Open in the app
Mid-century illustration of a calm sea at dawn

Amos 9:3 · World English Bible

Amos 9:3 Meaning Though They Hide Themselves in the Top

Though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out there; and though they be hidden from my sight in the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent, and it will bite them.

Read it in the app

What does Amos 9:3 mean?

There is no corner of the self where a person can hide from what he has pushed out of sight. Climb to the highest, most respectable heights of the personality, and it is still there.

From the Psychoanalysis reading below.

Amos 9:3 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

PSYCHOANALYSIS

Psychoanalysis

There is no corner of the self where a person can hide from what he has pushed out of sight. Climb to the highest, most respectable heights of the personality, and it is still there. Sink into the deepest waters of the mind, and it waits there too.

What a man refuses to face does not stay quiet. It follows him, reaching him through his moods, his slips, his sudden fears, even the bite of an instinct he thought he had left behind. The sea and the mountain stand for the whole range of the mind. Whatever has been denied will find him wherever he goes, until he stops running and turns to deal with it directly.

Psychoanalysis lensGo deeper in the app

Psychoanalysis lens

Live Amos 9:3 today

  1. Think of the one task or message you have been avoiding for days. Do the first two minutes of it now, not the whole thing, just the part you keep skipping past.
  2. Say the hard sentence to the person you have been managing around. Keep it short and kind, and resist the urge to pad it until it says nothing.
  3. When you catch yourself opening a new tab or reaching for the phone the second a feeling shows up, put the phone down and let the feeling be there for sixty seconds. Nothing bad happens.

What keeps finding you no matter where you go or how busy you stay?

The same truth in other traditions

Buddhism · Dhammapada

Not in the sky, not in the middle of the sea, not in a cleft of the mountains is there a place where a man can escape the fruit of what he has done.

Stoicism · Seneca

People travel to new cities hoping to leave themselves behind, and they arrive with the same soul in their luggage. Change the inner thing or the journey is wasted.

Hinduism · Bhagavad Gita

Even the wise man acts out of his own nature, and nature cannot be curbed by force. What you clamp down on still moves you from underneath.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

Free · No account needed

Read all of Amos 9 through 17 lenses

Lensightful opens every verse of the Bible through the traditions you choose. Save readings, ask a follow-up question, and get one verse a day.

Get Lensightful on the App Store