Amos 4:2

"The Lord Jehovah hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that they shall take you away with hooks, and your residue with fish-hooks. And ye shall go out at the breaches, every one straight before her; and ye shall cast yourselves into Harmon, saith Jehovah."

The exact meaning of this passage is very difficult to determine, due to the damaged nature of the Hebrew text from which it is translated. Some widely different translations have come down to us. Wolfe translated it thus:

"You shall be dragged by the nose with hooks,

And by your buttocks with fish spears;

Even as dung you shall be hauled out, one by one,

To be cast forth on the dump heap naked."[14]

The Septuagint and Vatican renditions of this place have: "And fiery destroyers shall cast those with you into boiling cauldrons."[15] Such uncertainties are due to the fact that the words translated "hooks," "fish-hooks" and "Harmon" are not exactly known, as to their meanings. Such difficulties, however, do not in any sense obscure the meaning of the prophet in this passage, that being that a terrible fate is in store for the sensual profligates called the "kine of Bashan." The leading of captives by "hooks" which is certainly one of the possible meanings here was no unlikely event, for:

"The Assyrian illustrations depict such scenes with captives being led with hooks through their noses or mouths, and Amos was no doubt familiar with this barbaric practice."[16]

"The breaches ..." mentioned here indicate that the city will be overthrown by military action and that its citizens shall be removed through the breaches made in the wails.

"Harmon ..." is sometime construed as "naked" and sometimes as a place-name; but if it is the latter, no such place has ever been identified.