What Does Amos 5:26 Mean?
But you have lifted up the booth of your Moloch and Chiun, your images, the star of your god, which you made for yourselves.
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
But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.THE KEY
The god people carry is itself what they made, so what promises to support them becomes their burden.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now as a reversal of dependence: what is made for the self becomes what the self must carry. A self-made source of certainty, status, or protection cannot bear its maker; the bearer is revealed by the weight.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that something made to secure you can ultimately carry you.
THE ROOT
נְשָׂאתֶם
nəśāʾtem
GROWS FROM
נשא
To lift, carry, or bear.
“lifted up” in this verse is nəśāʾtem. The verb נְשָׂאתֶם (nəśāʾtem, “you carried”) comes from נשא (nasa, “lift, carry, bear”), the same root behind מַשָּׂא (massa, “load, burden”) and נָשִׂיא (nasi, “prince, chief”). The root holds carrying and weight together: what is carried as a source of power also becomes a load borne by its makers.
ALSO GROWS
massa: Load or burden.
מַשָּׂא
This branch makes the weight in “borne” visible: what the reader carries as ultimate support can become a burden.
nasi: Prince or chief; a leader.
נָשִׂיא
This title shares the root of lifting and bearing, bringing the language of authority into a verse where the supposed king depends on those who carry him.
THE PATTERN
What people make for ultimate trust cannot bear its makers; dependence reverses, and the makers become its bearers.
Bel kneels, Nebo stoops. Your images are upon the beasts and upon the cattle. What you lift is a load for the faint beast.Those who make them are like them, everyone who leans on them.who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and bowed down and served the creation beside the one who created, who is praised for the ages. Amen.THE THREAD
Even to old age I AM, and to gray hair I will bear you. I have made, and I will lift, I will bear, and I will slip you free.Amos’s נְשָׂאתֶם (nəśāʾtem, “you carried”) and Isaiah’s אֶשָּׂא (eśśāʾ, “I will carry”) share נשא (nasa, “lift, carry, bear”). Amos shows people carrying what they made; Isaiah turns the same verb toward one who carries the people.
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