1. Strike the capitals. The imperative here is puzzling because it makes the prophet the agent of destruction, a role that prophets do not play. Some medieval Hebrew commentators propose that this command is delivered to an angel (not mentioned in the text) and not to Amos. An alternative would be to emend the verb to “I will strike,” changing hakh to ʾakh.

I will split them. The received text has “he will split them.” See the previous comment.

2. Were they to dig down to Sheol. This sequence of lines to the end of verse 3 is strongly reminiscent of Psalms 139:7–12. Both the passage in Psalms and this one articulate a vision of God as an all-seeing cosmic deity from Whom there can never be escape. The theater of retribution against Israel is thus dramatically widened.

3. the Serpent. This is a mythological entity, not the serpent of the Garden story but the monstrous Leviathan of Canaanite tradition. Here the once menacing sea god answers the LORD’s bidding.

5. Who but touches the earth and it melts. This verse and the next are still another doxology celebrating God’s overwhelming power, with language reminiscent of several psalms. The editorial motivation for the placement of the doxology here is the vivid evocation in verses 2–4 of God’s cosmic omniscience in pursuit of all who seek to flee.

6. vault. The translation is a guess for ʾagudah, a term that may be architectural because it derives from a verbal stem that means “to bind together.”

7. Are you not like the Cushites to Me. The Cushites are the Nubians, perhaps invoked here because as black Africans, they would seem to be an ultimate other to the Israelites (a presence of individual Nubians among the Israelites is attested to in several biblical narratives, with no suggestion of racial prejudice). The idea, then, is that God oversees all nations and peoples, however different they might seem from Israel. But from what follows in the next line of poetry, one would expect a mention of God’s having brought the Cushites to Nubia from another land, and that is absent.

Israel from the land of Egypt. Nubia borders on Egypt to the south, so its mention in the preceding line provides an associative preparation for the introduction at this point of Egypt.

the Philistines from Crete / and Aram from Kir. The Philistines in fact migrated to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean from somewhere in the Greek realm, perhaps actually from Crete. Nothing is known about a migration of Arameans from Kir, far to the northeast in Mesopotamia, but the reference here may reflect factual knowledge about such origins in Amos’s time. In any case, the point of these references is to say that God oversees the migration of all peoples and that the movement of Israel from Egypt to Canaan is not unique.

8. the eyes of the Master . . . / are upon the offending kingdom. The offending kingdom must be Israel. Thus, the God Who moves peoples from one territory to another does not grant special privileges or guarantee permanent residence to Israel if it turns itself into an offending kingdom.

But I will surely not destroy the house of Jacob. The prophet has just represented God as saying He will destroy the offending kingdom from the face of the earth. Although it is possible that he wants to qualify that sweeping declaration, one suspects that the mitigation of the prophecy of destruction is an editorial addition—especially since this entire sentence does not scan as poetry.

9. no pebble shall fall to the ground. This is a little confusing. Does it mean that the whole people, good and bad, will be shaken in the sieve of exile and destroyed? A possible solution is that the “pebble”—“the offenders” of the next line—will remain in the sieve while the grain, which has smaller particles, will fall through the holes and be saved.

11. the fallen shelter. The Hebrew noun sukah is strategically chosen. It is the shelter or hut erected in a field for someone watching over the crops. Thus, unlike a fortress or a palace, it is easily knocked down.

David. This invocation of the Davidic dynasty appears to suggest a hope on the part of the prophet that in future times the united kingdom will be restored.

12. all the nations on which My name has been called. Edom and other regions east of the Jordan were conquered by David and made part of a mini-empire. David’s taking possession of these lands is what is meant by God’s name being called on these nations. Now the empire will be restored.

13. the plowman shall overtake the reaper. The whole line is a hyperbole for an era of extravagant agricultural fertility.

and all the hills shall melt. Those who see in this an image of fields of waving grain betray a lack of understanding of how biblical poetry works. First, the mountains “drip” new wine because the yield of the vineyards is so abundant. Then, in an intensification in the second verset, the hills produce such a flow of wine that they veritably melt.

15. And I will plant them on their soil, / and they shall no more be uprooted from their soil. The prophecy pointedly concludes by underscoring through the terms chosen a continuity between the flourishing vineyards and gardens and the people flourishing on the soil. The Hebrew ʾadamah means “soil” but has an extended sense of “land,” and both meanings are brought into play here.