1. burning the bones. Desecrating a corpse was seen as a violation of human dignity and thus is included in the list of war crimes.

4. For three trespasses of Judah. While some scholars claim that the introduction of Judah is a later editorial interpolation, it makes perfect sense that this Judahite prophet, moving from pronouncements of doom on the surrounding nations to Israel, would include a denunciation of the trespasses of his own kingdom before arriving at his main target, the northern kingdom of Israel.

their false things. This is an epithet for idols, which makes this a very different kind of transgression from the crimes against humanity. Some see here Deuteronomistic language, thus attributing this text to a much later date than that of Amos, but this identification is not convincing, even if the anti-idolatry theme resembles Deuteronomy.

6. for their selling the just man for silver / and the needy for sandals. When Amos turns to the transgressions of Israel, his concern is injustice and exploitation of the vulnerable. Coming after the catalogue of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the surrounding nations, perversions of justice are in effect also represented as crimes against humanity. “The just man,” tsadiq, may here carry its legal sense—the person who deserved to be declared right, given justice, in a court of law. In that case, selling him for silver would mean taking a bribe so that he is given an unfavorable ruling. Selling the needy for sandals means selling such a person—perhaps into slavery—for something of relatively minor value.

7. a man and his father go to the same girl. One understanding that has had considerable currency is that they both go to the same cult-prostitute, but this is not certain. The word for “girl,” naʿarah, means “a nubile young woman,” with no special indication of her profession or sexual activity. The choice of the term here is pointed: a naʿarah could conceivably be an appropriate sexual partner for a young man, but a son and father sharing her is an abomination—in fact, a kind of incest.

9. Yet I had destroyed the Amorite before them. Israel has done all these unspeakable acts even though historically it was the beneficiary of God’s manifest generosity that enabled it, against all odds, to conquer the land.

who is tall as the height of cedars. The gigantic stature of the Canaanites is registered in Numbers 13 and elsewhere.

12. But you gave the nazirites wine to drink. The nazirites take a vow of abstention from alcohol, thus constituting a kind of elite of holiness within the people. The likely motive for giving them wine is not sheer perversity but reflects an indiscriminate abuse of alcohol in the Israelite population, of the sort Isaiah would denounce a few decades after Amos.

13. halt you. Although this Hebrew verb would later mean something like “to weigh down,” its likely biblical sense is “to bring to a stop, to impede.”

14. And flight shall elude the swift. The failure of flight follows directly from the “halting” of the previous line. The three lines of poetry beginning here—the first two are triadic—are all the more effective as a representation of a catastrophe overtaking the nation because there is no direct mention of an invading army: all we see is the swift and the strong and the martially skilled in the army of Israel flailing and unable to escape.

15. the horseman shall not escape with his life. The whole line exhibits a striking pattern of intensification from one verset to the next. First, the stationary bowman is unable to withstand the onslaught of the enemy; then, the swift-footed soldier is not fast enough to escape; finally, even the horseman on his mount cannot get away.

16. naked shall flee on that day. While the literal sense of “naked” is possible, the likely meaning is that the brave warrior, now terrified by the overwhelming force of the enemy, will strip himself of his armor and throw away his weapons in order to flee.