What Does Amos 5:17 Mean?
And in all the vineyards shall be wailing, for I will pass through your midst, says the LORD.
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
And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, saith the LORD.THE KEY
The LORD’s passage turns every vineyard, a place of cultivation, into a place of mourning.
THE MEANING
Grief fills the vineyards as the LORD passes through. The verse holds divine presence as judgment with consequences reaching into the places that sustain life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that the LORD’s nearness always feels like protection or abundance; here, his passing brings grief into every vineyard.
THE ROOT
אֶעֱבֹר
ʾeʿĕvōr
GROWS FROM
עבר
Cross, pass over, pass through.
“pass through your midst” in this verse is ʾeʿĕvōr. The English can make this sound like movement through space alone. The root also carries the sense of crossing a boundary, so the LORD’s passage reaches through the whole place as an act of judgment.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēver: Across, beyond, or the other side.
עֵבֶר
The idea of crossing opens onto what lies beyond; the passage in Amos reaches across the community.
ʿābar: To cross over or transgress.
עָבַר
The same crossing verb can describe overstepping a boundary, adding the force of an incursion to the LORD’s passage.
מִסְפֵּד
mispēd
GROWS FROM
ספד
Mourn, lament.
“wailing” in this verse is mispēd. The word names lamentation, not just a loud cry. The grief is shared and audible across the vineyards, as mourning overtakes places associated with cultivation.
ALSO GROWS
sāphad: To mourn or lament.
סָפַד
The verb shows that the wailing is an act of mourning, not simply a sound.
mispēd: Lamentation or mourning.
מִסְפֵּד
This noun form makes the grief itself the scene filling every vineyard.
THE PATTERN
When judgment passes through a community, its ordinary places of livelihood become sites of public grief.
For I will cross through the land of Egypt this night, and I will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am the LORD.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.And they throw dust on their heads, and cry out, weeping and mourning, saying, Woe, woe, the great city, in which all who had ships on the sea grew rich by her costliness! For in one hour she has been emptied.THE THREAD
For I will cross through the land of Egypt this night, and I will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am the LORD.Amos’s “pass through thee” uses the same Hebrew root, עבר, as “I will pass through the land of Egypt.” In both verses, the passing is an act of judgment whose effects reach the land and the people within it.
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