What Does Amos 5:16 Mean?
Therefore, thus says the LORD, the God of hosts, the Lord. Wailing shall be in all the wide places, and in all the highways they shall say, Alas! Alas! They shall call the one who works the soil to mourning, and those who know how to lament, into wailing.
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 LORD, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing.THE KEY
The Hebrew calls them “broad places”: even public spaciousness fills with grief until ordinary work joins the lament.
THE MEANING
Grief fills the public places; no street stays untouched. The farmer is called from ordinary work, while those who know lament give the sorrow its voice. Shared loss enters public life and interrupts its daily rhythms.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that ordinary work can remain outside public grief: the farmer is called into mourning beside those skilled in lament.
THE ROOT
מִסְפֵּד
misped
GROWS FROM
ספד
To mourn or lament aloud.
“wailing” in this verse is misped. The verse names a voiced, shared grief, not merely a private feeling. The same root appears in the call to mourn in Zechariah, linking this citywide lament to grief felt with intimate force.
ALSO GROWS
safad: To mourn or lament.
סָפַד
The verb makes lament an action that people give voice to.
ve-safdu: And they shall mourn.
וְסָפְדוּ
This form appears in Zechariah 12:10, where the shared root carries mourning for one deeply loved.
רְחֹבוֹת
rechovot
GROWS FROM
רחב
To be broad or spacious.
“wide places” in this verse is rechovot. English gives “streets,” while the Hebrew word carries the sense of broad places. Here the spaces of public passage are filled with lament: grief reaches into the very places that sound open and spacious.
ALSO GROWS
rachav: Broad, wide.
רָחָב
This adjective makes the underlying sense of spaciousness in the street word visible.
merchav: A broad or open place.
מֶרְחָב
It echoes the verse’s broad public spaces, now occupied by mourning.
THE PATTERN
When grief becomes shared, it enters public view and gathers many voices around the loss.
Thus says the LORD of hosts, Discern, and call for the wailing women, that they may come, and send for the wise women, that they may come.A great crowd of people followed him, and women who also beat their breasts and wailed for him.THE THREAD
And I will pour out upon the house of David, and upon those who settle in Jerusalem, the breath of favor and of pleas; and they will look upon me, the one they pierced, and they will wail for him as one wails for his only son, and will be bitter for him as one is bitter for his firstborn.Amos’s “lamentation” and Zechariah’s “mourn” share the Hebrew root ספד (safad), to lament. Zechariah’s image of mourning for an only son lets the public wailing in Amos open into grief felt with intimate intensity.
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