What Does Amos 7:10 Mean?
Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, Amos has bound himself against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words.
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
Then Amaziah the priest of Beth-el sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words.THE KEY
Amaziah binds Amos’s speech to a plot even as he says the land cannot contain all his words.
THE MEANING
You are watching a report travel upward to the king, naming Amos’s words as a conspiracy against him. The same report says the land cannot contain all those words, holding the accusation and their overwhelming scale in the same frame.
THE ROOT
תוּכַל
tûḵal
GROWS FROM
יכל
To be able or have capacity; in this form, to contain or hold.
“cannot bear” in this verse is tûḵal. Hebrew repeats the same root in “not able” and “to contain.” The land’s capacity and the act of holding Amos’s words are joined in one statement.
ALSO GROWS
tûḵal: Is able; can
תּוּכַל
This is the land’s stated capacity, which the verse says fails.
lehaḵîl: To contain; to hold
לְהָכִיל
The same root turns capacity into the specific act the land cannot perform with all Amos’s words.
קָשַׁר
qāshar
GROWS FROM
קשר
To tie or bind together; to conspire.
“bound himself” in this verse is qāshar. The accusation comes from a root of binding. Amaziah does not merely report that Amos speaks against the king; he ties Amos’s voice to a plot against him.
ALSO GROWS
qāshar: To bind, tie, or conspire
קָשַׁר
This is the verb used for Amaziah’s charge against Amos.
qesher: A bond or conspiracy
קֶשֶׁר
The related noun shows the same binding idea taking the form of a political plot.
עָמוֹס
ʿĀmôs
GROWS FROM
עמס
To load, carry, or place a burden on.
The name Amos is commonly linked to the root for carrying a load. Against that name, the claim that the land cannot contain all his words carries an added resonance: the burden-bearer’s speech presses beyond the land’s capacity.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāmas: To load or lay a burden on
עָמַס
This verb carries the image of bearing a load associated with Amos’s name.
ʿĀmôs: Amos; traditionally linked with “burden-bearer”
עָמוֹס
The name echoes the verse’s image of words too numerous for the land to contain.
THE PATTERN
When a voice unsettles authority, its message is framed as danger and the speaker is pressed toward silence.
Also Amaziah said to Amos, O you who see, go, flee away into the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and prophesy there.Then the priests and the prophets spoke to the princes and to all the people, saying, "This man bears the judgment of death, for he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your ears."And they called them and commanded them not to let a sound out at all, nor to teach in the nature of Jesus.THE THREAD
And Hoshea son of Elah bound together against Pekah son of Remaliah, and struck him, and killed him, and reigned in his place, in the twentieth year of Jotham son of Uzziah.The same root, קָשַׁר (qāshar), names the conspiracy alleged against Amos and the plot enacted by Hoshea. In Amos, it is the priest’s word for binding Amos to a political threat.
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