Luke 10:12 → Amos 4:11

"I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town" (Luke 10:12). Sodom functions in Jesus' mouth as a fixed unit of measure - the recognized floor of divine judgment, against which something worse can be named. Amos uses the city the same way, as the standard by which Israel's own overthrow is described: "Some of you I overthrew as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze, yet you did not return to Me" (Amos 4:11). Both texts assume a shared canonical vocabulary in which Sodom is not merely a place but a verdict, and - the point worth noticing - both aim that verdict at the covenant people rather than at outsiders. That is the substance of the link, and it is genuine as far as it goes. It should not be pressed further. The two passages share no vocabulary beyond the name, and Jesus' particular move is not Amos's move: Amos compares Israel's past chastisement to Sodom's fate, while Jesus ranks a Galilean town's coming judgment above it. The text that makes exactly Jesus' comparison is Lamentations 4:6 - "the punishment of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of Sodom" - with Deuteronomy 29:23, Isaiah 1:9-10, and Jeremiah 23:14 supplying the surrounding tradition in which Judah is addressed as Sodom. Amos 4:11 belongs to that tradition without being its sharpest instance, and the pairing is recorded at that weight. What the comparison finally weighs is not sin but light. Sodom never saw the seventy sent out, never watched a demon leave, never heard "the kingdom of God is near." The towns of Galilee did. That is why the reckoning is heavier - and it is also why the mercy on offer is heavier, since the kingdom that came near enough to increase their guilt came near in a Person who would carry it. The severity of this verse is the shadow cast by how much was given.