What Does Amos 5:1 Mean?
Hear and respond to this word that I lift against you, a lament, house of Israel.
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 this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel.THE KEY
The word lifted against Israel is already a dirge: it carries the sound of communal loss before the loss is explained.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to you through a word carried against a whole house, and its form is lament. Grief is not an afterthought added to the message; it is the sound in which the message reaches you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the idea that grief is only a reaction after truth is spoken: here the lament is the word’s form from the start.
THE ROOT
קִינָה
qināh
GROWS FROM
קונ
To chant or sing a dirge; to give grief a voiced form.
“lament” in this verse is qināh. The Hebrew names a dirge, a shaped, voiced grief, not only a feeling. The word Amos carries is itself a public form of mourning.
ALSO GROWS
məqōnēn: One who laments; a dirge singer.
מְקוֹנֵן
This branch makes the lament a voiced act, something carried into the open.
qināh: A lamentation or dirge.
קִינָה
This is the verse’s word: grief is the form of the message, not an addition to it.
נֹשֵׂא
nōśēʾ
GROWS FROM
נשׂא
To lift, carry, or bear.
“lift against you” in this verse is nōśēʾ. The lament is not merely reported; it is borne and lifted against the house. The same root names a burden, so prophetic speech here carries grief as weight.
ALSO GROWS
nāśāʾ: To lift, carry, or bear.
נָשָׂא
This verb is the action Amos uses for taking up the lament.
maśśāʾ: A burden; also an oracle or pronouncement.
מַשָּׂא
This branch shows how a spoken word can be something carried as weight.
שִׁמְעוּ
shimʿū
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, listen, and heed.
“Hear and respond to” in this verse is shimʿū. The call to hear is more than sound reaching the ear: the root can carry the sense of receiving and responding to what is heard. The lament asks to be taken in as a word with weight.
ALSO GROWS
shāmaʿ: To hear, listen, or heed.
שָׁמַע
This is the root verb behind the opening command.
shemūʿāh: A report or tidings.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch links hearing with a message received, making the lament something to be reckoned with.
THE PATTERN
Prophetic speech can carry grief as a public dirge rather than a detached warning.
And David wailed this lament over Saul, and over Jonathan his son.O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!THE THREAD
And you, lift up a lament over the lifted ones of Israel.Ezekiel uses the same two-part language: “take thou up” and “a lamentation.” It makes Amos’s phrasing visible as a carried dirge, a voiced grief laid over a community.
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