“In that day,” declares the Lord GOD, “the songs of the temple will turn to wailing. Many will be the corpses, strewn in silence everywhere!”
Parallel translations
- WEB The songs of the temple will be wailings in that day,” says the Lord Yahweh. “The dead bodies will be many. In every place they will throw them out with silence.
- KJV And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord GOD: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence.
- NKJV And the songs of the temple Shall be wailing in that day,” Says the Lord God— “Many dead bodies everywhere, They shall be thrown out in silence.”
- NASB The songs of the palace will turn to wailing on that day,” declares the Lord God. “The corpses will be many; in every place they will throw them out. Hush!”
- NLT In that day the singing in the temple will turn to wailing. Dead bodies will be scattered everywhere. They will be carried out of the city in silence. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!”
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
On that day the temple songs will turn to wailing, with many corpses cast out in silence. Joyful worship gives way to the silence of death.
Overview
The festive temple music becomes funeral lament as judgment fills the land with the dead. The 'silence' conveys both the magnitude of death and the stunned hopelessness of survivors. This reversal of joy into mourning shows the bitter fruit of sin, which only the resurrection life of Christ can finally overturn into lasting joy.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 16
- Amos 6:9–10And if there are ten men left in one house, they too will die.
- Amos 5:23Take away from Me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.
- Jer 9:21–22For death has climbed in through our windows; it has entered our fortresses to cut off the children from the streets, the young men from the town squares.
- Amos 5:16Therefore 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.
- Lev 10:3Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD meant when He said: ‘To those who come near Me I will show My holiness, and in the sight of all the people I will reveal My glory.’” But Aaron remained silent.
- Amos 8:10I 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.
- Zech 11:1–3Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may consume your cedars!
- Nah 3:3Charging horseman, flashing sword, shining spear; heaps of slain, mounds of corpses, dead bodies without end—they stumble over their dead—
- Isa 37:36Then the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies!
- Hos 10:5–6The people of Samaria will fear for the calf of Beth-aven. Indeed, its people will mourn with its idolatrous priests—those who rejoiced in its glory—for it has been taken from them into exile.
- Ps 39:9I have become mute; I do not open my mouth because of what You have done.
- Jer 22:18Therefore this is what the LORD says concerning Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah: “They will not mourn for him: ‘Alas, my brother! Alas, my sister!’ They will not mourn for him: ‘Alas, my master! Alas, his splendor!’
- Joel 1:13Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, because the grain and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.
- Amos 4:10“I sent plagues among you like those of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, along with your captured horses. I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camp, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.
- Joel 1:5Wake up, you drunkards, and weep; wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it has been cut off from your mouth.
- Joel 1:11Be dismayed, O farmers, wail, O vinedressers, over the wheat and barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.
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Christ at the center
Amid judgment on injustice, Amos promises the raising up of David's fallen tent — read by James in Acts 15 as the ingathering of the nations into the kingdom of the risen Christ.
How Amos 8:3 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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