What Does Amos 5:13 Mean?
Therefore the one who sees shall close the mouth in that time, for the time is evil.
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
Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.THE KEY
In an evil time, silence can be prudence in action: wisdom sees what speech will meet.
THE MEANING
When evil sets the conditions around you, prudence can keep you silent because it recognizes the danger in the moment. The verse names the time as evil and the silence as a response to it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that wisdom must always speak publicly, whatever the cost.
THE ROOT
יִדֹּם
yiddom
GROWS FROM
דמם
damam
To be silent, become still, or cease.
“close the mouth” in this verse is yiddom. English “keep silence” can sound like mere absence, but דמם also names stillness and waiting. The prudent silence here carries alert restraint: the voice falls quiet because it has read the moment.
ALSO GROWS
dom: Be still; wait quietly.
דּוֹם
The same root can describe silence as a deliberate stillness, giving the prudent person’s silence depth beyond simply saying nothing.
dumam: Quietly, without noise.
דּוּמָם
This branch joins quietness with waiting, echoing the restrained posture of the verse.
הַמַּשְׂכִּיל
hammaskil
GROWS FROM
שכל
sakal
To understand or act with insight and skill.
“the one who sees” in this verse is hammaskil. The word for the prudent person comes from a root that can describe understanding put into effective action. Here, discernment takes the form of silence because the person recognizes what kind of time this is.
ALSO GROWS
taskil: Act wisely; succeed through understanding.
תַּשְׂכִּיל
This form links wisdom with a fitting response, illuminating silence as an intentional act of discernment.
wayyaskil: Acted with success or skill.
וַיַּשְׂכִּל
The same root joins understanding to effective action, showing that prudence is more than knowing; it shapes what a person does.
THE PATTERN
When a setting makes speech dangerous or mistimed, wisdom can appear as silence.
A time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to hush, and a time to speak.Whoever despises his neighbor lacks heart, but the discerning one holds still.But he kept silent and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said to him, Are you the Anointed One, the Son of the Praised One?THE THREAD
Hush before the LORD, and wait for him in labor. Do not burn yourself because of the one who pushes through on his way, because of the man who makes schemes.The Hebrew root דמם (damam, “be silent” or “be still”) also appears in “Rest” and “wait patiently.” Amos’s silence can carry this sense of stillness, while Psalm 37 places that stillness before the LORD amid wickedness.
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