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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 Deuteronomy 28:21 and Amos 4:9

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Amos 4 draws on Deuteronomy 28 by describing failed harvests and crop disease as the result of covenant disobedience. Amos frames the people’s suffering as the expected outcome of those ignored warnings.

Passages

Deuteronomy 28:21

Hebrew Bible
20 “The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you in everything you undertake until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me. 21 The Lord will plague you with deadly diseases until he has completely removed you from the land you are about to possess. 22 He will afflict you with weakness, fever, inflammation, infection, sword, blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish. 23 The sky above your heads will be bronze and the earth beneath you iron.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

Amos 4:9

Hebrew Bible
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.
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Amos

References

"... scorching and green-mold, and with hail: These three disasters are listed as part of the careful structure of the whole verse ... Agricultural products (compare 2:14) are failing because of natural disasters. All three of these disasters are associated in particular with either of the two transitional periods, April / May or October / November, falling between the dry season and the rainy season in the Palestinian calendar. “Scorching” refers to the destruction of standing crops by the sirocco or east wind; and hail damages plants during the unstable weather of the transitional season. Since this prophecy refers back to a time before temple work had begun - i.e., before the sixth month—the crucial spring shift from winter to summer must be involved. The fall harvest, which is the setting for this prophet’s activity, would have been severely limited because of damage to crops when buds were forming in the spring. Compare the language of Deuteronomy 28:22 (Amos 4:9), which omits “hail” but which describes God’s response to the people’s disobedience: “Yahweh will smite you with ... heat and drought, blight, and mildew.” ..."
Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987), 61.

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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Deuteronomy 28:21 and Amos 4:9

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