What Does Amos 5:10 Mean?
They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they recoil from the one who speaks what is whole.
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
They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.THE KEY
When correction is hated, the hatred may reveal what the correction has brought into the open.
THE MEANING
This verse names a present pattern: a person who brings correction into the open may be hated for speaking, even when the speech is upright. The rejection targets the speaker, while the words remain described as whole and straight.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being hated for speaking plainly proves the speech is wrong.
THE ROOT
מוֹכִיחַ
mokhiach
GROWS FROM
יכח
To decide or judge a matter; by extension, to reason with, correct, or reprove.
“reproves” in this verse is mokhiach. The word translated “rebuketh” carries the sense of bringing a matter to judgment, not merely scolding. At the gate, that correction is made where others can hear and weigh it.
ALSO GROWS
hokhiach: To reprove, reason with, or show what is right.
הוֹכִיחַ
It shares the root’s movement from weighing a matter to correcting it.
tokhechah: Reproof or correction.
תּוֹכֵחָה
The same root names both the act of confronting a matter and the correction that follows.
תָּמִים
tamim
GROWS FROM
תמם
To be complete or whole.
“speaks what is whole” in this verse is tamim. The speech called “uprightly” is described with a word of wholeness: it is sound and integral. The verse sets that whole speech beside the hatred it draws, showing that hostility does not make the words crooked.
ALSO GROWS
tam: Whole, sound, or blameless.
תָּם
It carries the same sense of completeness into a description of a person or thing.
tom: Integrity or completeness.
תֹּם
It shows how the root’s idea of wholeness can describe moral integrity.
THE PATTERN
When correction brings wrongdoing into public view, those who reject it may turn against the truth-teller.
Those who make a human miss the mark by a word, and set a snare for the one who reproves in the gate, and bend the aligned ones aside for emptiness.For everyone who does worthless things hates the light, and does not come to the light, so that their deeds would not be exposed.THE THREAD
Those who make a human miss the mark by a word, and set a snare for the one who reproves in the gate, and bend the aligned ones aside for emptiness.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew root, יכח (y-kh-ch), for the person who reproves at the gate. The shared root links Amos’s hated correction to a wider pattern: judgment itself is turned against the one who names what is wrong.
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