What Does Amos 4:3 Mean?
And you will go out through the breaches, each woman straight before her face, and you will be thrown into the strongholds, says the LORD.
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
And ye shall go out at the breaches, every cow at that which is before her; and ye shall cast them into the palace, saith the LORD.THE KEY
The breach becomes a forced route: the opening that lets people out can also be the way they are driven through.
THE MEANING
Each woman is driven straight ahead through an opening made by a break, then cast toward the palace; the verse holds the violence of that movement without softening it. The Hebrew names “each woman” (אִשָּׁה, ishah, woman), while the KJV carries the cattle image forward from the surrounding lines.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
An exit is not always chosen freedom; a breach can become the passage through which people are forced.
THE ROOT
פְּרָצִים
peratsim
GROWS FROM
פרץ
p-r-ts
Break through, burst open
“breaches” in this verse is peratsim. English gives a static gap, but פרץ holds the act of breaking through inside the word: the opening is the result of a break. Here that opening becomes a route for forced passage.
ALSO GROWS
parats: To burst through or break out
פָּרַץ
The verb keeps the force of the break inside the breach: this is an opening made by rupture.
perets: A break or breach
פֶּרֶץ
The noun names the opening left by the breaking, which becomes the passage in Amos.
וְהִשְׁלַכְתֶּנָה
vehishlakhtenah
GROWS FROM
שלך
sh-l-k
Throw, cast
“thrown” in this verse is vehishlakhtenah. This verb pictures an imposed transfer: people are hurled from one place toward another. The same root casts a burden onto the LORD (Psalm 55:22) or idols away (Isaiah 2:20); here the women themselves undergo the violent casting.
ALSO GROWS
hashlekh: To cast or throw
הַשְׁלֵךְ
Psalm 55:22 uses this root to cast a burden onto the LORD, showing that the verb marks a transfer of what is carried.
hishlikh: To throw or cast aside
הִשְׁלִיךְ
Isaiah 2:20 uses this root for casting away idols; in Amos, the same forceful motion is turned upon people.
THE PATTERN
A broken boundary becomes a passage, and who controls that passage determines whether it opens into release or expulsion.
The one who breaks through goes up before them. They break through, pass through the gate, and go out through it. Their king passes before them, and the LORD is at their head.Then the city was split open, and all the men of war fled by night through the gate between the two walls, by the king's garden, while the Chaldeans were all around the city, and the king went by the way of the plain.And suddenly there came a great shaking, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and at once all the doors were opened, and every one's bonds were untied.THE THREAD
The one who breaks through goes up before them. They break through, pass through the gate, and go out through it. Their king passes before them, and the LORD is at their head.Micah’s “breaker” and “broken up” echo פרץ (parats, break through), the root behind Amos’s “breaches.” The shared root holds two outcomes together: a break can open a route out, while Amos shows people being driven through that opening.
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