What Does Amos 8:4 Mean in the King James?
Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail,
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 names exploitation as an appetite that consumes people until their presence itself is made to cease.
THE MEANING
The verse names a living pattern: people in need are treated as material for someone else’s gain. Their need does not make them invisible; the language exposes both the appetite directed at them and the effort to make them cease from the land.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that taking from people in need is only an economic transaction dissolves here: the verse names its endpoint as their erasure.
THE ROOT
שֹׁאֲפִים
sho'afim
GROWS FROM
שׁאף
sha'af
To pant, gasp, or draw in greedily; in some contexts, to yearn after.
“swallow up” in this verse is sho'afim. The verb can describe panting after something as well as swallowing it, so the image holds pursuit and consumption together. Those with power do not merely possess the needy; their appetite fixes on them.
ALSO GROWS
sha'af: To pant, gasp, or pant after.
שָׁאַף
This verb form makes the appetite in “swallow up” sound like an active, sustained pursuit.
she'ifah: Inhalation; aspiration.
שְׁאִיפָה
This related noun carries the sense of drawing inward, echoing the verse’s image of taking the needy in as prey.
לְהַשְׁבִּית
lehashbit
GROWS FROM
שׁבת
shavat
To cease, stop, or come to rest.
“fail” in this verse is lehashbit. The phrase means to cause the poor to cease: the verse presents their disappearance as something people do to them. This root can also name Sabbath rest, so here the force of cessation is starkly imposed rather than received as rest.
ALSO GROWS
shabbat: Sabbath; cessation and rest.
שַׁבָּת
The same root can name a protected rhythm of rest; here the poor are made to cease under force.
shabbaton: A Sabbath rest or solemn rest.
שַׁבָּתוֹן
This related form again holds cessation as rest, sharpening the violence of making people cease.
THE PATTERN
Scripture exposes the extraction of the vulnerable as violence against people, not merely a transfer of wealth.
What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord GOD of hosts.Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate:Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
That pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek: and a man and his father will go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy name:Amos uses the same verb here as “pant after” in 2:7, where the poor are the object of a predatory pursuit. The shared root lets 8:4’s “swallow up” register as an ongoing appetite, not a detached outcome.
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