What Does Amos 7:17 Mean?
Therefore thus says the LORD, Your wife shall be a harlot in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your ground shall be divided by the measuring cord, and you shall die in unclean soil, and Israel shall surely be uncovered from its ground.
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
Therefore thus saith the LORD; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou shalt die in a polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land.THE KEY
The verse ends with galah, a Hebrew root used both for exile and for uncovering, so its captivity clause carries the image of a people laid bare.
THE MEANING
This verse confronts you now with an unsoftened sentence of dispossession: the addressee’s wife becomes a prostitute in the city, his sons and daughters fall by the sword, his land is divided, he dies on unclean ground, and Israel is driven from its land. Family, body, soil, and communal belonging are all struck.
THE ROOT
גָּלֹה יִגְלֶה
gālō yigleh
GROWS FROM
גלה
To uncover or reveal; in another well-attested use, to go into exile.
“uncovered from its ground” in this verse is gālō yigleh. The emphatic phrase gālō yigleh intensifies the exile: Israel will surely be removed from its land. The same root can describe uncovering or revelation, giving this departure the image of a people exposed and stripped of their place.
ALSO GROWS
galah: To uncover, disclose, or reveal.
גָּלָה
This is the root’s revealing sense; Isaiah 40:5 uses it for the LORD’s glory being revealed.
golah: Exile, or a community living in exile.
גּוֹלָה
This noun names displacement from home, the condition Israel faces in this verse.
THE PATTERN
When judgment removes a people from their land, scripture names the loss through bodies, sword, and exile together.
And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will pour out a sword after you. Your land shall be emptied, and your cities shall be a dry waste.I will scatter them among the nations, whom neither they nor their fathers have perceived, and I will send the sword after them, until I have spent them.They will fall by the mouth of the sword, and be led away captive into all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled by the nations until the seasons of the nations are filled.THE THREAD
And the weight of the LORD is uncovered, and all flesh sees it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it.The Hebrew verb translated “shall be revealed” in Isaiah and “go into captivity” in Amos comes from the same root, גלה (galah), meaning to uncover or reveal and also to go into exile. Amos names a people removed from their land; Isaiah names what is unveiled for all flesh to see.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us