Bible Strands
Amos 8:10
I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, and its outcome like a bitter day.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God speaks through the prophet to Israel, declaring immediate judgment directly following the noon darkness in Amos 8:9.
The words — The text uses הָפַכְתִּי (ha.fakh.Ti, "I will turn") to describe transforming חַגֵּיכֶם (cha.gei.Khem, "your feasts") into אֵבֶל ('E.vel, "mourning") and שִׁירֵיכֶם (shi.rei.Khem, "your songs") into קִינָה (ki.Nah, "lamentation").
The thread — The text's command to wear sackcloth and mourn echoes Jeremiah 6:26, while the pattern of joy reversed into grief appears in Zechariah 12:10 and Job 20:23.
Why it lands — The passage requires readers to acknowledge that divine judgment actively inverts communal celebration, demanding sober recognition of God's corrective authority without softening its finality.
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
And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 6:26 O daughter of my people, dress yourselves in sackcloth and roll in ashes. Mourn with bitter wailing, as you would for an only son, for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us.
- Zechariah 12:10 Then I will pour out on the house of David and on the people of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and prayer, and they will look on Me, the One they have pierced. They will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for Him as one grieves for a firstborn son.
- Job 20:23 When he has filled his stomach, God will vent His fury upon him, raining it down on him as he eats.
- Jeremiah 48:37 For every head is shaved and every beard is clipped; on every hand is a gash, and around every waist is sackcloth.
- Ezekiel 7:18 They will put on sackcloth, and terror will overwhelm them. Shame will cover all their faces, and all their heads will be shaved.
- 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.
- Hosea 2:11 I will put an end to all her exultation: her feasts, New Moons, and Sabbaths—all her appointed feasts.
- Luke 7:12 As He approached the town gate, He saw a dead man being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her.
- Deuteronomy 16:14 And you shall rejoice in your feast—you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levite, as well as the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widows among you.
- 1 Samuel 25:36 When Abigail returned to Nabal, there he was in the house, holding a feast fit for a king, in high spirits and very drunk. So she told him nothing until morning light.