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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 LXX Amos 4:13

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

Amos describes God revealing his plans to humanity. The Greek Septuagint translates this as announcing “his anointed one,” introducing a messianic figure absent from the Hebrew text.

Passages

Amos 4:13

Hebrew Bible
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

LXX Amos 4:13

Septuagint
12 Therefore I will do this to you, Israel: but because I will do thus to you, prepare to call on your God, Israel. 13 For, look, I am he that strengthens the thunder, and creates the wind, and proclaims to men his Christ, forming the morning and the darkness, and mounting on the high places of the earth, The Lord God Almighty is his name.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Amos

References

"... The divergent reading in Amos 4.13 of χριστὸν αὐτοῦ apparently renders *משׁיחו (‘his anointed’), where the Masoretic Text has מהשׂחו (‘what is his thought’). In its immediate context, this misreading/translational choice does not reveal much about what kind of ‘anointed’ person is envisaged, whether king or priest, and whether the allusion is to past, present or future. Glenny links the passage to 7.1 (‘Gog the king’) and 9.11-12 (restoration of the ‘tent of David’), and argues for a more developed eschatological intention on the part of the translator (Finding, pages 236–40). Munnich also thinks the intention is messianic, but comments that the plural τοὺς χριστούς σου in Habakkuk 3.13 envisages a collective restoration (‘Le messianisme’, pages 347–48; compare Dafni, ‘ΠΑΝΤΟΚΡΑΤΩΡ’). ..."
Jennifer Dines, “The Minor Prophets,” in T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint, ed. James K. Aitken, Bloomsbury Companions (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 448.

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 LXX Amos 4:13

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