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.
Parallel translations
- 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.
- BSB “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!”
- 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 6:9–10It will happen, if there remain ten men in one house, that they shall 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 come up into our windows. It has entered into our palaces; to cut off the children from outside, and the young men from the streets.
- Amos 5:16Therefore Yahweh, the God of Armies, the Lord, says: “Wailing will be in all the wide ways; and they will say in all the streets, ‘Alas! Alas!’ and they will call the farmer to mourning, and those who are skillful in lamentation to wailing.
- Lev 10:3Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what Yahweh spoke of, saying, ‘I will show myself holy to those who come near me, and before all the people I will be glorified.’” Aaron held his peace.
- Amos 8:10I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will make you wear sackcloth on all your bodies, and baldness on every head. I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.
- Zech 11:1–3Open your doors, Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars.
- Nah 3:3the horseman mounting, and the flashing sword, the glittering spear, and a multitude of slain, and a great heap of corpses, and there is no end of the bodies. They stumble on their bodies,
- Isa 37:36Yahweh’s angel went out and struck one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the camp of the Assyrians. When men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.
- Hos 10:5–6The inhabitants of Samaria will be in terror for the calves of Beth Aven; for its people will mourn over it, Along with its priests who rejoiced over it, for its glory, because it has departed from it.
- Ps 39:9I was mute. I didn’t open my mouth, because you did it.
- Jer 22:18Therefore Yahweh says concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: “They shall not lament for him, saying, ‘Ah my brother!’ or, ‘Ah sister!’ They shall not lament for him, saying ‘Ah lord!’ or, ‘Ah his glory!’
- Joel 1:13Put on sackcloth and mourn, you priests! Wail, you ministers of the altar. Come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God, for the meal offering and the drink offering are withheld from your God’s house.
- Amos 4:10“I sent plagues among you like I did Egypt. I have slain your young men with the sword, and have carried away your horses; and I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camp, yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.
- Joel 1:5Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.
- Joel 1:11Be confounded, you farmers! Wail, you vineyard keepers; for the wheat and for the barley; for 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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