What Does Amos 6:9 Mean?
And it shall come to pass, if ten men are left over in one house, that they shall die.
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 it shall come to pass, if there remain ten men in one house, that they shall die.THE KEY
The word “remain” names a remainder, but the verse gives that remainder no refuge: all ten men left in the house die.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks of a household where even those still present are not preserved. Remaining inside the house does not secure life; the sentence says they die.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a group left together or a house around them is itself protection.
THE ROOT
יִוָּתְרוּ
yivvateru
GROWS FROM
יתר
y-t-r
To remain, be left over, or be in excess.
“are left over” in this verse is yivvateru. The verb comes from a root for what is left over. That root names the remainder, but does not promise that it is spared; here the verse says even those left in the house die.
ALSO GROWS
yether: Surplus; what is left over.
יֶתֶר
It makes the ten men a remainder within the house, while the verse makes clear that being left over is no guarantee of safety.
yitron: Profit; advantage.
יִתְרוֹן
This branch shows the root can name what remains as an advantage, but Amos strips that implication away: the remainder here dies.
THE PATTERN
A house or accumulated provision cannot make human life invulnerable when death arrives.
And a man's uncle will lift him up, and the one who burns him, to carry the bones out of the house. And he will say to the one at the flanks of the house, Is there yet anyone with you? And he will say, None. Then he will say, Hush, for we must not make mention of the name of the LORD.And the Great House rose up in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?THE THREAD
Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the dawn rose.Genesis uses the same root when Jacob is “left” alone: the root names what remains, but does not determine what happens next. Amos makes the outcome explicit, the ten left in the house die.
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