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Amos

About this book
Chapter 2

1 This is what the Lord says: “Because Moab has committed three crimes—make that four—I will not revoke my decree of judgment. They burned the bones of Edom’s king into lime. 2 So I will set Moab on fire, and it will consume Kerioth’s fortresses. Moab will perish in the heat of battle amid war cries and the blaring of the ram’s horn. 3 I will remove Moab’s leader; I will kill all Moab’s officials with him.” The Lord has spoken! 4 This is what the Lord says: “Because Judah has committed three covenant transgressions—make that four—I will not revoke my decree of judgment. They rejected the Lord’s law; they did not obey his commands. Their false gods, to which their fathers were loyal, led them astray. 5 So I will set Judah on fire, and it will consume Jerusalem’s fortresses.” 6 This is what the Lord says: “Because Israel has committed three covenant transgressions—make that four—I will not revoke my decree of judgment. They sold the innocent for silver, the needy for a pair of sandals.⁠ 7 They trample on the dirt-covered heads of the poor; they push the destitute away. A man and his father go to the same girl; in this way they show disrespect for my moral purity.⁠ 8 They stretch out on clothing seized as collateral;⁠ they do so right beside every altar!⁠ They drink wine bought with the fines they have levied; they do so right in the temple of their God!⁠ 9 For Israel’s sake I destroyed the Amorites. They were as tall as cedars and as strong as oaks,⁠ but I destroyed the fruit on their branches and their roots in the ground. 10 I brought you up from the land of Egypt; I led you through the wilderness for 40 years so you could take the Amorites’ land as your own. 11 I made some of your sons prophets and some of your young men Nazirites. Is this not true, you Israelites?” The Lord is speaking. 12 “But you made the Nazirites drink wine;⁠ you commanded the prophets, ‘Do not prophesy!’ 13 Look! I will press you down, like a cart loaded down with grain presses down. 14 Fast runners will find no place to hide; strong men will have no strength left; warriors will not be able to save their lives. 15 Archers will not hold their ground; fast runners will not save their lives, nor will those who ride horses. 16 Bravehearted warriors will run away naked⁠ in that day.” The Lord is speaking.

Texts in conversation

Compare Numbers 13:33 and Amos 2:9

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Numbers 13 says the Israelite spies saw the Nephilim in Canaan, describing themselves as grasshoppers in comparison and portraying them as giants. Amos echoes a similar tradition, describing the Amorites as towering like the legendary giants.

Passages

Numbers 13:33

Hebrew Bible
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against these people, because they are stronger than we are!” 32 Then they presented the Israelites with a discouraging report of the land they had investigated, saying, “The land that we passed through to investigate is a land that devours its inhabitants. All the people we saw there are of great stature. 33 We even saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak came from the Nephilim), and we seemed like grasshoppers both to ourselves and to them.”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Numbers

Amos 2:9

Hebrew Bible
7 They trample on the dirt-covered heads of the poor; they push the destitute away. A man and his father go to the same girl; in this way they show disrespect for my moral purity. 8 They stretch out on clothing seized as collateral; they do so right beside every altar! They drink wine bought with the fines they have levied; they do so right in the temple of their God! 9 For Israel’s sake I destroyed the Amorites. They were as tall as cedars and as strong as oaks, but I destroyed the fruit on their branches and their roots in the ground. 10 I brought you up from the land of Egypt; I led you through the wilderness for 40 years so you could take the Amorites’ land as your own. 11 I made some of your sons prophets and some of your young men Nazirites. Is this not true, you Israelites?” The Lord is speaking.
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Amos

References

"... God’s plural address to his divine entourage is found elsewhere in the Bible (e.g. Isaiah 6:8, 40:1–2) and is a type of allusion we presume would have been readily apparent in ancient Israel. The Sons of God must have been familiar creatures in these traditions. In contrast to the Sons of God, the identity of the Nephilim is obscure. Their epithets, “the ancient warriors, the men of renown,” indicate that their stories were well-known, but these legendary exploits have been lost. The only other reference to the Nephilim in the Hebrew Bible is in the report by the Israelite spies commissioned by Moses to reconnoiter the Promised Land. They report after their journey [Numbers 13:32-33] ... According to this fearful report of the spies, the Nephilim are the aboriginal giants of Canaan. A related tradition calls these aboriginal giants the Amorites, as Yahweh recalls in Amos 2:9 ... The statement in Genesis 6:4 that “the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also later,” ties the Nephilim who are mighty warriors before the flood to the Nephilim who are mighty giants in Canaan at the time prior to the Israelite conquest. This dual signification of the Nephilim is odd, but the continuity of the antediluvian and postdiluvian Nephilim is clear enough ..."
Ronald Hendel, “The Nephilim Were on the Earth: Genesis 6:1–4 and Its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” in The Fall of the Angels, ed. Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, TBN 6 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 11–34.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Numbers 13:33 and Amos 2:9

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