What Does Amos 3:15 Mean in the King James?
And I will smite the winter house with the summer house; and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall have an end, saith the LORD.
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 winter and summer houses fall together: no season of comfort provides an escape from the same ending.
THE MEANING
The LORD strikes both the winter house and the summer house; the houses adorned with ivory perish, and the great houses end. Size and luxury do not hold a dwelling beyond the reach of this judgment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
“If I have a refuge for every season and a house rich with costly things, I am secure from loss.”
THE ROOT
אָבְדוּ
ʾāḇdū
GROWS FROM
אבד
To perish, be lost, or be destroyed.
The Hebrew אָבְדוּ (ʾāḇdū, they perish) says these houses are lost, not merely stripped of their splendor. The same root אבד (ʾāḇaḏ, perish or be lost) forms אֲבַדּוֹן (ʾăḇaddōn, destruction), making the loss of the dwelling itself plain.
ALSO GROWS
ʾăḇaddōn: Destruction; ruin.
אֲבַדּוֹן
This derivative names destruction itself, extending the verse’s root from something lost to the state of destruction.
ʾăḇēḏāh: A lost thing; loss.
אֲבֵדָה
It preserves the root’s sense of something gone, matching the verse’s ending for these houses.
וְהִכֵּיתִי
wĕhikkêtî
GROWS FROM
נכה
To strike, smite, or hit.
“smite” in this verse is wĕhikkêtî. The verb וְהִכֵּיתִי (wĕhikkêtî, I will strike) gives the houses’ judgment the force of a blow. The verse moves from that impact to אבד (ʾāḇaḏ, perish or be lost), keeping the violence and its result in view.
ALSO GROWS
makkāh: A blow; a plague.
מַכָּה
This noun from the same root carries the force of the strike named at the verse’s opening.
nākeh: Stricken; lame or disabled.
נָכֶה
This related form describes a condition left by a blow, echoing the verse’s movement from impact toward ruin.
THE PATTERN
Material shelter and stored wealth cannot secure permanence against the LORD’s judgment.
The Lord GOD hath sworn by himself, saith the LORD the God of hosts, I abhor the excellency of Jacob, and hate his palaces: therefore will I deliver up the city with all that is therein.Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names.But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?THE THREAD
For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.Amos’s אָבְדוּ (ʾāḇdū, they perish) comes from אבד (ʾāḇaḏ, perish or be lost); Psalm 1 uses the same root for the way of the ungodly that perishes. The shared seed carries the same ending from a dwelling to a whole path.
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