What Does Amos 8:6 Mean in the King James?
That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?
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
When need becomes the price, commerce does not merely exploit poverty, it turns a person into something purchasable.
THE MEANING
You see an economy that puts a price on people’s vulnerability: one person is bought for silver, another’s need is measured against a pair of shoes. Even the fallen scraps of wheat become another thing to sell. The verse exposes how exploitation reaches both people and what should nourish them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the claim that an exchange is fair simply because a price has been named: the price can reveal how cheaply someone’s need is being used.
THE ROOT
לִקְנוֹת
liqnot
GROWS FROM
קנה
Acquire, take possession of, buy.
“buy” in this verse is liqnot. The verse uses the ordinary verb for acquiring to speak of people. Its root also names acquisition and possession, exposing how the market’s logic makes the vulnerable appear purchasable.
ALSO GROWS
qinyan: Acquisition or possession.
קִנְיָן
The same root names the act of acquiring; here, the poor are treated as something to acquire.
miqneh: Property or livestock.
מִקְנֶה
This branch for possessions shows how easily acquisition language can make a person sound like property.
דַּלִּים
dallim
GROWS FROM
דלל
Be brought low, hang down, become weak.
“poor” in this verse is dallim. The word carries the sense of being lowered or made weak, not merely having less. Set beside “buy,” that root reveals a pressure that both diminishes people and makes their vulnerability useful to the buyer.
ALSO GROWS
dal: Poor or weak.
דַל
This related form names the person whose lowered position the verse puts into the marketplace.
dallut: Poverty or low estate.
דַּלּוּת
The root also names the condition itself, showing the vulnerability that becomes a point of leverage.
מַפַּל
mappal
GROWS FROM
נפל
Fall, drop, descend.
The refuse is named as what has fallen. Even what drops away from the wheat becomes marketable, revealing a logic of extraction that finds profit in the leftovers.
ALSO GROWS
naphal: To fall or drop.
נָפַל
This is the root action beneath the refuse: what has fallen from the grain.
nefilah: A fall or falling.
נְפִילָה
This noun from the same root keeps the image of fallen matter inside the word translated “refuse.”
THE PATTERN
When someone’s need or labor is turned into another person’s bargain, scripture names the transaction as oppression, even when the price looks ordinary.
Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates: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
Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes;Amos 2:6 names the same exchange directly: people are sold for silver or a pair of shoes. The shared Hebrew word אֶבְיוֹן (evyon, a needy person) links the verses, showing the wheat trade as part of the same economy that prices people’s vulnerability.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us