Amos 6
THAT the iniquity of Israel was now about full, these chapters of Amos’s prophecy make plain. In chapter 3, verse 2, God had said, “I will punish you for all your iniquities,” and the recital of them is an exposure of a state thoroughly bad, and demanding (and about to receive) His unsparing judgment.
A people who had always practiced idolatry while professing to be the people of Jehovah their God; who turned judgment to wormwood and cast down righteousness to the earth; who hated reproof and abhorred one that spoke uprightly; who trampled upon the poor; who afflicted the just; who took bribes, and turned aside the right of the needy when they asked for their due; whose transgressions were manifold and whose sins were mighty, they were yet supremely confident that all was well with themselves.
At the time of Amos the northern kingdom was prospering. Jeroboam II had added to the military successes of his father so that the northern part of the kingdom, which the Syrians had seized, was wholly restored (2 Kings 14:23-2923In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years. 24And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord: he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. 25He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher. 26For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. 27And the Lord said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash. 28Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, and all that he did, and his might, how he warred, and how he recovered Damascus, and Hamath, which belonged to Judah, for Israel, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel? 29And Jeroboam slept with his fathers, even with the kings of Israel; and Zachariah his son reigned in his stead. (2 Kings 14:23‑29)). After his death decline was rapid; four of the six kings who reigned after him were murdered, and there were periods during which the country was without a ruler; then came the siege of Samaria and the captivity of the nation.
“The prophecy of Amos, while chiefly directed toward the ten tribes, embraces in its scope the two tribes also, for, except that they clung to the line of David their king, there was little difference between the northern and southern kingdoms (See 2 Kings 17:1919Also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made. (2 Kings 17:19)), Accordingly, in verse 1 The opening word is “Woe to them that are at ease in Zion” (the kingdom of Judah) “and trust,” or are secure “in the mountain of Samaria” (the kingdom of Israel).
Verses 3-6 present a picture of ease, of luxury and self-indulgence from which self-judgment was wholly absent. There was no grief among his children over the affliction (or breach) of Joseph; indeed, we may gather that the people of Israel would for the most part have denied that there was any such thing as decline among them.
Just so is it today in what is called Christendom, for there are evidently few among the millions of professors of Christianity who realize and mourn over the great departure from God and His word which marks the present hour.
Because of this blindness and self-confidence in the face of many warnings, added to their many sins, the ten tribes would go first into captivity (verse 7).
Verses 9-14 forecast a fearful time, the condition of the people being now hopeless; a nation that would afflict the house of Israel from end to end of their land, would be raised up against them by God.
ML 01/31/1937