Amos 6:9

"And it shall come to pass, if there remain ten men in one house, that they shall die. And when a man's uncle shall take him up, even he that burneth him, to bring out the bones out of the house, and shall say to him that is in the innermost parts of the house, Is there yet any with thee? and he shall say, No; then shall he say, Hold thy peace; for we may not make mention of the name of Jehovah."

The situation envisioned by these verses presupposes the possible survival of "ten men in one house," evidently one of the "great houses" which normally had a hundred or more inhabitants, as the remnant after a devastating military defeat; and the prophecy is that they (these few survivors) will all die of the plague. The plague is evidenced by the burning of the bodies, contrary to the usual Hebrew custom.

"A man's uncle ..." An alternate reading here is "kinsman," in any case, the person who came to burn the bodies.

"Is there any yet with thee? ..." The picture is that of the very last of the survivors who answered the inquiry negatively.

"Hold thy peace, for we may not make mention of the name of Jehovah ..." A number of somewhat fanciful interpretations have been given to this, but it seems merely to indicate that all of the people at that late stage of their sorrow had at last recognized that their punishment was of God, and that it was God's judgment that was upon them. The solicitation, therefore, not to invoke the name of God would have come from the fear that if God were aware of "any" survivor, he also would have been destroyed. That such a conception does not take account of the omniscience of God does not nullify it, for the very fault that led to Israel's destruction was their total failure to develop any adequate conception of the true nature of God.