʿu. English “hear” can sound like a passive sensory act, while שָׁמַע holds hearing and heeding together. Paired here with “testify,” it makes reception accountable: what is heard becomes a response spoken among the house.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: Hear, heed, respond.
שָׁמַע
The verb’s range holds listening and response together.
shemuʿah: A report or news; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
Hearing can become a message carried from one person to another.
וְהָעִידוּ
wehaʿidu
GROWS FROM
עוד
To attest or bear witness; to testify.
“bear witness” in this verse is wehaʿidu. The verb puts witness into motion: what is heard is affirmed within the house, not kept as private understanding. The related words for witness and testimony show how the act and its evidence belong together.
ALSO GROWS
ʿed: Witness.
עֵד
The testimony has a bearer: someone stands as witness to what is heard.
ʿedut: Testimony or witness.
עֵדוּת
The same root names the witness’s declaration and the witness borne.
יַעֲקֹב
Yaʿaqov
GROWS FROM
עקב
Heel; to follow at the heel or supplant.
Jacob’s name carries the image of the heel: one who grasps or follows from behind. “The house of Jacob” addresses a people through a name with a story inside it, rather than as an anonymous crowd.
ALSO GROWS
ʿaqev: Heel.
עָקֵב
The name Jacob echoes this concrete image.
ʿaqav: Follow at the heel; supplant.
עָקַב
This verb gives the name its sense of grasping or following from behind.
THE PATTERN
What is heard about God becomes testimony through a people.
Hear and respond, O Israel. The LORD our God is one LORD.You are my witnesses, says the LORD, and my servant, whom I have chosen, so that you may perceive and lean your weight on me, and understand that I AM. Before me no God was shaped, and behind me there shall be none.But you will take hold of power when the Set-Apart Breath comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the farthest edge of the ground.THE THREAD
And it shall be, if you do at all let the LORD your God slip from you, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and bow down to them; I bear witness against you this day that you shall surely perish.Both verses use the Hebrew root עוּד (ʿud), “to testify.” Deuteronomy shows testimony carrying a direct warning, sharpening the gravity of Amos’s summons to the house.
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