Yet You Did Not Return to Me
6 “I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in every town; yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh. 7 “I also have withheld the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest; and I caused it to rain on one city, and caused it not to rain on another city. One field was rained on, and the field where it didn’t rain withered. 8 So two or three cities staggered to one city to drink water, and were not satisfied; yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh. 9 “I struck you with blight and mildew many times in your gardens and your vineyards, and the swarming locusts have devoured your fig trees and your olive trees; yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh. 10 “I sent plagues among you like I did Egypt. I have slain your young men with the sword, and have carried away your horses. I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camp, yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh. 11 “I have overthrown some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a burning stick plucked out of the fire; yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh. 12 “Therefore I will do this to you, Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel. 13 For, behold, he who forms the mountains, creates the wind, declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the high places of the earth: Yahweh, the God of Armies, is his name.”
Five escalating disasters each end in the same sentence, and the refrain says what the disasters were for.
Five times in six verses the same clause closes a paragraph: yet you did not return to me, says Yahweh. The count was verified against the Hebrew, and the repetition is the passage's whole architecture.
The five are ordered by scale. Famine, put with dreadful lightness as cleanness of teeth. Drought — with the detail that makes it worse, rain on one city and not another, so the withholding was visibly selective. Blight and locusts. Plague and sword, with horses carried off. And an overthrow compared to Sodom, leaving survivors like a stick snatched out of the fire.
Each is claimed in the first person: I gave, withheld, struck, sent, overthrew. And each is followed by the same finding, which turns the list from a record of suffering into a record of missed purpose. These were not sentences but summonses, and their intended result is named five times by its absence.
Verse 12 draws the conclusion without describing it — therefore I will do this to you — and refuses to say what this is. Then the appointment: prepare to meet your God, Israel.
And verse 13 answers who that is, in a doxology of creation. He forms the mountains, creates the wind, declares to man his thought, makes the morning darkness, treads the heights of the earth. Yahweh, the God of Armies, is his name. The refrain of the name will fall twice more in the book Amos 5:8 Amos 9:6.
settled What this mark means