Amos 5:16

Therefore this is what the LORD, the God of Hosts, the Lord, says: “There will be wailing in all the public squares and cries of ‘Alas! Alas!’ in all the streets. The farmer will be summoned to mourn, and the mourners to wail.

Berean Standard Bible

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Study note

Setting — The LORD, the God of Hosts, speaks through the prophet Amos to Israel immediately after the command to hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the gate.

The words — לָכֵן (lakhen) means "therefore," binding the coming judgment to the preceding ethical demand. כֹּה (koh) translates to "thus," functioning as the formal marker of Yahweh’s authoritative declaration.

The thread — This summons to public mourning parallels the crop devastation in Joel 1:11 and the directive to call skilled mourners in Jeremiah 9:17.

Why it lands — The text states that wailing will fill public squares, streets, and agricultural life, demanding the reader acknowledge that collective moral failure produces inescapable societal collapse.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.

The Hebrew words

King James Version

Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing.

Cross-references

Joel 1:11 Be dismayed, O farmers, wail, O vinedressers, over the wheat and barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.
Jeremiah 9:17 This is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Take note, and summon the wailing women; send for the most skillful among them.
Jeremiah 9:10 I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains, a dirge over the wilderness pasture, for they have been scorched so no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard. Both the birds of the air and the beasts have fled; they have gone away.
Isaiah 15:2 Dibon goes up to its temple to weep at its high places. Moab wails over Nebo, as well as over Medeba. Every head is shaved, every beard is cut off.
Isaiah 15:8 For their outcry echoes to the border of Moab. Their wailing reaches Eglaim; it is heard in Beer-elim.
Isaiah 22:12 On that day the Lord GOD of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.
Jeremiah 4:31 For I hear a cry like a woman in labor, a cry of anguish like one bearing her first child—the cry of the Daughter of Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands to say, “Woe is me, for my soul faints before the murderers!”
Joel 1:8 Wail like a virgin dressed in sackcloth, grieving for the husband of her youth.
Joel 1:14 Consecrate a fast; proclaim a solemn assembly! Gather the elders and all the residents of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.
Amos 3:13 Hear and testify against the house of Jacob, declares the Lord GOD, the God of Hosts.