What Does Amos 5:20 Mean?
Is not the day of the LORD darkness, and not light? Even very dark, with no glow in it?
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
Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?THE KEY
The day you expect to bring light may meet you as darkness.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the hope that God’s arrival will confirm what you expect: it names that day as darkness, not light. The repeated absence, “very dark, and no brightness”, leaves no promise that divine intervention feels like relief to the one awaiting it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that longing for the day of the LORD means that day will bring light to you.
THE ROOT
חֹשֶׁךְ
ḥōšeḵ
GROWS FROM
חשך
ḥ-š-k
To grow dark or become darkness.
The noun חֹשֶׁךְ (ḥōšeḵ, darkness) belongs to a word family that also names the darkening itself. Amos does not describe the day as a painful kind of light: he names darkness, then denies light outright.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāšaḵ: To become dark.
חָשַׁךְ
The verb gives darkness a movement: the expected day turns dark.
maḥšāḵ: A place of darkness.
מַחְשָׁךְ
This branch makes darkness a condition one can be within, deepening the verse’s picture of a day with no brightness.
אוֹר
ʾôr
GROWS FROM
אור
ʾ-w-r
Light; to give or become light.
אוֹר (ʾôr, light) belongs to a family that names both illumination and what bears it. By saying “not light,” the verse removes the expectation of seeing clearly, not merely the expectation of comfort.
ALSO GROWS
māʾôr: A light-bearing body or lamp.
מָאוֹר
This branch connects light with its visible source; Amos denies the illumination the day was expected to bring.
ʾôrâ: Light or brightness.
אוֹרָה
This related form reinforces that the verse negates light itself, not just a favorable mood.
THE PATTERN
The day of the LORD overturns the assumption that divine arrival automatically brings light to the one awaiting it.
Woe to you who covet the day of the LORD! What is it to you? The day of the LORD is darkness, and not light.That day is a day of overflowing, of narrowing and pressing, of stunning and devastation, of darkness and murk, a day of cloud and thick darkness.For you yourselves know exactly that the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night.THE THREAD
Even darkness does not darken from you; the night lights up like day, and darkness is as light to you.Psalm 139:12 sets חֹשֶׁךְ (ḥōšeḵ, darkness) beside אוֹר (ʾôr, light), the same paired words Amos uses. It opens the warning further: darkness does not hide the reader from God, even when the expected day brings no light.
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