Amos 6:11

11 For the Lord commands: The large house will be smashed to pieces, and the small house to rubble.^[a]

Amos 6:11 Meaning and Commentary

Amos 6:11

For, behold, the Lord commandeth
Hath determined and ordered the judgment before, and what follows: Kimchi paraphrases it, hath decreed the earthquake, as in ( Amos 3:15 ) ; of which he understands the following: and he will smite the great house with breaches;
or "droppings" ^F8; so that the rain shall drop through: and the little house with clefts;
so that it shall fall to ruin; that is, he shall smite the houses both of great and small, of the princes, and of the common people, either with an earthquake, so that they shall part asunder and fall; or, being left without inhabitants, shall of course become desolate, there being none to repair their breaches. Some understand, by the "great house", the ten tribes of Israel; and, by the "little house", the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin; to which sense the Targum seems to incline,

``he will smite the great kingdom with a mighty stroke, and the little kingdom with a weak stroke.''

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FOOTNOTES:

F8 (Myoyor) "guttis, [seu] stillis", Piscator; (qekadev) , "quae est minuta et rorans pluvia", Drusius.

Amos 6:11 In-Context

9 And if there are 10 men left in one house, they will die.

10 A close relative and a burner,will remove his corpse from the house. He will call to someone in the inner recesses of the house, "Any more with you?" That person will reply, "None." Then he will say, "Silence, because Yahweh's name must not be invoked."

11 For the Lord commands: The large house will be smashed to pieces, and the small house to rubble.

12 Do horses run on rock, or does someone plow [it] with oxen? Yet you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood-

13 you who rejoice over Lo-debar and say, "Didn't we capture Karnaim for ourselves by our own strength?"

Footnotes

• [a]. Am 1:1; 9:9