Amos 8 — Hebrew and Greek compared

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: The showing formula and the presentation of a single object agree. The object does not. Hebrew kelub qayits is a basket of qayits, summer fruit, and kelub can also mean a cage; the Greek has taken it in that second sense and supplied a trade, a fowler's vessel. The choice matters for the next verse, because qayits is what makes the sound-play with qets, end, and the Greek object carries no such sound.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: The dialogue and the two announcements, the end and the end of forbearance, agree. The Hebrew turns on sound: qayits, summer fruit, and qets, end, differ by one consonant, so the object seen names the verdict spoken. The Greek repeats the fowler's vessel and then the end with no link between them, so an argument the Hebrew carries by a pun cannot be carried in the Greek. Hebrew ba haqqets is a qal perfect, the end has come, a completed arrival, which the Greek has arrived matches.

Classification & Notes

Disparate. Text: Three separate things move. First the subject of wailing: Hebrew shirot heikhal, the songs of the temple, becomes in Greek the temple's coffered ceilings, so singing is turned into architecture. Second the corpse clause: Hebrew rav happeger has a singular collective, the corpse is many, with hishlikh, a hiphil perfect third masculine singular whose subject is unnamed, someone has flung them, where the Greek has many have fallen in every place. Third the closing word: Hebrew has, one abrupt syllable, Hush, is a silencing addressed to the hearers, while the Greek makes it a divine act, I will cast silence upon them. The Hebrew's terseness and its unnamed agent are both lost, and the silence changes from something commanded to something inflicted.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: The summons and the two objects of oppression agree. Hebrew hashsho'afim is a qal participle of shaaf, to pant after or trample, with evyon, the needy, as its object, where the Greek has wear out the needy and adds until morning, which answers to nothing in the Hebrew clause. Hebrew velashbit is a hiphil infinitive of shavat, to cause to cease, an intent to abolish the poor, where the Greek has oppress the poor out of the land, supplying a removal from the land that the Hebrew does not state. The Leningrad text here carries a written form anwe, humble or afflicted, beside the read form aniyye, poor; the read form is followed in this column. Rabbinic: Rashi's text of Amos 8 displays both the written anwe and the read aniyye at this verse, the read form giving the poor of the land. Source: https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16180/jewish/Chapter-8.htm

Classification & Notes

Similar. Text: The essentials are the same, impatience with the holy day and fraud in measure. Hebrew names the units exactly, hachodesh, the new moon, eifah, the dry measure, and sheqel, the weight, where the Greek generalises to month, measure and weights and pluralises the sabbaths. Hebrew has two first person plural cohortatives, venashbirah and veniftechah, that we may sell grain and that we may open, expressing eagerness, which the Greek renders as purpose clauses. Hebrew mozne mirmah is balances of deceit, the Greek an unjust balance. Rabbinic: Rashi at Amos 8:5 reads the calendar language through anticipated grain scarcity and takes the sabbath here as the sabbatical year. The ordinary sabbath is kept in this column and Rashi's reading is recorded as commentary, not adopted. Source: https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16180/jewish/Chapter-8.htm

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: Both have persons bought with silver and persons bought for footwear, and both end with a further act of grain trading. The last clause differs. Hebrew mappal bar, the fallen-off or refuse portion of the wheat, names an adulterated product sold to the poor, where the Greek has trade from every kind of produce, which describes scope rather than fraud. Hebrew na'alayim is a dual, a pair of sandals, and the Greek has sandals with no number marked.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: The oath formula and its emphatic denial agree. Hebrew im eshkach is the standard oath construction in which im introduces an emphatic negative, so the first person eshkach means I will never forget; the Greek shifts to the third person, He will never forget. The Greek also shifts the possessor, giving your works where the Hebrew has ma'asehem, their deeds, third masculine plural. Both changes of person are retained rather than harmonised. Hebrew ge'on Yaaqov, the pride of Jacob, is used by Amos both of the land's glory and of Israel's arrogance, and the Greek arrogance selects the second sense.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: The rhetorical question, the trembling of the land, the mourning of its inhabitants and the double Nile comparison all agree. Hebrew kullah, all of it, refers back to ha'arets, the land, and is what rises, where the Greek makes the rising subject a consummation, syntelia, an eschatological noun with no counterpart in the Hebrew clause. The Hebrew also has venigreshah, and it shall be tossed about, which the Greek lacks. The Leningrad text here shows a written form venishqah beside the read form venishqe'ah, and shall sink, from shaqa; the read form is followed, as at 9:5 where the same verb stands without a variant.

Classification & Notes

Similar. Text: The same portent is announced in both, the sun failing at midday and daylight turned dark. The difference is agency. Hebrew has two first person hiphils, vehevei'ti, I will bring in, and vehachashakhti, I will darken, making God the explicit cause of both, where the Greek narrates the events without naming an agent, the sun will set and the light will grow dark, though still inside divine speech. Hebrew beyom or, in a day of light, is rendered in daytime in the Greek.

Classification & Notes

Different. Text: The reversal of feast into mourning and song into dirge, and both mourning signs, sackcloth on the loins and baldness on the head, agree throughout. Hebrew yachid, an only son, is what the Greek renders beloved one, which is that translation's ordinary equivalent for the word and not a real difference. The one substantive difference is the last clause: Hebrew acharitah, its end or aftermath, with a third feminine singular suffix picking up the mourning, becomes Greek those with him, a group of persons. The category recorded in the earlier project notes was Disparate; it is changed here to Different, because only one detail moves and neither the act, the agent nor the outcome of the oracle changes.

Classification & Notes

Similar. Text: The oracle is the same in both, a coming deprivation that is not of food or drink but of divine speech. Hebrew divre YHWH is plural, the words of YHWH, and the Greek has the singular the Lord's word. The Greek repeats the noun famine in the last clause, famine for hearing, where the Hebrew has only the infinitive lishmoa, for hearing, governed by the earlier noun. Hebrew vehishlachti is a first person hiphil, I will send. Saints: Basil the Great and John Chrysostom, both cited at Amos 8:11 in the catena, read the famine as a deprivation of the soul rather than the body: Basil ties it to the putting to death of the bread of life, and Chrysostom contrasts the famine that tortures the body with the one that affects the soul. Source: https://catenabible.com/am/8/11

Classification & Notes

Disparate. Text: The second half agrees closely, a restless search from north to east for the word of the Lord that fails. The first half changes who acts. Hebrew vena'u, a qal of nua, to totter or stagger, has as its subject the people of the preceding verses, who wander from sea to sea, where the Greek has waters shaken as far as the sea, replacing human agents with a physical disturbance. That is a change of agent in the governing clause, which is why this stands at Disparate rather than Different. Hebrew yeshotetu is a polel of shut, to rove to and fro, an intensive of the same restlessness.

Classification & Notes

Same. Text: The same two groups, the beautiful virgins and the young men, faint from the same cause in both. Hebrew titallafnah is a hithpael imperfect third feminine plural, they shall faint away, the feminine plural form governing both subjects. The verse runs on into the participial description of 8:14 in the Hebrew as in the Greek.

Classification & Notes

Disparate. Text: The oath formulas, the two shrine names and the final irreversible fall agree. Two words carry the difference and the first is theological. Hebrew ashmat Shomron is the guilt of Samaria, a term of condemnation for the very object sworn by, where the Greek has Samaria's propitiation, a term of favourable cultic standing; the same object is condemned in one text and named by an expiatory word in the other. Second, Hebrew derekh Beer Sheva, the way or pilgrimage of Beersheba, becomes in the Greek your god, Beersheba, so that what the Hebrew leaves as a cultic route the Greek states as a deity. The exact referent of the Greek propitiation is not reconstructed here.