Amos 9 — Hebrew and Greek compared

Classification & Notes

Disparate. Text: The frame agrees: a vision of the Lord at the altar, a command to strike, a shaking of the building, a slaughter by the sword and a total denial of escape. Inside that frame the architecture and the action differ. Hebrew hak hakkaftor is strike the capital, the ornamental head of a column, where the Greek has strike the atonement cover, hilasterion, the lid of the ark, so the blow falls on a structural member in one text and on the holiest furnishing in the other. Hebrew hassippim, the thresholds, becomes Greek the foregates. Hebrew uvetsa'am, an imperative of batsa with a third masculine plural suffix, break them off upon the head of all of them, has the fabric of the building fall on the worshippers, where the Greek cut through the heads of all makes the heads themselves the thing severed. Hebrew acharitam, their remnant or latter part, is what the sword takes. The Hebrew doubles its final denial with cognate constructions, lo yanus lahem nas and lo yimmalet lahem palit, no fleeing one of them shall flee, no escaping one of them shall escape. Rabbinic: Rashi at Amos 9:1 places the vision at the golden altar in the Temple and counts it among the journeys of the Shekhinah. That is an interpretative placement and is not used here to identify the Hebrew kaftor. Source: https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16181/jewish/Chapter-9.htm

Classification & Notes

Similar. Text: The pair of vertical extremes, the repeated from there, and the two divine retrievals all agree. Hebrew yachteru is a qal of chatar, to dig or break through, matching the Greek burrow. Hebrew tiqqachem, My hand shall take them, is plainer than the Greek pull them up, which specifies the direction, but the sense is the same. The underworld is named Sheol in Hebrew and Hades in the Greek, and the two names are left standing as they are.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: The two hiding places, the divine search, the command to the sea creature and the bite all agree. Hebrew yissateru minneged enai, they conceal themselves from before My eyes, is an act of hiding from sight, where the Greek plunge from My eyes turns it into a descent. Hebrew beqarqa hayyam is on the floor of the sea, the Greek the sea's depths. Hebrew hannachash is the serpent, the ordinary word, while the Greek has drakon, rendered dragon in the reading text; no later mythological identity is read into either.

Classification & Notes

Same. Text: The fourth and last of the escape clauses corresponds throughout: captivity before enemies, the commanded sword, the killing, and the deliberate fixing of the divine gaze for harm and not for benefit. Hebrew has the singular eni, My eye, where the Greek has My eyes, and the singular and plural are idiomatic variants of the same expression. Hebrew lera'ah velo letovah, for evil and not for good, is matched by the Greek for evils and not for good things.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: This is the third of Amos's doxologies, and both texts keep its hymnic shape, a divine title followed by participial description. Hebrew hannogea, the article with a qal participle, He who touches, heads the clause and is kept as a participle in this column. The one verb that differs is the effect of the touch: Hebrew vattamog, from mug, and it melts, where the Greek has shakes it. The rising and sinking like the Nile repeat 8:8, and as there the Hebrew subject is kullah, all of it, the land, while the Greek makes it a consummation. Hebrew YHWH hatseva'ot, of hosts, appears in the Greek as Almighty.

Classification & Notes

Disparate. Text: The doxology continues in both with the same participial register, He who builds and He who calls, and the water action at the end corresponds closely, the calling of the sea's waters and their pouring out on the face of the earth, closing with the name formula. The second clause differs decisively. Hebrew agguddato, from aggudah, a band, bundle or bound thing, is a structure that God has founded upon the earth, its exact form uncertain and deliberately not identified here as a vault of heaven or anything else; the Greek has His promise, epangelia, a pledged word. A built thing in one text is a spoken pledge in the other. The Leningrad text carries a written form ma'aloto beside the read ma'alotav, His upper chambers or ascents, plural with a third masculine singular suffix; the read form is followed. Rabbinic: Rashi at Amos 9:6 offers the company of His creatures, and alternatively the company of the righteous, as the aggudah, reading the uncertain noun as a body of persons rather than as a structure. That reading is recorded, not adopted. Source: https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16181/jewish/Chapter-9.htm

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: Both put the same two rhetorical questions and both name three divinely directed migrations against Israel's own. The three proper nouns in the second question all shift. Hebrew Pelishtiyyim, the Philistines, becomes Greek foreigners, that translation's standing equivalent for the name; Hebrew Kaftor becomes Cappadocia; and Hebrew Qir, a place name, dissolves into a pit, a common noun. So the Greek has one ethnic term generalised, one place identified with a different region, and one place turned into an ordinary noun. Hebrew bene Khushiyyim, sons of the Cushites, is kept as Cushites and not equated with any modern state.

Classification & Notes

Same. Text: The structure and the reservation agree exactly: the divine gaze on a guilty kingdom, its removal from the face of the ground, and the explicit exception for the house of Jacob. Hebrew hammamlakhah hachatta'ah, the sinful kingdom, an adjective, and Greek the kingdom of sinners, a genitive, give the same governing contrast. Hebrew hashmed ashmid is infinitive absolute plus imperfect, an emphatic I will not utterly destroy, matched by the Greek not completely remove. Hebrew efes ki, except that, marks the reservation sharply.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: The command, the shaking of Israel among the nations and the assurance that nothing falls all agree. The implement and the object differ. Hebrew kevarah is a sieve, and the verb henia, to shake or cause to totter, is used twice, of God shaking Israel and of the shaking in the sieve; the Greek has winnowing in a winnowing basket, a different operation with a different tool. Hebrew tseror is a pebble or hard kernel, the thing that will not pass through, where the Greek has a fragment. The Hebrew object that does not fall is retained here and is not replaced with good grain in order to settle what the metaphor means. Rabbinic: Rashi at Amos 9:9 reads the sifting so that the fine bran falls away while the coarse particles remain, with the one who shakes shaking with all his might; the implement in that reading is a sieve, not a winnowing basket. Source: https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16181/jewish/Chapter-9.htm

Classification & Notes

Same. Text: The doomed group, the instrument of their death and their quoted denial all agree. Hebrew hara'ah, the evil or disaster, is the subject of both verbs, taggish and taqdim, both hiphil third feminine singular, draw near and come in front of; the Greek has evils as subject, plural, with draw near or come upon us. Hebrew ba'adenu, about us or on our behalf, is idiomatic for reaching them, and the Greek upon us carries that.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: The promise is the same in both: a fallen Davidic structure raised, its damage repaired and the whole rebuilt as in ancient days. The Hebrew is remarkable for the pronoun suffixes it shifts across a single sentence. Pirtsehen, their breaches, is third feminine plural; harisotav, his ruins, is third masculine singular; and uvenitiha, and I will rebuild it, is third feminine singular, referring back to sukkah, booth, which is feminine singular. This column keeps all three shifts. The Greek levels them, referring throughout to the tent and its parts. Hebrew sukkat David is a booth or hut, a temporary shelter, where the Greek has tent, and the Hebrew spells the name plene, David with the yod. No additional city or kingdom is named in either column. Rabbinic: Rashi at Amos 9:11, citing Targum Jonathan, identifies the booth of David with the kingdom of the house of David and places its raising in the future redemption. Rav Nachman at Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 96b derives a messianic title from this verse's participle hannofelet, calling the Messiah bar nafle, son of the fallen one, precisely because Amos speaks of the sukkah of David that is falling. Second Temple use: 4Q174, the Florilegium, fragment 1, quotes Amos 9:11 alongside 2 Samuel 7 and reads the fallen booth messianically. Saints: Cyril of Alexandria at Amos 9:11 reads the raising of the fallen tent as the restoration of human nature raised from death by the Father; Augustine at the same verse takes David as a name for Christ, born according to the flesh of David's offspring; John Chrysostom reads the fall as human nature's irreparable fall. All three are readings of the Greek wording and none is imported into the Hebrew column. Source: https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16181/jewish/Chapter-9.htm ; https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.96b ; https://intertextual.bible/text/4q174-acts-15.16 ; https://catenabible.com/am/9/11

Classification & Notes

Disparate. Text: This is the book's most consequential Hebrew-Greek divergence and it turns on two words. First the object. The Hebrew has edom, written alef-dalet-vav-mem and vocalised Edom, the nation; the Greek has of men, which presupposes the consonants alef-dalet-mem read as adam, humankind. In the Leningrad text the vav is present, so the Greek reading requires a text written without it, which is the ordinary defective spelling of adam. Second the verb. The Hebrew has yireshu, yod-yod-resh-shin-vav, qal imperfect third masculine plural of yarash, to possess or take as an inheritance; the Greek has may seek, which presupposes yidreshu, yod-dalet-resh-shin-vav, from darash, to seek. The two forms differ in one letter, the second, yod against dalet. Third, that verb difference carries a difference of syntax. In the Hebrew the remnant of Edom and all the nations are the direct object, marked by et, and the unnamed they, the Israel restored in 9:11, are the subject who possess them; in the Greek those same parties become the subject who seek. So the Hebrew has Israel inheriting the nations and the Greek has the nations seeking, and the Greek in this reading text leaves the object of seek unexpressed. New Testament use: James at Acts 15:16-18 quotes the Greek form, that the remaining human beings and all the nations may seek, and that is the form his argument for the Gentiles rests on. What the citation establishes is that a Greek text of Amos 9:12 in the seek-and-men form was current and treated as scripture in the first century, and that the apostolic decision was argued from it. What it does not establish is that the Hebrew of Amos read adam and yidreshu, or that the Masoretic possess-and-Edom reading is secondary. Nor is Acts identical with either column here: it supplies the Lord as the object of seek, which this Greek text does not, and it opens with after these things I will return, which matches neither the Hebrew on that day nor the Greek equivalent. Neither Amos column has been conformed to Acts. Rabbinic: Rashi at Amos 9:12 takes Israel as the subject who shall inherit the remnant of Edom and all the nations upon whom God's name is called, that is, the Hebrew possess-and-Edom reading throughout. Saints: Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.12.14, quotes the seek-and-men form while reporting the Jerusalem council, that the residue of men may seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles. John Chrysostom, cited at Amos 9:12 in the catena, makes the rebuilding of the city the ground of the calling of the Gentiles. Source: https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16181/jewish/Chapter-9.htm ; https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103312.htm ; https://catenabible.com/am/9/12 ; https://www.die-bibel.de/en/bible/NA28/ACT.15

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: Both picture an abundance so great that the agricultural seasons overrun one another, and both end with mountains dripping sweetness. Three details move. The Hebrew names human workers, choresh, the plowman, qotser, the reaper, dorekh anavim, the treader of grapes, and moshekh hazzara, the one who draws out the seed; the Greek names processes instead, threshing, vintage and seedtime. Hebrew asis is new or sweet wine, which the Greek generalises to sweetness. Hebrew titmogagnah, a hithpolel of mug, the same root as the melting of 9:5, has the hills melt or flow, where the Greek has them planted together, reversing the image from dissolution to cultivation. The earlier project notes recorded Disparate; it is changed here to Different, because the substitutions are of image and participant within one unchanged promise of superabundance and no assertion, agency or outcome is altered. Rabbinic: Rashi at Amos 9:13 paraphrases the crowding of the seasons: they will not finish plowing until the harvest comes, and will not finish harvesting until sowing time comes. Source: https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16181/jewish/Chapter-9.htm

Classification & Notes

Similar. Text: The whole sequence corresponds: cities rebuilt and inhabited, vineyards planted and their wine drunk, gardens made and their fruit eaten. Hebrew veshavti et shevut ammi, with the cognate accusative shevut, is to restore the fortunes and can also carry the sense of bringing back captives, where the Greek states captivity outright, reverse the captivity. Hebrew arim neshammot is desolate cities, a niphal participle of shamem, the same root used of the ruined high places at 7:9, where the Greek has vanished cities. Hebrew ve'asu gannot is literally they shall make gardens.

Classification & Notes

Similar. Text: The promise of permanent planting on the given land is the same in both, including the negative, they shall never again be uprooted. Hebrew adamah, soil or ground, occurs twice and is the same word used of the unclean soil of exile at 7:17. The closing title differs: the Hebrew has elohekha, your God, with a second masculine singular suffix, a personal address to a single hearer at the very end of the book, where the Greek has the Lord God Almighty, a title of universal power with no address in it. Hebrew yinnateshu is a niphal of natash, to be uprooted, answering the active neta'tim, I will plant them.