Amos 2:9

"Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them,
whose height was like the height of the cedars
and who was as strong as the oaks;
I destroyed his fruit above
and his roots beneath.


Instead of announcing the punishment immediately after the accusation, as was done in the judgments against the seven other nations, God heightened Israel’s guilt by setting her rebellion against the backdrop of His own gracious acts toward them. Israel’s existence as a nation was only because of His intervention. By themselves they could never have conquered the Canaanites. The Amorite (cf. v. 10; note comments on Gen. 14:13-16), as the most formidable, stands for all the nations in Canaan at the time of the Conquest (cf. Gen. 15:16-21; Josh. 24:8-15). The inhabitants of the land were the greatest of men, tall as the cedars and strong as the oaks (cf. Num. 13:28-33; Deut. 1:26-28). Yet God uprooted them, totally destroying them, both fruit above and roots below.


I destroyed his fruit above, and his roots beneath. (rsv) This picture is not kept in the tev but included in the earlier use of totally destroyed because this was a standard Canaanite and Hebrew idiom,* and the meaning of the expression as a whole should be translated and not the meanings of the individual words.*If the Hebrew idiom can be replaced by an equivalent idiom in your language, it should be done. In English we could say: “I destroyed them root and branch” (Robinson, TT); in German: “ich rotte sie mit Stumpf und Stiel aus,” etc. If it is not possible to find an equivalent idiom, the meaning of the total expression should be translated in a general way, as tev has done.