Appendix B: Early Church, Patristic, and Rabbinic Sources

Collected references relevant to Amos 7:1 and the textual variant between “the king’s mowings” (MT) and “Gog the king” (LXX), arranged by tradition and chronology.

The Ancient Versions

Septuagint (LXX) --- c. 2nd century BCE

οὕτως ἔδειξέν μοι κύριος καὶ ἰδοὺ ἐπιγονὴ ἀκρίδων ἐρχομένη ἑωθινή καὶ ἰδοὺ βροῦχος εἷς Γωγ ὁ βασιλεύς

Translation: “Thus the Lord showed me, and behold a brood of locusts coming in the morning, and behold one locust-larva, Gog the king.”

Source: Goettingen Septuagint, Ziegler’s critical edition of the Twelve Prophets. Also preserved in Codex Vaticanus (4th century CE) and Codex Alexandrinus (5th century CE).

Context: The LXX Minor Prophets were likely translated in the 2nd century BCE. The translator singularizes the locust swarm and introduces the name “Gog,” creating an apocalyptic reading.

Vulgate (Jerome) --- c. 405 AD

Haec ostendit mihi Dominus Deus: et ecce fictor locustae in principio germinantium serotini imbris, et ecce serotinus post tonsionem regis.

Translation: “The Lord God showed me this: and behold, a former of locusts at the beginning of the springing up of the late growth of rain, and behold, the late growth after the shearing of the king.”

Source: Biblia Sacra Vulgata

Context: Jerome follows the Hebrew MT, translating gizzey hammelek as tonsionem regis (“the shearing/mowing of the king”).

Targum Jonathan on Amos --- c. 1st-2nd century AD

כְּדֵין אֲחְזְיַנִי יְיָ אֱלֹהִים וְהָא בִּרְיַת גוֹבֵי בַּאֲוַל צִמוּחַ לָקִישׁ וְהָא צִמוּחַ דַעֲדַק בָּתַר דְאִתְגְזִיזַת שִׁחֲתָא דְמַלְכָּא

Translation: “Thus the Lord God showed me, and behold a creation of locusts at the beginning of the sprouting of the latter growth, and behold the sprouting of the tender [grass] after the young corn of the king was mowed.”

The Targum follows the MT reading without introducing “Gog,” despite the Gog tradition being well known in Jewish circles (the LXX and Samaritan Pentateuch read “Gog” in Numbers 24:7; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan references “the armies of Gog” in Numbers 24:17). The key phrase d’itg’zizat shichata d’malka (“after the young corn of the king was mowed”) confirms the agricultural reading. Rashi quotes this Targum rendering directly in his own commentary.

Source: Sefaria, Mikraot Gedolot edition. Standard English translation with notes: Kevin J. Cathcart and Robert P. Gordon, The Targum of the Minor Prophets (The Aramaic Bible, vol. 14; Liturgical Press, 1989).

Peshitta (Syriac) --- c. 2nd-3rd century AD

The Syriac Peshitta follows the Hebrew MT, reading the equivalent of “the king’s mowings.”

Patristic Commentaries

Origen (c. 185-254 AD) --- The Hexapla

Origen’s Hexapla (c. 240 AD) presented the Old Testament in six parallel columns:

Column	Content
1	Hebrew text
2	Hebrew transliterated into Greek letters
3	Aquila’s Greek translation (early 2nd c. CE)
4	Symmachus’s Greek translation (late 2nd c. CE)
5	The LXX, with Origen’s critical marks (obelus ÷ and asterisk ※)
6	Theodotion’s Greek revision (late 2nd c. CE)

What the columns showed for Amos 7:1:

For the critical phrase, the columns would have displayed the divergence between the LXX and the other Greek versions:

Column 5 (LXX): Read Γωγ ὁ βασιλεύς (“Gog the king”). Origen would have marked this with an obelus (÷), his standard sign indicating material in the LXX that had no corresponding Hebrew in column 1. This obelus is the earliest known critical mark flagging the variant.
Column 3 (Aquila): Jerome reports that Aquila rendered the phrase as post gazae regem (“after the king of Gaza”), apparently transliterating the Hebrew gizzey as a place name rather than translating it as “mowings.” Jerome found this puzzling and suspected textual corruption (see Jerome’s commentary below).
Column 4 (Symmachus): The specific wording does not survive for this verse.
Column 6 (Theodotion): Likely followed the Hebrew “mowings” pattern, as Theodotion’s method was to revise the LXX toward the MT, but the specific rendering is not preserved.

How we know this --- the reconstruction:

The original Hexapla was approximately 6,000 pages and likely never copied in full. It remained in the library at Caesarea Maritima until the library’s destruction (probably during the 7th-century Islamic conquest). No physical fragment of the original survives. What we have instead is a reconstruction assembled from three types of “ghost” evidence:

The Syro-Hexapla (616-617 AD). Just before the Caesarean library was lost, Bishop Paul of Tella translated the fifth column (LXX) into Syriac, preserving Origen’s critical marks --- the obeli and asterisks that showed where the LXX differed from the Hebrew. This translation was made at the Enaton monastery near Alexandria, and the primary surviving manuscript is the 8th-century Codex Ambrosianus (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana). For Amos 7:1, the Syro-Hexapla preserves the Syriac equivalent of “Gog” with Origen’s obelus beside it, confirming that Origen himself recognized this reading as absent from the Hebrew.
Hexaplaric marginalia in Greek manuscripts. Medieval scribes copying the Greek Bible sometimes added marginal notes recording the readings of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. The most important manuscript for the Prophets is Codex Marchalianus (Codex Q, 6th century, Vatican Library), whose colophon claims it was “copied from the Hexapla according to the editions and corrected from Origen’s own Tetrapla.” It contains extensive marginal readings from the Three for the Minor Prophets. Other manuscripts with Hexaplaric scholia also contribute scattered readings.
Patristic citations. Church fathers who had access to the Hexapla (or to copies of individual columns) quoted variant readings in their commentaries. Jerome is the most important witness for Amos 7:1, since he had direct access to Hexaplaric manuscripts at Caesarea and explicitly cites Aquila’s rendering.

The modern critical edition:

Frederick Field assembled these scattered witnesses into a single reconstruction: Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1875), 2 volumes. The Minor Prophets appear in volume 2. Field’s apparatus for each verse identifies the source of each reading (e.g., “Hieron.” for Jerome, “Q” for Codex Marchalianus, “Syro-hex.” for the Syro-Hexapla). The work is digitized and freely available at archive.org.

Field’s reconstruction is not a transcript of the original --- it is a forensic reassembly from surviving fragments. As such, it is a “second-hand” witness. But for Amos 7:1, the “Gog” variant is attested by multiple independent ancient sources (Jerome, the Syro-Hexapla, the LXX manuscript tradition), making it one of the more securely reconstructed entries.

A Note on Origen’s Hermeneutics and Amos 7:1

No surviving commentary by Origen on Amos 7:1 is extant. His commentaries on the Minor Prophets are almost entirely lost, preserved only in scattered catena fragments and citations by later fathers. We cannot quote what Origen said about the “Gog” reading because no such text has come down to us.

What we can say is how Origen’s well-documented hermeneutical method would have approached a textual divergence like this one. In De Principiis 4.2, Origen laid out his three-fold reading of Scripture: the literal (or bodily), the moral (or psychic), and the spiritual (or allegorical). He believed that apparent difficulties in the text --- including discrepancies between the Hebrew and the Greek --- were often placed there by the Holy Spirit to push the reader beyond the surface meaning toward a deeper spiritual reality (De Principiis 4.2.9).

Origen also held the LXX in extraordinarily high regard. He believed the Seventy translators were divinely guided, and he constructed the Hexapla not to correct the LXX but to understand where and why it differed from the Hebrew (cf. his Letter to Africanus 5-7, where he defends LXX readings that diverge from the Hebrew). When he encountered a passage where the LXX read differently, he did not automatically assume the Hebrew was right --- he asked what the Spirit might be revealing through the difference.

Applied to Amos 7:1: Origen would have seen both “the king’s mowings” (Hebrew) and “Gog the king” (LXX) side by side in his own Hexapla, with the obelus marking the divergence. His instinct would not have been to choose one and discard the other, but to read both as layers of a single divine communication --- the Hebrew preserving the historical-agricultural sense, the Greek opening a prophetic-eschatological horizon. Whether Origen actually articulated this for Amos 7:1 specifically, we do not know. But the method is entirely characteristic of his exegetical practice.

Sources: Origen, De Principiis 4.2.1-9 (on the three-fold sense of Scripture). Origen, Letter to Africanus 5-7 (on the authority of the LXX). Both in ANF 4 and available on various patristic databases. For Origen’s view of the LXX, see also Karen H. Jobes and Moisés Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint, 2nd ed. (Baker Academic, 2015), pp. 75-80.

Jerome (c. 347-420 AD) --- Commentariorum in Amos Prophetam Libri III

Jerome directly addresses the MT/LXX variant in his commentary. He first cites the LXX rendering, then explains how the divergence arose:

Videntur mihi LXX interpretes, verbum hebraicum gozi quod interpretatur tonsor, sive tonsura, intellexisse Gog, zai litteram vau arbitrantes, et bruchi innumerabilem multitudinem Gog genti saevissimae comparasse, quae terram Iudaeam vastatura describitur.

Translation: “It seems to me that the Seventy translators understood the Hebrew word gozi, which means ‘shearer’ or ‘shearing,’ as Gog, taking the letter zayin for a waw, and compared the innumerable multitude of locusts to Gog, that most savage nation which is described as about to devastate the land of Judea.”

Jerome also notes that Aquila rendered the phrase puzzlingly as post gazae regem (“after the king of Gaza”), which Jerome suspects is a scribal corruption of the original gozi. Jerome adds that the name Gog means tectum (“a roof/covering”), representing “a certain proud and arrogant strength” (superba quaedam et arrogans fortitudo).

Jerome interprets the entire vision as referring to Sennacherib king of Assyria and his army devastating like locusts: the “shearer of the king” (tonsor regis) is the Assyrian army that sheared and devastated the ten tribes.

Source: PL 25, cols. 1044ff (CCSL 76A, M. Adriaen, ed.). English translation: Thomas P. Scheck, St. Jerome: Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets, vol. 2 (IVP Academic, Ancient Christian Texts series, 2016-2017).

Theodoret of Cyrrhus (c. 393-466 AD) --- Interpretatio in XII Prophetas Minores

Antiochene exegete; worked from the LXX (“Gog the king”). His historical-literal method led him to seek concrete historical referents for each image in the locust vision. Theodoret’s interpretation is distinctive because he assigns a different invader to each figure --- locusts, locust-larva, and Gog:

Ἐπιγονὴν δὲ ἀκρίδων ἐκάλεσε τὸν Ἀσσύριον· βροῦχον δὲ τὸν Βαβυλώνιον· τὸ δὲ, εἷς Γὼγ βασιλεὺς, τὸ τῆς στρατιᾶς μέγεθος παραδηλοῖ. Ὥσπερ γὰρ, φησὶν, ὁ Γὼγ, ὁ τῶν Σκυθικῶν ἐθνῶν βασιλεὺς, κατὰ τῆς Ἱερουσαλὴμ πλῆθος ὅτι πλεῖστον ἀθροίσει· οὕτως Ἀσσύριοι καὶ Βαβυλώνιοι μετὰ πολλῆς παραγενήσονται στρατείας.

Translation: “He called the Assyrian a ‘brood of locusts’; the Babylonian a ‘locust-larva’; and the phrase ‘one Gog the king’ indicates the greatness of the army. For just as, he says, Gog, the king of the Scythian nations, will gather the greatest multitude against Jerusalem, so the Assyrians and Babylonians will come with a great army.”

Theodoret also notes that after seeing this terrifying vision, the prophet interceded but God did not relent, “as was fitting, on account of the excess of their lawlessness” (οὐκ ἐπένευσε δὲ, ὡς εἰκὸς, διὰ τὴν τῆς παρανομίας ὑπερβολήν).

Theodoret’s reading is notable because he treats Gog not as a code name for a specific invader (as Cyril does with Sennacherib) but as a comparative figure: the army will be like Gog’s vast Scythian horde.

Source: PG 81, cols. 1701-1704 (Greek text from Documenta Catholica Omnia / TLG 4089.025). English: Robert C. Hill, Theodoret of Cyrus: Commentary on the Prophets Vol 3: Commentary on the Twelve Prophets (Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006).

Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376-444 AD) --- Commentarii in XII Prophetas Minores

Alexandrian exegete; worked from the LXX (“Gog the king”). Cyril’s commentary on Amos 7:1 is notable for explicitly identifying Gog as the Assyrian (Sennacherib), using the locust imagery to signify military devastation, and cross-referencing Ezekiel 38-39 as the same figure.

On the locust vision and Gog (§57):

ὡς ποιμένι τῷ Προφήτῃ Θεὸς τὰς ἐκ τοῦ πολέμου κατασημαίνει συμφοράς. ὡς ἐν εἴδει γὰρ ἀκρίδος κατασημαίνει τὸν Ἀσσύριον, ὡς ἐν ἀμετρήτῳ πληθύι· μονονουχὶ κατεσθίοντα καὶ δαπανῶντα τὴν γῆν. ἑωθινὴν δέ φησιν αὐτὴν, μονονουχὶ πίπτουσαν ὡς δρόσον, καὶ ἐν νιφάδων τάξει καταχεομένην τῆς γῆς. ἀλλ’ ἦν, φησὶ, καὶ βροῦχος εἷς· ἦν δὲ δὴ οὗτος καὶ Γὼγ ὁ βασιλεύς.

Translation: “As to a shepherd, God signifies to the Prophet the calamities of war. For in the form of a locust he signifies the Assyrian, as in countless multitude --- all but devouring and consuming the land. And he calls it a ‘morning’ [locust], as though falling like dew and pouring over the land in the manner of snowflakes. But there was, he says, also one locust-larva; and this was indeed Gog the king.”

On the identity of Gog (§58):

Πολυπραγμονοῦντες δὲ ἀναγκαίως, τίς δὴ ἄρα ἐστὶν ὁ Γὼγ, ἐκεῖνό φαμεν, ὅτι καὶ ὁ μακάριος προφήτης Ἰεζεκιὴλ θρῆνον ἐν αὐτῷ γράφει, Θεοῦ προστάττοντος. οἰόμεθα δὲ εἶναι τὸν Σενναχηρὶμ, ὅτε καὶ Ῥαψάκου κατακερτομοῦντος Θεὸν “ἐξῆλθεν ἄγγελος κυρίου καὶ ἀνεῖλεν ἐν μιᾷ νυκτὶ ἐκ τῆς παρεμβολῆς τῶν Ἀσσυρίων ἑκατὸν ὀγδοηκονταπέντε χιλιάδας.”

Translation: “Inquiring necessarily into who Gog is, we say this: that the blessed prophet Ezekiel also writes a lament over him, at God’s command. And we think he is Sennacherib, when after Rabshakeh mocked God, ‘the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 from the camp of the Assyrians in a single night’” (citing 2 Kings 19:35).

Cyril then quotes Ezekiel 38:17 and 39:1-5 at length as proof that God had foretold Gog’s invasion through the prophets. He concludes with a summary identification (§60):

Τὸν Γὼγ ἤγουν τὸν Ἀσσύριον ὡς ἀκρίδα καὶ βροῦχον τεθέαται· τοῦτον δίκην ὀνομάζει τὴν διὰ πυρός.

Translation: “He has seen Gog, that is the Assyrian, as locust and locust-larva; this [second vision] he calls judgment by fire.”

Cyril’s interpretation is significant because he: (1) reads “Gog the king” as the straightforward text without any note of a variant, (2) explicitly identifies Gog = Sennacherib = the Assyrian, (3) connects the Amos passage directly to Ezekiel 38-39, and (4) treats the locust imagery as a military metaphor suited to a shepherd-prophet’s understanding.

Source: P.E. Pusey, ed., Sancti Patris Nostri Cyrilli Archiepiscopi Alexandrini in XII Prophetas (Oxford, 1868), vol. 1, pp. 496-500 (= PG 71). Greek text available via First1KGreek project (tlg4090.tlg003.opp-grc1.xml). English: Robert C. Hill, St. Cyril of Alexandria: Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, FC 115, 116, 124 (CUA Press, 2007-2012). Volume 2 covers Amos. TLG 4090.001.

Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350-428 AD) --- Commentarius in XII Prophetas Minores

The most rigorously historical-literal of the Antiochene exegetes. Theodore’s commentary on the Minor Prophets is his only complete surviving Greek work. Like Theodoret, he assigns different invaders to the locust and the locust-larva, but his treatment of Gog is unique among the fathers: he identifies Gog as the king of the Scythians who served as an auxiliary to the main invaders, not the primary aggressor.

Theodore’s Greek (from PG 66, partially preserved via OCR; supplemented by the parallel Latin column):

ὧνπερ οὖν ἐβασίλευεν ὁ Γὼγ, οὗπερ ἐμνημόνευσεν οὐχ ἄρχοντος τοῦ πολέμου τότε, ἀλλ’ ὡς τοῖς ἄρχουσι συμμαχοῦντος· οὐ γὰρ ἄδηλον ὅτι καὶ ὁ Ἀσσύριος πρότερον ἐθνῶν πολλῶν ἐκράτει, καὶ μετ’ ἐκείνου ὁ Βαβυλώνιος· οὓς ἅπαντας μετὰ τῶν σατραπῶν τῶν οἰκείων, εἴτ’ οὖν βασιλειῶν, οὐκ ἀπεικὸς ἦν καὶ παρεῖναι καὶ συμπράττειν αὐτοὺς τῷ πολέμῳ.

Translation: “Over whom Gog was king, whom [the prophet] mentioned not as the leader of the war at that time, but as an ally to the rulers. For it is well known that the Assyrian formerly ruled over many nations, and after him the Babylonian; and it was not unlikely that all of these, with their own satraps or kingdoms, were present and cooperated in the war.”

The parallel Latin column (PG 66, col. 127-128) confirms the reading more cleanly:

Jam nemo miretur quod Gogum regem inseruerit: etenim et antea Assyriis, et Babyloniis postea, multi de Scythicis quoque populis auxiliares belli erant, quorum rex erat Gog… facit mentionem non tanquam belli ducis, sed tanquam regnatoribus suppetias ferentis.

Translation: “Let no one wonder that he inserted Gog the king: for both before with the Assyrians, and afterward with the Babylonians, many of the Scythian peoples were auxiliaries in the war, whose king was Gog… [the prophet] mentions him not as the leader of the war, but as one bringing aid to the rulers.”

Theodore’s interpretation is the most historically grounded of the four major commentators: he sees the locusts as the Assyrians, the locust-larva as the Babylonians, and Gog as a Scythian vassal-king whose forces supplemented the main invading armies.

Source: PG 66, cols. 125-128 (Greek text from OGL-PatrologiaGraecaDev OCR; Latin from same). Critical edition: H.N. Sprenger, Theodori Mopsuesteni Commentarius in XII Prophetas (1977). English: Robert C. Hill, FC 108 (CUA Press, 2004). TLG 4135.007.

Rabbinic Sources

Rashi (1040-1105 AD) on Amos 7:1

כֹּה הִרְאַנִי. פּוּרְעָנוּת שֶׁהָיָה רוֹצֶה לְהָבִיא גּוֹבַאי:

בִּתְחִלַּת עֲלוֹת הַלֶּקֶשׁ. לְשׁוֹן מַלְקוֹשׁ שֶׁהַתְּבוּאָה עוֹלָה בְּקָנֶה שֶׁלָּהּ:

וְהִנֵּה לֶקֶשׁ הָיָה צוֹמֵחַ אַחַר גִּזֵּי הַמֶּלֶךְ אַחַר שֶׁגָּזְזוּ תְּבוּאַת הַמֶּלֶךְ עַד שֶׁלֹּא עָלְתָה בְּקָנֶה הָיוּ גּוֹזְזִין אוֹתָהּ שַׁחַת לְהַאֲכִיל לַבְּהֵמוֹת. וְכֵן תִּרְגֵּם יוֹנָתָן: דְּאִתְגְּזִיזַת שִׁיחֲתָא דְמַלְכָּא, וּלְשׁוֹן מִשְׁנָה הִיא: קוֹצֵר לְשַׁחַת וּמַאֲכִיל לַבְּהֵמָה:

Translation (Judaica Press, tr. A. J. Rosenberg):

“Thus…showed me” --- retribution, that He wished to bring locusts.

“at the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth” --- An expression referring to the latter rain when the grain shoots up in its stalk.

“and behold the latter growth…after the king’s mowings” --- was growing after they mowed the king’s grains. Before it would shoot up in its stalk, they would mow it [as] young corn to feed the cattle, and so did Jonathan render it: [After] the king’s young corn was mown. This is a mishnaic expression (Menachoth 10:8): “One may cut young corn and feed the cattle.”

Rashi follows a straightforward peshat reading: the king’s portion is the first cutting (mowed as young corn for cattle feed), and the laqesh is the regrowth the people depend on. He cites both the Targum Jonathan and the Mishnah (Menachoth 10:8) as support.

Source: Sefaria.org (vocalized edition), with Judaica Press English translation by A. J. Rosenberg.

Ibn Ezra (1089-c. 1164 AD) on Amos 7:1

כה --- אמר רבי משה: כי יוצר כמו חבור, וכמוהו לפי דעתו יוצר עמל עלי חוק. והנכון: שהוא כמשמעו.

וגובי --- תרגום ארבה.

והנה --- ראה שהשם היה יוצר ארבה.

הלקש --- העשב העולה ברדת המלקוש והנה לקש נגזז לצורך בהמות המלך, קודם עלות הקנה.

Translation:

“Thus” --- Rabbi Moses [Ibn Chiquitilla] said that yotzer [means] “gathering,” and similarly in his view [Psalm 94:20] yotzer amal alei choq. But the correct [reading] is its plain meaning [i.e., God was forming/creating].

“And locusts” (gobay) --- the Targum [translates this as] arbeh (locust).

“And behold” --- He saw that God was forming locusts.

“The latter growth” (laqesh) --- the vegetation that comes up when the late rain (malqosh) falls; and behold, the laqesh was mowed for the king’s cattle, before the stalk grew up.

Ibn Ezra’s focus is on the word yotzer (forming/creating), debating whether it means “gathering” or “creating.” He also confirms the laqesh was mowed for the king’s animals. He does not comment on gizzey specifically, nor does he engage the LXX variant.

Source: Sefaria.org (Daat edition, Hebrew only). Cf. Nahum 3:17 for Ibn Ezra’s comparison of gobay/gobai.

Radak / David Kimhi (1160-1235 AD) on Amos 7:1

כה הראני, יוצר גובי. אסיפת הארבה כמו ויצר ה’ אלהים מן האדמה… או פירש יצירת הארבה כלומר שראה במראה הנבואה שהיה יוצר הארבה בשעתו… או יהיה יוצר פועל ולא שם רוצה לומר שראה אל יתברך שהיה יוצר ארבה:

גובי תרגום ארבה גובא והיו״ד לרבים…

בתחלת עלות הלקש. העשב היוצא באחרונה יקרא לקש כמו המטר האחרון מלקוש:

והנה לקש. הלקש הזה היה עולה אחר גזי המלך כלומר אחר שהיה נגזז העשב למאכל בהמות המלך אחר כן היה צומח העשב והוא נקרא לקש והנה הארבה היה אוכלו ויונתן תירגם כמו לצמוח…

Translation:

“Thus He showed me, forming locusts” --- a gathering of locusts, as in “And the LORD God formed from the ground” (Gen 2:19)… or it means the forming/creating of locusts, meaning he saw in the prophetic vision that [God] was forming the locusts at that moment… or yotzer is a verb not a noun, meaning he saw God (blessed be He) forming locusts.

“Locusts” (gobay) --- the Targum [translates] arbeh as goba, and the yod is for the plural…

“At the beginning of the coming up of the latter growth” --- The vegetation coming out last is called laqesh, just as the last rain is called malqosh.

“And behold, the latter growth” --- This laqesh was growing after the king’s mowings --- that is, after the grass was mowed as food for the king’s cattle, afterward the grass would grow again and this is called laqesh, and the locusts were eating it. And Jonathan translated it similarly…

Radak confirms the agricultural reading: the king’s right to the first cutting for his cattle, the regrowth (laqesh) being consumed by the locusts. Like Rashi and Ibn Ezra, Radak follows the MT without engaging the LXX variant. Medieval Jewish commentators generally did not interact with LXX readings.

Source: Sefaria.org (Hebrew only).

Babylonian Talmud, Makkot 24a

The key rabbinic passage connecting Amos’s intercession with Moses is in Makkot 24a, not Leviticus Rabbah 5:3 (which discusses Amos 6, not Amos 7). The Talmud presents Amos as one of four prophets who revoked decrees of Moses:

Moses said: “And Israel dwells in safety, the fountain of Jacob alone” (Deuteronomy 33:28). Amos came and revoked it, as it is stated: “Lord God, cease, I beseech You; how shall Jacob stand, as he is small?” (Amos 7:5), and immediately afterward: “The Lord regretted this; it too shall not be, says the Lord God” (Amos 7:6).

The Talmud cites Amos 7:5 (the fire vision) rather than 7:2 (the locust vision), though the intercessory pattern is identical in both passages. Amos’s plea --- based on Israel’s smallness, not Israel’s righteousness --- prompted God to relent. This presents Amos as a prophet whose compassionate intercession was powerful enough to overturn Moses’s own decree.

Source: Sefaria.org. Cf. also Leviticus Rabbah 10:2, which discusses Amos’s prophetic status.

Leviticus Rabbah 10:2

”…אמר לו הקדוש ברוך הוא: עמוס, אמרת ‘חדל נא’? חייך, ‘נחם ה’ על זאת’.”

Translation: “The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: Amos, you said ‘Cease, I pray’? By your life, ‘The LORD relented concerning this.’”

This passage records the divine dialogue responding to Amos’s intercession, confirming that God honored the prophet’s plea. The section also discusses Amos’s prophetic worthiness and his status among the prophets.

Source: Sefaria.org.

Modern Scholarly Resources

On the Textual Variant

W. Edward Glenny, Amos: A Commentary Based on Amos in Codex Vaticanus (Brill, Septuagint Commentary Series, 2013) --- the most thorough modern treatment of the LXX variant.
Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (Fortress Press, 2012) --- standard reference for OT textual criticism; discusses LXX Vorlage questions.
Jennifer Dines, The Septuagint (T&T Clark, 2004) --- discusses the LXX Minor Prophets and the Gog variant.

Commentaries

Hans Walter Wolff, Joel and Amos (Hermeneia; Fortress Press, 1977) --- defends MT; major critical commentary.
Shalom M. Paul, Amos (Hermeneia; Fortress Press, 1991) --- most thorough philological defense of MT.
Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Amos (Anchor Yale Bible 24A; Doubleday, 1989) --- balanced treatment; favors MT but gives weight to LXX.
Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah (WBC 31; Word Books, 1987) --- follows MT.
Jörg Jeremias, The Book of Amos (OTL; Westminster John Knox, 1998) --- follows MT.

On the Gog Tradition

Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 25-48 (NICOT; Eerdmans, 1998) --- major commentary on Ezekiel 38-39.
Stephen L. Cook, Ezekiel 38-48 (Anchor Yale Bible; Yale University Press, 2018) --- covers the Gog oracle in Ezekiel 38-39.
Myrto Theocharous, Lexical Dependence and Intertextual Allusion in the Septuagint of the Twelve Prophets (T&T Clark, 2012) --- examines LXX translation technique.
James Nogalski, Literary Precursors to the Book of the Twelve (BZAW 217; de Gruyter, 1993) --- redactional connections within the Twelve.