Amos 4 — Hebrew and Greek compared

Classification & Notes

Similar. Text: The bovine address, the two participial charges and the demand for drink correspond. Hebrew has three feminine plural participles under the article — hāʽōshəqōt, hārōṣəṣōt, hāʽōmərōt — and the Greek keeps all three as relative clauses. Hebrew rōṣəṣōt is crush or shatter; Greek trample is a near neighbour and carries the same force. The address is feminine throughout, but the suffix on laʽadōnêhem, to their lords, is masculine plural, so the women speak to male masters; the Greek masters is likewise masculine. The imperative hāḇîʽāh is masculine singular with paragogic he — one master is addressed — while the following cohortative wənishteh is first common plural, we. Greek preserves the same singular-to-plural turn with Give to us. Rabbinic: Rashi on Amos 4:1 takes pārōt habbāshān as the wives of the princes and the officers, and reports that Targum Jonathan renders the phrase wealthy in property rather than as livestock. Source: https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Amos.4.1

Classification & Notes

Disparate. Text: Both columns hold the oath and the coming days, and then the instruments of capture part company. Hebrew swears bəqodshō, by His holiness, a singular construct noun with a third masculine singular suffix; the Greek has the plural His holy things. Hebrew ṣinnōt and sîrōt dûgāh are hooks and fishing hooks — the second phrase literally pots or thorns of fishing — and the Greek replaces both with weapons and with cauldrons burning underneath, adding fiery pestilences as the agents that do the throwing. The verb wənissāʾ is third masculine singular with no named subject, so Hebrew leaves the carrier impersonal, one will carry; the Greek supplies they. Note also that Hebrew shifts person inside the verse: ʾeṯkem, you, is second masculine plural, but ʾaḥărîṯken, your remnant, is second feminine plural, continuing the address to the cows of 4:1. The two rare implement names remain uncertain in Hebrew, and the difference in the capture scene is real rather than a matter of wording. Rabbinic: Rashi on Amos 4:2 reads bəṣinnōt as on shields — the nations shall bear you on their shields — and, with Targum Jonathan, reads bəsîrōt dûgāh as in fishermen's boats, glossing your remnant as your daughters. Neither of his readings is the Greek one. Source: https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Amos.4.2

Classification & Notes

Divergent. Text: Category changed from the prior working note's Disparate: the outcome — expulsion toward a named place — is the same in both columns, and what differs is that material has been replaced rather than reversed. Hebrew's uṗərāṣîm, the breaches in the wall through which the women leave, has no Greek counterpart; the Greek instead adds naked, which is not in the Hebrew. Hebrew ʼishshāh negədāh, each woman straight before her, matches Greek opposite one another only loosely. Harmon becomes Mount Remman, the Greek adding Mount. The verb wəhishlakhtenah is pointed as a hiphil perfect second feminine plural, an active you shall cast, with no expressed object; it is kept active and reflexive here rather than silently repointed as the hophal passive that the Greek thrown presupposes. Rabbinic: Rashi on Amos 4:3 reads the breaches as breaches of the wall through which they flee, and each woman straight before her as the breach she finds opposite her; he then takes haharāmōnāh as casting off authority or haughtiness on the basis of Aramaic usage in the Talmud, so he too declines to treat it simply as a place. Source: https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Amos.4.3

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: Category changed from the prior working note's Disparate. Every named element corresponds — Bethel, Gilgal, transgression, morning sacrifices, the unusual three-day tithe — and the difference is confined to verbal force. Hebrew has four imperatives in a row (bōʾu, ûṗishʽu, harḇû, wəhāḇîʾu), all second masculine plural, which makes the verse an ironic summons to worship; the Greek reports completed conduct, You entered Bethel and acted lawlessly, and then You brought. The Greek three-day period faithfully keeps lishlōsheṯ yāmîm as days, not years. Nothing in either column is added or omitted; the mood is what moves.

Classification & Notes

Disparate. Text: The ritual acts charged differ, not merely their wording. Hebrew names two concrete offerings — qaṭṭēr mēḥāmēṣ tōdāh, burning a thank offering from what is leavened, and nəḏāḇōt, freewill offerings, to be called out and published. The Greek has neither: it has reading a law outside and invoking acknowledgments. The Hebrew opens with wəqaṭṭēr, a piel infinitive absolute used as an imperative, continuing 4:4's ironic commands, and holds second masculine plural throughout; the Greek moves to third person, they read and invoked, before returning to a command, Announce. The closing clause agrees: kî kēn ʾăhaḇtem, for so you have loved, matched by the sons of Israel loved these things.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: Hebrew niqyōn shinnayim is cleanness of teeth — teeth with nothing on them, an image of empty mouths — and the verb nāṯattî is qal perfect first common singular, a completed past act. The Greek turns the image into aching teeth and the tense into a future, I will give. The shortage of bread, the universality in all your cities and in all your places, and the refrain wəlōʾ shabṯem ʽāḍay, you did not return unto Me, all correspond. This refrain closes 4:6, 4:8, 4:9, 4:10 and 4:11 identically in Hebrew and is rendered identically here.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: The selective-rain oracle corresponds closely. The one substantive difference is the season named: Hebrew laqqāṣîr is the grain harvest, while the Greek names the vintage, the grape harvest. Hebrew's verb sequence is mixed — mānaʽtî is qal perfect, an accomplished withholding; wəhimṭartî is a hiphil perfect with waw, and ʾamṭîr a hiphil imperfect, both read here as habitual past, I would send — while the Greek makes the first past and the rest future. Ḥelqāh is a plot or field-portion; timmāṭēr is niphal third feminine singular, would be rained upon, and tîḇāsh qal third feminine singular, would dry up. Rabbinic: Rashi on Amos 4:7 fixes the phrase as three months before the harvest and, citing Taanit 6b, holds that both halves of the pattern are curses: the rained-on portion will rot and the unrained portion will wither. That reading makes selective rain itself the judgment rather than a partial mercy. Source: https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Amos.4.7

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: Hebrew wənāʽû is the root nûʽ, to totter, reel or wander — the cities stagger to the one city like men without water; the Greek has them assemble, a purposeful gathering. The tense also differs: nāʽû is a perfect with waw read here as habitual past, while the Greek is future. The counts two or three, the single destination, the unrelieved thirst and the refrain all agree.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: Hebrew names two crop diseases, shiddāṗōn, scorching or blight, and yērāqōn, yellowing or mildew; the Greek has burning and jaundice, the second a bodily rather than agricultural term. Hebrew harbōt is a hiphil infinitive construct governing the four following nouns, best taken as the multitude of your gardens and vineyards and figs and olives — all four as one object of the devouring — whereas the Greek makes multiplying the gardens a separate act by the addressees and leaves only vineyards, fig orchards and olive groves to be eaten. The devourer is haggāzām, a locust named from shearing or cutting; the Greek has caterpillar. The refrain agrees.

Classification & Notes

Disparate. Text: The second half of the verse says two different things. Hebrew has wāʾaʽăleh bəʾōsh maḥănêkhem ûḇəʾappəkhem: I made the stench of your camps go up, and into your nostril — a scene of unburied dead whose smell reaches the survivors. The Greek instead has the camps brought up in fire, in My anger: bəʾōsh, stench, has been read as fire and ʺppekem, your nose, as the divine anger. Agency and image both change. Earlier in the verse Hebrew deḇer, pestilence, becomes Greek death, and bəḍerekh miṣrayim, in the manner or on the road of Egypt — derekh carries both — is fixed by the Greek to road. Shəḇî sûsêkhem is the capture of your horses, a construct chain the Greek keeps.

Classification & Notes

Similar. Text: The overthrow comparison, the two city names and the rescued firebrand agree closely. Hebrew hāṗakṯî ḇākem is I overthrew among you, narrower than the Greek's I overthrew you; kəmahṗēkhaṯ ʾĕlōhîm is a construct, God's overthrow, which the Greek turns into a clause, as God overthrew. Muṣṣāl is a hophal participle, snatched or rescued, matched by the Greek snatched. Neither column says that no one survived.

Classification & Notes

Disparate. Text: The commanded response differs. Hebrew hikkōn liqraʾt ʾĕlōhekhā is prepare to meet your God — liqraʾt is the infinitive of encounter, used of going out to meet an advancing party — and hikkōn is a niphal imperative, prepare yourself. The Greek has prepare to call upon your God, an act of appeal rather than of confrontation. The threat that precedes is the same in both. A grammatical detail the English cannot display: Hebrew addresses Israel first as ləkhā, second masculine singular, then as lākh, second feminine singular, within one verse. Saints: Augustine, City of God XVIII.28, quotes Amos 4:12–13 in the Greek-derived form — Prepare you, that you may invoke your God, O Israel; for lo, I am binding the thunder, and creating the spirit, and announcing to men their Christ — so the Latin tradition he transmits reads invoke, with the Greek column here, and not meet, with the Hebrew. Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120118.htm

Classification & Notes

Disparate. Text: This is the first of the book's three doxologies and the Hebrew is a chain of five articleless participles — yōṣēr, bōrēʾ, maggîḍ, ʽōsēh, dōrēkh — held open until the name-formula lands at the end; that elevated participial register is kept rather than flattened into finite clauses. Three words carry the difference. Hebrew hārîm, mountains, corresponds to Greek thunder, which presupposes reading the consonants as raʽam. Hebrew mah-séḥō, what his thought or musing is, corresponds to Greek His anointed, which presupposes məshîḥō; the Hebrew phrase is genuinely ambiguous as to whose thought is meant, man's or God's, so his is left lower case here and no name is inserted into the Greek column's anointed. Hebrew ʽōsēh shaḥar ʽîṗāh is making dawn into darkness — ʽîṗāh is gloom — an oxymoron the Greek resolves into two coordinated products, dawn and mist. Treading on the heights of the earth and the closing name-formula agree, the Greek expanding YHWH, God of hosts to Lord God Almighty. The Greek also opens with I am the One and then continues with His, a shift of person retained. Rabbinic: Rashi on Amos 4:13 reads mah-séḥō of the human being — all his deeds are recounted in detail before him at the hour of his death — and takes ʽōsēh shaḥar as dawn for the righteous and ʽîṗāh as the turning of the brightness of the wicked into thick darkness, comparing Isaiah 8:22 and Job 10:22 and 11:17; treading the heights of the earth he glosses as humbling the high and the haughty. Saints: Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit II.6.48–58, argues from this verse in its Greek form against those who inferred from create the spirit that the Holy Spirit is created: he takes the order thunder-before-wind to show that worldly creation is meant, since these are created when they occur while the Holy Spirit is eternal (§51), and at §54 offers the Christological reading that Christ established the thunders by His coming, the force and sound of the heavenly Scriptures. Augustine, City of God XVIII.28, quotes the same verse as announcing to men their Christ. Both read the Greek text; neither is a reading of the Hebrew as it stands here. Source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/34022.htm , https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120118.htm