Core Glossary
Core Glossary — Amos
This glossary consolidates every load-bearing term identified in 07_semantic_analysis.md across the whole book of Amos. Terms already present in the baseline Romans translation_memory.json / bible_term_registry.json are marked [BASELINE REUSE] and carry forward their recorded rendering and risk tier exactly, unless this curriculum documents a specific Amos-context extension (marked accordingly). New terms specific to this curriculum are marked [NEW].
Risk tiers and definitions follow the baseline doctrine_risk_registry.json exactly:
- Critical — dominant competing meaning; human theologian review required for every occurrence.
- High — significant secular dilution, cultural erosion, or denominational disagreement; human theologian review required.
- Medium — some competing usage or reduced resonance; native speaker review recommended.
- Low — minor/negligible risk; automated review sufficient.
| English Rendering | Original (Hebrew) | Transliteration | Doctrine | Risk | Chapters | Status | Translation Risk Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lord / LORD | אֲדֹנָי / יְהוָה | Adonai / YHWH | Sovereignty of God; Lordship extension | Critical | 1-9 (pervasive) | [BASELINE REUSE + EXTENSION] | Reuses baseline “Lord” Critical risk profile (archaic/fictional-genre drift) and adds an Amos-specific risk: the typographic convention distinguishing “LORD” (the covenant name YHWH) from “Lord” (Adonai, “master”) is frequently lost in casual reading, audio narration, and inconsistent digital formatting, silently flattening YHWH’s personal covenant-name identity into a generic title. Must be actively preserved and explained on first use. |
| the day of the LORD | יוֹם יְהוָה | yom YHWH | The Day of the Lord as Judgment | Critical | 5:18-20 (anchor); 8:9-10 (cf.) | [NEW] | Homophone/near-homograph collision with the established, denominationally live English phrase “the Lord’s Day” (Sunday worship). Amos’s phrase denotes a specific future decisive judgment, not a recurring weekly observance. Must be distinguished explicitly on first use; never assume aural/visual disambiguation alone. |
| justice | מִשְׁפָּט | mishpat | Social Justice and Care for the Poor | High | 5:7, 5:15, 5:24; 6:12 | [NEW] | Contemporary English “justice” splits toward a narrow criminal/legal-system sense (missing Amos’s broader social-covenantal sense) and toward the politically contested phrase “social justice,” which carries partisan associations in some English-speaking Christian circles absent from Amos’s own usage. State plainly that this is Scripture’s own vocabulary, prior to any modern political coalition’s use. |
| righteousness | צְדָקָה | tsedaqah | Social Justice and Care for the Poor | High | 5:7, 5:24; 6:12 | [BASELINE REUSE] | Reuses baseline “righteousness” Critical/High risk profile (self-righteous/smug connotation drift) with an Amos-specific addition: readers may privatize the term into personal piety alone, missing that tsedaqah here is inseparably economic/social — right dealing with the poor. |
| poor / needy | עָנִי / אֶבְיוֹן | ani / evyon | Social Justice and Care for the Poor | High | 2:6-7; 4:1; 5:11-12; 8:4-6 | [NEW] | Contemporary policy/NGO/statistical framing of “poverty” risks reducing Amos’s covenant-lawsuit charge to generic socioeconomic commentary; contemporary charity culture risks flattening Amos’s structural-justice demand into voluntary individual kindness. Both drift directions must be corrected. |
| sin / transgression | חַטָּאָה / פֶּשַׁע | chattah / pesha | Universal moral accountability (Sovereignty extension) | Medium-High | 1:3-2:16 (formula); 5:12 | [BASELINE REUSE + EXTENSION] | Reuses baseline “sin” trivialization-risk profile; Amos-specific addition: contemporary pluralism may resist the premise that God holds nations outside any covenant relationship morally accountable — this must be stated as Amos’s own assumed universal moral order. |
| covenant | (implicit; covenant curses per Lev 26/Deut 28) | — | Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual; Sovereignty | Medium-High | 4:6-11 | [BASELINE REUSE + EXTENSION] | Reuses baseline “covenant” legal-document drift risk. Amos-specific addition: the covenant-curse catalogue (famine, locusts, plague) is often read by contemporary audiences as impersonal “acts of nature/God” (insurance-industry no-fault sense), stripping out the deliberate, communicative, covenant-calibrated framing Amos assumes. |
| prophet / prophecy | נָבִיא / נְבוּאָה | navi / nevu’ah | Inspiration and authority of the prophetic word | Medium | 2:11-12; 3:7-8; 7:10-17 | [BASELINE REUSE] | Reuses baseline “prophet”/“prophecy” risk profile (secular dilution to “confident forecaster”). Amos-specific point: Amos’s lack of professional prophetic credentials/guild membership is part of the text’s own argument for direct divine commissioning as the true basis of prophetic authority. |
| Israel | יִשְׂרָאֵל | Yisra’el | Sovereignty over Nations; Unity themes | Medium | pervasive | [BASELINE REUSE] | Reuses baseline “Israel” risk profile (contemporary geopolitical sensitivity); in Amos, consistently the covenant people (especially the Northern Kingdom specifically, as distinct from Judah), not the modern nation-state. |
| David / the tent (booth) of David | דָּוִיד / סֻכַּת דָּוִיד | David / sukkat David | The Restoration of David’s Fallen Tent (Messianic Hope) | Critical | 9:11-12 | [NEW, extends BASELINE “David”/“seed of David”/“covenant”] | Compounding risks: (1) “tent/booth” trivialized to camping imagery in contemporary usage; (2) live denominational contest on already/not-yet fulfillment (church-age fulfillment per Acts 15:16-17 vs. future ethnic-Israel/millennial-kingdom fulfillment); (3) direct root of baseline’s Critical “Son of God”/“David” Christological entries — flag for cross-curriculum consistency. |
| election / “known” (chosen) | יָדַע | yada | Divine Calling / Election extension | High | 3:2 | [BASELINE REUSE + EXTENSION] | Reuses baseline “calling”/“election” risk profile. Amos-specific inversion: popular English “chosen one” narrative tropes imply guaranteed favor/protection; Amos uses election language to intensify accountability and judgment, the opposite implication, and this reversal must be actively taught. |
| holy / holiness | קֹדֶש | qodesh | Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual (implicit; God’s holiness as oath-ground, 4:2) | Medium | 4:2 | [BASELINE REUSE] | Reuses baseline “holy” risk profile (drained by idiom/exclamation usage); low direct occurrence in Amos but present as the ground of a divine oath. |
| Gentiles / the nations | גּוֹיִם | goyim | God’s Sovereignty over All Nations | Medium | 1:3-2:3; 9:7, 9:12 | [BASELINE REUSE + EXTENSION] | Related to but distinct from baseline “Gentiles” (ethnē, non-Jewish peoples generally in an NT frame). In Amos, refers to specific, named, historical geopolitical powers (Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab) under YHWH’s real moral jurisdiction — risk that readers conflate this with the broader, more generic NT “Gentile” category rather than grasping the specific ancient political entities in view. |
| woe | הוֹי | hoy | The Day of the Lord as Judgment (rhetorical marker) | Medium | 5:18; 6:1 | [NEW] | “Woe is me” survives mainly as ironic self-deprecating idiom in contemporary English, risking loss of the funerary-lament register Amos deploys; render with explicit judgment-announcement framing, not merely archaic flavor. |
| feasts / solemn assemblies | חַג / עֲצָרָה | chag / atzarah | Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual | Medium | 5:21; 8:10 | [NEW] | Archaic-register vocabulary (obsolescence) naming Israel’s own Torah-sanctioned worship calendar, not pagan ritual; risk that readers over-generalize Amos’s critique into a critique of liturgical worship as such rather than worship divorced from justice. |
| burnt offering / grain offering / peace offering | עֹלָה / מִנְחָה / שֶׁלֶם | olah / minchah / shelamim | Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual | Medium | 5:22 | [NEW] | “Sacrifice” in ordinary English now means personal cost/forfeiture, not cultic offering; the specific technical categories require active glossing so readers grasp three distinct, costly, Torah-legitimate worship forms are all named and rejected. |
| seek (the LORD / good) | דָּרַשׁ / בִּקֵּשׁ | darash / baqash | Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual; call to repentance | Medium-High | 5:4, 5:6, 5:14 | [NEW] | Contemporary “seeking” is colonized by generic, uncommitted spiritual-journey language; Amos’s “seek” demands a specific covenantal return to a specific God and away from specific named illegitimate shrines — the specific object must be restored, paralleling baseline “faith.” |
| the gate | שַׁעַר | sha’ar | Social Justice and Care for the Poor | Medium | 5:10, 5:12, 5:15 | [NEW] | Functions as the ancient civic courthouse; unglossed, reads as merely architectural to contemporary readers, obscuring the concrete, locatable judicial-fairness demand. |
| wormwood | לַעֲנָה | la’anah | Social Justice and Care for the Poor | Medium | 5:7 | [NEW] | Obsolescence risk; also risks unrelated cross-association with Revelation’s “Wormwood” star; plain sense (bitterness/poison) should be stated directly. |
| at ease / complacent | שַׁאֲנָן | sha’anan | Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual; false security | Medium | 6:1 | [NEW] | “At ease” alone under-conveys the specific presumptuous false-security Amos targets; pair with “complacent” or “self-satisfied.” |
| abhor | תָּעַב | ta’av | Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual | Medium | 6:8 | [NEW] | Contemporary devotional culture resists strong negative divine emotion language, especially toward “pride,” which carries neutral-to-positive connotations in contemporary self-esteem culture; Amos’s ga’on (arrogant self-satisfaction) must be distinguished from healthy pride in heritage/achievement. |
| Nazirite | נָזִיר | nazir | Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual (corrupted consecration) | Critical | 2:11-12 | [NEW] | Homophone/near-homograph collision with “Nazarene” (a person from Nazareth); given the term’s rarity, readers are likely to silently substitute the more familiar word or assume an unrelated connection to Jesus’ hometown title. Must be explicitly distinguished on first use. |
| plumb line | אֲנָךְ | anakh | The Day of the Lord as Judgment (finality of verdict) | Medium | 7:7-8 | [NEW] | Obsolescence; the tool’s obscurity risks muting the narrative’s key turning point (no further intercession/relenting after this vision) unless stated explicitly. |
| relent | נָחַם | nacham | Divine responsiveness to intercession | Medium | 7:3, 7:6 | [NEW] | Denominational contest: classical impassibility/immutability readings treat “relent” language as anthropomorphic accommodation; other traditions read it more literally. State the range rather than silently adopt one. |
| summer fruit / the end (wordplay) | קַיִץ / קֵץ | qayits / qets | The Day of the Lord as Judgment (finality) | Medium | 8:1-2 | [NEW] | Untranslatable Hebrew pun; English rendering must carry an explicit editorial note explaining the wordplay, or the vision’s entire rhetorical logic is lost. |
| ephah / shekel / false scales | אֵיפָה / שֶׁקֶל / מֹאזְנֵי מִרְמָה | eyphah / sheqel / mo’zney mirmah | Social Justice and Care for the Poor | Low-Medium | 8:4-6 | [NEW] | Obsolescence only (ancient units needing definition); “false scales” transfers intuitively into a still-recognizable modern consumer-fraud image — a translation asset. |
| famine of the word | רָעָב… לִשְׁמֹעַ אֶת דִּבְרֵי יהוה | ra’av… lishmoa et divrey YHWH | Inspiration/withdrawal of the prophetic word (Sovereignty extension) | Medium | 8:11-12 | [NEW] | Risk of flattening into a vague, common devotional-life complaint (“spiritual dryness”) rather than Amos’s specific, severe covenant-curse: total withdrawal of God’s revelatory word from a people who silenced his prophets. |
| remnant | שְׁאֵרִית | she’erit | The Restoration of David’s Fallen Tent (Messianic Hope) | Medium | 9:8-10 (implicit) | [NEW] | Contemporary English “remnant” (leftover fabric scrap; small/insignificant leftover portion) risks trivializing Amos’s sense of a divinely preserved, covenant-bearing faithful core. |
| restore the fortunes | שׁוּב שְׁבוּת | shuv shevut | The Restoration of David’s Fallen Tent (Messianic Hope) | Medium | 9:14 | [NEW] | “Fortune” risks a narrow financial-wealth reading in contemporary English; intended sense is comprehensive covenantal reversal of national circumstances, not merely material prosperity. |
| roar | שָׁאַג | sha’ag | God’s Sovereignty over All Nations (opening frame) | Low-Medium | 1:2; 3:8 | [NEW] | Contemporary lion associations skew toward nature-documentary/heraldic-mascot usage, risking loss of Amos’s specifically menacing, judicial force. |
| altar / horns of the altar | מִזְבֵּחַ / קַרְנוֹת | mizbeach / qarnot | Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual | Low-Medium | 3:14; 9:1 | [NEW] | “Horns of the altar” requires a brief gloss (ancient asylum function) not obvious to contemporary readers. |
| lament / dirge | קִינָה | qinah | The Day of the Lord as Judgment | Medium | 5:1-2 | [NEW] | Obsolescence; “lament” is often read loosely as any sad statement rather than the specific funeral-dirge genre Amos performs in advance of Israel’s actual downfall. |
| sift | נָפָה | naphah | The Restoration of David’s Fallen Tent (Messianic Hope) — remnant preservation | Low-Medium | 9:9 | [NEW] | Agricultural image requiring minor glossing; discriminating-preservation logic (a remnant preserved, not indiscriminate destruction) transfers intuitively once glossed. |
| plant (permanence) | נָטַע | nata | The Restoration of David’s Fallen Tent (Messianic Hope) | Low | 9:15 | [NEW] | Minimal drift risk; the planting/rootedness-permanence metaphor transfers cleanly. |
| prepare to meet your God | הִכּוֹן לִקְרֹאת אֱלֹהֶיךָ | hikon liqrat Eloheikha | The Day of the Lord as Judgment; Sovereignty | Medium | 4:12 | [NEW] | “Meet your Maker” survives as a softened, often humorous stock idiom for ordinary death; must restore the specifically confrontational, courtroom-appearance force. |
| Bethel / Gilgal | בֵּית־אֵל / הַגִּלְגָּל | Beit-El / ha-Gilgal | Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual | Low (term) / High (background need) | 3:14; 4:4-5; 5:5 | [NEW] | Low intrinsic word-risk as proper nouns, but require substantial supplied historical background (rival royal calf-idol shrines, cf. 1 Kings 12) without which Amos’s specific critique is unintelligible. |
| Damascus / Gaza / Tyre / Edom / Ammon / Moab | אֲרָם־דַּמֶּשֶׁק / עַזָּה / צוֹר / אֱדוֹם / עַמּוֹן / מוֹאָב | — | God’s Sovereignty over All Nations | Low (term) / High (background need) | 1:3-2:3 | [NEW] | Proper nouns; require supplied ancient historical-political context (specific treaty violations, war crimes) for the specificity of each indictment to register with contemporary readers. |
Cross-Reference to Baseline Package
The following baseline translation_memory.json entries are reused exactly as recorded in this curriculum, with Amos-specific contextual extensions noted in the table above where applicable: Lord, Israel, righteousness, sin, prophet, prophecy, David, holy, Gentiles, calling/election (“known”).
No baseline entry is contradicted or overridden by this glossary. Where Amos’s Old Testament, pre-incarnation context requires a distinct nuance (most notably the LORD/YHWH vs. Lord/Adonai distinction, and the “tent of David” as the historical-covenantal root of the baseline’s Christological “David”/“seed of David” entries), this is flagged as an extension, consistent with the governing instruction that established renderings must be reused exactly and never contradicted.
Full-Book Coverage Confirmation
Chapters 1 through 9 of Amos have each been reviewed and represented above, either through direct new-term entries or explicit baseline-reuse-with-extension entries. No chapter is silently omitted; the recurring “three transgressions… four” oracle formula shared across chapters 1-2 is documented once (under “sin/transgression”) rather than repeated per nation, since it introduces no additional distinct vocabulary beyond the proper nouns of each nation named.
Critical Risk Terms
Lord
Approved rendering: Lord
Transliteration: Lord
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: boss / master (attempts at modernization that lose the term’s exclusivity and worship-worthiness), a British Lord (the aristocratic title sense, especially salient for British/Commonwealth readers)
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] CRITICAL: ‘Lord’ has nearly disappeared from ordinary spoken English outside this specific religious usage, and where it does survive (British/Commonwealth aristocratic titles, ‘the House of Lords,’ fantasy fiction ‘dark lords’) it carries archaic or fictional-genre associations rather than lived, felt authority. Romans 10:9’s confession ‘Jesus is Lord’ risks landing with almost no emotional or volitional force for many contemporary English readers precisely because the English word itself has gone mostly obsolete in everyday use; this curriculum must actively restore its weight (total, exclusive, personal allegiance) rather than assume the English word still carries it. AMOS EXTENSION: Amos overwhelmingly uses this word-space to render the covenant name YHWH (‘LORD,’ small capitals), not the NT title kyrios; see the new entry ‘lord_yhwh’ below for the compounding typographic LORD/Lord distinction risk this creates.
Election
Approved rendering: election
Transliteration: election
Doctrine: Effectual Calling
Rejected alternatives: an election (the near-total dominant contemporary sense: a political vote, e.g. ‘the presidential election’)
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: in essentially all contemporary English usage outside specifically theological contexts, ‘election’ means a political vote. This is a near-total lexical takeover; readers encountering Romans 9’s election language without explicit signposting are highly likely to import a political-voting frame that has nothing to do with God’s sovereign, prior, unilateral choice. AMOS EXTENSION: Amos 3:2 (‘you only have I known of all the families of the earth’) and 9:7 use election/covenant-choice language not to promise favor but to intensify judgment — the popular contemporary ‘chosen one’ fiction trope (destined favor, guaranteed protection) runs in exactly the opposite direction from Amos’s own argument and must be actively reversed for readers, not merely clarified.
Day Of The Lord
Approved rendering: the day of the LORD
Transliteration: yom YHWH
Doctrine: The Day of the Lord as Judgment
Rejected alternatives: Judgment Day (popular apocalyptic-film/game gloss — reduces the concept to cataclysmic spectacle rather than YHWH’s righteous covenant verdict), a generic ‘day of reckoning’ (loses the specific, fixed technical phrase’s cross-reference value across Joel, Zephaniah, Malachi, 1 Thessalonians 5)
Original: יוֹם יְהוָה
Category: Eschatology
CRITICAL HOMOPHONE/NEAR-HOMOGRAPH COLLISION with the established, denominationally live English-Christian phrase ‘the Lord’s Day’ (Sunday corporate worship; in Sabbatarian/Seventh-day traditions an actively contested day-of-the-week question). In speech the two phrases are indistinguishable, and even in print many readers will not register the different word order and referent. Amos 5:18-20 (the core passage) redirects Israel’s own popular expectation of a day of vindication against her enemies into a day of judgment against Israel herself. Must be distinguished explicitly on first use in every document, never left to context alone.
Lord Yhwh
Approved rendering: LORD / Lord
Transliteration: YHWH / Adonai
Doctrine: God’s Sovereignty over All Nations
Rejected alternatives: flattening both to a single generic ‘Lord’ (loses the personal covenant-name identity YHWH carries), modernizing ‘LORD’ to ‘Yahweh’ throughout (departs from established English Bible-translation convention and the site-wide NLT citation standard)
Original: יְהוָה / אֲדֹנָי
Category: God
Extends the baseline ‘lord’ Critical entry (NT kyrios/Christ’s exclusive lordship) to the OT covenant-name usage underlying it. The typographic convention distinguishing ‘LORD’ (small capitals, the personal covenant name YHWH) from ‘Lord’ (Adonai, a title) is frequently lost in casual reading, audio narration, and inconsistent digital formatting, silently flattening YHWH’s specific, personal, covenant-name identity into a generic honorific. Amos’s argument depends on YHWH as Israel’s own covenant-named God turning against his own covenant people specifically because of the relationship the name signals — must be actively preserved and explained on first use in every document.
Nazirite
Approved rendering: Nazirite
Transliteration: nazir
Doctrine: Sanctity of Vows and Consecration
Rejected alternatives: Nazarene (a near-homograph collision — an entirely unrelated word meaning a person from Nazareth, most famously Jesus of Nazareth), Nazarite (an older-translation spelling variant that compounds, rather than resolves, the collision risk)
CRITICAL HOMOPHONE/NEAR-HOMOGRAPH COLLISION with ‘Nazarene.’ Given the rarity of both words in ordinary contemporary English, readers are highly likely to silently substitute the more familiar word or assume an unrelated connection to Jesus’ hometown title. One consecrated by the voluntary vow of Numbers 6; Amos 2:11-12 charges Israel with corrupting even this visible act of devotion by forcing Nazirites to drink wine. Must be flagged and explicitly distinguished on first use in every document.
Tent Of David
Approved rendering: the fallen tent (booth) of David
Transliteration: sukkat David ha-nofelet
Doctrine: The Restoration of David’s Fallen Tent (Messianic Hope)
Rejected alternatives: a camping tent / recreational shelter (the dominant contemporary association with ‘tent,’ disproportionately trivial for a covenant-dynasty restoration promise), the fallen house/dynasty of David (an acceptable secondary gloss, but should not fully replace the traditional ‘tent/booth’ phrase, which carries the text’s own deliberate rhetorical humility)
Original: סֻכַּת דָּוִיד הַנֹּפֶלֶת
Category: Covenant
The anchor text for the doctrine of The Restoration of David’s Fallen Tent (9:11-15). CRITICAL, compounding risks: (1) contemporary readers associate ‘tent’ with recreational camping — the deliberate rhetorical irony (a humble word for the collapsed royal house, underscoring how far it has fallen before its rebuilding is promised) must be stated explicitly; (2) live denominational contest over already/not-yet fulfillment — church-age fulfillment in Christ and the church (per Acts 15:16-17’s direct quotation at the Jerusalem Council) versus a future, more literal restoration tied to ethnic Israel and a future messianic kingdom (premillennial/dispensational readings); this curriculum states its own reading transparently while noting the range of other readings; (3) Old Testament root of the baseline’s Critical ‘Son of God,’ ‘David,’ and ‘seed of David’ entries — flag for cross-curriculum consistency.
High Risk Terms
Righteousness
Approved rendering: righteousness
Transliteration: righteousness
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: self-righteous / holier-than-thou (the dominant connotation ‘righteous’ now carries in casual usage — smug, judgmental superiority)
Original: צְדָקָה
Category: Justice
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] In contemporary usage, ‘righteous’ and especially ‘self-righteous’ carry a strongly negative, sanctimonious connotation — nearly the opposite of Paul’s sense of a right standing before God received as a gift. Readers must be told explicitly that biblical righteousness is not moral smugness but a status given, not achieved or performed. AMOS EXTENSION: renders tsedaqah, Amos’s word-pair partner to mishpat (‘justice’; 5:7, 5:24, 6:12). Beyond the smug-moralism drift documented in the baseline, Amos surfaces a second drift risk: readers may privatize ‘righteousness’ into inward personal piety alone, missing that tsedaqah here is inseparably social and economic — right dealing with the poor, not merely devotional virtue. Both drift directions must be corrected explicitly.
Sin
Approved rendering: sin
Transliteration: sin
Doctrine: Universal Human Accountability
Rejected alternatives: sinfully delicious / my one sin (trivialized marketing and joking usage, e.g. dessert advertising)
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] Contemporary marketing and casual speech have trivialized ‘sin’ into a jokey synonym for a harmless indulgence (‘sinfully delicious chocolate cake’), and broader therapeutic and non-judgmental cultural norms are often actively resistant to guilt-based moral language generally. Romans 1:18-3:20’s weight of real moral guilt before a personal God must be restored explicitly, working against both the trivializing and the guilt-averse cultural currents at once. AMOS EXTENSION: renders both chattah (general sin) and pesha (deliberate, rebellious transgression), the latter used as a formal indictment-count against every nation named in chapters 1-2, Israel included. Contemporary Western pluralism may additionally resist the premise that God holds foreign nations with no covenant relationship to Israel morally accountable to his standards at all; state explicitly that Amos assumes a universal moral order under YHWH’s authority, not one limited to covenant insiders.
Covenant
Approved rendering: covenant
Transliteration: covenant
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Rejected alternatives: a restrictive covenant (the dominant contemporary legal sense: a binding clause in a property deed, employment contract, or loan agreement)
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] Most contemporary English speakers now encounter ‘covenant’ chiefly in real estate law (‘restrictive covenants’ in property deeds) or contract law (‘a covenant not to compete’), a technical legal-document sense that crowds out the relational, promissory, personal bond Romans and the wider Old Testament narrative intend. This should be actively distinguished, not assumed understood. AMOS EXTENSION: underlies the covenant-curse catalogue of Amos 4:6-11 (see new entry ‘covenant_curses’ below) and the Davidic covenant promise of 9:11-15 (see new entry ‘tent_of_david’). Contemporary secular and popular-Christian reading habitually treats disasters as impersonal ‘acts of nature/God’ (an insurance-industry no-fault legal category), stripping out the deliberate, communicative, covenant-calibrated framing Amos assumes.
Called
Approved rendering: called
Transliteration: called
Doctrine: Divine Calling
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] Context-sensitive: in 1:1 = called to apostleship; in 1:7 = called to be saints; in 8:28-30 = effectual calling to salvation. AMOS EXTENSION: Amos does not use this exact English word as a technical term, but the underlying covenant-election concept it renders in Romans is the same concept Amos 3:2’s yada (‘known’) deploys — see new entry ‘known_chosen’ below, which should be read as this term’s Old Testament conceptual root.
Calling
Approved rendering: calling
Transliteration: calling
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Rejected alternatives: finding your calling (the dominant contemporary secular sense: career vocation or personal passion, discovered through self-reflection rather than received from God)
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] Modern self-actualization culture has repurposed ‘calling’ as career vocation (‘teaching is my calling’) discovered through introspection, which risks reducing God’s initiative in Romans’ calling language to an individualist project of finding one’s own purpose. The direction of agency (God calls; the person does not self-select) must be stated explicitly. AMOS EXTENSION: reinforced by Amos 7:14-15, where Amos insists his prophetic role was not a chosen career or guild membership but a direct divine summons (‘the LORD took me from following the flock’) — a concrete Old Testament illustration of the baseline’s own agency-direction point.
Justice
Approved rendering: justice
Transliteration: mishpat
Doctrine: Social Justice and Care for the Poor
Rejected alternatives: the justice system / law enforcement (the dominant narrow contemporary sense — reduces mishpat to punitive criminal law), ‘social justice’ unqualified (a politically and denominationally contested contemporary phrase)
Original: מִשְׁפָּט
Category: Justice
Contemporary English ‘justice’ splits toward a narrow criminal/legal-system sense and toward the politically contested phrase ‘social justice.’ State plainly that Amos’s mishpat is Scripture’s own prior vocabulary, independent of any modern political coalition’s use of similar-sounding language — right judicial and social order, fair treatment in courts, economic dealings, and toward the vulnerable. Must not be softened to avoid contemporary controversy.
Poor And Needy
Approved rendering: poor / needy
Transliteration: ani / evyon
Doctrine: Social Justice and Care for the Poor
Rejected alternatives: poverty (in the narrow statistical/policy-line sense), generic charity-recipient language implying voluntary individual kindness rather than a structural covenant charge
Original: עָנִי / אֶבְיוֹן
Category: Justice
A fixed prophetic word-pair combining social lowliness/oppression (ani) and material lack/dependence (evyon). Contemporary policy/NGO/statistical discourse risks reframing Amos’s covenant-lawsuit charge as generic socioeconomic commentary; contemporary charity culture can also flatten the structural demand into voluntary individual generosity. State explicitly that Amos indicts systemic economic practice (courts, wages, commerce), not merely a private lack of kindness.
Hate Despise Ritual
Approved rendering: I hate, I despise
Transliteration: sane’ti / ma’asti
Doctrine: Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual
Rejected alternatives: I am not pleased with / I disapprove of (softened pastoral glosses that lose the full covenant-lawsuit force)
Strong covenant-lawsuit vocabulary — active revulsion, not mere disapproval (5:21). Contemporary devotional culture is often uncomfortable attributing strong negative emotion to God and tends to soften such language pastorally; per the doctrinal preservation rule, the full force must be retained while clarifying explicitly that the object of God’s hatred is hollow ritual detached from justice, not worship itself or the worshiper’s person.
Known Chosen
Approved rendering: known (chosen)
Transliteration: yada
Doctrine: Divine Election and Accountability
Rejected alternatives: chosen one (the dominant contemporary pop-fiction trope implying guaranteed destiny, favor, and protection — the opposite of Amos’s point)
Extends baseline ‘calling’/‘election’ risk profile. To know in the full relational/covenantal sense; here, YHWH’s unique covenant-election of Israel (3:2), used as the stated basis for intensified accountability, not automatic protection. The popular ‘chosen one’ trope implies guaranteed favor; Amos’s inversion must be actively taught, not assumed.
Relent
Approved rendering: relent
Transliteration: nacham
Doctrine: Divine Responsiveness to Intercession
Rejected alternatives: changed his mind (a more literal gloss some traditions consider theologically imprecise)
Original: נָחַם
Category: God
God’s genuine responsiveness to intercessory prayer (7:3, 7:6), changing the course of judgment in response to Amos’s appeal. Live denominational disagreement: classical impassibility/immutability readings treat this as anthropomorphic accommodation; other traditions (including some open-theism-adjacent readings) take it more literally. State the range of readings transparently rather than silently adopt one, per the baseline’s ambiguity-handling rule.
Seek
Approved rendering: seek
Transliteration: darash / baqash
Doctrine: Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual
Rejected alternatives: seeking (as generic spiritual-journey self-discovery language, e.g. ‘she’s on a spiritual seeking path’)
Original: דָּרַשׁ / בִּקֵּשׁ
Category: Worship
To seek or turn to YHWH in covenantal repentance and renewed loyalty (5:4, 6, 14), explicitly contrasted with seeking at the illegitimate shrines of Bethel and Gilgal. Parallels the baseline’s treatment of ‘faith’ losing its specific object; the specific object (YHWH) and specific rejected alternative (named shrines) must be actively restored.
Covenant Curses
Approved rendering: famine / locusts / plague / the sword
Transliteration: ra’av / arbeh / dever / cherev
Doctrine: Covenant Curses and Discipline
Rejected alternatives: acts of nature / acts of God (the dominant contemporary insurance-industry no-fault legal sense, entirely disconnected from any covenantal moral framework)
Original: רָעָב / אַרְבֶּה / דֶּבֶר / חֶרֶב
Category: Covenant
Extends baseline ‘covenant’ legal-document drift risk. The specific, itemized covenant sanctions promised in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 (4:6-11), each followed by ‘yet you did not return to me.’ State explicitly Amos frames these as YHWH’s own deliberate, communicative covenant discipline — while avoiding the overcorrection of decoding every contemporary disaster as judgment for a specific sin, a move Amos’s own text does not authorize.
Medium Risk Terms
Israel
Approved rendering: Israel
Transliteration: Israel
Doctrine: Unity of Jews and Gentiles
Original: יִשְׂרָאֵל
Category: Covenant
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] Standard proper name; note the modern nation-state of Israel is a live, politically contested contemporary topic in English-language media and public discourse, so context should clarify when the biblical covenant people, not contemporary geopolitics, is meant. AMOS EXTENSION: in Amos, ‘Israel’ consistently denotes the covenant people and specifically the Northern Kingdom, distinct from Judah (cf. Amos 2:4-5’s separate oracle against Judah); this distinction should be made explicit given the term’s live contemporary political charge.
Prophet
Approved rendering: prophet
Transliteration: prophet
Doctrine: Inspiration of Scripture
Rejected alternatives: a tech prophet / prophet of doom (secular usage for a confident forecaster or a pessimistic commentator)
Original: נָבִיא
Category: Prophecy
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] Secular usage applies ‘prophet’ loosely to any confident public forecaster (‘a tech prophet,’ ‘a prophet of doom’), diluting the specific sense of one who speaks God’s own revealed word rather than making an educated guess about the future. AMOS EXTENSION: Amos explicitly denies professional prophetic credentials or guild membership for himself (7:14-15: ‘I was a herdsman… the LORD took me’), grounding his authority in direct divine commissioning alone — a claim contemporary readers, accustomed to institutional credentialing of religious authority, may not register as significant unless made explicit.
Prophecy
Approved rendering: prophecy
Transliteration: prophecy
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: a self-fulfilling prophecy (a common secular psychological/sociological idiom unrelated to divine revelation)
Original: נְבוּאָה
Category: Prophecy
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] ‘A self-fulfilling prophecy’ is a well-known secular psychological idiom describing a belief that causes its own fulfillment through behavior, unrelated to and potentially confusing alongside God-inspired predictive prophecy in the biblical sense. AMOS EXTENSION: Amos 3:7-8 explicitly grounds prophetic speech in YHWH’s own prior revelation (‘surely the LORD… does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets’), a claim of direct disclosure the secular idiom does not carry.
Seed Of David
Approved rendering: seed of David
Transliteration: seed of David
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Rejected alternatives: descendant of David (an acceptable modern-register gloss)
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] Romans 1:3; ‘seed’ in the sense of ‘offspring/lineage’ is archaic in ordinary modern English; ‘descendant of David’ is an acceptable plain-language gloss, but the older King James-influenced phrase ‘seed of David’ is worth retaining alongside it given its familiarity in English hymnody and older translations. AMOS EXTENSION: Amos 9:11-12’s promise to rebuild David’s fallen dynasty ‘as in the days of old’ is the covenant-historical background this NT phrase assumes; cross-reference explicitly for curriculum consistency.
Holy
Approved rendering: holy
Transliteration: holy
Doctrine: Sanctification
Rejected alternatives: holier-than-thou (negative idiom for sanctimonious superiority), holy cow / holy moly (mere exclamations, entirely secularized)
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] ‘Holy’ survives mainly in negative idiom (‘holier-than-thou’) or as a content-free exclamation (‘holy cow!’), both of which drain the word of its ‘set apart for God’ meaning; must be actively re-taught rather than assumed familiar. AMOS EXTENSION: Amos 4:2 cites God’s own holiness as the binding ground of a judicial oath (‘The Sovereign LORD has sworn by his holiness’) — see new entry ‘holy_oath_ground’ below for this specific, unusually weighty use.
Gentiles
Approved rendering: Gentiles
Transliteration: Gentiles
Doctrine: Unity of Jews and Gentiles
Rejected alternatives: non-believers (a common but incorrect modern gloss — Gentiles are non-Jews, not necessarily non-Christians)
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] ‘Gentiles’ is a low-frequency, almost archaic word in ordinary contemporary English outside Bible reading; many readers only vaguely know it means ‘non-Jewish people’ without grasping the specific rhetorical and covenantal stakes Paul assigns it. Should not be glossed as ‘non-believers,’ a common but mistaken modern conflation. AMOS EXTENSION: Amos’s underlying term goyim names specific, historical, named geopolitical powers (Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab), not the broader NT missiological category; see new entry ‘gentiles_nations_goyim’ below.
God
Approved rendering: God
Transliteration: God
Doctrine: Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: a higher power (a common, deliberately vague contemporary substitute, e.g. in recovery-program language), the universe (a New-Age-influenced impersonal substitute, e.g. ‘the universe has a plan for you’)
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] Contemporary spiritual-but-not-religious culture often substitutes deliberately vague or impersonal alternatives (‘a higher power,’ ‘the universe’) for a personal, specific, self-revealing God. AMOS EXTENSION: Amos’s God is emphatically not a placeholder concept but the specific covenant-named YHWH who both roars in judgment (1:2) and pursues restoration (9:11-15); Amos 4:12-13’s ‘prepare to meet your God’ plus the creation-doxology immediately following reinforces this personal, engaged, sovereign identity against impersonal substitutes.
Son Of God
Approved rendering: Son of God
Transliteration: Son of God
Doctrine: Sonship of Christ
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] Comparatively stable phrase, but contemporary secular ‘historical Jesus’ popular narratives can quietly strip the theological content from the phrase even when the words themselves are retained; the eternal, unique, divine sense must be actively taught, not assumed retained by cultural familiarity with the phrase. AMOS EXTENSION: Amos 9:11-15, quoted directly at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:16-17), is the Old Testament root feeding this NT Christological title via the restored Davidic king; flag for cross-curriculum consistency alongside ‘tent_of_david’ below.
The Gate
Approved rendering: the gate
Transliteration: sha’ar
Doctrine: Social Justice and Care for the Poor
Rejected alternatives: the entrance (a purely architectural gloss that loses the judicial function)
Original: שַׁעַר
Category: Justice
The city gate was the standard site of local judicial proceedings, contracts, and elders’ courts — functionally the courthouse. Unglossed, ‘the gate’ reads as merely architectural; gloss actively as ‘the courts’ or ‘the local court’ so the concrete, locatable judicial-fairness demand of 5:10, 12, 15 registers.
Wormwood
Approved rendering: wormwood
Transliteration: la’anah
Doctrine: Social Justice and Care for the Poor
Original: לַעֲנָה
Category: Justice
A bitter-tasting plant, figurative for justice perverted into something bitter and harmful (5:7). Obsolescence risk; also risks an unrelated cross-association with the star ‘Wormwood’ in Revelation 8:10-11. State the plain sense (turned into something bitter/poisonous) directly rather than relying on the word alone.
Ever Flowing Stream
Approved rendering: ever-flowing stream
Transliteration: nachal eitan
Doctrine: Social Justice and Care for the Poor
Rejected alternatives: a flowing river (loses the specific wadi/seasonal-streambed contrast that gives the image its shock)
Original: נַחַל אֵיתָן
Category: Justice
In the land of Israel a nachal is normally a dry streambed flowing only after rain; eitan marks the rare exception that never fails. Contemporary readers unfamiliar with this contrast will hear only generic abundance rather than Amos 5:24’s deliberate paradox — supply the wadi contrast explicitly every occurrence.
Feasts And Solemn Assemblies
Approved rendering: feasts / solemn assemblies
Transliteration: chaggeikhem / atzarotheikhem
Doctrine: Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual
Rejected alternatives: festivals (acceptable modern-register gloss for ‘feasts’)
Original: חַגֵּיכֶם / עַצְּרֹתֵיכֶם
Category: Worship
Israel’s own YHWH-ordained pilgrim festivals and obligatory sacred assemblies — orthodox, Torah-sanctioned worship, not pagan ritual. Archaic-register English requires definition; more seriously, contemporary readers primed by the doctrine of empty ritual may over-read Amos as condemning liturgical worship as such. State explicitly the failure indicted is ethical-covenantal, not aesthetic or liturgical.
Burnt Grain Peace Offerings
Approved rendering: burnt offering / grain offering / peace offering
Transliteration: olah / minchah / shelamim
Doctrine: Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual
Rejected alternatives: sacrifice (unqualified) — ordinary contemporary English overwhelmingly means personal cost/forfeiture, not a cultic offering
Original: עֹלָה / מִנְחָה / שְׁלָמִים
Category: Worship
The three principal categories of Levitical sacrifice, all Torah-legitimate and performed meticulously by Israel (5:22). Requires active glossing so readers grasp three distinct, elaborate, costly categories of legitimate worship are named and rejected, not one generic ‘sacrifice.‘
Worship Noise And Music
Approved rendering: noise of your songs / melody of your harps
Transliteration: hamon / shir / zimrah / nevel
Doctrine: Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual
Original: הָמוֹן / שִׁיר / זִמְרָה / נֶבֶל
Category: Worship
‘Hamon’ is a deliberately unflattering word (tumult, roar of a crowd/army) for what Israel would call worship music (5:23). Contemporary worship-style debates risk causing readers to misapply this as a critique of a musical genre rather than Amos’s actual target: skillfully performed, Torah-sanctioned music rejected because divorced from ethical obedience. ‘Harp’ also carries a mild risk of importing an anachronistic angelic/heavenly-choir image.
False Security Complacency
Approved rendering: at ease / complacent
Transliteration: sha’anan
Doctrine: False Security and National Complacency
Rejected alternatives: relaxed / comfortable (under-conveys the specific presumptuous false-security Amos targets)
Original: שַׁאֲנָן
Category: Worship
Confident ease bordering on presumption (6:1) — a settled assumption that disaster cannot touch oneself because of national or religious status. Pair ‘at ease’ with ‘complacent’ or ‘self-satisfied’ to restore the specific sense.
Abhor Pride
Approved rendering: abhor
Transliteration: ta’av
Doctrine: Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual
Original: תָּעַב
Category: Worship
To detest or find abhorrent — strong covenant-lawsuit language directed at Israel’s arrogant national self-satisfaction, ‘the pride of Jacob’ (6:8). Distinguish Amos’s target (arrogant overweening self-satisfaction) explicitly from contemporary neutral-to-positive ‘pride’ in heritage or achievement.
Holy Oath Ground
Approved rendering: holy / holiness (as ground of oath)
Transliteration: qodesh
Doctrine: God’s Holiness as Ground of Judgment
Cited in Amos 4:2 (‘The Sovereign LORD has sworn by his holiness’) as the very ground of a binding divine oath — God has nothing greater to swear by. An unusually weighty use of the baseline ‘holy’ term; requires active re-teaching since ‘holy’ otherwise survives mainly in negative idiom or content-free exclamation.
Prepare To Meet Your God
Approved rendering: prepare to meet your God
Transliteration: hikon liqrat Eloheikha
Doctrine: The Day of the Lord as Judgment
Rejected alternatives: meet your Maker (a stock English idiom now usually softened into humor or a euphemism for ordinary death)
Original: הִכּוֹן לִקְרֹאת אֱלֹהֶיךָ
Category: Eschatology
A climactic courtroom-confrontation warning (4:12) to prepare for direct encounter with YHWH as judge. Restore the specifically confrontational, courtroom-appearance force rather than letting the phrase default to its softened idiomatic sense.
Woe
Approved rendering: woe
Transliteration: hoy
Doctrine: The Day of the Lord as Judgment
Rejected alternatives: woe is me (a self-deprecating, ironic contemporary idiom for mock self-pity that drains the funerary-lament force)
Original: הוֹי
Category: Eschatology
A funerary/lament interjection — the cry raised over a corpse — redirected by Amos (5:18; 6:1) as a prophetic pronouncement of coming disaster over those who assume they are safe. Render with explicit judgment-announcement framing, not merely archaic flavor.
Lament Dirge
Approved rendering: lament / dirge
Transliteration: qinah
Doctrine: The Day of the Lord as Judgment
Original: קִינָה
Category: Eschatology
A formal funeral-dirge genre, with its own distinct poetic meter, sung by Amos over Israel (5:1-2) in advance of her actual downfall. ‘Lament’ is often read loosely as any sad statement; state explicitly that Amos is performing Israel’s funeral before the fact.
Plumb Line
Approved rendering: plumb line
Transliteration: anakh
Doctrine: The Day of the Lord as Judgment
Rejected alternatives: measuring line (an acceptable alternate gloss)
Original: אֲנָךְ
Category: Eschatology
A weighted cord verifying a wall’s verticality (7:7-8) — a precise instrument with no tolerance for deviation. Marks the vision in which YHWH ceases to relent and settles Israel’s judgment; the narrative-hinge significance (no further intercession accepted after this point) must be stated explicitly.
Summer Fruit The End
Approved rendering: summer fruit / the end
Transliteration: qayits / qets
Doctrine: The Day of the Lord as Judgment
Original: קַיִץ / קֵץ
Category: Eschatology
A deliberate untranslatable Hebrew wordplay (8:1-2): near-homonyms exploited directly by Amos. No equivalent pun exists in English; supply an explicit editorial note explaining the wordplay rather than let the English rendering stand unexplained, or the vision’s entire rhetorical logic is lost.
Famine Of The Word
Approved rendering: famine of hearing the word of the LORD
Transliteration: ra’av… lishmoa et divrey YHWH
Doctrine: Withdrawal of the Word (Famine of Revelation)
Rejected alternatives: spiritual dryness / spiritual famine (a stable devotional idiom that risks flattening a specific severe covenant-curse into a vague individualized complaint)
Original: רָעָב… לִשְׁמֹעַ אֶת דִּבְרֵי יהוה
Category: Prophecy
A culminating covenant curse (8:11-12) extending chapter 4’s ‘famine’ vocabulary metaphorically: the total withdrawal of prophetic access to YHWH’s own word from a people who persistently silenced his prophets. Present as a judgment worse than material deprivation.
Remnant
Approved rendering: remnant
Transliteration: she’erit
Doctrine: Remnant and Covenant Faithfulness
Rejected alternatives: a remnant (as in a leftover fabric scrap, e.g. a ‘remnant sale’) — the dominant contemporary secular sense, an insignificant leftover portion (a trivializing default reading)
Original: שְׁאֵרִית
Category: Covenant
A fixed prophetic technical term (9:8-10) for the faithful minority preserved through judgment, carrying forward the covenant promises — the theological hinge between Amos’s judgment material and its restoration material. Both dominant contemporary senses of ‘remnant’ risk trivializing this into merely ‘small and unimportant leftovers.‘
Restore The Fortunes
Approved rendering: restore the fortunes
Transliteration: shuv shevut
Doctrine: The Restoration of David’s Fallen Tent (Messianic Hope)
Rejected alternatives: bring back the exiles/captives of (an acceptable alternate gloss)
Original: שׁוּב שְׁבוּת
Category: Covenant
A stock prophetic-restoration idiom (9:14) marking a formal, comprehensive reversal of covenant-curse exile back to covenant-blessing homecoming. ‘Fortune’ in contemporary English risks a narrow financial-wealth reading; a brief clarifying gloss restores the comprehensive covenantal sense.
Gentiles Nations Goyim
Approved rendering: Gentiles / the nations
Transliteration: goyim
Doctrine: God’s Sovereignty over All Nations
Rejected alternatives: non-believers (an incorrect modern gloss carried over from the baseline’s own ‘Gentiles’ caution), the New Testament missiological ‘Gentile’ category (imported back onto Amos’s specific ancient political referents, a category mismatch)
Original: גּוֹיִם
Category: Nations
Extends baseline ‘Gentiles’ entry. In Amos, goyim names specific, named, historical geopolitical powers under YHWH’s real moral jurisdiction (chs. 1-2), and by 9:7, 12, peoples included in the restored Davidic kingdom. Readers should not silently import the more generic NT frame back onto Amos’s specific ancient referents.
Transgression Formula
Approved rendering: for three transgressions… and for four
Transliteration: al-shloshah pish’ei… ve’al arba’ah
Doctrine: Universal Moral Accountability (Israel and the Nations)
A formal Hebrew numerical-escalation idiom (not a literal count of exactly seven sins) functioning as a legal indictment formula, repeated against each named nation and against Israel herself (1:3-2:16). Signals an overflowing, decisively-full measure of guilt rather than a precise tally; contemporary readers unfamiliar with this idiom may search for exactly seven listed sins or dismiss the repetition as rhetorical flourish, missing its function as a formal, itemized indictment establishing real moral guilt before God for every nation named, not only Israel.
Low Risk Terms
David
Approved rendering: David
Transliteration: David
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
[INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE, reproduced exactly.] Standard proper name; comparatively stable, though most contemporary readers’ independent knowledge of David likely comes from the David-and-Goliath narrative alone rather than the covenant promise Romans 1:3 depends on, so that background should still be supplied. AMOS EXTENSION: Amos 9:11’s ‘fallen tent of David’ is the specific Old Testament root of the covenant promise Romans 1:3 depends on; see new entry ‘tent_of_david’ below (Critical risk) for the full compounding risk profile this generates.
Fattened Animals
Approved rendering: fattened animals
Transliteration: meri
Doctrine: Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual
Original: מְרִיא
Category: Worship
A choice, well-fed specimen reserved for the peace-offering meal — the best, not a cheap or token offering. Reinforces that Israel’s worship was lavish, not stingy; the problem Amos indicts is qualitative (justice-less), not insufficient expense.
Darkness And Light
Approved rendering: darkness / gloom / light / brightness
Transliteration: choshek / or / ophel / nogah
Doctrine: The Day of the Lord as Judgment
Original: חֹשֶׁךְ / אוֹר / אֹפֶל / נֹגַהּ
Category: Eschatology
Theological shorthand for judgment/disfavor versus blessing/favor (5:18, 20). The polarity remains intuitively stable in contemporary English and requires little active correction.
Threat Animals
Approved rendering: lion / bear / serpent
Transliteration: ari / dov / nachash
Doctrine: The Day of the Lord as Judgment
Original: אֲרִי / דֹּב / נָחָשׁ
Category: Eschatology
A chain of escalating ancient Near Eastern threat-animals (5:19) illustrating inescapable, compounding danger. The rhetorical logic (‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’) has a stable contemporary English idiom equivalent.
Plant Permanence
Approved rendering: plant
Transliteration: nata
Doctrine: The Restoration of David’s Fallen Tent (Messianic Hope)
Original: נָטַע
Category: Covenant
Agricultural rootedness imagery (9:15) signaling final, unshakeable security, contrasted with the uprooting (exile) threatened throughout the book. Transfers cleanly into contemporary English with minimal drift risk.
Low-Medium Risk Terms
Economic Fraud Terms
Approved rendering: ephah / shekel / false scales
Transliteration: eyphah / sheqel / mo’zney mirmah
Doctrine: Social Justice and Care for the Poor
Original: אֵיפָה / שֶׁקֶל / מֹאזְנֵי מִרְמָה
Category: Justice
A specific three-part commercial fraud scheme (8:4-6): short-measuring goods (small ephah) while overcharging (great shekel) and rigging the scales. Obsolescence-only risk for the ancient units; ‘false/rigged scales’ is a genuine translation asset, mapping intuitively onto the still-recognizable modern consumer-fraud image.
Altar And Horns
Approved rendering: altar / horns of the altar
Transliteration: mizbeach / qarnot
Doctrine: Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual
Original: מִזְבֵּחַ / קַרְנוֹת
Category: Worship
‘Altar’ is stable in contemporary English (3:14; 9:1); ‘horns of the altar’ requires a brief gloss since the ancient asylum-function (cf. 1 Kings 1:50) is not obvious to contemporary readers and is essential to grasping why Amos names this specific location as reached by judgment.
Roar
Approved rendering: roars
Transliteration: sha’ag
Doctrine: God’s Sovereignty over All Nations
Original: שָׁאַג
Category: God
The specific sound of a lion’s roar, used of YHWH’s own judgment-speech thundering from Zion (1:2; cf. 3:8). Contemporary lion associations skew toward nature-documentary or heraldic/sports-mascot usage, draining the specifically menacing, judicial force intended; brief contextual framing corrects this.
Sift
Approved rendering: sift
Transliteration: naphah
Doctrine: Remnant and Covenant Faithfulness
Original: נָפָה
Category: Covenant
To shake or sift with a sieve (9:9), separating grain from debris — a qualification that judgment is thorough but discriminating, not indiscriminate annihilation. Once glossed, the discriminating-preservation logic transfers intuitively.
Low (term) / High (background need) Risk Terms
Bethel Gilgal
Approved rendering: Bethel / Gilgal
Transliteration: Beit-El / ha-Gilgal
Doctrine: Judgment on Empty Religious Ritual
Original: בֵּית־אֵל / הַגִּלְגָּל
Category: Worship
Israel’s principal, illegitimate rival-to-Jerusalem royal worship sanctuaries (cf. 1 Kings 12), condemned repeatedly by name (3:14; 4:4-5; 5:5). Low intrinsic word-risk as proper nouns, but a high background-supply need: without the supplied historical background (rival, non-Jerusalem, calf-idol royal shrines instituted by Jeroboam), readers cannot grasp why Amos repeatedly singles these out.
Nations Named
Approved rendering: Damascus / Gaza / Tyre / Edom / Ammon / Moab
Transliteration: Aram-Dammeseq / Azzah / Tsor / Edom / Ammon / Mo’av
Doctrine: God’s Sovereignty over All Nations
Original: אֲרָם־דַּמֶּשֶׂק / עַזָּה / צוֹר / אֱדוֹם / עַמּוֹן / מוֹאָב
Category: Nations
Specific historical geopolitical powers surrounding Israel and Judah, each indicted by name for documented atrocities (war crimes against Gilead, slave-trading, broken treaties of brotherhood). Low intrinsic risk as proper nouns; requires substantial supplied historical-political background, without which each indictment’s specificity does not register.
Referenced passages