What Does Amos 2:12 Mean in the King James?
But ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink; and commanded the prophets, saying, Prophesy not.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The pressure reaches both the boundary of a dedicated life and the voice that speaks.
THE MEANING
The verse lets you recognize two pressures in the present: what is set apart is offered a way to cross its boundary, while the voice that speaks is told to stop. Together they reach both a person’s dedication and the truth that person is willing to voice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie it undoes is that pressure always looks like a blow: here wine is put before the set-apart ones, and speech is curtailed by command.
THE ROOT
נְזִירִים
nezirim
GROWS FROM
נזר
To dedicate, consecrate, or set apart
“Nazarites” names people set apart by a vow and grows from נזר, a root of consecration and separation. The charge becomes sharper: wine is put before people whose lives bear a boundary, while the next clause orders the prophets’ voices quiet.
ALSO GROWS
nazir: A consecrated person, one set apart
נָזִיר
This is the singular form behind “Nazarites,” making their dedicated status part of the word itself.
nezer: Consecration; a crown or diadem
נֵזֶר
The same root links being set apart with a crown, giving dedication the image of a marked and honored boundary.
THE PATTERN
Power tries to manage an unwelcome word by compromising what is set apart and silencing those who speak.
Therefore thus saith the LORD of the men of Anathoth, that seek thy life, saying, Prophesy not in the name of the LORD, that thou die not by our hand:Prophesy ye not, say they to them that prophesy: they shall not prophesy to them, that they shall not take shame.And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.THE THREAD
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the LORD:Numbers describes a Nazarite through the act of separation, using the same נזר root beneath “Nazarites” here. That shared root makes Amos’s charge precise: the wine is placed before a life defined by consecration.
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