Amos 7 – Tin and Plumb-lines

I have just finished reading Rob Bell’s 2005 book “Velvet
Elvis – Repainting the Christian Faith”, which is a little slow to get going
but is ultimately a fascinating and challenging read.

The section that has resonated most with me comes in Movement
Two: Yoke (oh yeah, it is arguably a little pretentious at times as well).
Here, Bell makes the point that all Biblical analysis is interpretation.
This, he points out, starts with the English translation we are using because,
since certain Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic words do not have an exact English
translation, the translator is forced to interpret the text in a way
that we might understand today.

Bell beautifully illustrates this with the example of the
word hell, which he tells us appears 12 of its 14 Biblical occurrences
in the teachings of Jesus. Bell explains that the word hell is an
English translation of the Greek word gehenna, which is a reference to
the Valley of Hinnom. This was a ravine on the south side of Jerusalem, which
had been the site of many violent deaths and was now the town dump, complete
with rubbish, wild animals fighting over scraps of food (gnashing their teeth)
and burning fires. So, while Jesus’ audience knew exactly what was meant by gehenna,
it was always going to be a major challenge for any translator to give the word
similar resonance hundreds of years later.

I must admit that this enlightenment helped me address my
discomfort with Amos Chapter 7. You see in my translations,
the crux of the Chapter is the rich imagery of God using a plumb line to
measure how far His people have veered from His guidance (the straight &
narrow so to speak). Now this image is something anyone who has every tried
wallpapering would understand (especially if they hadn’t used a plumb line!).
However, in this case, the translation is flawed.

H. Neil Richardson uses his piece the Four Visions of
Amos (see http://members.bib-arch.org),
to illustrate the problems of translation and the consequent importance of
looking at Biblical text from a variety of perspectives, including, if
possible, a knowledge of everyday life and culture in Biblical times.
Richardson tells us that traditional translations have struggled with Amos’
third vision, and settled on the translation plumb line or plumb bob. The
reason for their difficulty is that the Hebrew word ’anaµk, appears in
no other passage in the entire Hebrew Bible. But having explored other Semitic
languages, Richardson points out that in Akkadian the related word anaµku
means only “tin.” Thus, he points out, if we assume that what Amos saw
was tin, the vision could not have been a plumb line, as tin is obviously too
lightweight to be used for this purpose.

Richardson believes that that the translation has been
thrown by a scribing error and the more accurate meaning of the text can be
discovered by examining the Amos’ fourth vision (a basket of ripe fruit), with
which this vision is paired, and noting that the word for what Amos sees
reminds him of another word similar to it in sound, which conveys the meaning
of the vision. Assuming that Amos has done this in the third vision, then
Richardson concludes that the word for tin – ’anaµk – reminds Amos of a
word similar in sound: ’anaµh\aµh, meaning “a groan” and is predicting
that God is about to put a groan in the midst of the nation, i.e. when the
people start to suffer the consequences of their wrongdoing and begin to
realise that God is not going to pardon them.

Now as someone who had always assumed that the best way to
understand the Bible was with two translations and a good commentary, this was
something of a shock, not to mention a little disconcerting.

Lesson 1: churches need to create and stimulate an
environment whereby people study the bible in groups, preferably groups that
contain a mix of demographics, denominational background etc.