Hebrew word · H528

אָמוֹן

'amon

Amon

'Amon' is Hebrew for the Egyptian god Imen/Amun, 'the Hidden One', worshipped as Amun-Ra, 'king of the gods', at Thebes. 'No' comes from Egyptian niwt, 'the City', a name for Thebes (Greek Diospolis, 'city of Zeus'). Nahum 3:8 calls the city No-Amon, 'Amun's city'.

Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

§ Amon or Amun = "to nourish: to be faithful"

an Egyptian god, originally the local god of Thebes, later head of the Egyptian pantheon

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Jeremiah 46:25

Range of meaning

'Amon' is Hebrew for the Egyptian god Imen/Amun, 'the Hidden One', worshipped as Amun-Ra, 'king of the gods', at Thebes. 'No' comes from Egyptian niwt, 'the City', a name for Thebes (Greek Diospolis, 'city of Zeus'). Nahum 3:8 calls the city No-Amon, 'Amun's city'.

Against the English

BSB 'Amon god of Thebes', WEB 'Amon of No', and ESV/NASB 'Amon of Thebes' take it as the god. KJV's 'the multitude of No' reads the same consonants as hamon, 'crowd, wealth', and so loses the god from the verse.

How it drifted

The KJV reading goes back to ancient Jewish tradition. Ezekiel 30:15 has hamon No, 'the multitude of No', with the same letters plus h. The Targum and the Vulgate ('tumultum Alexandriae') both followed that reading, and Jewish tradition also identified No with Alexandria. Since Egyptian texts were deciphered in the 1800s, Amun of Thebes is clearly the better sense.

Used elsewhere in the period

Egyptian sources name Amun-Ra of Karnak as the state god of the New Kingdom. Assyrian annals of Ashurbanipal record the sack of Thebes in 663 BC, which Nahum 3:8–10 recalls. Under the 26th (Saite) dynasty of Jeremiah's day, princesses of the ruling house held the office of 'God's Wife of Amun' at Thebes, so Amun's cult stayed tied to royal power.

Where it appears

Jeremiah · 1

  1. Jeremiah 46:25 אָמ֣וֹן Amon

    The LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “Behold, I am about to punish Amon god of Thebes, along with Pharaoh, Egypt with her gods and kings, and those who trust in Pharaoh.

    Here: Amun, the 'Hidden One', chief god of Thebes and in Egyptian belief 'king of the gods' (as Amun-Ra). He comes first on the list, ahead of Pharaoh himself.

Nahum · 1

  1. Nahum 3:8 אָמ֔וֹן Amon

    Are you better than Thebes, stationed by the Nile with water around her, whose rampart was the sea, whose wall was the water?

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.