What Does Amos 6:11 Mean?
For look, the LORD commands, and he will strike the great house into shards, and the little house into clefts.
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
For, behold, the LORD commandeth, and he will smite the great house with breaches, and the little house with clefts.THE KEY
The “clefts” come from בָּקַע (baqa, “split open”), the same root that divides the sea elsewhere, here the split tears through a house instead of opening a way through water.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s command reaches both the great house and the little one: one breaks into fragments, the other is split open. The size of a shelter does not place it beyond the force that strikes it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a shelter’s size can make it safe from the command confronting it.
THE ROOT
בְּקָעִים
beqa’im
GROWS FROM
בקע
To split, cleave open, or break through.
“Clefts” carries the force of something split open, not merely marked by surface cracks. The same root describes the sea being divided and light breaking forth, so here the house is cleaved through.
ALSO GROWS
baqa: To split, cleave, or break open.
בָּקַע
This verbal form names the opening force behind the clefts in the little house.
biq’ah: A valley or plain.
בִּקְעָה
The word carries the image of ground opened into a broad cleft.
וְהִכָּה
we-hikkah
GROWS FROM
נכה
To strike or strike down.
“strike” in this verse is we-hikkah. This root names the striking itself and branches into the blow and the one left stricken. The verse holds the impact and its damage together as both houses are struck.
ALSO GROWS
makkah: A blow, wound, or plague.
מַכָּה
The blow is the result of the same striking named in the verse.
makkeh: One who strikes.
מַכֵּה
This form keeps the striking agent visible within the same root-family.
מְצַוֶּה
metsavveh
GROWS FROM
צוה
To command or appoint.
“commands” in this verse is metsavveh. The verse places the breaking under a command; it does not describe an accidental collapse. Related forms of this root name both a commandment and a directive.
ALSO GROWS
mitzvah: A commandment.
מִצְוָה
It shows the root’s connection to an instruction given with authority.
tsav: A command or directive.
צַו
This form keeps the root’s direct sense of an issued command.
THE PATTERN
What splits open a sealed thing can expose it to ruin or open a way through it.
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that very day, all the springs of the great deep were split open, and the windows of heaven were opened.And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD made the sea go back by a strong breath of the east all that night, and made the sea dry ground, and the waters were split.Then your light shall break open like the dawn, and your healing shall sprout quickly; your alignment shall go before you, and the weight of the LORD shall gather you in.THE THREAD
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD made the sea go back by a strong breath of the east all that night, and made the sea dry ground, and the waters were split.The word translated “clefts” comes from בקע (baqa, “split open”), the same root rendered “divided” when the sea opens. In Amos the split tears through shelter; in Exodus it opens a way through water, so the root holds both breach and passage.
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