Listen to this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who tell their husbands, “Bring us drinks!”
The Lord Yahweh has sworn by his holiness that behold, “The days shall come on you that they will take you away with hooks, and the last of you with fish hooks.
You will go out at the breaks in the wall, everyone straight before her; and you will cast yourselves into Harmon,” says Yahweh.
“Go to Bethel, and sin; to Gilgal, and sin more. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days,
offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened, and proclaim free will offerings and brag about them: for this pleases you, you children of Israel,” says the Lord Yahweh.
“I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in every town; yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.
“I also have withheld the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest; and I caused it to rain on one city, and caused it not to rain on another city. One place was rained on, and the piece where it didn’t rain withered.
So two or three cities staggered to one city to drink water, and were not satisfied: yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.
“I struck you with blight and mildew many times in your gardens and your vineyards; and the swarming locusts have devoured your fig trees and your olive trees; yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.
“I sent plagues among you like I did Egypt. I have slain your young men with the sword, and have carried away your horses; and I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camp, yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.
“I have overthrown some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a burning stick plucked out of the fire; yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.
“Therefore thus I will do to you, Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel.
For, behold, he who forms the mountains, and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought; who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the high places of the earth: Yahweh, the God of Armies, is his name.”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1–13 He who divided the chapters seems not to have…
He who divided the chapters seems not to have well considered the Prophet’s argument: for he pursues here his reproof of the rich, and he had been prophesying against the chief men in the kingdom of Israel. We indeed know how much ferocity there is in the rich, when they become formidable to others by their power. Hence the Prophet here laughs to scorn their arrogance: Hear, he says, this word; as though he said, “I see how it will be; for these great and pompous men will haughtily despise my threatening, they will not think themselves exposed to God’s judgment; and they will also think that wrong is done to them: they will inquire, ‘Who I am,’ and ask, ‘How dares a shepherd assail them with so much boldness?’ “Hear then ye cows; as though he said, that he cared not for the greatness in which they prided themselves. “What then is your wealth? It is even fatness: then I make no more account of you than of cows; ye are become fat; but your power will not terrify me; your riches will not deprive me of the liberty of treating you as it becomes me and as God has commanded me.” We hence see that the Prophet here assails with scorn the chief men of the kingdom, who wished to be sacred and untouched. The Prophet asks by what privilege they meant to excuse themselves for not hearing the word of the Lord. If they pleaded their riches and their own authority; “These,” he says, “are fatness and grossness; ye are at the same time cows and I will regard you as cows; and I will not deal with you less freely than I do with my cattle.” We now then perceive the Prophet’s intention.
But he goes on with his similitude: for though he here accuses the chiefs of the kingdom of oppressing the innocent and of distressing the poor, he yet addresses them in the feminine gender, who dwell, he says, on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who consume the needy, who say, etc. He does not think them worthy of the name of men; and yet they wished to be viewed a class separate from the common people, as though they were some heroes or halfgods. The Prophet, by way of contempt, calls them here cows; and he also withholds from them the name of men. Bashan, we know, derived its name from fatness; it was a very rich mountain, and celebrated for its pastures: as the fertility of this mountain was well known among that people, the Prophet gave the name of the cows of Bashan to those fat and full men: and it was right that they should be thus roughly handled, because through fatness, as it is usually the case, they had contracted dullness; for when men abound in riches, when they become great in power, they forget themselves and despise God, for they think themselves beyond the reach of danger. As then this security makes the rich torpid and inattentive to any threatenings, and disobedient to God’s word, so that they regard all counsels superfluous, the Prophet here rebukes them with greater asperity, and addresses them, by way of reproach, under the name of cows. And when he says that they were on the mountain of Samaria, this is still ironical; for they might have made this objection, that they dwelt in the royal city, and were watchful over the state of the whole nation, and that the kingdom stood through their counsels and vigilance: “I see how it is,” he says; “Ye are not on mount Bashan, but on the mount of Samaria; what is the difference between Samaria and Bashan? For ye are there inebriated with your pleasures: as cows, when fattened, are burdened with their own weight, and can hardly draw along their own bodies; so it is with you, such is your slowness through your gluttony. Samaria then, though it may seem to be a watch-tower, is yet nothing different from mount Bashan: for ye are not there so very solicitous (as ye pretend) for the public safety; but, on the contrary, ye devour great riches; and as your cupidity is insatiable, the whole government is nothing else to you than fatness or a rich pasturage.”
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But the Prophet chiefly reproves them, because they oppressed the poor and consumed the needy. Though the rich, no doubt, did other wrongs, yet as they especially exercised cruelty towards the miserable, and those who were destitute of every help, this is the reason why the Prophet here elates expressly that the poor and the needy were oppressed by the rich: and we also know, that God promises special aid to the miserable, when they find no help on earth; for it more excites the mercy of God, when all cruelly rage against the distressed, when no one extends to them a helping hand or deigns to aid them.
He adds, in the last place, what they say to their masters. I wonder why interpreters render this in the second person, who say to your masters; for the Prophet speaks here in the third person: they seem therefore designedly to misrepresent the real meaning of the Prophet; and by masters they understand the king and his counselors, as though the Prophet here addressed his words to these chief men of the kingdom. Their rendering then is unsuitable. But the Prophet calls those masters who were exactors, to whom the poor were debtors. The meaning is, that the king’s counselors and judges played into the hands of the rich, who plundered the poor; for when they brought a bribe, they immediately obtained from the judges what they required. They are indeed to be bought by a price who hunt for nothing else but a prey.
They said then to their masters, Bring and we shall drink; that is, “Only satiate my cupidity, and I will adjudge to thee what thou wouldest demand: provided then thou bringest me a bribe, care not, I will sell all the poor to thee.” We now comprehend the design of the Prophet: for he sets forth here what kind those oppressions were of which he had been complaining. “Ye then oppress the poor, — and how? Even by selling them to their creditors, and by selling them for a price. Hence, when a reward is offered to you, this satisfies you: Ye inquire nothing about the goodness of the cause, but instantly condemn the miserable and the innocent, because they have not the means of redeeming themselves: and the masters to whom they are debtor; who through your injustice hold them bound to themselves, pay the price: there is thus a mutual collusion between you.” It now follows —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 They encourage such as have authority over the people…
They encourage such as have authority over the people to powle them, so that they may have profit by it.
Thus he calleth the princes and governors, which being overwhelmed with the great abundance of God’s benefits, forgot God, and therefore he calleth them by the name of beasts and not of men.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–13 Amo 4:1 Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan,…
Amo 4:1 Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that [are] in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink.
Ver. 1. Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan] Obesae et bene pastae, ye fat bawsons (as we use to call them), ye that are
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“ Boeotum in patria, crassoque sub aere natae. ”
Ye that have hearts as fat as grease, and delight not in God’s law, Psa 119:70. Ye that cover your faces with fatness, Job 15:27, till both your eyes stand out with it, Psa 73:7-8 (as fulness breeds forgetfulness, Deu 32:15, the fed hawk forsakes his master), as untamed heifers fully fed, ye have been unruly and refractory, means of much mischief to my poor afflicted, as was Jezebel to Elijah, Herodias to the Baptist, Eudoxia, the empress, to Chrysostom, Theodora to Belisarius, that brave and noble captain, and others. Poor Tegedine suffered many years’ captivity in misery and irons, by the Turk, for one word in a sermon, which distasted a proud and petulant woman without the least cause. What cruel persecutions raised the Queen Mother of Scotland, about the beginning of the Reformation there! the Queen Mother of France, Katherine de Medicis, for 30 years together! Queen Mary here, being wholly possessed by the bishops, as Alexandra was by the Pharisees, of whom Josephus testifieth that she had the name, but they had all the power of the kingdom! Oh these kine of Bashan, these wanton and wicked women (for so I understand the text after the Jewish doctors Vatablus, Lyra, Lively, &c.), when once they get the reins in their hands there is no hoe with them; when once the devil gets passage, per costam ad cot (as Gregory), by the rib to the heart, what may he not effect? when the hen is suffered to crow, what hope is there of good? David complains of strong bulls of Bashan, Psa 22:12, but those he might better deal with than with these cursed cows of Bashan that thrust with side and shoulder, and pushed the diseased with their horns, till they had scattered them abroad, Eze 34:21.
That are in the mountains of Samaria] Ladies of the court, accustomed to high titles, such as I, that am non aula sed caula natus et educatus, no courtier but carter rather, and used to call a spade a spade, care not to compliment.
Which oppress the poor, which crush the needy] As did, much about the same time, Jezebel in Israel, and Athaliah in Judah; and (besides the above mentioned) Dame Alice Piercy, King Edward III’s concubine, an impudent woman; who so far wrought upon the king’s impotencies, and presumed on his favour, that she imprisoned Sir Peter Lamar, speaker in parliament, and intermeddled in courts of justice and other offices; where she herself would sit to effect her desires; which, though in all who are so exalted are ever excessive, yet in a woman most immoderate, as having less of discretion and more of greediness. I have spoken before of Diana Valentina, King Henry II of France’s mistress, to whom he had given all the confiscations of goods made in the kingdom for cause of heresy, whereby many poor Protestants were oppressed, and needy crushed and quashed to pieces; for a poor man in his house is like a snail in his shell; crush that, and you kill his heart.
Which say to their masters] Or lords, that is, to their husbands; as Sarah called her husband lord, Gen 18:12. She in obedience, but these in craft and counterfaisance; that they may the sooner subdue them, and have what they will of them.
Bring and let us drink] q.d. Fan nobis potestatem in hos aut illos, saith Mercer: that is, Give us authority over such and such, that we may pick their bones, drink their tears, enrich and feast ourselves with their spoils, make no more scruple to undo them by force or forgery, than to eat a meal’s meat when huntry; or than the luxurious Italians (who have twenty distinct species of liquor, to please the gusto) do, to take off a cup of the most delicious, which they profanely call Lachrymae Christi. the tears of Christ.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–13 This verse is an introduction to all that follows…
This verse is an introduction to all that follows in this chapter.
Hear attentively, and consider the consequences of it; weigh both what and whose it is that is spoken. This word; prophecy, or sermon of reproof and threatening: see Amo 3:1.
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Ye kine of Bashan: so Amos, bred among cattle, compares the mighty, proud, wanton, and oppressive riflers of Israel to those full-fed, strong, and wanton beasts, which in the herds did push at, hurt, and disturb the weaker cattle. Some will by this understand the court ladies of Israel in those times; but this perhaps is too nice: though, as in Ahab’s time Jezebel was at court, and a promoter of oppression and violence, so there might be in aftertimes some like her, and perhaps these may be intended secondarily; yet surely Amos intends the great men and governors, whom he calls kine of Bashan, a fruitful country, of which see Eze 39:18; Nah 1:4.
In the mountain of Samaria: in a decorum to his first allusion he calls their places of power, authority, and office in the kingdom of Israel, mountains; for as those beasts grazing on mountains grew fat, so these men by their fees, perquisites, and bribes grew insolent and mischievous: see Amo 3:9.
Which oppress the poor; the meaner sort of the people, the commonalty, under their jurisdiction, by colour of law.
Which crush the needy; by force and open violence break in pieces the afflicted, who have neither power nor friend to relieve them.
Which say to their masters; husbands, say some, so the Hebrew will bear; or it may refer to some of the greatest officers in Israel, who had inferior officers under them, or the masters of the poor.
Bring; get us commission, or bring them into our court and office.
Let us drink; we will get by them to feast on and revel in drink.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 6 It is here foretold, in the name of God,…
It is here foretold, in the name of God, that oppressors shall be humbled and idolaters shall be hardened.
I. That proud oppressors shall be humbled for their oppressions: for he that does wrong shall receive according to the wrong that he has done. Now observe,
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1. How their sin is described, Amo 4:1. They are compared to the kine of Bashan, which were a breed of cattle very large and strong, especially if, though bred there, they were fed upon the mountain of Samaria, where the pastures were extraordinarily fat. Amos had been a herdsman, and he speaks in a dialect of his calling, comparing the rich and great men, that lived in luxury and wantonness, to the kine of Bashan, which were wanton and unruly, would not be kept within the bounds of their own pasture, But broke through the hedges, broke down all the fences, and trespassed upon the neighboring grounds; and not only so, but pushed and gored the smaller cattle that were not a match for them. Those that had their summer-houses upon the mountains of Samaria when they went thither for fresh air were as mischievous as the kine upon the mountains of Bashan and as injurious to those about them. (1.) They oppress the poor and needy themselves; they crush them, to squeeze something to themselves out of them. They took advantage of their poverty, and necessity, and inability to help themselves, to make them poorer and more necessitous than they were. They made use of their power as judges and magistrates for the invading of men's rights and properties, the poor not excepted; for they made no conscience of robbing even the hospital. (2.) They are in confederacy with those that do so. They say to their masters (to the masters of the poor, that abuse them and violently take from them what they have, when they ought to relieve them), "Bring, and let us drink; let us feast with you upon the gains of our oppression, and then we will protect you, and stand by you in it, and reject the appeals of the poor against you." Note, What is got by extortion is commonly made use of as provisions for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof; and therefore men are tyrants to the poor because they are slaves to their appetites. Bring, and let us drink, is the language of those that crush the needy, as if the tears of the oppressed, mingled with their wine, made it drink the better. And by their associations for drinking and reveling, and an excess of riot, they strengthen their combinations for persecution and oppression, and harden the hearts of one another in it.
2. How their punishment is described, Amo 4:2, Amo 4:3. God will take them away with hooks, and their posterity with fish-hooks; he will send the Assyrian army upon them, that shall make a prey of them, shall not only enclose the body of the nation in their net, but shall angle for particular persons, and take them prisoners and captives as with hooks and fish-hooks, shall draw them out of their own land as fish are drawn out of the water, which is their element, them and their children with them, or, They in their day shall be drawn out by one victorious enemy, and their posterity in their day by another, so that by a succession of destroying judgments they shall at length be wholly extirpated. These kine of Bashan thought they could no more be drawn out with a hook and a cord than the Leviathan can, Job 41:1, Job 41:2. But God will make them know that he has a hook for their nose and a bridle for their jaws, Isa 37:29. The enemy shall take them away as easily as the fisherman takes away the little fish, and shall make it their sport and recreation. When the enemy has made himself master of Samaria, then, (1.) Some shall attempt to escape by flight: You shall go out at the breaches made in the wall of the city, every cow at that which is before her, to shift for her own safety, and make the best of her way; and now the unruly kine of Bashan are tamed, and are themselves crushed, as they crushed the poor and needy. Note, Those to whom God has given a good pasture, if they are wanton in it, will justly be turned out of it; and those who will not be kept within the hedge of God's precept forfeit the benefit of the hedge of God's protection, and will be forced in vain to flee through the breaches they have themselves fearfully made in that hedge. (2.) Others shall think to shelter themselves, or at least their best effects, in the palace, because it is a castle well fortified and a garrison well manned: You shall throw yourselves (so some read it), or throw them (that is, your posterity, your children, or whatever is dear to you), into the palace, where the enemy will find it ready to be seized. Note, What is got by oppression cannot long be enjoyed with satisfaction.
3. How their sentence to this punishment is ratified: The Lord God has sworn it by his holiness. He had often said it, and they regarded it not; they thought God and his prophets did but jest with them; therefore he swears it in his wrath, and what he has sworn he will not revoke. He swears by his holiness, that attribute of his which is so much his glory, and which is so much glorified in the punishment of wicked people; for, as sure as God is a holy God, those that plough iniquity and sow wickedness shall reap the same.
II. That obstinate idolaters shall be hardened in their idolatries (Amo 4:4, Amo 4:5): Come to Bethel, and transgress. It is spoken ironically: "Do so; take your course; multiply your transgressions by multiplying your sacrifices, for this liketh you; but what will you do in the end hereof?" Here we see, 1. How intent they were upon the service of their idols, and how willing they were to be at cost upon them; they brought their sacrifices, and their tithes, and their free-will offerings, hoping that therein they should be accepted of God, but it was all an abomination to him. The profuseness of idolaters in the service of their false gods may shame our strait-handedness in the service of the true and living God. 2. How they mimicked God's institutions. They had their daily sacrifice at the altar of Bethel, as God had at his altar; they had their thank-offerings as God had, only they allowed leaven in them, which God had forbidden, because their priests did not like to have the bread to heavy and tasteless as it would be if it had not leaven in it, for something to ferment it. Holy bread would not serve them, unless it were pleasant bread. 3. How well pleased they were with these services themselves: This liketh you, O you children of Israel! So you love. What was their own invention they were fond of and wedded to, and thought it must be pleasing to God because it was agreeable to their own fancy. 4. How they upbraided with it: "Come to Bethel, to Gilgal; bring the sacrifices and tithes yourselves; proclaim and publish to the nation the free-offerings, pressing them to bring in abundance of such; go on in this way;" that is, (1.) "It is plain that you are resolved to do it, whatever God and conscience say to the contrary." (2.) "Your prophets shall let you alone in it, and not admonish you as they have done, for it is to no purpose. Let no man strive nor rebuke his neighbour." (3.) "Your foolish hearts shall be more and more darkened and besotted, and you shall be quite given up to these strong delusions, to believe a lie." (4.) "What will you get by it? Come to Bethel and multiply your sacrifices, and see what the better you will be, what returns you will have to your sacrifices, what stead they will stand you in in the day of distress. You shall be ashamed of Bethel your confidence," Jer 48:13. (5.) "Come, and transgress, come, and multiply your transgression, that you may fill up the measure of your iniquity and be ripened for ruin." Thus Christ said to Judas, What thou doest do quickly; and to the Jews, Fill you up the measure of your fathers, Mat 23:32.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–13 Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan,.... Or "cows…
Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan,.... Or "cows of Bashan" (n); a country beyond Jordan, inhabited by the tribes of Gad and Reuben, and the half tribe of Manasseh, very fruitful of pasturage, and where abundance of fat cattle were brought up; to whom persons of distinction, and of the first rank, are here compared. Aben Ezra, Jarchi, and Kimchi, interpret them of the wives of the king, princes, ministers of state, and great men; and so it may be thought that Amos, a herdsman, in his rustic manner, compliments the court ladies with this epithet, for their plumpness, wantonness, and petulancy. Though it may be the princes and great men themselves may be rather intended, and be so called for their effeminacy, and perhaps with some regard to the calves they worshipped; and chiefly because being fat and flourishing, and abounding with wealth and riches, they became wanton and mischievous; like fat cattle, broke down their fences, and would be under no restraint of the laws of God and man; entered into their neighbours' fields, seized on their property, and spoiled them of it. So the Targum paraphrases it,
"ye rich of substance.''
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In like manner the principal men among the Jews, in the times of Christ, are called bulls of Bashan, Psa 22:12;
that are in the mountains of Samaria; like cattle grazing on a mountain; the metaphor is still continued: Samaria was the principal city of Ephraim, the metropolis of the ten tribes, Isa 7:9; situated on a mountain; Mr. Maundrell (o) says, upon a long mount, of an oval figure, having first a fruitful valley, and then a ring of hills running about it. Here the kings of Israel had their palace, and kept their court, and where their princes and nobles resided. Ahab is said to be king of Samaria, Kg1 21:1;
which oppress the poor, which crush the needy; by laying heavy taxes upon them; exacting more of them than they are able to pay; lessening their wages for work done, or withholding it from them; or by taking from them that little they have, and so reducing them to the utmost extremity, and refusing to do them justice in courts of judicature:
which say to their masters, bring, and let us drink; Kimchi, who interprets these words of the wives of great men, supposes their husbands are here addressed, who are, and acknowledged to be, their masters or lords; see Pe1 3:6; whom they call upon to bring them money taken from the poor, or for which they have sold them, that they may have wherewith to eat and drink, fare sumptuously, and live in a grand manner, feasting themselves and their visitors: or these are the words of inferior officers to superior ones, desiring they might have leave to pillage the poor, that so they might live in a more gay and splendid manner, and in rioting and drunkenness, in chambering and wantonness. So the Targum,
"give us power, that we may spoil it.''
Or rather these words are directed to the masters of the poor, who had power over them, had them in their clutches, in whose debt they were; or they had something against them, and therefore these corrupt judges, and wicked magistrates, desire they might be brought before them; who for a bribe would give the cause against them, right or wrong, so long as they got something to feast themselves with; or they are spoken by the rich, to the masters of the poor, to whom they had sold them, to bring them the purchase money, that they might indulge and gratify their sensual appetites; see Amo 2:6.
(n) "vaccae Basan", Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Vatablus, Drusius, Mercerus, Grotius, Cocceius. (o) Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, p. 59. Ed. 7.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1–13 Oppressors threatened, ver. 1-3. Idolaters given up, ver. 4,…
Oppressors threatened, ver. 1-3. Idolaters given up, ver. 4, 5. The incorrigibleness of Israel, ver. 6-11. They are still invited to repent, ver. 12, 13.
Kine of Bashan - So Amos compares the mighty, wanton, and oppressive rulers of Israel, to those full-fed, strong, and wanton beasts which in the herds did push at, hurt, and disturb the weaker cattle.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 Israel reproved for their oppression, 1-3;
CHAPTER IV
Israel reproved for their oppression, 1-3;
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idolatry, 4, 5;
and for their impenitence under the chastising hand of God,
6-11.
The omniscience and uncontrollable power of God, 12, 13.
NOTES ON CHAP. IV
Verse 1. Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan] Such an address was quite natural from the herdsman of Tekoa. Bashan was famous for the fertility of its soil, and its flocks and herds; and the prophet here represents the iniquitous, opulent, idle, lazy drones, whether men or women, under the idea of fatted bullocks, which were shortly to be led out to the slaughter.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 12 Amo 4:1. Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan…
Amo 4:1. Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan — Bashan was famous for its flocks and herds, Deu 32:14; Eze 39:18. The proud and luxurious matrons of Israel may be here described. In this sense the words are understood by Grotius, and some other commentators. Thus rich, proud, and tyrannical men are compared, Psa 22:13, to the bulls of Bashan; because cattle fed in the pastures of Bashan, which were remarkably rich, were more than commonly large, and wanton, or headstrong, by reason of their full feeding. Which say to their masters — To their husbands; Bring, and let us drink — From these expressions we may infer the dissoluteness and intemperance of the women. And it may be observed here also, that even the women are accused of oppressing the poor, and crushing the needy; from whence we may gather to how great a height cruelty, oppression, and insolence were grown among them, since even the women were guilty of these vices. Some, however, think that the description contained in this verse is not to be confined to the matrons, but that the rich, luxurious, and profligate rulers and nobles are also and even especially intended; and that these might be represented as kine rather than bulls, in order to reprove their effeminacy and cowardice when assaulted by their enemies; while at the same time they crushed and trampled on their unresisting brethren, and sold them for slaves, saying to the masters who bought them, Bring, and let us drink. Having made the iniquitous bargain, perhaps, on low terms, they required from the purchaser to be treated with wine. This is Mr. Scott’s view of the passage.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–13 Hear ye this, ye kine of Bashan - The…
Hear ye this, ye kine of Bashan - The pastures of Bashan were very rich, and it had its name probably from its richness of soil . The Batanea of later times was a province only of the kingdom of Bashan, which, with half of Gilead, was given to the half tribe of Manasseh. For the Bashan of Og included Golan Deu 4:43, (the capital of the subsequent Gaulonitis, now Jaulan) Beeshterah Jos 21:27, (or Ashtaroth) 1Ch 6:71, very probably Bostra (see ab. on 1Ch 1:12), and Elrei Deu 1:4, in Hauran or Auranitis; the one on its southern border, the other perhaps on its northern boundary toward Trachonitis . Its eastern extremity at Salkah Deu 3:10; Jos 13:11, (Sulkhad) is the southern point of Batanea (now Bathaniyyeh); Argob, or Trachonitis , (the Lejah) was its north eastern fence.
Westward it reached to Mount Hermon Deu 3:8; Jos 12:5; Jos 13:11; 1Ch 5:23. It included the subsequent divisions, Gaulonitis, Auranitis, Batanea, and Trachonitis. Of these the mountain range on the northwest of Jaulan is still “everywhere clothed with oak-forests.” The Ard-el-Bathanyeh , “the country of Batanea or Bashan, is not surpassed in that land for beauty of its scenery, the richness of its pastures, and the extent of its oak forests.” “The Arabs of the desert still pasture their flocks on the luxuriant herbage of the Jaulan” . Its pastures are spoken of by Micah Mic 7:14 and Jeremiah Jer 50:19. The animals fed there were among the strongest and fattest Deu 32:14. Hence, the male animals became a proverb for the mighty on the earth Exo 39:18, the bulls furnished a type for fierce, unfeeling, enemies Psa 22:12. Amos however, speaks of “kine;” not, as David, of “bulls.” He upbraids them not for fierceness, but for a more delicate and wanton unfeelingness, the fruit of luxury, fullness of bread, a life of sense, which destroy all tenderness, dull the mind, “banker out the wits,” deaden the spiritual sense.
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The female name, “kine,” may equally brand the luxury and effeminacy of the rich men, or the cruelty of the rich women, of Samaria. He addresses these “kine” in both sexes, both male and female . The reproachful name was then probably intended to shame both; men, who laid aside their manliness in the delicacy of luxury; or ladies, who put off the tenderness of womanhood by oppression. The character of the oppression was the same in both cases. It was done, not directly by those who revelled in its fruits, but through the seduction of one who had authority over them. To the ladies of Samaria, “their lord” was their husband, as the husband is so called; to the nobles of Samaria, he was their king, who supplied their extravagances and debaucheries by grants, extorted from the poor.
Which oppress - Literally, “the oppressing!” The word expresses that they habitually oppressed and crushed the poor. They did it not directly; perhaps they did not know that it was done; they sought only, that their own thirst for luxury and self-indulgence should be gratified, and knew not, (as those at ease often know not now,) that their luxuries are continually watered by the tears of the poor, tears shed, almost unknown except by the Maker of both. But He counts willful ignorance no excuse. “He who doth through another, doth it himself,” said the pagan proverb. God says, they did “oppress,” were “continually oppressing, those in low estate,” and “crushing the poor” (a word is used expressing the vehemence with which they “crushed” them.) They “crushed” them, only through the continual demand of pleasures of sense, reckless how they were procured; “bring and let us drink.” They invite their husband or lord to joint self-indulgence.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 Fat kine. He means the great ones that lived…
Fat kine. He means the great ones that lived in plenty and wealth, (Challoner) and without restraint, (Isaias xv. 5., and Jeremias xlvi. 20.; Calmet) having no compassion for the poor. (Worthington) --- The women who had too great an ascendency over their husbands, like Jezabel, may also be meant. (Theodoret; Grotius) --- In many parts of the East the women affect being fat.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Amos 4
Amos 4
2. Punishment must come, since despite all Chastisements the People will not amend.
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1 Hear1 this word, ye kine of Bashan,
Who are upon the mountain of Samaria,
Who oppress the poor,
Who crush the needy,
Who say to their lords,
Bring hither that we may drink.
2 The Lord Jehovah hath sworn by his holiness,
Behold days are coming upon you,
When men will drag2you away with hooks
And the remnant3 of you with fish-hooks.
3 And through breaches4 in the wall ye shall go out, every one before her5
And be cast forth6 to Harmon7 saith Jehovah.
4 Go to Bethel and sin,—
To Gilgal,8 and sin still more !
Bring every morning your sacrifices,
Every three days your tithes.
5 Offer9 a praise-offering of what is leavened,
Call out for voluntary offerings, proclaim them !
For this liketh you,10 O sons of Israel,
Saith the Lord, Jehovah.
6 And I, even I,11 have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities,
And want of bread in all your places;
And ye have not returned unto me, saith Jehovah.
7 And I, even I, have withheld the rain from you,
When there were yet three months to the harvest,
And have caused it to rain upon one city,
And cause it not to rain12 upon another.
One field is rained upon,
And the field upon which it does not rain, withers.
8 And two, three cities stagger to one city
To drink water, and are not satisfied;
And ye have not returned unto me, saith Jehovah.
9 I have smitten you with blight and with mildew;
And the multitude13 of your gardens and your vineyards,
And of your fig trees and olive trees, the locust devoured;
And ye have not returned to me, saith Jehovah.
10 I have sent pestilence among you in the manner of Egypt,14
I have slain your young men with the sword,
Together with the booty15 of your horses,
And caused the stench16 of your camps to ascend even into your noses,
And ye have not returned unto me, saith Jehovah17.
11 I have overthrown among you,
As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,
And ye were like a brand plucked out of the burning;
And still ye have not returned unto me.
12 Therefore thus will I do to thee, O Israel.
Because I will do this to thee,
Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.
13 For, behold, He that formeth the mountains and createth the wind.
And declareth to man what is his thought,
Who maketh dawn darkness,
And goeth over the high places of the earth,
Jehovah, God of hosts, is his name.
EXGETICAL AND CRITICAL.
1. Amo_4:1-3. Hear this, etc. Plundering and destruction had been threatened; here carrying away is added. They who are threatened are the same as in chap. 3. The comparison to kine of Bashan. i.e., strong, well-fed well agrees with the description of their extortions and their luxurious life in that chapter. They are compared to cows rather than bulls, manifestly because the latter figure would be too dignified for such persons as are intended. Perhaps their effeminacy is also hinted. But it is certainly wrong to understand the expression as meaning specifically the women of Samaria. For nothing characteristic of women is said of the great in general. Nor is the phrase who say to their lords, any objection to this view; for cows have their “lords,” and the term here means the king and the princes under whom the other great men are ranked. So the Targum, Jerome, Calvin, Maurer, and others.
Amo_4:2. The threat is introduced by an oath Jehovah swears by his holiness, for this perfection must desire the punishment of such an unholy life, Your remnant, what has not been dragged away with hooks. To understand this as meaning “posterity,” would require us to consider two generations as included in the punishment threatened, which is a thought foreign to the context.
The breaches in the walls, are those made at the capture of the city. [There will be no need to resort to the gates, for egress will be possible in every direction—C.] As to the much disputed Harmon, all the ancients and most of the moderns take it as a proper name,—Armenia, Rimmon, Hermon, etc. Kimchi, followed by Gesenius, Winer, Henderson, resolves the word by a change of its first letter into the term meaning palace or citadel, and renders “will be cast down as to the palace,” i. e., from it. Dr. Van Dyck in the New Arabic Bible, also takes it as appellative, and renders “to the citadel.”
2. Amo_4:4-5. Go to Bethel, etc. You will not arrest this judgment by your idolatrous worship, eagerly as you may pursue that worship. Such eagerness is only an enlargement of your sins. This thought is expressed in a manner bitterly ironical by a summons to greater zeal. Gilgal was, like Bethel, a seat of idol worship (cf. on Hos_4:15). The whole passage is hyperbolical. “Even if you offered slain offerings every morning and tithe every three days, it would only increase your guilt.”
To the same effect in Amo_4:5 they are told, instead of being content with unleavened cakes, to offer also upon the altar even the leavened loaves which were not required by law to be consumed (Lev_7:13-14). And so with the free-will offerings. Instead of leaving these to spontaneous impulses, they in their exaggerated zeal called out for them, published them. The words, for this liketh you, make a mock of this zeal. But the mock is subsequently turned into earnest. For men surely should not persist in such love and zeal for idolworship, after God had so often punished them for it.
3. Amo_4:6-11. All punishment hitherto had been in vain. This is shown in five instances, each concluding with the sorrowful refrain, and yet ye have not returned unto me, which strikingly display the love of Jehovah, who visits and punishes his people only to prevent the necessity of severer punishment.
(a.) Amo_4:6. And I also, etc. To what they did, the prophet sets in opposition what Jehovah did. Cleanness of teeth, because they had nothing to eat.
(b.) Amo_4:7-8. Withheld the rain when, etc. The latter rain is meant. As this fell in February and March, while the harvest occurred in May and June, the interval was reckoned in round numbers at three months. [“This is utterly ruinous to the hopes of the farmer. A little earlier or a little later would not be so fatal, but drouth three months before harvest is entirely destructive.” The Land and the Book, 2:66.] The withholding of rain is stated as partial, in order to show more distinctly that it was a divine ordering.
(c.) Amo_4:9. The third chastisement was a bad harvest, arising from a blight upon the cereal grains and the destruction of fruits by locusts.
(d.) Amo_4:10. The fourth chastisement was pestilence and war. For the grievous sufferings of Israel in the latter, see 2Ki_8:12; 2Ki_13:3; 2Ki_13:7.
(e.) Amo_4:11. I overthrew, etc. This manifestly does not indicate a new chastisement in addition to the foregoing, but sums them all up in a single utterance. “The comparison of the doom of Ephraim to that of Sodom and Gomorrah, is a general indication of the greatness of their punishment (cf. Isa_1:9). The way in which the destruction of the cities of the plain is spoken of, plainly refers to Gen_19:29, where occurs the word ‘overthrow,’ which became the standing phrase to describe this fearful fate Deu_29:22; Isa_1:7; Isa_13:19; Jer_49:18; Jer_50:40).” (Baur.) As a brand. The emphasis does not lie on the actual escape, but on i he fact that it was so narrow. The phrase vividly depicts the severity of their chastisements itherto; so much the more inexcusable are they or not having returned to the Lord.
4. Amo_4:12-13. Therefore thus will I, etc. Thus, but how is not said. “Thus,” is therefore to be regarded as a general threat, which is so much the more severe, because it is not stated what shall come, so that there is everything to fear. The punishment is indeed generally indicated in this chapter, as also in chapter 3. But the chief point of the chapter is to recall the past hard-heartedness of Israel, not to describe their punishment, since there are only brief references to the judgment already mentioned, the full description of which is resumed in chap. 5. As yet it is only a threat: hence the summons, Prepare, etc., i. e., not to meet your doom, but to avert it by true repentance (cf. Amo_5:4; Amo_5:6). “To give the greater emphasis to this command, Amo_4:13 depicts God as the Almighty and Omniscient who creates prosperity and adversity.” (Keil.) “His thought” does not mean man’s thought, but God’s own, which He makes known by the prophets, i. e., his purpose to punish. [It seems more natural, as it is more in accordance with the uniform usage of the word שִֹׁיח to refer it to man. As Pusey says, “To man, a sinner, far more impressive than all majesty of creative power is the thought that God knows his inmost soul. He declareth unto man his meditation, before he puts it into words.”] Treads upon the high places = rules over all, even the highest of earth. Finally the whole is confirmed by the lofty title of God as God of Hosts.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL.
1. “This discourse (Amo_4:1-3) strikes at those who are in authority and practice violence at court and elsewhere. In them, unrighteousness in act concurs with great looseness in speech. The more violently men deal in matters of office and government, the more viciously do they proceed among their fellows, trying to stifle all humane feeling for others need and all complaints at the wrong that is done. But the more frivolous their talk, the more earnest is God in his counsel and oath against them; and as they have done much for the sake of advancing and enriching their posterity, so the judgment of God strikes them with their posterity.” (Rieger.)
2. “Since the prophet here attacks so severely the heads of the state, we are to consider that if a modern preacher were to do the same, it would be regarded as an insult and a calumny. But if a preacher out of a proper zeal should at times handle somewhat harshly acknowledged public offenders who can be reached in no other way, this is by no means to be deemed an unbecoming insult, for the same reproach would apply to the prophets, to our Lord Himself, and to his Apostles, all of whom often uttered severe language. When in any such case the rebuke aims only at the benefit of the persons concerned, it is not an impropriety or an outrage, but a work of love demanded by the preacher’s office, which is to censure the impenitent. This must he done not only upon the lowly but upon the lofty, and indeed the more upon the latter because thev do so much more harm when they act amiss.” (Wart. Bi.) It is a natural inference that such a thing should be done not in passion nor personal provocation, but really from a holy zeal against sin. But clear as the matter is so far, the more difficult is it in practice. One can only say, Let each man approve himself to God as to his inward feeling. The fear of man should not close the mouth to an open testimony against the high. But it docs not follow that an open mouth is always a token of zeal for God’s honor. Least of all is such a thing found in a mere copying of others, even though they be prophets. Nor should the difference between prophets and the preachers of our day be obliterated. With the courage to bear testimony must be united the courage to suffer on account of such testimony (cf. at chap. 3. Doct. and Eth. 2).
3. They who shamelessly transgress the simplest moral duties, develop along with this course a powerful religious zeal and cannot do enough in worship. An apparent contradiction, yet one confirmed a hundred times by experience; moral corruption and religious bigotry amalgamated! Yet is it altogether natural; the religious form covers over the moral nakedness and quiets the conscience; but this is certainly a horrible delusion. That it was a false worship in which the Israelites were so zealous, enhances their guilt, for it was an apostasy from Jehovah. But even a religiosity which is formally correct, may be used as a cover for wickedness, and be blended with moral corruption. Thus it is well to remember that religious zeal in itself is no proof that all is well.
4. God tries all means before proceeding to extremities. If benefits are not recognized, He sends chastisements. These in the first instance aim not at destruction, but at opening the eyes through the perception of the divine wrath so that men may repent and seek God. They are therefore as much tokens of grace as proofs of wrath. But if this aim is not reached, the forbearance of God ceases, and a decisive judgment steps forth. But this last is something extorted from God, it is against his real disposition; only with reluctance does He resolve upon it. He waits long in the hope that there will be a change and so the last step be unnecessary. Most clearly does the sorrowful love of God shine out from the vivid delineation of the prophet. National calamities, according to our chapter, are to be viewed as chastisements from God. This view does not conflict with the existence of natural causes, but recognizes God as the being in whose service these act. It sees in the course of the world, not the blind mechanism of a clock, but the work of a personal intelligent will, and considers the laws of that course as the thoughts of this will, which rules and governs the whole, the domain of the physical as well as that of the moral and spiritual, and naturally does not leave these to run on merely side by side, but puts them in constant and intimate relation and alternation with each other, so that physical life finds its highest aim in the loftier domain of moral and spiritual life. National calamities are only a lower degree of the revelation of God’s wrath. Heavy as they may be, they endanger only the material conditions of a nation’s life, and that in a superficial way from which there may be a recovery, but they do not imperil its essential being, which consists in its political “independence and freedom.” That a nation is determined to maintain and guard this, that it considers the loss of it the last punishment from God’s hand, comes forth very clearly as the prophet’s view: A nation therefore should defend this against the attack of a foreign foe. But it is equally clear that where the inner conditions, piety and righteousness, no longer exist, there all pains to preserve independence are vain. God gives the power and victory to the foes. What enemies do, that God himself does through them (cf. Amo_2:13; Amo_3:15). Here also there is no denial of the nearer causality, that of the human will. But while man is doing only his own will, he at the same time does the will of God, acts as his instrument, and serves his aims, which are the highest, the only absolute ones.
5. With a short but lofty delineation of God’s transcendent greatness and almighty power, the prophet concludes the chapter, showing that Jehovah is one who speaks with emphasis and can execute his threatenings. It is as beautiful poetically as it is profound theologically. It exhibits an elevation and depth in the conception of God, which permits a very definite conviction as to the strength and clearness of the divine manifestation made to Israel. As thus controlling all things, God is called the God of Hosts. Observe how fond Amos is of this phrase in the vehement outpouring of indignation in the chaps. 3–6, cf. Amo_3:13, Amo_4:13, Amo_5:16; Amo_5:27, Amo_6:8; Amo_6:14. Here Jehovah appears as One who towers above all creaturely existences, who rules the highest spheres of might, against whom therefore nothing can avail, around whom everything stands ready to execute his will. He is not the national God of Israel alone, but the God of the world. Hence He is not merely a natural force which builds and again destroys, but a personal God who acts according to his own “thought,” which He makes known to men. And as such a personal, self-conscious, self-active being, He stands in constant relations with his personal creatures.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
[Amo_4:1. Who oppress the poor. He upbraids them not for fierceness, but for a more delicate and wanton unfeelingness, the fruit of luxury, fullness of head, a life of sense, which destroy all tenderness, dull the mind, deaden the spiritual sense. They did not directly oppress, perhaps did not know that it was done; they sought only that their own thirst for luxury and self-indulgence should be gratified, and knew not, as those at ease often know not now, that their luxuries are continually watered by the tears of the poor, tears shed almost unknown except by the Maker of both. But He counts willful ignorance no excuse. (Pusey.)
Amo_4:2. Behold, days are coming. God’s day and eternity are ever coming. They are holding on their steady course. Men put out of their minds what will come. Therefore God so often in his notices of woe brings to mind that those days are ever coming; they are not a thing which shall be only; in God’s purpose they already are, and with one uniform, steady noiseless tread are coming upon the sinner. (Ibid.)
Amo_4:4. Go to Bethel and sin, etc. Words uttered in bitter irony and indignation, as Ezekiel says (Eze_20:39), “Go ye, serve every one his idols,” and our Lord, “Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers” (Mat_23:32). It is a characteristic of idolatry and schism, to profess extraordinary zeal for God’s worship and go beyond the letter and spirit of his law by arbitrary will-worship and self-idolizing fanaticism. (Wordsworth.)
Amo_4:5. Call out for voluntary offerings, etc. The profuseness of idolaters in the service of their false gods may shame our strait-handedness in the service of the true and living God. (M. Henry.)]
Amo_4:6 ff. Have given you cleanness of teeth, etc. Before, we had a thoughtful appeal to God’s mercies; now his chastisements are enumerated. These are the two chief evidences of God’s approach to a people, a community, a family, or even an individual, in love or in sorrow, and what fruits one or the other has borne (Rieger). [And ye have not returned unto me. By repeating this sorrowful ejaculation four times (Amo_4:6; Amo_4:9-11), God emphatically declares the loving design of his chastisement of Israel. (Wordsworth.)
Amo_4:7-8. The preaching of the Gospel is as rain; God sometimes blesses one place with it more than another; some countries, some cities are like Gideon’s fleece, wet with this dew while the ground around is dry; all withers where this rain is wanting. But it were well if people were but as wise for their souls as they are for their bodies, and, when they have not this rain near them, would go and seek it where it is to be had. If they seek aright, they shall not seek in vain. (M. Henry.)]
Amo_4:9. Of what avail are judgments? Men now are as little influenced by them as Israel of old. They do not believe they are punishments, much less that they are sent for the causes assigned. They deem them accidental, or else invent other causes, and even ascribe droughts, floods, hail, caterpillars, etc., to witchcraft and sorcery, in the face of the Scripture which expressly attributes such plagues to God. (Wurt. Bible.) [Ordinarily, God makes his sun to arise upon the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust, but He does not enslave himself to his own laws. There are variations, and in his Word He reveals to us the meaning of his daily variations in the workings of nature. (Pusey.)
Amo_4:10. After the manner of Egypt. Israel, having sinned like Egypt, was to be punished like Egypt. One of the threatenings in Deuteronomy in case of disobedience was (Deu_28:27), The Lord shall smite thee with the botch of Egypt. (Ibid.)
Amo_4:11. I have overthrown, etc. The earthquake is reserved to the last as the most special visitation, It is at all times the more terrible, because unseen, unannounced, instantaneous, complete. The ground under a man’s feet seems no longer secure, his shelter is his destruction; men’s houses become their graves. War, pestilence, and famine seldom break in at once. The earthquake at once buries it may be, thousands, each stiffened (if it were so), in that his last deed of evil; each household with its own form of misery; each in its separate vault,—dead, dying, crushed, imprisoned. (Ibid.)
Amo_4:12. Thus will I do unto thee. God having said this is silent as to what He will do; that so Israel hanging in suspense as having before him each sort of punishment—which are the more terrible because he imagines them one by one,—may indeed repent, that God inflict not what He threatens. (Jerome.)]
Amo_4:13. He that formeth the mountains, etc. This noble description of God on one hand arouses the conscience to appreciate his threatenings and renounce all vain confidence, and on the other encourages the heart to come again into communion with such a God by sincere conversion. (Rieger.) [If He be such a God as He is here described to be, it is folly to contend with Him, and our duty and interest to make our peace with Him; it is good having Him our friend, and bad having Him our enemy. (M. Henry.)]
Footnotes:
[1]Amo_4:1.—שִׁמעוּ for שְׁמַענָה, because the verb stands first. Cf. Isa_32:11.
[2]Amo_4:2.—נִשָּׂא is Piel, as in 1Ki_9:11. Green’s Grammar, § 164, 2. כִי pleonastic, like the Greek ὅτι, in direct address.
[3]Amo_4:2.—אחרִית׳ is not posterity (Fürst, Henderson), but remnant, “all even to the very last.” Cf. Hengstenberg, Christol., i. 367.]
[4]Amo_4:3.—פְרָצִים is accusative of place.
[5]Amo_4:3.—נֶגְדָּהּ, i.e., without turning to the right or the left.” Cf. Jos_6:5-20.
[6]Amo_4:3.—ה ,הִשְׁלַכתֶנָה—is simply the fall form of the pronoun, added here to obtain a similarity of sound with the preceding verb. The Hiphil form is found in all the MSS. save one, and is defended by Hitzig, Ewald, etc., but as it is very harsh, it is better, with the LXX., Syr., Sym., Vulgate, and Arabic, to take it as Hophal (Jerome, Fürst, Keil, etc.).
[7]Amo_4:3.—ההרמ׳. This hapax legom. is not yet satisfactorily explained, although almost every possible interpretation has been given. The final letter appears to be ה local, and in that case the word indicates the place into which the fugitives are cast. But where that place is none can say; we have only conjectures, for which see Keil and Henderson in loc.
[8]Amo_4:4.—“Gilgal” is in the accusative after “go” understood from the preceding clause. “Every three days,” is the literal rendering adopted by Ibn Esra, Rosenmüller, Maurer, Keil, etc. Kimchi gives it as E. V., and is followed by Henderson. The LXX., Vulgate, and Luther agree with Ibn Esra.
[9]Amo_4:5.—קַטֵר, infin. absol. used for the imper.
[10]Amo_4:5.—“For this liketh you.” This fine archaism seems preferable to the marginal equivalent of the E. V, “So ye love.”]
[11]Amo_4:6.—The first personal pronoun, when separately expressed in Hebrew, is always emphatic; hence the repetition in the version, “I, even I.”]
[12]Amo_4:7.—אַמְטִיר. The imperfects from here on are used as the historical present to give life to the description.
[13]Amo_4:9.—הַרִבוֹת, infin. const. used as a substantive = multitude.
[14]Amo_4:10.—“In the manner of Egypt,” because pestilence is epidemic in Egypt (Isa_10:24-26).
[15]Amo_4:10.—עִמ שְׁבִי is usually explained: “together with the carrying away of your horses,” so that even your horses were carried away. But Keil renders it concrete = the booty, so that even the horses that were captured, perished.
[16]Amo_4:10—וּבְאַפְּכֶם—even into your nostrils, “like as a memorial of their sins” (Hitzig).
[17]Amo_4:13.—עשִֹׁה׳, may be, who turns the dawn into darkness, or, by asyndeton, who makes dawn, darkness. i.e., both. [The latter is preferred by Calvin, is expressed in the LXX., and is said by Henderson to be the reading of more than twenty of Kenmcott’s MSS.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–13 The Lord--the same Hebrew as "masters" (Amo 4:1). Israel's…
The Lord--the same Hebrew as "masters" (Amo 4:1). Israel's nobles say to their master or lord, Bring us drink: but "the Lord" of him and them "hath sworn," &c.
by his holiness--which binds Him to punish the guilty (Psa 89:35).
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he will take yon away--that is God by the instrumentality of the enemy.
with hooks--literally, "thorns" (compare Ch2 33:11). As fish are taken out of the water by hooks, so the Israelites are to be taken out of their cities by the enemy (Eze 29:4; compare Job 41:1-2; Jer 16:16; Hab 1:15). The image is the more appropriate, as anciently captives were led by their conquerors by a hook made to pass through the nose (Kg2 19:28), as is to be seen in the Assyrian remains.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12 1. Hear this word — As in Amo_3:1; Amo_5:1.
1. Hear this word — As in Amo_3:1; Amo_5:1.
Ye kine — Jerome, who was followed by some later writers, understood this to apply to the effeminate nobility, “the rulers of Israel and all the leading men of the ten tribes who spent their time in pleasure and robbery”; others limit it to the nobles condemned in Amo_3:9 ff. However, it is better to understand the words as addressed to the wanton women of Samaria, whose thoughtlessness and luxury had transformed their gentle natures into those of brutes (compare Isa_3:16 ff; Isa_32:9 ff.).
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Bashan — The very fertile district east of the Jordan and north of the Yarmuk, which was rich in pasture land (Mic_7:14; compare Psa_22:12).
Mountain of Samaria — See on Amo_3:9.
Which oppress… crush — Indirectly, by insisting upon the gratification of their appetites, though the means with which to do this had to be secured unjustly. The two verbs are combined in Deu_28:33; 1Sa_12:3-4, etc.
Masters — R.V., “lords”; or, husbands, which is another meaning of the word.
Let us drink — Or, feast, the feasts including drinking and carousing of every sort.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–13 1. Hear this word] Amo_4:1, Amo_5:1.
1. Hear this word] Amo_4:1, Amo_5:1.
ye kine of Bashan] Bashan was the fertile region on the E. of Jordan, bounded on the S. by the Jarmuk, and a line passing through Edrei to Salecah, on the W. by Geshur and Maacah, on the N. extending towards Hermon (cf. Jos_12:1; Jos_12:5), and on the E. as far as the Jebel Hauran, some 40 miles E.S.E. of the Sea of Galilee. The soil of Bashan consists in many parts of a rich disintegrated lava, and is extremely fertile. The name (which here, as usually in Heb., has the article) means probably a stoneless and fertile plain (see Wetzstein in Delitzsch’s Job, ed. 2, pp. 557 f.). Its pasture-grounds are alluded to in Mic_7:14, and its oak-forests (Isa_2:13; Zec_11:2) in Golan on the W., and on the slopes of the Jebel Hauran on the E., are still often mentioned by travellers: its strong and well-nourished herds (Deu_32:14; Eze_39:18) are in Psa_22:12 symbols of the Psalmist’s wild and fierce assailants. The wealthy ladies of Samaria are here called kine of Bashan, because they live a life of purely animal existence, proudly and contentedly going their own way, resenting interference, and intent solely upon their own food and enjoyment.
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which oppress the poor, which crush the needy] The same two words in parallelism, 1Sa_12:3-4, Deu_28:33 : cf. the corresponding substantives, Jer_22:17. The word rendered oppress has often the force of defraud, Lev_19:13, Deu_24:14 (note the context), 1Sa_12:3-4 (where it is so rendered); cf. oppression, Jer_22:17. The wages, or other dues, unjustly withheld from the poor, enabled the ladies of Samaria the more readily to indulge their own luxurious and expensive tastes.
masters] R.V. lords, i.e. husbands (Gen_18:12; Psa_45:11 &c.). They press their husbands to supply them with the means for enjoying a joint carouse.
1–3. The women of Samaria.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 (1) Bashan.—This contained the rich pasture-lands east of the…
(1) Bashan.—This contained the rich pasture-lands east of the Jordan, between Hermon and the mountains of Gilead, where cattle flourished. The “strong bulls of Bashan” (Psa_22:12) were descriptive of the malignant enemies of the ideal sufferer. The feminine “kine” refers to the luxurious self-indulgent women of fashion in Samaria.
Which say to their masters (i.e., their husbands), Bring, and let us drink.—Their very debauch being paid for by the robbery of the poor. Some regard the feminines as sarcastic epithets, merely expressing effeminacy on the part of men. But this is not a probable explanation.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–13 Vers. 1-13. Second address. The prophet reproves the voluptuous…
Vers. 1-13. Second address. The prophet reproves the voluptuous women of Samaria, and fortells their captivity (vers. 1-3); with bitter irony he describes the peoples devotion to idolatry (vers. 4, 5): he shows how incorrigible they have proved themselves under Gods chastisements (vers. 6-11); therefore they must expect further punishment, if so be that they will learn to fear the Lord (vers. 12, 13).
The very women are leaders in dissoluteness and oppression. Ye kine of Bashan. Fat and well liking, such as the rich pastures of Bashan produce. Some have supposed that by this term are meant the luxurious nobles of Samaria, who are called "cows" as being effeminate and licentious. This is possible; but such grandees would be called rather "bulls of Bashan," and the "masters" mentioned just below signify more naturally these women"s husbands than the kings. Pussy notes that the genders in the sentence are interchanged. "Hear ye," your Lord," "upon you," "they shall take you," being masculine; that oppress," that crush," that say," your posterity," ye shall go out," each before her," ye shall cast," feminine. Evidently the prophet addresses his reproaches to the luxurious of both sexes, though he begins with the women. The land of Bashan extended from Hermon to the Jabbok, including Gaulonitis, Auronitis, Batauea, and Trachonitis. It was always famous for its pasturage, cattle, and oaks. The Vulgate takes the term as metaphorical, and has, vaccae pingues. So Symmachus, boev eutrofoi, which translation Jerome adopts. Mountain of Samaria. The hill of Shomer, on which Samaria was built. (see note on Amo_3:9) Oppress the poor. This they did in ministering, or getting their husbands to minister, to their luxury and debauchery. Apparently they urged their husbands to violence and fraud in order to obtain means to satisfy their extravagance. A bad woman is thoroughly unscrupulous (see the case of Ahab and Naboth,. (1Ki_21:7, etc.) Their masters; their lords; i.e. husbands. (comp. Gen_18:12; 1Pe_3:6) Bring, and let us drink. They invite their husbands to supply the means of debauchery and to join in their revels.
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HOMILETICS.
Vers. 1-3.
The woes of the women at ease.
By a contemptuous and striking figure, the women of Samaria are styled the "kine of Bashan." They were as kine, unmindful of the past, unheeding of the future, their attention limited to the present, and living in it only the life of sense. They were as Bashan"s kine, wandering in richest pastures, overfed, indulged, and pampered, and therefore waxed voluptuous and wanton. In explanation of the special reference to them, observe
I THAT THE WOMEN OF A NATION ARE ALWAYS MORE OR LESS RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS SINS. This appears from the fact that:
1. They reflect the national character. Soft, and easily receptive of influence, whether good or bad, the female character is, to a greater extent than the male, a compound tincture of the prevailing qualities of the land and time. It is natural that, as reflecting the national sin, the women will be obnoxious to national punishment.
2. They form the national character. They have earliest, most constant, and most affectionate access to the young. They influence character at its softest and most pliant stage, and they approach it, moreover, on its softest side. Reflecting national character so truly, and impressing this so inevitably on the rising generation, it is through them chiefly that good or evil becomes hereditary in society.
O woman, nature made thee To temper man.
The "tempering" is oftener for good than ill, converting into porcelain the common clay, purifying and ennobling all she comes near.
Woman"s empire, holier, more refined, Moulds, moves, and sways the fallen yet God-breathed mind.
But if she reigns as the devil"s vicegerent, if the influences that go forth from her tend to the enthronement of corruption and wrong, she must be deposed as a matter of policy, and punished as a matter of justice. (Isa_3:16-24 Isa_32:9-13)
II A COURSE THAT INVOLVES EVIL IS AS GUILTY BEFORE GOD AS A COURSE THAT INFLICTS IT. The evil a woman does outside her family circle is largely indirect. Of the women of Israel it appears that:
1. They were self-indulgent at the necessary expense of the poor. "Which oppress the humble, which crush the needy." This would sometimes be done directly, but generally through the agency of the men. A luxurious mistress often makes a hard and oppressive master. Her extravagant demands must be met by an increased income, and that is only too likely to be sought in exactions from the dependent poor. Let it be in overcharged dues or in underpaid work, in every case the luxury that forces on the demand is responsible for the evils of the enforced supply. "Those at ease often know not that their luxuries are continually watered by the tears of the poor but God counts wilful ignorance no excuse" (Pusey). Hood"s stanza, addressed to men, is doubly pertinent to women.
O men with sisters dear! O men with mothers and wives! It is not linen you"re wearing out, But human creatures" lives.
The self-indulgence of the women of Israel meant really the grinding of the poor, out of whose poverty "their lords" were; driven to wring the means of carrying on their shameful excesses.
1. They encouraged their husbands in self-indulgence. "Bring, and let us drink." This was a doubling of the evil. They not only did wrong, but tempted others to do it. They wasted much, and procured the wasting of more. They were at pains to increase the number of harpies who would gorge themselves on the hard earnings of the poor.
2. This was not an isolated act, but a habit. "Oppress" is equivalent to "are continually oppressing." Luxury had settled irate a chronic social evil. The demand for fuel to feed the fire of indulgence was constant. It was a cancer eating out the well being of society continually, and devouring, generation after generation, the inheritance of the poor. The evil of it smelled rank to Heaven, and the guilt of it clamoured for punishment.
III GOD"S OUTRAGED PERFECTIONS ARE THE GUARANTEE OF THE SINNER"S PUNISHMENT. "The Lord Jehovah hath sworn by his holiness." The occasions of God"s action are often supplied by men, but the grounds of it are in himself in the perfections of his character and the purposes of his will.
1. Holiness is Gods characteristic quality. There is a universal ascription of it to him in Scripture (Exo_15:11; Isa_6:1-3 Isa_57:15; Hab_1:13) Absolutely his "name is holy;" relatively he is the "Holy One of Israel." This holiness is an infinite contrariety to all that is morally impure. It characterizes all his other perfections, and is, in this aspect, not so much a distinct attribute as the blending together of them all. Administratively, he swears by his holiness, and sits upon the throne of his holiness; (Psa_89:35 Psa_47:8) believers are the people of his holiness, and heaven the habitation of his holiness; (Isa_63:18, Isa_63:15) whilst a synonym for the consecrated life is "holiness to the Lord.
2. God"s holiness was the quality specially profaned. (Amo_2:7) It was to profane his holy Name that they had sinned. The perfection specially sinned against is naturally the one to be vindicated. "He pledges his own holiness that he will avenge their unholiness (Pusey). Jealous of all his perfections, the one our conduct tends to obscure or hurt is the one God will most emphatically illustrate and glorify.
3. Holiness is the quality that makes punishment of sin inevitable. It is the recoil of God"s infinitely pure nature from moral evil. It is the expression and sum of an essential and external antagonism to it. It is incompatible with impurity as light is with darkness, and its necessary and natural action toward it is destructive. Fundamentally it is because God is holy that he punishes, and must punish, sin.
IV THE SINNER"S PUNISHMENT WHEN IT COMES WILL MATCH AND SQUARE WITH HIS SIN. (Vers. 2, 3.) Here the dovetailing of retribution with crime is very complete. There would be:
1. Deportation from luxurious scenes. "I will take you away." The indulgences become habitual would be violently interrupted. The luxurious and vicious tastes, developed into tremendous strength by long continued sensuality, would be deprived of their gratification. Instead of the high living, become by long enjoyment a thing of course, and a necessity of their life, they would have the coarse and scanty fare of slaves. To visit with want and bondage, when habits of rule and luxury have become a second nature, is a judgment bitterly felt.
2. This in a violent and painful manner. "With hooks." The figure is drawn from fishing. The drawing out of the fish by means of a hook is always painful, and is rendered doubly so by its resistance. So with the soft and delicately nurtured women of Samaria in the hands of a rough and brutal soldiery. They would suffer as a fish transfixed by a barbed hook, and their former luxury would be in a sense its own avenger.
3. This to the last one. "And your last one with fish hooks." Not one should escape. God"s judgments are particular. He does not visit people in the mass, but individuals. Not a cow but would feel the cut of the drover"s whip, and experience the famine pangs of the scanty pasture.
4. This in connections with their own lusts as auxiliaries. The hook that draws out the fish has been baited for it, and voluntarily swallowed, though under a wrong impression. In heathen luxury and dissolution the Hebrew women found a bait which they swallowed greedily. Now they should find that, with the bait, they had swallowed also a cruel hook, which would draw them away to suffer evils worse than they had themselves inflicted. "And be cast away to Harman" (Authorized Version, "into the palace"), i.e. probably Armenia (see Pusey). Here, being used to minister to heathenish luxury and lust, they would be victims in the matter in which they had been so long the victimizers of others. There is a nameless cruelty in debauchery, which only the victims of it know. This, with the added burden of heathen horrors, the delicate and pampered Israelitish women would now suffer. Their punishment would rise upon them in familiar shape, the resurrection of their own sin.
5. The bovine stolidity of their prosperous days would make them helplessas driven cattle in the day of calamity. "In the wall ye shall go out every one before her," i.e. "as a herd of cows go one after another through a gap in the fence" (Pusey). The level of intelligence goes down with the level of morality. The penalty of living the brutes" life of sense is a weakening of the heavenly gift of reason, by which we are distinguished from them.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13 Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are…
Amo_4:1-3
Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria.
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God the champion of the oppressed
I. The character of these men. Ye kine of Bashan, etc. The feminine, kine, marks their effeminacy; the reference to Bashan, where the richest pasture-land of Israel lay, shows that they had grown fat with luxurious living. It is not rare to find such men the most unscrupulous and cruel Here they are seen in characteristic fashion oppressing the poor, crushing the needy (Amo_2:6-7), and crying out for new gratification of the!r lusts. Bring, and let us drink.
II. Their punishment.
1. The Certainty of this is assured by an oath. The Lord hath sworn by His holiness. Such men were a fester in the creation of God, an offence to His love for purity. God had espoused the cause of the poor and taken them under His wing. His holiness forbade Him to keep any truce with such men.
2. The punishment is both complete and ignominious. Every one should seek to escape by the nearest breach in the walls, and as God threatened to do with Sennacherib (2Ki_19:28), these luxurious nobles should be taken away with hooks, and their posterity with fish-hooks. The oppressor must reckon with the great Champion of the oppressed. (J. Telford, B. A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On vv3–4 Amos 3- Amo_4:3
CIVILIZATION AND JUDGMENT
Amos 3- Amo_4:3
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WE now enter the Second Section of the Book of Amos: chapters 3-6. It is a collection of various oracles of denunciation, grouped partly by the recurrence of the formula "Hear this word," which stands at the head of our present chapters 3, 4, and 5, which are therefore probably due to it; partly by two cries of "Woe" at Amo_5:18 and Amo_6:1; and also by the fact that each of the groups thus started leads up to an emphatic, though not at first detailed, prediction of the nations doom. {Amo_3:13-15; Amo_4:3; Amo_4:12; Amo_5:16-17; Amo_5:26-27; Amo_6:14} Within these divisions lie a number of short indictments, sentences of judgment, and the like, which have no further logical connection than is supplied by their general sameness of subject, and a perceptible increase of articulateness from beginning to end of the Section. The sins of Israel are more detailed, and the judgment of war, coming from the North, advances gradually till we discern the unmistakable ranks of Assyria. But there are various parentheses and interruptions, which cause the student of the text no little difficulty. Some of these, however, may be only apparent: it will always be a question whether their want of immediate connection with what precedes them is not due to the loss of several words from the text rather than to their own intrusion into it. Of others it is true that they are obviously out of place as they lie; their removal brings together verses which evidently belong to each other. Even such parentheses, however, may be from Amos himself. It is only where a verse, besides interrupting the argument, seems to reflect a historical situation later than the prophets day, that we can be sure it is not his own. And in all this textual criticism we must keep in mind that the obscurity of the present text of a verse, so far from being an adequate proof of its subsequent insertion, may be the very token of its antiquity, scribes or translators of later date having been unable to understand it. To reject a verse, only because we do not see the connection, would surely be as arbitrary as the opposite habit of those who, missing a connection, invent one, and then exhibit their artificial joint as evidence of the integrity of the whole passage. In fact we must avoid all headstrong surgery, for to a great extent we work in the dark.
The general subject of the Section may be indicated by the title: Religion and Civilization. A vigorous community, wealthy, cultured, and honestly religious, are, at a time of settled peace and growing power, threatened, in the name of the God of justice, with their complete political overthrow. Their civilization is counted for nothing; their religion, on which they base their confidence, is denounced as false and unavailing. These two subjects are not, and could not have been, separated by the prophet in any one of his oracles. But in the first, the briefest, and most summary of these, chapters 3-4:3, it is mainly with the doom of the civil structure of Israels life that Amos deals; and it will be more convenient for us to take them first, with all due reference to the echoes of them in later parts of the Section. From Amo_4:4-6. it is the Religion and its false peace which he assaults; and we shall take that in the next chapter. First, then, Civilization and Judgment (Amos 3-4:3); second, The False Peace of Ritual (Amo_4:4-6).
These few brief oracles open upon the same note as that in which the previous Section closed-that the crimes of Israel are greater than those of the heathen; and that the peoples peculiar relation to God means, not their security, but their greater judgment. It is then affirmed that Israels wealth and social life are so sapped by luxury and injustice that the nation must perish. And, as in every luxurious community the women deserve especial blame, the last of the group of oracles is reserved for them. {Amo_4:1-3}
"Hear this word, which Jehovah hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt"
- Judah as well as North Israel, so that we see the vanity of a criticism which would cast out of the Book of Amos as unauthentic every reference to Judah. "Only you have I known of all the families of the ground"-not world, but "ground," purposely chosen to stamp the meanness and mortality of them all-"therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities."
This famous text has been called by various writers "the keynote," "the license," and "the charter" of prophecy. But the names are too petty for what is not less than the fulmination of an element. It is a peal of thunder we hear. It is, in a moment, the explosion and discharge of the full storm of prophecy. As when from a burst cloud the streams immediately below rise suddenly and all their banks are overflowed, so the prophecies that follow surge and rise clear of the old limits of Israels faith by the unconfined, unmeasured flood of heavens justice that breaks forth by this single verse. Now, once for all, are submerged the lines of custom and tradition within which the course of religion has hitherto flowed; and, as it were, the surface of the world is altered. It is a crisis which has happened more than once again in history: when helpless man has felt the absolute relentlessness of the moral issues of life; their renunciation of the past, however much they have helped to form it; their sacrifice of every development however costly, and of every hope however pure; their deafness to prayer, their indifference to penitence; when no faith saves a Church, no courage a people, no culture or prestige even the most exalted order of men; but at the bare hands of a judgment, uncouth of voice and often unconscious of a Divine mission, the results of a great civilization are for its sins swept remorselessly away.
Before the storm bursts, we learn by its lightnings some truths from the old life that is to be destroyed. "You only have I known of all the families of the ground: therefore will I visit your iniquities upon you." Religion is no insurance against judgment, no mere atonement and escape from consequences. Escape! Religion is only opportunity-the greatest moral opportunity which men have, and which if they violate nothing remains for them but a certain fearful looking forward unto judgment. You only have I known; and because you did not take the moral advantage of My intercourse, because you felt it only as privilege and pride, pardon for the past and security for the future, therefore doom the more inexorable awaits you.
Then as if the people had interrupted him with the question, What sign do you give us that this judgment is near?-Amos goes aside into that noble digression (Amo_3:3-8) on the harmony between the prophets word and the imminent events of the time, which we have already studied. From this apologia, Amo_3:9 returns to the note of Amo_3:1-2 and develops it. Not only is Israels responsibility greater than that of other peoples. Her crimes themselves are more heinous. "Make proclamation over the palaces in Ashdod"-if we are not to read Assyria here, then the name of Ashdod has perhaps been selected from all other heathen names because of its similarity to the Hebrew word for that "violence" with which Amos is charging the people-"and over the palaces of the land of Egypt, and say, Gather upon the Mount of Samaria and see! Confusions manifold in the midst of her; violence to her very core! Yea, they know not how to do uprightness, saith Jehovah, who store up wrong and violence in their palaces."
"To their crimes," said the satirist of the Romans, "they owe their gardens, palaces, stables, and fine old plate." And William Langland declared of the rich English of his day:-"For toke thei on trewly they tymbred not so height Ne boughte non burgages be ye full certayne."
"Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Siege and Blockade of the Land. And they shall bring down from off thee thy fortresses, and plundered shall be thy palaces." Yet this shall be no ordinary, tide of Eastern war, to ebb like the Syrian as it flowed, and leave the nation to rally on their land again. For Assyria devours the peoples. "Thus saith Jehovah: As the shepherd saveth from the mouth of the lion a pair of shinbones or a bit of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be saved-they who sit in Samaria in the corner of the diwan and on a couch." The description, as will be seen from the note below, is obscure. Some think it is intended to satirize a novel and affected fashion of sitting adopted by the rich. Much more probably it means that carnal security in the luxuries of civilization which Amos threatens more than once in similar phrases. The corner of the diwan is in Eastern houses the seat of honor. To this desert shepherd, with only the hard ground to rest on, the couches and ivory-mounted diwans of the rich must have seemed the very symbols of extravagance. But the pampered bodies that loll their lazy lengths upon them shall be left like the crumbs of a lions meal-"two shin-bones and the bit of an ear!" Their whole civilization shall perish with them. "Hearken and testify against the house of Israel-oracle of the Lord Jehovah, God of Hosts"-those addressed are still the heathen summoned in Amo_3:14-15. "For on the day when I visit the crimes of Israel upon him, I shall then make visitation upon the altars of Bethel, and the horns of the altar," which men grasp in their last despair, "shall be smitten and fall to the earth. And I will strike the winter-house upon the summer-house, and the ivory houses Shall perish, yea, swept away shall be houses many-oracle of Jehovah."
But the luxury of no civilization can be measured without its women, and to the women of Samaria Amos now turns with the most scornful of all his words. "Hear this word"-this for you-"kine of Bashan that are in the mount of Samaria, that oppress the poor, that crush the needy, that say to their lords, Bring, and let us drink. Sworn hath the Lord Jehovah by His holiness, lo, days are coming when there shall be a taking away of you with hooks, and of the last of you with fish-hooks." They put hooks in the nostrils of unruly cattle, and the figure is often applied to human captives; but so many should these cattle of Samaria be that for the "last of them fish-hooks" must be used. "Yea, by the breaches" in the wall of the stormed city "shall ye go out, every one headlong, and ye shall be cast oracle of Jehovah." It is a cowherds rough picture of women: a troop of kine-heavy, heedless animals, trampling in their anxiety for food upon every frail and lowly object in the way. But there is a prophets insight into character. Not of Jezebels, or Messalinas, or Lady Macbeths is it spoken, but of the ordinary matrons of Samaria. Thoughtlessness and luxury are able to make brutes out of women of gentle nurture, with homes and a religion.
Such are these three or four short oracles of Amos. They are probably among his earliest-the first peremptory challenges of prophecy to, that great stronghold which before forty years she is to see thrown down in obedience to her word. As yet, however, there seems to be nothing to justify the menaces of Amos. Fair and stable rises the structure of Israels life. A nation, who know themselves elect; who in politics are prosperous and in religion proof to every doubt, build high their palaces, see the skies above them unclouded, and bask in their pride, heavens favorites without an ear. This man, solitary and sudden from his desert, springs upon them in the name of God and their poor. Straighter word never came from Deity: "Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" The insight of it, the justice of it, are alike convincing. Yet at first it appears as if it were sped on the personal and very human passion of its herald. For Amos not only uses the deserts cruelties-the lions to the sheep-to figure Gods impending judgment upon His people, but he enforces the latter with all a desert-bred mans horror of cities and civilization. It is their costly furniture, their lavish and complex building, on which he sees the storm break. We seem to hear again that frequent phrase of the previous section: "the fire shall devour the palaces thereof." The palaces, he says, are simply storehouses of oppression; the palaces will be plundered. Here, as throughout his book, couches and diwans draw forth the scorn of a man accustomed to the simple furniture of the tent. But observe his especial hatred of houses. Four times in one verse he smites them: "winter-house on summer-house and the ivory houses shall perish-yea, houses manifold, saith the Lord." So in another oracle of the same section: "Houses of ashlar ye have built, and ye shall not inhabit them; vineyards of delight have ye planted, and ye shall not drink of their wine." {Amo_5:11} And in another: "I loathe the pride of Jacob, and his palaces I hate; and I will give up a city and all that is in it For, lo, the Lord is about to command, and He will smite the great house into ruins and the small house into splinters." {Amo_6:8; Amo_6:11} No wonder that such a prophet found war with its breached walls insufficient, and welcomed, as the full ally of his word, the earthquake itself.
Yet all this is no mere desert razzia in the name of the Lord, a nomads hatred of cities and the culture of settled men. It is not a temper; it is a vision of history. In the only argument which these early oracles contain, Amos claims to have events on the side of his word. "Shall the lion roar and not be catching" something? Neither does the prophet speak till he knows that God is ready to act. History accepted this claim. Amos spoke about 755. In 734 Tiglath-Pileser swept Gilead and Galilee; in 724 Shalmaneser overran the rest of Northern Israel: "siege and blockade of the whole land!" For three years the Mount of Samaria was invested, and then taken; the houses overthrown, the rich and the delicate led away captive. It happened as Amos foretold; for it was not the shepherds rage within him that spoke. He had "seen the Lord standing, and He said, Smite."
But this assault of a desert nomad upon the structure of a nations life raises many echoes in history and some questions in our own minds today. Again and again have civilizations far more powerful than Israels been threatened by the desert in the name of God, and in good faith it has been proclaimed by the prophets of Christianity and other religions that Gods kingdom cannot come on earth till the wealth, the culture, the civil order, which men have taken centuries to build, have been swept away by some great political convulsion. Today Christianity herself suffers the same assaults, and is told by many, the high life and honest intention of whom cannot be doubted, that till the civilization which she has so much helped to create is destroyed, there is no hope for the purity or the progress of the race. And Christianity, too, has doubts within herself. What is the world which our Master refused in the Mount of Temptation, and so often and so sternly told us that it must perish?-how much of our wealth, of our culture, of our politics, of the whole fabric of our society? No thoughtful and religious man, when confronted with civilization, not in its ideal, but in one of those forms which give it its very name, the life of a large city, can fail to ask, How much of this deserves the judgment of God? How much must be overthrown, before His will is done on earth? All these questions rise in the ears and the heart of a generation, which more than any other has been brought face to face with the ruins of empires and civilizations, which have endured longer, and in their day seemed more stable, than her own.
In face of the confused thinking and fanatic speech which have risen on all such topics, it seems to me that the Hebrew prophets supply us with four cardinal rules.
First, of course, they insist that it is the moral question upon which the fate of a civilization is, decided. By what means has the system grown? Is justice observed in essence as well as form? Is there freedom, or is the prophet silenced? Does luxury or self-denial prevail? Do the rich make life hard for the poor? Is childhood sheltered and is innocence respected? By these, claim the prophets, a nation stands or falls; and history has proved the claim on wider worlds than they dreamt of.
But by themselves moral reasons are never enough to justify a prediction of speedy doom upon any system or society. None of the prophets began to foretell the fall of Israel till they read, with keener eyes than their contemporaries, the signs of it in current history. And this, I take it, was the point which made a notable difference between them, and one who like them scourged the social wrongs of his civilization, yet never spoke a word of its fall. Juvenal nowhere calls down judgments, except upon individuals. In his time there were no signs of the decline of the empire, even though, as he marks, there was a flight from the capital of the virtue which was to keep the empire alive. But the prophets had political proof of the nearness of Gods judgment, and they spoke in the power of its coincidence with the moral corruption of their people.
Again, if conscience and history (both of them, to the prophets, being witnesses of God) thus combine to announce the early doom of a civilization, neither the religion that may-have helped to build it, nor any remnant virtue in it, nor its ancient value to God, can avail to save. We are tempted to judge that the long and costly development of ages is cruelly thrown away by the convulsion and collapse of an empire; it feels impious to think that the patience, the providence, the millennial discipline of the Almighty are to be in a moment abandoned to some rude and savage force. But we are wrong. "You only have I known of all the families of the ground," yet I must "visit upon you your iniquities." Nothing is too costly for justice. And God finds some other way of conserving the real results of the past.
Again, it is a corollary of all this, that the sentence upon civilization must often seem to come by voices that are insane, and its execution by means that are criminal. Of course, when civilization is arraigned as a whole, and its overthrow demanded, there may be nothing behind the attack but jealousy or greed, the fanaticism of ignorant men or the madness of disordered lives. But this is not necessarily the case. For God has often in history chosen the outsider as the herald of doom, and sent the barbarian as its instrument. By the statesmen and patriots of Israel, Amos must have been regarded as a mere savage, with a savages hate of civilization. But we know what he answered when Amaziah called him rebel. And it was not only for its suddenness that the apostles said the "day of the Lord should come as a thief," but also because of its methods. For over and over again has doom been pronounced, and pronounced truly, by men who in the eyes of civilization were criminals and monsters.
Now apply these four principles to the question of ourselves. It will scarcely be denied that our civilization tolerates, and in part lives by, the existence of vices which, as we all admit, ruined the ancient empires. Are the political possibilities of overthrow also present? That there exist among us means of new historic convulsions is a thing hard for us to admit. But the signs cannot be hid. When we see the jealousies of the Christian peoples, and their enormous preparations for battle; the arsenals of Europe which a few sparks, may blow up; the millions of soldiers one mans word may mobilize; when we imagine the opportunities which a general war would furnish to the discontented masses of the European proletariat-we must surely acknowledge the existence of forces capable of inflicting calamities, so severe as to affect not merely this nationality or that type of culture, but the very vigor and progress of civilization herself; and all this without our looking beyond Christendom, or taking into account the rise of the yellow races to a consciousness of their approach to equality with ourselves. If, then, in the eyes of the Divine justice Christendom merits judgment, -if life continue to be left so hard to the poor; if innocence be still an impossibility for so much of the childhood of the Christian nations; if with so many of the leaders of civilization prurience be lifted to the level of an art, and licentiousness followed as a cult; if we continue to pour the evils of our civilization upon the barbarian, and "the vices of our young nobles," to paraphrase Juvenal, "are aped in" Hindustan, -then let us know that the means of a judgment more awful than any which has yet scourged a delinquent civilization are extant and actual among us. And if one should reply, that our Christianity makes all the difference, that God cannot undo the development of nineteen centuries, or cannot overthrow the peoples of His Son, -let us remember that God does justice at whatever cost; that as He did not spare Israel at the hands of Assyria, so He did not spare Christianity in the East when the barbarians of the desert found her careless and corrupt. "You only have I known of all the families of the ground, therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities."
THE PROBLEM THAT AMOS LEFT
AMOS was a preacher of righteousness almost wholly in its judicial and punitive offices. Exposing the moral conditions of society in his day, emphasizing on the one hand its obduracy and on the other the intolerableness of it, he asserted that nothing could avert the inevitable doom-neither Israels devotion to Jehovah nor Jehovahs interest in Israel. "You alone have I known of all the families of the ground: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." The visitation was to take place in war and in the captivity of the people. This is practically the whole message of the prophet Amos.
That he added to it the promise of restoration which now closes his book, we have seen to be extremely improbable. Yet even if that promise is his own, Amos does not tell us how the restoration is to be brought about. With Wonderful insight and patience he has traced the captivity of Israel to moral causes. But he does not show what moral change in the exiles is to justify their restoration, or by what means such a moral change is to be effected. We are left to infer the conditions and the means of redemption from the principles which Amos enforced while there yet seemed time to pray for the doomed people: "Seek the Lord and ye shall live." (Amo_5:4) According to this, the moral renewal of Israel must precede their restoration; but the prophet seems to make no great effort to effect the renewal. In short Amos illustrates the easily-forgotten truth that a preacher to the conscience is not necessarily a preacher of repentance.
Of the great antitheses between which religion moves, Law and Love, Amos had therefore been the prophet of Law. But we must not imagine that the association of Love with the Deity was strange to him. This could not be to any Israelite who remembered the past of his people-the romance of their origins and early struggles for freedom. Israel had always felt the grace of their God; and unless we be wrong about the date of the great poem in the end of Deuteronomy, they had lately celebrated that grace in lines of exquisite beauty and tenderness:-
"He found him in a desert land, In a waste and a howling wilderness. He compassed him about, cared for him, Kept him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirreth up his nest, Fluttereth over his young, Spreadeth his wings, taketh them, Beareth them up on his pinions-So Jehovah alone led him."
The patience of the Lord with their waywardness and their stubbornness had been the ethical influence on Israels life at a time when they had probably neither code of law nor system of doctrine. "Thy gentleness," as an early Psalmist says for his people, "Thy gentleness hath made me great." {Psalms 18} Amos is not unaware of this ancient grace of Jehovah. But he speaks of it in a fashion which shows that he feels it to be exhausted and without hope for his generation "I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorites. And I raised up of your sons for prophets and of your young men for Nazarites." {Amo_2:10} But this can now only fill the cup of the nations sin. "You alone have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." {Amo_3:2} Jehovahs ancient Love but strengthens now the justice and the impetus of His Law.
We perceive, then, the problem which Amos left to prophecy. It was not to discover Love in the Deity whom he had so absolutely identified with Law. The Love of God needed no discovery among a people with the Deliverance, the Exodus, the Wilderness, and the Gift of the Land in their memories. But the problem was to prove in God so great and new a mercy as was capable of matching that Law, which the abuse of His millennial gentleness now only the more fully justified. There was needed a prophet to arise with as keen a conscience of Law as Amos himself, and yet affirm that Love was greater still; to admit that Israel were doomed, and yet promise their redemption by processes as reasonable and as ethical as those by which the doom had been rendered inevitable. The prophet of Conscience had to be followed by the prophet of Repentance.
Such a one was found in Hosea, the son of Beeri, a citizen and probably a priest of Northern Israel, whose very name, Salvation, the synonym of Joshua and of Jesus, breathed the larger hope, which it was his glory to bear to his people. Before we see how for this task Hosea was equipped with the love and sympathy which Amos lacked, let us do two things. Let us appreciate the magnitude of the task itself, set to him first of prophets; and let us remind ourselves that, greatly as he achieved it, the task was not one which could be achieved even by him once for all, but that it presents itself to religion again and again in the course of her development.
For the first of these duties, it is enough to recall how much all subsequent prophecy derives from Hosea. We shall not exaggerate if we say that there is no truth uttered by later prophets about the Divine Grace, which we do not find in germ in him. Isaiah of Jerusalem was a greater statesman and a more powerful writer, but he had not Hoseas tenderness and insight into motive and character. Hoseas marvelous sympathy both with the people and with God is sufficient to foreshadow every grief, every hope, every gospel, which make the Books of Jeremiah and the great Prophet of the Exile exhaustless in their spiritual value for mankind. These others explored the kingdom of God: it was Hosea who took it by storm. {Mat_11:12} He is the first prophet of Grace, Israels earliest Evangelist; yet with as keen a sense of law, and of the inevitableness of ethical discipline, as Amos himself.
But the task which Hosea accomplished was not one that could be accomplished once for all. The interest of his book is not merely historical. For so often as a generation is shocked out of its old religious ideals, as Amos shocked Israel, by a realism and a discovery of law, which have no respect for ideals, however ancient and however dear to the human heart, but work their own pitiless way to doom inevitable; so often must the Book of Hosea have a practical value for living men. At such a crisis we stand today. The older Evangelical assurance, the older Evangelical ideals have to some extent been rendered impossible by the realism to which the sciences, both physical and historical, have most healthily recalled us, and by their wonderful revelation of Law working through nature and society without respect to our creeds and pious hopes. The question presses: Is it still possible to believe in repentance and conversion, still possible to preach the power of God to save, whether the individual or society, from the forces of heredity and of habit? We can at least learn how Hosea mastered the very similar problem which Amos left to him, and how, with a moral realism no less stern than his predecessor and a moral standard every whit as high, he proclaimed Love to be the ultimate element in religion; not only because it moves man to a repentance and God to a redemption more sovereign than any law; but because if neglected or abused, whether as love of man or love of God, it enforces a doom still more inexorable than that required by violated truth or by outraged justice. Love our Savior, Love our almighty and unfailing Father, but, just because of this, Love our most awful Judge-we turn to the life and the message in which this eternal theme was first unfolded.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 6, 12 CRITICAL NOTES.] Kine] Fat and wanton, yet effeminate and…
CRITICAL NOTES.] Kine] Fat and wanton, yet effeminate and luxuriant; reproved not for fierceness, but unfeeling insolence and oppression. Say]
(1) Wives here intended, voluptuous women after the analogy of Isa_3:16; Isa_32:9-13. “The sin of these women consisted in the tyrannical oppression of the poor, whilst they asked their lords, i.e. their husbands, to procure them the means of debauchery” [Keil].
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(2) Others, princely oppressors, who say to their king, with whom they indulge in drink, and whom they ask to seal the bargain with wine. Oppress] Lit. continually oppress. Crush] Heb. expresses vehemence.
Amo_4:2. Holiness] which binds him to punish (Psa_89:35). Hooks] Invaders and spoilers compared to fishers (Jer_16:16; Heb_1:14).
Amo_4:3. Breaches] of city walls broken by the enemy. Every] one before her, i.e. without looking to right or left (cf. Jos_6:5; Jos_6:20), as cows through a gap or fence. Cast] “The word may describe the headlong motion of the animal, and the desperate gestures of the hopeless” [pusey].
HOMILETICS
SAD PICTURES OF HUMAN LIFE.—Amo_4:1-3
Punishment is the leading thought in chap. 3, but in this sin is the prominent thought, and its consequences incidental to prove its exceeding sinfulness. Civil injustice and oppression were very common. The king and his ministers are spoken of in terms of contempt, for sharp rebuke often becomes an imperative duty.
I. Insolent abuse of prosperity. Bashan was a place of rich soil and pasturage (Mic_7:14; Jer_50:19). Animals fed there were among the strongest and fattest (Deu_32:14). Bulls furnished a type of the mighty, fierce, and unfeeling men of earth; kine may indicate the luxury and effeminacy of men or women—a life of wantonness and brutish feeling. Amos points out the princes and judges as ringleaders in provocation and insolence. They grew fat and prosperous, abused their place and power, and made themselves base and contemptible. In their pleasure and grandeur they despised the herdman and the poor. They thought more highly of themselves than they ought to do. Like beasts, they found their enjoyments in self-indulgence and luxury. Men who wallow in riches and surfeit themselves in pleasure fatten themselves for slaughter. Those who live a brutish life will die a brutish death. Men in worldly honour, without true wisdom, are worse than beasts that perish. Their eminence is their peril, and their fall is disgraceful. “Man that is in honour and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish.”
II. Might ruling over right. Men in prosperity and high rank often become extravagant and tyrannical. They lose the tenderness of their own, and have no sympathy with the nature of others. Might overcomes right.
1. In oppressing the poor. The poor are always with us to kindle our sympathies, teach our dependence, and fulfil the purpose of God. In true philanthropy there is present blessedness and godlike action. “Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.” The poor must be defended, provided for, and not oppressed. They are not of a lower grade than ourselves If we mock or oppress them we reproach God. “He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker.”
2. In crushing the needy. Society is a medium for illustrating the attributes of humanity, and building up the moral history of the world. It is composed of all classes, and bound together by all ties. He who is charitable to the needy exhibits moral likeness to God, and administers to the glory of Christ in heaven (Mat_25:40). But when men gratify pride in selfishness, disregard the rights of the poor, and, like powerful cattle, trample the weak under-foot, it is a mark of an unfeeling heart and social corruption—a way to obliterate the moral character of society, and a prelude to Divine judgment. It is sad when men vent their wantonness where there is no power to resist. Not the wolf with the wolf, but the wolf with the defenceless lamb, “devouring the poor and needy from off the earth.” Yet they are found among the rulers of God’s own people, among the teachers of religion, and in the common ranks of life. “Judge righteously and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”
III. Confederacy in wickedness. “Bring, and let us drink.” The wicked encourage and strengthen one another in sin. “Come on,” said Pharaoh, “let us deal wisely with them.” The king and his courtiers in Israel practised oppression themselves, abetted it and connived at it in others. A sinful course cannot long prosper. Articles of luxury are dearly bought by oppression. Proud combinations against the laws of humanity and the providence of God shall be broken as tow. The builders of Babel were confounded. The conspiracies of Voltaire and his infidel school have been overthrown. In our day all social compacts and private bargains in the cause of injustice will be crushed by the irresistible power of God. “Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished.”
IV. Debauchery in social conduct. “Let us drink.” Men reap a poor harvest from cruelty and oppression when they spend it to gratify their lusts. Making merry at the cost of extortion will only mingle bitterness with wine. Tyrants to the poor are often slaves to their own passions. “Cruelty and sensuality are well matched. Inflamed passions crave for inflaming drink, and this again sets on fire the whole course of nature, and disposes to deeds of violence and shame. Nor must it be forgotten that men and women naturally mild and kind commit the most ferocious (otherwise unaccountable) acts under the influence of alcoholic drink, which exerts all the foreign tyranny of diabolical possession.”
V. Life terminating in great calamities. Consider the end of these proud oppressors. “So the days shall come upon you that he will take you away with hooks and your children with fish-hooks.” Led as an ox to the slaughter, taken as fish out of the water, neither power nor number can keep them from sudden and violent destruction.
1. Calamities fixed in time. The days hold on their steady course and advance closer and closer to the sinner. They are determined in God’s purpose and will be fitted in God’s providence.
2. Calamities with great sacrifice. From security they shall violently be taken away to a land of oppression. Their stores of violence would be cast away from their palaces. When life is at stake, treasures of gold are of no worth. “A thousand pounds for any one who will save my life,” cried a young lady in the wreck of the London. It is too late often, and none can flee away.
3. Calamities from which none can escape. They shall rush from one palace to another. Some think to be the meaning, cast themselves into one place after another and find no shelter. In wild confusion, without help and hope, they will run through the breach of the city, like a herd of cows through a fence.
4. Calamities entailed upon posterity. “Your children with fish-hooks.” People may survive in their descendants sometimes, but reckless must be that life which sweeps away posterity. Sinners entangle themselves in their own devices, and bring the judgments of God upon their families. Riches are small, and strong palaces are defenceless in the hour of death. Those who boast of wealth, and act in cruelty towards others, will be carried away without ransom and without hope.
“To the vile dust from whence they sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Amo_4:1. God’s intimate acquaintance with men.
1. He discerns their character. “Ye kine of Bashan.” Pride, wantonness, and effeminacy.
2. He detects their sins. Specifies one by one.
3. He knows their residence. “In the mountain of Samaria.” “God knows where men live. Let us seek to make our houses such as he will look on with pleasure” [Hall in loco]. “I know thy abode, and thy going out and thy coming in, and thy rage against me” (Isa_37:28).
Amo_4:2; Amo_3:1. Destruction inevitable. “Saith the Lord.”
2. Destruction by meanest instruments. Fish dragged by the hook, Herod destroyed by worms.
3. Destruction vindicated by God’s character. Holiness is offended by sin, and pledged to vindicate its own honour. “God swears by that holiness which they had profaned in themselves, and which they had caused to be profaned in others. God sware by himself. For he is the supreme uncreated Justice and Holiness. This justice each, in his degree, should imitate and maintain on earth, and these they had sacrilegiously violated and overthrown” [Pusey].
Amo_4:1-3. From the whole learn—
1. In proportion to the prosperity hero will be the misery of the wicked hereafter.
2. In proportion to their luxury here will be their poverty hereafter.
3. In proportion to their sins here, will be their punishment hereafter [Treasury of David].
“O luxury!
Bane of elated life, of affluent states,
What dreary change, what ruin is not thine?” [Dyer.]
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4
Amo_4:1. There is not a word in our language which expresses more detestable wickedness than oppression [Butler]. Mr Cecil says that he often “had a sleepless night from having seen an instance of cruelty in the day.”
“My ear is pain’d,
My heart is sick with every day’s report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.”
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel"—i.e. prepare thyself,…
Amo 4:12
Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel"—i.e. prepare thyself, if penitent, to meet Him with supplications, prayers, and tears; but if still hardened and impenitent, to encounter His just vengeance and fiery indignation. This warning is no less applicable or necessary for us than it was for Israel. As Christians, as immortal spirits redeemed by the blood of Jesus the Son of God, placed here for a little space on our passage and trial for eternity; preparation is our business, and our only business; preparation, that is, for the great changes which are drawing on upon us, and of which we must all soon be witnesses; but whether in joy or in sorrow, in hope or in despair, it is left to ourselves to determine. Religious preparation implies in it at least these three things: (1) Serious forethought; (2) actual search and inquiry; (3) a resolute course of practice suitable to what appears to be the truth of our condition with respect to the future.
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I. Serious forethought. As the great distinguishing mark which at present separates us from the beasts that perish, is the power of exercising reason and reflection, so is this power in nothing more wonderfully shown than in our being capable of looking forward, and ascertaining with a considerable degree of certainty, what will be the consequences of our conduct, both on this side the grave and beyond it. If a person does not live in constant forethought and anxiety about his eternal state, he must somehow or other be going wrong.
II. This forethought and anxiety, if it be sincere, and at all proportionate to the importance of the subject, will lead us to search also and inquire what our prospects really are; what promises and threatenings are before us to be fulfilled in eternity; and in what degree our conduct at present may produce effects to be felt, for good or evil hereafter, forever. It is quite necessary that time should be spent and attention bestowed, in closely examining what may be called the accounts of our souls.
III. We must resolutely maintain a course of practice suitable to the prospect that is before us. As the blood of Christ Jesus is all our hope and dependence, so His will must be all our rule and guidance. And take we good heed lest, while we profess faith in His blood, we forget or neglect His will.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. i., p. 287.
That man has still to learn the real lesson of life, who has not yet been taught to read it, in all its chapters of joy and sorrow, as one great preparation for another world. But between us and that coming state, there lies an event, of which it is impossible to over-estimate the importance and the dignity. For in passing out of this world into another, we must, every one of us, meet God.
I. What the exact character of that meeting shall be, I shall not commit the rash act of endeavouring to unfold. (1) It is likely that at that moment the whole of the past life will re-live and stand out in its clearness; just as pictures which are fading. are sometimes, by certain processes, restored, in a moment, to their original brightness. (2) In that interview with God, the past and the future will come together: the past, to its crisis; the future to its doom.
II. Our view of God, at least our first view of God, will be of the Godhead as it is in Christ. And if in Christ it must be in human form. Christ has never laid aside His body. Never divide the thought of the God you are going to meet, from that of the Man Christ Jesus; but let Jesus in all His exalted manhood, Jesus in all the perfections of His work, be present to you by the eye of faith, whenever you hear the words said, "Prepare to meet thy God."
III. Notice the propriety and the wisdom of the exact words which the Holy Spirit has selected. It is "thy God"—thine own God—whom you are to be ready to meet. For it is He who made you. God—the sinner’s God—it is He who has given Himself for you, He in whom all Heaven is thine. And do you only feel him thine—make Him thine by a strong act of appropriating faith—then do not doubt that you will be able to meet Him as thine, and it will leave you nothing else to contemplate. If you can say the last words, you need not be afraid of the first words: "Prepare to meet thy God."
IV. If you would meet God well when you come to die, it must not be the first time. You must have met Him very often before, while you are living down on the earth. By "meeting God," here, I understand two things: (1) To go forth, to respond, with your whole heart, to those approaches, which God is continually making, by His Spirit, to your soul; (2) to have as much intercourse as you can with God, in your own retirement, in thought, prayer, and sacred study of the Bible. Put yourself in frequent converse with the grandnesses of an unseen world. These things will be the rehearsing of that greater meeting which is to come; the practising of that high part which you are one day to take.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 195.
An appeal to justice.
I. Justice is a primary element of human thought; but justice presupposes another idea—the idea of right. Justice is the virtue which takes care of the rights of other beings—which not merely avoids interference with these rights, but gives them what they claim; and the right of a being is the claim which it can make in virtue of the law of its nature. Human justice is the assertion of the rights of man; and that phrase, or an equivalent, has been a power again and again in human history.
II. The power of the idea of justice as between man and man is seen chiefly in this, that the present does not satisfy it. There is no room for it in the world at any existing moment, and those who are keen about it, and anxious that its claims should be respected, are obliged to look forward. Read Amos; read him from this point of view. He is so full of the future, because the idea of justice which he possesses, which inspires him, makes him so dissatisfied with the present. In various ways he summons Israel to the work of social and moral regeneration. He bids Israel arise in awe and prepare to meet his God.
III. But there are other rights towards which justice has duties—other rights than the rights of man. The most eloquent defenders of human rights have not seldom forgotten that there are such rights as the rights of God. God has His rights, too, as man has his, and to be just is to satisfy all rights whatever; the rights of man, assuredly, but also not less certainly, the rights of Him from whom all human rights are gifts—the rights of the self-existent and perfect Being who made us.
And this, too, was felt by Amos, for Amos is the prophet of an absolute and adequate justice, not merely of a justice between man and man, but also of justice as between man and God. In the eyes of Amos the accumulating injustice of Israel towards God was ever making it more and more inevitable that Israel and God should meet in judgment. He knew, as we Christians should know, that the ever-swelling tide of mental and moral rebellion against the Ruler of the universe is by a law which cannot fail to assert itself, bringing His judgment, whether temporal or final, nearer and nearer.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 1074.
I. Amos is specially the poor man’s prophet, for he was a poor man himself; not a courtier like Isaiah, or a priest like Jeremiah, or a sage like Daniel; but a herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit in Tekoa, near Bethlehem, where Amos was born. What was the secret of this inspired herdsman’s strength? He believed and preached the kingdom of God and His righteousness: the simple but infinite difference between right and wrong, and the certain doom of wrong, if wrong was persisted in.
II. In the time of Amos, the rich tyrants of Israel seem to have meant by the "day of the Lord" some vague hope that in those dark and threatening times He would interfere to save them, if they were attacked by foreign armies. But woe to you that desire the day of the Lord, says Amos the herdsman. You will find it very different from what you expect. There is a day of the Lord coming, he says, therefore prepare to meet your God. But you are unprepared, and you will find the day of the Lord very different from what you expect. It will be a day in which you will learn the righteousness of God. Because He is good, He will not permit you to be bad. The day of the Lord to you will be darkness and not light; not, as you dream, deliverance from the invaders, but ruin by the invaders, from which there will be no escape.
III. No wonder that the Israelites thought Amos a most troublesome and insolent person. No wonder that the smooth priest Amaziah begged him to begone and talk in that way somewhere else. The two could no more work together than fire and water. Amos wanted to make men repent of their sins, while Amaziah wanted only to make them easy in their minds; and no man can do both at once. When a man dares to preach like Amos, he is no more likely to be popular with the wicked world, than Amos was popular, or St. Paul was popular, or our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave both to Amos and to St. Paul their messages, was popular.
C. Kingsley, Good Words, 1876, p. 195.
I. Prudence,—what is it? Why need I ask the question? Looked at from an every day, from a popular, point of view, prudence is the first, perhaps, of all the virtues—the most needed for the well-being of human life. Prudence in man is not unlike the higher forms of instinct in the animals, only human prudence knows better what it is about than does animal instinct. Prudence in man does two things: it thinks, and it either acts or it decides to abstain from acting. It looks beyond the present moment. It is foresight with a practical object. And when prudence addresses itself to higher matters, it is as before, in this twofold character still thought, still action, only it commands a wider horizon. Its thought reaches away beyond the grave. It acts or it hesitates to act, with an eye to eternity. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, in His teaching, continually appeals to that which, if exercised on a sufficient field, will secure to man his truest happiness.
II. Amos is the prophet and the apostle of prudence throughout his book. To Amos, a simple pious soul, caring chiefly or rather exclusively, about questions of truth or falsehood, and right and wrong, and caring little, or rather not at all, about the vulgar glitter of a God-forgetting civilization, it was clear that the state of things in Samaria could not last. While the sky was yet bright and the prospect fair, Amos hears the whispered mutterings of the yet distant tempest. There were past judgments to which he points as earnests of the future. "Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel." What had been might yet be—would yet be—aye, and more also. It was an appeal to prudence.
III. "Prepare for death," surely this is the voice of prudence. The one thing certain about life is that we must leave it. The one thing certain about death is that we must die. Scripture says, experience echoes, it is appointed. "Prepare to meet thy God:" (1) In death; (2) in judgment.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 1,060.
An appeal to Desire:—
I. Desire is meant, first of all, to keep man loyal to the Being who made him. God is the ultimate object of desire. He meant to be so. He gave us desire, that it might be so. Just as any small meteoric mass in the near neighbourhood of this earth cannot but draw near to it, in obedience to what we call the law of gravitation, so souls are impelled by desire or love of God, and freely as moral beings, yet incessantly, to move towards Him as their centre of moral gravitation. But human nature, as we find it, is like a beautiful instrument in which everything has been more or less dislocated and put out of gear by some terrible shock; and thus desire in us fallen men, instead of concentrating itself upon God, lavishes itself like a spendthrift upon anything and everything that is not God. The object of religion is, if possible, to restore desire—this fund of motive force—to its true track, its true direction, and having restored it, to maintain it there.
II. "Prepare to meet thy God." When desire is alienated from God, and is spent on created objects, as if they were adequate and satisfactory, these words cannot but carry with them a very solemn meaning. They mean, evidently, at least this: Prepare, O man, for a meeting which will show thee that thy life has been a vast mistake—that thou hast neglected and forgotten the one Being who is really worth its efforts.
III. In order to set desire free to return to its original direction, God has an agency at command in this His human world by which this work is effected. That agency is pain. Pain is the disappointment and the defeat of desire, arising either from the discovery that an object is worthless, or that it is vanishing.
The words of the text bid us wed desire to understanding, that true understanding of the real meaning and conditions of our existence, which God gives to those who keep His law with their whole heart. Desire and understanding are the parents of will. When will is supreme in a regenerate soul even the crooked places are made straight and the rough places plain, as of old across the desert for the passage of God, everything is welcomed because everything, either as an assistance or as a discipline, must further one purpose—that of reaching the supreme object of desire—the vision of God.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 1,076.
An appeal to Reverence:—
I. Reverence is not in any sense a fictitious sort of virtue. Like all virtue that deserves the name, it is based on truth. The truth of some greatness which the soul acknowledges must be seriously felt if there is to be real reverence. The lesson of reverence is learned: (1) from the natural world around us; (2) from man himself.
II. Israel was irreverent, and Israel was to meet God in suffering. And therefore Amos says "Prepare." And so, too, with us Christians, as to death and judgment. Is it not true, that in our ordinary lives, God, if I may say so, takes His chance amid a thousand objects of interest? The day is coming when we shall see Him. What must not that sight mean to those who come upon it suddenly, and without having given an hour of reverent thought to it in their whole lives? What should it not exact in the way of preparation from that instinct, that original instinct of reverence, which neither nature nor man, nor the blessings that we have in the Christian Church militant, nor anything short of the unveiled face of God Himself, will lastingly satisfy.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 1,064.
I. What it will be to "meet our God," no heart of man can conceive; for what thought of man can ever understand what God is? The sea and mountains speak of Him and of His power and greatness; and the sky above us, and the sun and stars, and storm and thunder: all these speak of Him when they appeal to the heart of man, and make him to be amazed and lost in admiration of them. Every corner of the world which He fills with His awful presence, and the heart of every man in which He is wonderfully present, speak of Him. But what must the Almighty God Himself be? and what must it be to meet Him and to appear before Him? Man cannot know Him, nor comprehend Him, excepting so far as He is taught by the Spirit of God; so far as man does know Him, he must love and fear Him more and more; they who do not fear Him above all things, know Him not, and most miserable are they. Who shall be prepared to meet this pure and holy, this all-knowing and all-powerful God? And yet of all things future none is so certain as this, that we must meet our God, and appear one by one before Him.
II. The thought of meeting God is in itself so awful that we might have been disposed to sit down in despair at the thought of it, were it not for the access to the Father which we have in Jesus Christ, who is Himself the way, the truth, and the life, and no man cometh unto the Father but by Him. He is now set before us as our perfect Example; as our High Priest, to intercede with God for us; as our King; but when He shall appear as our Judge, then we must remember that He will be seen not as man only—concealing, as it were, from our sight His Divine power and unspeakable Godhead; but He will appear as God also, in His own glory and in the glory of the Father, and with all the holy angels with Him.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. vii., p. 225.
References: Amo 4:12.—J. Keble, Sermons from Septuagesima to Ash Wednesday, p. 209; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi., No. 923; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 361; W. Jay. Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 217. Amo 4:12, Amo 4:13.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 200. Amo 5:8.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 123; W. M. Statham, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 312; G. Bainton, Ibid., vol. x., p. 190; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 85; J. Keble, Sermons from Lent to Passiontide, p. 243. Amo 5:10.—J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 2nd series, p. 56; Homiletic Magazine, vol. vii., p. 78. Amo 5:18, Amo 5:19.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xi., p. 332. Amo 6:1.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii., No. 417. Amo 6:1-6.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. vii., p. 139. Amo 6:7-11.—Ibid., p. 140. Amo 6:12.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1470. Amo 6:12-14.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. vii., p. 141. Amo 7:7.—Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi, p. 327.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v4 Amo 4:4 - Amo 4:13.
Amos
SMITTEN IN VAIN
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Amo 4:4 - Amo 4:13.
The reign of Jeroboam II. was one of brilliant military success and of profound moral degradation. Amos was a simple, hardy shepherd from the southern wilds of Judah, and his prophecies are redolent of his early life, both in their homely imagery and in the wholesome indignation and contempt for the silken-robed vice of Israel. No sterner picture of an utterly rotten social state was ever drawn than this book gives of the luxury, licentiousness, and oppressiveness of the ruling classes. This passage deals rather with the religious declension underlying the moral filth, and sets forth the self-willed idolatry of the people {Amo 4:4 - Amo 4:5}, their obstinate resistance to God’s merciful chastisement {Amo 4:6 - Amo 4:11}, and the heavier impending judgment {Amo 4:12 - Amo 4:13}.
I. Indignant irony flashes in that permission or command to persevere in the calf worship.
The seeming command is the strongest prohibition. There can be no worse thing befall a man than that he should be left to go on forwardly in the way of his heart. The real meaning is sufficiently emphasised by that second verb, ‘and transgress’. ‘Flock to one temple after another, and heap altars with sacrifices which you were never bid to offer, but understand that what you do is not worship, but sin.’ That is a smiting sentence to pass upon elaborate ceremonial. The word literally means treason or rebellion, and by it Amos at one blow shatters the whole fabric. Note, too, that the offering of tithes was not called for by Mosaic law, ‘every three days’ {Revised Version}, and that the use of leaven in burnt offerings was prohibited by it, and also that to call for freewill offerings was to turn spontaneousness into something like compulsion, and to bring ostentation into worship. All these characteristics spoiled the apparent religiousness, over and above the initial evil of disobedience, and warrant Amos’s crushing equation, ‘Your worship = rebellion.’ All are driven home by the last words of Amo 4:5, ‘So ye love it.’ The reason for all this prodigal ostentatious worship was to please themselves, not to obey God. That tainted everything, and always does.
The lessons of this burst of sarcasm are plain. The subtle influence of self creeps in even in worship, and makes it hollow, unreal, and powerless to bless the worshipper. Obedience is better than costly gifts. The beginning and end of all worship, which is not at same time ‘transgression’ is the submission of tastes, will, and the whole self. Again, men will lavish gifts far more freely in apparent religious service, which is but the worship of their reflected selves, than in true service of God. Again, the purity of willing offerings is marred when they are given in response to a loud call, or, when given, are proclaimed with acclamations. Let us not suppose that all the brunt of Amos’s indignation fell only on these old devotees. The principles involved in it have a sharp edge, turned to a great deal which is allowed and fostered among ourselves.
II. The blaze of indignation changes in the second part of the passage into wounded tenderness, as the Prophet speaks in the name of God, and recounts the dreary monotony of failure attending all God’s loving attempts to arrest Israel’s departure by the mercy of judgment.
Mark the sad cadence of the fivefold refrain, ‘Ye have not returned unto Me, saith the Lord.’ The ‘unto’ implies reaching the object to which we turn, and is not the less forcible but more usual word found in this phrase, which simply means ‘towards’ and indicates direction, without saying anything as to how far the return has gone. So there may have been partial moments of bethinking themselves, when the chastisement was on Israel; but there had been no thorough ‘turning,’ which had landed them at the side of God. Many a man turns towards God, who, for lack of resolved perseverance, never so turns as to get to God. The repeated complaint of the inefficacy of chastisements has in it a tone of sorrow and of wonder which does not belong only to the Prophet. If we remember who it was who was ‘grieved at the blindness of their heart,’ and who ‘wondered at their unbelief’ we shall not fear to recognise here the attribution of the same emotions to the heart of God.
To Amos, famine, drought, blasting, locusts, pestilence, and probably earthquake, were five messengers of God, and Amos was taught by God. If we looked deeper, we should see more clearly. The true view of the relation of all material things and events to God is this which the herdsman of Tekoa proclaimed. These messengers were not ‘miracles,’ but they were God’s messengers all the same. Behind all phenomena stands a personal will, and they are nearer the secret of the universe who see God working in it all, than they who see all forces except the One which is the only true force. ‘I give cleanness of teeth. I have withholden the rain. I have smitten. I have sent the pestilence. I have overthrown some of you.’ To the Prophet’s eye the world is all aflame with a present God. Let no scientific views, important and illuminating as these may be, hide from us the deeper truth, which lies beyond their region. The child who says ‘God,’ has got nearer the centre than the scientist who says ‘Force.’
But Amos had another principle, that God sent physical calamities because of moral delinquencies and for moral and religious ends. These disasters were meant to bring Israel back to God, and were at once punishments and reformatory methods. No doubt the connection between sin and material evils was closer under the Old Testament than now. But if we may not argue as Amos did, in reference to such calamities as drought, and failures of harvests, and the like, as these affect communities, we may, at all events, affirm that, in the case of the individual, he is a wise man who regards all outward evil as having a possible bearing on his bettering spiritually. ‘If a drought comes, learn to look to your irrigation, and don’t cut down your forests so wantonly,’ say the wise men nowadays; ‘if pestilence breaks out, see to your drainage.’ By all means. These things, too, are God’s commandments, and we have no right to interpret the consequences of infraction of physical laws as being meant to punish nations for their breach of moral and religious ones. If we were prophets, we might, but not else. But still, is God so poor that He can have but one purpose in a providence? Every sorrow, of whatever sort, is meant to produce all the good effects which it naturally tends to produce; and since every experience of pain and loss and grief naturally tends to wean us from earth, and to drive us to find in God what earth can never yield, all our sorrows are His messengers to draw us back to Him. Amos’ lesson as to the purpose of trials is not antiquated.
But he has still another to teach us; namely, the awful power which we have of resisting God’s efforts to draw us back. ‘Our wills are ours, we know not how,’ but alas! it is too often not ‘to make them Thine.’ This is the true tragedy of the world that God calls, and we do refuse, even as it is the deepest mystery of sinful manhood that God calls and we can refuse. What infinite pathos and grieved love, thrown back upon itself, is in that refrain, ‘Ye have not returned unto Me!’ How its recurrence speaks of the long-suffering which multiplied means as others failed, and of the divine charity, which ‘suffered long, was not soon angry, and hoped all things!’ How vividly it gives the impression of the obstinacy that to all effort opposed insensibility, and clung the more closely and insanely to the idolatry which was its crime and its ruin! The very same temper is deep in us all. Israel holds up the mirror in which we may see ourselves. If blows do not break iron, they harden it. A wasted sorrow-that is, a sorrow which does not drive us to God-leaves us less impressible than it found us.
III. Again the mood changes, and the issue of protracted resistance is prophesied {Amo 4:12 - Amo 4:13}.
‘Therefore’ sums up the instances of refusal to be warned, and presents them as the cause of the coming evil. The higher the dam is piled, the deeper the water that is gathered behind it, and the surer and more destructive the flood when it bursts. Long-delayed judgments are severe in proportion as they are slow. Note the awful vagueness of threatening in that emphatic ‘thus,’ as if the Prophet had the event before his eyes. There is no need to specify, for there can be but one result from such obstinacy. The ‘terror of the Lord’ is more moving by reason of the dimness which wraps it. The contact of divine power with human rebellion can only end in one way, and that is too terrible for speech. Conscience can translate ‘thus.’ The thunder-cloud is all the more dreadful for the vagueness of its outline, where its livid hues melt into formless black. What bolts lurk in its gloom?
The certainty of judgment is the basis of a call to repentance, which may avert it. The meeting with God for which Israel is besought to prepare, was, of course, not judgment after death, but the impending destruction of the Northern Kingdom. But Amos’s prophetic call is not misapplied when directed to that final day of the Lord. Common-sense teaches preparation for a certain future, and Amos’s trumpet-note is deepened and re-echoed by Jesus: ‘Be ye ready also, for . . . the Son of man cometh.’ Note, too, that Israel’s peculiar relation to God is the very ground of the certainty of its punishment, and of the appeal for repentance. Just because He is ‘thy God,’ will He assuredly come to judge, and you may assuredly prepare, by repentance, to meet Him. The conditions of meeting the Judge, and being ‘found of Him in peace,’ are that we should be ‘without spot, and blameless’; and the conditions of being so spotless and uncensurable are, what they were in Amos’s day, repentance and trust. Only we have Jesus as the brightness of the Father’s glory to trust in, and His all-sufficient work to trust to, for pardon and purifying.
The magnificent proclamation of the name of the Lord which closes the passage, is meant as at once a guarantee of His judgment and an enforcement of the call to be ready to meet Him. He in creation forms the solid, changeless mountains and the viewless, passing wind. The most stable and the most mobile are His work. He reads men’s hearts, and can tell them their thoughts afar off. He is the Author of all changes, both in the physical and the moral world, bringing the daily wonder of sunrise and the nightly shroud of darkness, and with like alternation blending joy and sorrow in men’s lives. He treads ‘on the high places of the earth,’ making all created elevations the path of His feet, and crushing down whatever exalts itself. Thus, in creation almighty, in knowledge omniscient, in providence changing all things and Himself the same, subjugating all, and levelling a path for His purposes across every opposition, He manifests His name, as the living, eternal Jehovah, the God of the Covenant, and therefore of judgment on its breakers, and as the Commander and God of the embattled forces of the universe. Is this a God whose coming to judge is to be lightly dealt with? Is not this a God whom it is wise for us to be ready to meet?
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Second Address
The Second Address
1-3. The heartless luxury of the rich women.
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4, 5. The elaborate sacrifices and pilgrimages.
6-12. The failure of God's chastisements to produce amendment.
1. These pampered women are compared to cows grown fat through feeding in the rich pastures of Bashan (Num_32:1-5; Deu_32:14; Mic_7:14).
Masters] RV 'lords,' i.e. husbands (1Pe_3:6).
2. He] RV 'they,' i.e. the conquerors.
Your posterity] RV 'your residue.' Those farthest removed from danger will be dragged out of their retreats like fish from the water.
3. Like excited cattle each woman would make for the nearest breach in the city wall and endeavour to escape through it. The second half of the v. is corrupt. Possibly it may have run: 'And ye shall be cast out of your palaces' (Mic_2:9).
4. This v. shows that the pilgrimage to a holy place was then, as it has been in almost all times and lands, one of the popular forms of devotion. The pious Jew delighted in the annual visit to Jerusalem for the Feasts of Passover or of Tabernacles. Jeroboam I set apart Bethel and Dan as the two sanctuaries to be visited by his subjects (1Ki_12:29-32) for the same purpose. Other places were venerated in like fashion. Amos mentions Beer-sheba (Amo_8:14) and Gilgal. The latter place, which was situated between Jericho and the Jordan, derived its name, 'a circle,' from the circle of sacred stones which existed there from time immemorial. Joshua 4, 5 speak of it as the site of the first camp of the Hebrews in western Palestine and the scene of the circumcision of the great mass of the people.
The prophet asserts that these journeys to the holy places, for the purpose of worship, failed to win the favour of God: the more zealously they were engaged in the greater the guilt of the pilgrims. The reason was that men substituted such devotions in place of good morals. There is an Arabic proverb concerning the ceremonies performed by pilgrims to Mecca: 'Circumambulate, and run, and commit the seven deadly sins!' Another plays thus on words: Al-haram f'il Haramayn= 'Unholiness dwelleth in the two holy cities.'
Every morning.. after three years] 'in the morning.. on the third day,' seems preferable. On the morning after arrival the pilgrims brought an oblation: on the next day—the third, according to Heb. reckoning—they paid the tithes. In the great Mohammedan pilgrimage to Mecca the observances due on each day are strictly defined.
5. According to the Levitical legislation leaven might not be burned as part of a sacrifice (Exo_23:18; Lev_2:12); but even in those laws there are traces of some degree of freedom (Lev_7:13; Lev_23:17). And in northern Israel it would seem that leavened cakes were consumed on the altar as a praise or thank offering. This liketh you] i.e. this is what you like.
6. Doughty speaks of an Arab who 'would often show that he had nothing left to eat.. in crackling the thumb nail from the backward upon the upper front teeth.' Yet have ye not returned unto me] a pathetic refrain, expressing His disappointment and His appealing love. All warnings have been in vain.
7. In the plains harvest comes at the end of April; a month later in the hills. Heavy rains are necessary from Nov. to Jan. to soften the ground sufficiently for ploughing and sowing.
One piece was rained upon, etc.] cp. Gideon's fleece (Jdg_6:37-40).
8. Cities] i.e. the inhabitants.
9. Blasting] the effect produced on grain by the burning wind from the desert (Gen_41:6).
Palmerworm] or locust.
10. After the manner of Egypt] 'Life and death march in “double companies” through Egypt. All epidemics revel here.' 2Ki_13:7 is an illustration of the loss of horses. We are to think of the people as shut up in a fetid camp, with decaying bodies of men and horses, and all the other foul odours of the East.
11. The overthrow of these cities had become a type of utter destruction (Deu_29:23; Isa_1:7-8; Isa_13:19; Jer_49:18; Jer_50:40). The brand plucked out of the burning is a figure for grievous damage.
12. Thus] but we are not told how. Imagination is to fill up the blank, and the partial overthrow already inflicted is enough to indicate what the final and total ruin will be. They must meet God as a foe (Jos_5:13).
13. This verse, Amo_5:8-9, and Amo_9:6, were probably written on the margin by an admirer of Job_9:4-10. His thought] i.e. the determination He has arrived at. He darkens the heavens with storms and eclipses. He marches majestically over the mountains in clouds and thunder (Deu_33:13; Mic_1:3; Hab_3:19; Job_9:8).
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv4–5 Cf. 1Ki 12:25-33. Any altar at Beth-el, after the…
Beth-el
Cf. 1Ki 12:25-33. Any altar at Beth-el, after the establishment of Jehovah’s worship at Jerusalem was of necessity divisive and schismatic. Deu 12:4-14. Cf.; Joh 4:21-24; Mat 18:20; Heb 13:10-14.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 The Second Discourse
CHAPTER 4
The Second Discourse
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1. Divine threatening and irony (Amo 4:1-5)
2. Yet have ye not returned unto Me (Amo 4:6-11)
3. Prepare to meet thy God (Amo 4:12-13)
Amo 4:1-5. The prophet addresses them as “kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria.” The cows of Bashan were noted for their sleek and well-fed condition, feeding on the choicest of pasture. The term is descriptive of Israel’s prosperous condition as well as their beastly character. They were selfish and cruel, for they oppressed the poor and crushed the needy. It seems that women are mostly here in view, which explains the fact that the comparison is with kine and not with bulls. They asked their masters to supply them means for debauchery. But what happens to dumb cattle would happen to them in their luxurious and selfish life. They would be taken with hooks and their posterity with fishhooks, and they would be taken away. The last sentence of Amo 3:3 is correctly translated “Ye shall be cast away to Har (mountain) Monah.” It has been surmised that this means Armenia.
Then follows a statement of bitter irony. “Go to Bethel and sin; at Gilgal multiply transgression.” Go on in your idolatry in these sacred places of your past history! In Bethel the Lord had revealed Himself to the progenitor Jacob; in Gilgal on the banks of the Jordan, the reproach of Egypt had been rolled away Jos 5:1-15, and these favored places were now the scenes of their wicked idolatries. It is also mockery when the prophet says, “Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven,” for leaven always typifies sin.
Amo 4:6-11. The Lord had sent different chastisements upon them at different times. There had been famines, drought; yea, it had rained here and there, while lots of ground received rain others remained parched, so that they might recognize in it the hand of God. He smote them with mildew and blasting; the locusts came and devoured vegetation; there were frightful pestilences and other judgments, but they did not return unto Him. Five times in this paragraph we find the same statement, “Yet have ye not returned unto Me.” They were an impenitent nation and hardened their hearts as Pharaoh did. They were incorrigible, though they knew that through His mercy they were “as a firebrand plucked out of the burning.”
In the book of Revelation we read of a similar condition in the coming days when the Lord deals with the earth in the decreed and revealed judgments. It is written that the inhabitants of the earth, in spite of these judgments falling upon the earth, do not repent of their sins.
Amo 4:12-13. And now they were to come face to face with Himself as the judge.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 6 Denunciation of the Outstanding Vices
Denunciation of the Outstanding Vices
v. 1. Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, this name being taken from the strong, well-fed cattle of the pasture country east of Jordan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, the description agreeing with the extortions and the luxurious life of the rulers of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters (the picture of the cattle of Bashan being retained), Bring and let us drink.
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v. 2. The Lord God hath sworn by His holiness, by a most solemn oath, that, lo, the days shall come upon you that He will take you away with hooks, or, "when men will drag you away with hooks,". and your posterity, or the remnant of you, that which is left after the first punishment, with fish-hooks, as fish are drawn from the water.
v. 3. And ye shall go out at the breaches, through the breaches which had been torn in the walls by the attacking enemies, every cow at that which is before her, literally, "every one before her," anxious to get away, looking neither to the right nor to the left; and ye shall cast them into the palace, saith the Lord, or, "be cast forth to Harmon," apparently the place where they were led away captive. So much having been said of the rulers of Samaria and of Israel, the Lord now, in bitter irony, turns to the entire nation, bidding the people just continue in their idolatry and transgression; the divine punishment would not be kept away by their tactics.
v. 4. Come to Bethel and transgress, in their idolatrous worship; at Gilgal, another seat of idol-worship, multiply transgression; and bring your sacrifices every morning, in a wonderful zeal for worship, and your tithes after three years, rather, "after three days," for Amos purposely speaks hyperbolically: Even if you should offer burnt offerings every morning and tithes every three days, it would only increase your guilt before Jehovah;
v. 5. and offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, Cf Lev 7:12-14, and proclaim and publish the free offerings, making a great show of their religious fervor; for this liketh you, this they delighted in doing, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord God. The more zeal the hypocrites show in imitating the outward worship of the true believers, the more guilt they heap upon themselves in the sight of God, whose all-seeing eye penetrates their flimsy pretexts and causes Him to emphasize His threats of punishment.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 you cows of Bashan, you who are in the…
you cows of Bashan, you who are in the mountain of Samaria
Amos speaks to the women of Israel who live in Samaria as if they were well-fed cows. AT: "you wealthy women who live in the mountains of Samaria, you who are like the well-fed cows of Bashan" (See: Metaphor)
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you who oppress the poor
The phrase "the poor" refers to poor people. AT: "you who oppress poor people" (See: Nominal Adjectives)
you who crush the needy
Hear "crush" is a metaphor that represents treating people badly. The phrase "the needy" refers to people who need help. AT: "you who treat needy people badly" or "you who hurt needy people" (See: Metaphor and Nominal Adjectives)
The Lord Yahweh has sworn by his holiness
This means that Yahweh promised that he would do something, and he assured people that he would do what he promised because he is holy.
the days will come on you
The word "you" refers to the wealthy women of Israel who lived in Samaria, but also includes men.
the days will come on you when they will take you away with hooks
A time in the future when bad things will happen to the people is spoken of as if those days will attack the people. The word "they" refers to their enemies. AT: "There will be a time when your enemies will take you away with hooks" (See: Metaphor)
they will take you away with hooks, the last of you with fishhooks
These two phrases mean basically the same thing and emphasize that the enemy will capture the people like people catch fish. AT: "they will capture you as people capture animals, and they take you away" or "they will defeat you and cruelly force you to go away with them" (See: Parallelism and Metaphor)
translationWords
word
cow
Bashan
Samaria
oppress
Lord Yahweh
oath
holy
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13 4:1-3 In this message Amos holds Samaria’s wives accountable…
4:1-3 In this message Amos holds Samaria’s wives accountable for urging their husbands to perform ruthless acts in order to provide them with money for their parties.
4:1 you fat cows (literally you cows of Bashan): Bashan was famous for its fierce, fat bulls (Ps 22:12; Ezek 39:18). Amos uses the feminine form (cows) to paint a picture of Israel’s upper class wives, who cared little for the poor. Their only concern was to extract enough wealth from the needy to support their own consumption.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.