a rare loanword for a metal, most likely tin, held up in Amos's vision as God's measure of Israel on the eve of judgment; long rendered "plumb line".
This word appears only in Amos 7:7-8, four times, in the prophet's third vision of coming judgment. Most English Bibles picture God standing by a wall with a plumb line, testing whether Israel is "true". The image is vivid, but the word behind it is one of the most disputed in the Hebrew Bible, and that familiar picture may not be what Amos meant.
The term was borrowed from an old Near Eastern word for tin, a soft metal useless for building. Since the 1960s many scholars have taken it to mean "tin" here, so that the vision exposes Israel's defenses as a wall of weak metal, sure to buckle before the coming invasion. Strengthening this reading, Hebrew already had its own everyday words for tin (בְּדִיל) and lead (עֹפֶרֶת), and for a measuring line (קָו) and a plummet (מִשְׁקֹלֶת), yet Amos reached past all of them for this rare foreign word.
The oldest translations already disagreed with one another, a sign that the meaning was lost early:
- the ancient Greek version guessed an unbreakable, rock-hard substance
- the Latin read it as a mason's trowel
- the Aramaic dropped the picture entirely and simply said "judgment"
- medieval Jewish scholars, comparing a similar Arabic word, settled on "plumb line"
So the plumb-line reading is the youngest of these, not the oldest.
A further layer is sound. In the northern speech of the people Amos addressed, this word would have sounded almost exactly like the ordinary word for "I" (אָנֹכִי). On that reading God's words, "I am setting it in the midst of my people", become a pun: "I myself am here in the midst of my people", a claim of presence that turns from comfort to threat. Through every reading the point of the vision holds: God has taken Israel's measure, and the time for mercy has run out.
Disputed
What אנך denotes in Amos 7:7-8, and therefore what the third vision depicts.
- majorityA loanword for tin: the vision shows Israel's wall as soft, structurally useless metal that will buckle before the Assyrian invasion, inverting the standard image of an impregnable wall of bronze or iron.; Benno Landsberger, "Tin and Lead: The Adventures of Two Vocables," JNES 24 (1965): 285-296; Shalom M. Paul, Amos, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1991), 233-235; M. Daniel Carroll R., The Book of Amos, NICOT (Eerdmans, 2020)
- minorityLead, and hence a plumb line: God has measured the wall against a standard and found it out of true, so demolition follows and intercession ends; tin and lead are lexically confused across the Semitic languages, and a plummet fits the judgment imagery of 2 Kings 21:13 and Isaiah 28:17.; H. G. M. Williamson, "The Prophet and the Plumb-Line: A Redaction-Critical Study of Amos vii," OTS 26 (1990): 101-121; Benjamin J. Noonan, "There and Back Again: 'Tin' or 'Lead' in Amos 7:7-9?" VT 63 (2013): 299-307; Hans Walter Wolff, Joel and Amos, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1977)
- minorityDeliberate wordplay: in the leveled northern dialect the word echoes אנכי "I" (and roots of grief and sighing), so YHWH's declaration that he is setting it in Israel's midst puns on his own judicial presence among the people.; Tanya Notarius, "Playing with Words and Identity: Reconsidering ... in Amos's Visions," VT 67 (2017): 59-86; Tzvi Novick, "Duping the Prophet: On אנך (Amos 7.8b) and Amos's Visions," JSOT 33 (2008): 115-128