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Amos

About this book
Chapter 4

1 Listen to this message, you cows of Bashan who live on Mount Samaria! You oppress the poor; you crush the needy. You say to your husbands, “Bring us more to drink!” 2 The Sovereign Lord confirms this oath by his own holy character: “Certainly the time is approaching when you will be carried away in baskets, every last one of you in fishermen’s pots. 3 Each of you will go straight through the gaps in the walls; you will be thrown out toward Harmon.” The Lord is speaking. 4 “Go to Bethel and rebel! At Gilgal rebel some more!⁠ Bring your sacrifices in the morning, your tithes on the third day! 5 Burn a thank offering of bread made with yeast!⁠ Make a public display of your voluntary offerings! For you love to do this, you Israelites.”⁠ The Sovereign Lord is speaking. 6 “But surely I gave you no food to eat in all your cities; you lacked food everywhere you lived. Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking. 7 “I withheld rain from you three months before the harvest. I gave rain to one city, but not to another. One field would get rain, but the field that received no rain dried up.⁠ 8 People from two or three cities staggered into one city to get water, but remained thirsty. Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking. 9 “I destroyed your crops with blight and disease. Locusts kept devouring your orchards, vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees. Still you did not come back to me.”⁠ The Lord is speaking. 10 “I sent against you a plague like one of the Egyptian plagues. I killed your young men with the sword, along with the horses you had captured. I made the stench from the corpses rise up into your nostrils. Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking. 11 “I overthrew some of you the way God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You were like a burning stick snatched from the flames.⁠ Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking. 12 “Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel. Because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel!” 13 For here he is! He formed the mountains and created the wind.⁠ He reveals his plans to men.⁠ He turns the dawn into darkness and marches on the heights of the earth.⁠ The Lord God of Heaven’s Armies is his name!

Texts in conversation

Compare Amos 4:13 and 3 Enoch 23:17

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

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Summary

In Amos, God creates the wind and shapes the mountains. In 3 Enoch, these mountains are interpreted a station on the wind's descent from heaven to earth, following a route through all creation.

Passages

Amos 4:13

Hebrew Bible
10 “I sent against you a plague like one of the Egyptian plagues. I killed your young men with the sword, along with the horses you had captured. I made the stench from the corpses rise up into your nostrils. Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking. 11 “I overthrew some of you the way God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You were like a burning stick snatched from the flames. Still you did not come back to me.” The Lord is speaking. 12 “Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel. Because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel!” 13 For here he is! He formed the mountains and created the wind. He reveals his plans to men. He turns the dawn into darkness and marches on the heights of the earth. The Lord God of Heaven’s Armies is his name!
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Amos

3 Enoch 23:17

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · Hebrew Book of Enoch
17 And where do all these winds go? The Scripture teaches us, that they go out from under the wings of the Kerubim and descend on the globe of the sun, as it is written (Eccl. i. 6): "The wind goes toward the south and turns about to the north; it turns about continually in its course and the wind returns again to its circuits". And from the globe of the sun they return and descend upon [the rivers and the seas, upon] the mountains and upon the hills, as it is written (Am. iv. 13): "For lo, he that forms the mountains and creates the wind".
400–600 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 3 Enoch

References

“... Interestingly, too, the lengthy passage that describes the winds (3 Enoch 23, §35)59 does not make use of the metrological imagery that I noted to be sig- nificant in the Parables; rather, it brings together an array of biblical texts that speak of the winds and combines their imagery. In fact, there is only one point in 3 Enoch where scales/balance imagery is used, in 18:20 (§27): Why is his name called Šoqedḥozi? Because he weighs men’s merits in scales in the presence of the Holy One, blessed be he. So, while there appears to be more entanglement with the content of Parables of Enoch and 2 Enoch than is seen in the biblical material or even in b.Ḥagigah, ...”
Grant Macaskill, The Entangled Enoch: 2 Enoch and the Cultures of Late Antiquity (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill BV, 2024), 138.

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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Amos 4:13 and 3 Enoch 23:17

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