What Does Amos 6:13 Mean?
You who rejoice in what is not a word, who say, Have we not taken horns to ourselves by our own strength?
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
Ye which rejoice in a thing of nought, which say, Have we not taken to us horns by our own strength?THE KEY
The boast names its own emptiness: Lo-debar can be heard as “no thing,” while Karnaim means “two horns,” turning captured power into a claim of self-made strength.
THE MEANING
You can celebrate what looks like a victory while the verse names it as “no thing.” The horns you claim as your own strength also echo Karnaim, “two horns”: possession looks like proof, but it cannot make itself its source. The verse exposes the gap between what you have grasped and what can truly sustain you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
If I have secured power, that proves I made it myself.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
D-B-R
To speak; a word, matter, or thing.
“what is not a word” in this verse is davar. The phrase “a thing of nought” also carries the sound of Lo-debar, a place name heard as “no thing” or “no word.” The same root holds speech and matter together, so the boast is itself a spoken matter whose name carries negation.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
The same word can name what is spoken and what is treated as real, sharpening the tension between the boast and its “no thing” echo.
dibber: He spoke; to speak.
דִּבֵּר
The root behind “matter” also names speech, bringing the speakers’ claim into the wordplay itself.
קַרְנַיִם
qarnayim
GROWS FROM
ק־ר־ן
Q-R-N
Horn; a projecting peak or ray.
Qarnayim also sounds like Karnaim, “two horns,” so the verse can make the claimed possession and the horn-image overlap. The image suggests projected power, yet the speakers claim that projection as their own making.
ALSO GROWS
qeren: Horn; also a projecting ray.
קֶרֶן
The horn is a visible projection, giving the boast a concrete image of power.
qaran: To radiate or send out rays; used of Moses’ shining face.
קָרַן
This branch links the horn’s projection with radiance, showing how the root can describe power made visible.
THE PATTERN
Self-credit turns possession or achievement into a boast of power detached from its source.
And you say in your heart, "My power and the might of my hand have made me this strength."The king spoke, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the strength of my might, and for the weight of my majesty?But now you boast in your swaggering. Every such boasting is evil.THE THREAD
All the horns of the wicked I cut off; but the horns of the aligned one are lifted high.Amos’s “horns” and this verse use qeren, the same Hebrew word for horn and its image of power. Here horns are cut down or lifted up, exposing power as something that can rise or fall beyond the reach of a human boast.
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