What Does Amos 6:14 Mean in the King James?
But, behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel, saith the LORD the God of hosts; and they shall afflict you from the entering in of Hemath unto the river of the wilderness.
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 Hebrew renders affliction as pressure, making the whole territory feel like a space squeezed from edge to edge.
THE MEANING
The warning meets you as a people whose borders do not place you beyond pressure. The LORD raises a nation against the house, and its force presses from Hemath to the river of the wilderness. The span makes the threat reach across the whole field named by the verse.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that strength, status, or secure borders make a people unreachable by consequence.
THE ROOT
וְלָחֲצוּ
wə-lāḥaṣū
GROWS FROM
לחץ
To press or squeeze; to exert force against.
The word translated “afflict” carries the concrete force of pressing in on someone. English can make suffering sound abstract; this root shows a people being pressed across the full span of their world.
ALSO GROWS
lāḥaṣ: to press, oppress
לָחַץ
This verb makes the force in Amos tangible: a people is pressed by power set against them.
ha-laḥaṣ: the pressure, oppression
הַלַּחַץ
The same root names Israel’s oppression in Exodus 3:9, describing suffering as pressure exerted against people.
THE PATTERN
Scripture renders oppression as pressure that bears on people across the space they inhabit.
Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;THE THREAD
Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.The same Hebrew root לחץ (laḥats, to press or oppress) names the force in both verses. Its pressure has no permanent target: here the house itself stands under the force the word elsewhere uses for oppression.
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