What Does Amos 5:11 Mean?
Therefore, since you trample the bowed low and take from them loads of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, yet you shall not settle in them; you have planted desirable vineyards, yet you shall not drink their wine.
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
Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.THE KEY
The verse’s “pleasant” vineyard shares its root with “covet,” so the desire behind the taking is bound to a harvest its owner cannot enjoy.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now wherever one person’s scarcity is turned into another’s security: the extraction leaves its builder with a house they cannot inhabit and fruit they cannot taste. It names a split between possessing the visible result and receiving its life. The stone and vines are there; enjoyment is withheld.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A house and harvest secured by taking from others guarantee security and enjoyment.
THE ROOT
דַּל
dal
GROWS FROM
דלל
dalal
To be low, weak, or diminished.
“the bowed low” in this verse is dal. “Poor” belongs to a root family of being brought low or diminished. Set beside the image of treading upon this person, the word points to someone already made vulnerable, whose scarcity becomes the source of another’s gain.
ALSO GROWS
dal: Low, weak, or poor.
דַל
This is the word used for the poor person in the verse; its sense of being low sharpens the force of being trodden upon.
dallut: Poverty or want.
דַּלּוּת
This branch names the diminished condition that the taking of grain deepens.
חֶמֶד
chemed
GROWS FROM
חמד
chamad
To desire or find desirable.
The word translated “pleasant” describes what is desirable, from the same root that can mean “covet.” The verse places seized grain beside a desired vineyard, then withholds the enjoyment of what has been planted.
ALSO GROWS
chamad: To desire or covet.
חָמַד
This verb appears in Micah 2:2 for coveting fields; it reveals the shared root between acquisitive desire and the vineyard called desirable here.
machmad: A desirable or precious thing.
מַחְמָד
This branch describes what is prized, echoing the vineyard’s desirability and the value being pursued.
THE PATTERN
When one person’s harvest is built on another’s deprivation, the possessor’s apparent gain can be separated from its enjoyment.
You shall betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her. You shall build a house, and you shall not settle in it. You shall plant a vineyard, and you shall not eat of it.They covet fields and tear them away, and houses, and carry them off. So they press a man and his house, even a man and his inheritance.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
You shall betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her. You shall build a house, and you shall not settle in it. You shall plant a vineyard, and you shall not eat of it.The same house-then-vineyard sequence appears with the same withheld dwelling and harvest. It opens Amos’s image further: possession can be complete in appearance while the possessor is shut out from its enjoyment.
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