What Does Amos 3:13 Mean in the King James?
Hear ye, and testify in the house of Jacob, saith the Lord GOD, the God of hosts,
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 verse binds hearing to testimony: what reaches the ear becomes a witness within the very house that hears it.
THE MEANING
This word meets the reader inside a named house and calls for hearing that answers in testimony. The LORD of hosts is the speaker, so the witness lands within the community it addresses.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that hearing is passive reception with no public consequence. Here, hearing is joined to testimony.
THE ROOT
שִׁמְעוּ
shimʿu
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, heed, and respond to what is heard.
English “hear” can sound like a passive sensory act, while שָׁמַע holds hearing and heeding together. Paired here with “testify,” it makes reception accountable: what is heard becomes a response spoken among the house.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: Hear, heed, respond.
שָׁמַע
The verb’s range holds listening and response together.
shemuʿah: A report or news; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
Hearing can become a message carried from one person to another.
וְהָעִידוּ
wehaʿidu
GROWS FROM
עוד
To attest or bear witness; to testify.
“Testify” in this verse is wehaʿidu. The verb puts witness into motion: what is heard is affirmed within the house, not kept as private understanding. The related words for witness and testimony show how the act and its evidence belong together.
ALSO GROWS
ʿed: Witness.
עֵד
The testimony has a bearer: someone stands as witness to what is heard.
ʿedut: Testimony or witness.
עֵדוּת
The same root names the witness’s declaration and the witness borne.
יַעֲקֹב
Yaʿaqov
GROWS FROM
עקב
Heel; to follow at the heel or supplant.
Jacob’s name carries the image of the heel: one who grasps or follows from behind. “The house of Jacob” addresses a people through a name with a story inside it, rather than as an anonymous crowd.
ALSO GROWS
ʿaqev: Heel.
עָקֵב
The name Jacob echoes this concrete image.
ʿaqav: Follow at the heel; supplant.
עָקַב
This verb gives the name its sense of grasping or following from behind.
THE PATTERN
What is heard about God becomes testimony through a people.
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.THE THREAD
And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.Both verses use the Hebrew root עוּד (ʿud), “to testify.” Deuteronomy shows testimony carrying a direct warning, sharpening the gravity of Amos’s summons to the house.
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