Amos 4:9-10

4:9 “I destroyed your crops ¹  with blight and disease.

Locusts kept ²  devouring your orchards, ³  vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

4:10 “I sent against you a plague like one of the Egyptian plagues. ⁴ 

I killed your young men with the sword,

along with the horses you had captured.

I made the stench from the corpses ⁵  rise up into your nostrils.

Still you did not come back to me.”

The Lord is speaking!

Amos 6:8

6:8 The sovereign Lord confirms this oath by his very own life. ⁶ 

The Lord, the God who commands armies, is speaking:

“I despise Jacob’s arrogance;

I hate their ⁷  fortresses.

I will hand over to their enemies ⁸  the city of Samaria ⁹  and everything in it.”

[4:9]  ¹ tn Heb “you.” By metonymy the crops belonging to these people are meant. See the remainder of this verse, which describes the agricultural devastation caused by locusts.

[4:9]  ² tn The Hiphil infinitive construct is taken adverbially (“kept”) and connected to the activity of the locusts (NJPS). It also could be taken with the preceding sentence and related to the Lord’s interventions (“I kept destroying,” cf. NEB, NJB, NIV, NRSV), or it could be understood substantivally in construct with the following nouns (“Locusts devoured your many orchards,” cf. NASB; cf. also KJV, NKJV).

[4:9]  ³ tn Or “gardens.”

[4:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “in the manner [or “way”] of Egypt.”

[4:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “of your camps [or “armies”].”

[6:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “swears by his life”; or “swears by himself.”

[6:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “his,” referring to Jacob, which stands here for the nation of Israel.

[6:8]  ⁸ tn The words “to their enemies” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[6:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “the city”; this probably refers to the city of Samaria (cf. 6:1), which in turn, by metonymy, represents the entire northern kingdom.