Amos 5 A lamentation for Israel, Amos 5:1–3. An exhortation to repentance, Amos 5:4–20. God rejecteth their hypocritical service, Amos 5:21–27.

This preface you have in the same words Amos 3:1, and in part also Amos 4:1; to which I now add, that the person here speaking may refer to the prophet and to the Lord who sent him, both speak this word.

The virgin: this name is given to her not for her purity and integrity, for she was an adulteress, but either ironically, or because her present riches, glory, and beauty seemed to be that of a virgin that had her portion, strength, and honour untouched; or else by a figure as properly may it be…

Thus saith the Lord God: this solemnly attesteth the certainty of the thing. The city that went out by a thousand, that sent out one thousand soldiers as the quota they were assessed at to help against an invader, shall leave a hundred; shall lose nine parts of ten, so great shall the slaughter be…

For, or yet, truly. Thus saith the Lord; amidst all those threats there is still a reserve, a conditional proviso, and the Lord here does by his prophet declare it.

But seek not Beth-el; consult not, worship not, depend not on the idol calf at Beth-el; or seek not God at Beth-el, but at Jerusalem, where he will be found; cast off idolatry, return to the true God and to his instituted worship, so shall ye live.

Seek the Lord, and ye shall life: the prophet repeateth his exhortation to repentance with the repeated promise of a good issue hereon: see Amos 5:4. Lest he break out: this is a new argument to persuade them to do their duty, for unless they do it God’s judgments will break out upon them.

Ye; rulers and judges. Judgment; the righteous sentence of the law, the equity of it, which is sweet and pleasing to just men, and safe for all. Wormwood; proverbially understood, bitterness, grief, injustice, and oppression.

Seek him; though this be not in the Hebrew, it is well supplied by our interpreters. That maketh the seven stars; a famous constellation, and whose rising about September was usually accompanied with rains and sweet showers, which, as Amos 4:7, had been withholden, whence want of water and bread;…

That strengtheneth the spoiled; you have been exceedingly weakened and spoiled by your enemies; yet return, repent, seek God, for he can renew your strength, that you shall spoil your spoilers who are strong. Against the strong; the mighty, victorious, and insolent.

Either this is the prophet’s complaint of them without further expecting their compliance with his advice, or he foretells what they will do, judges and people.

Your treading; their oppression was more than ordinarily proud and tyrannous, expressed here by treading. It was very heavy on the poor, an effect of fraud, and executed with tyrannical insolence, as the word and its paraphrase imports.

For; wonder not at the threatened severity, as if it were too rigorous; it is but proportioned to your sins. I, the Lord, whom you provoke, who have threatened you, know, clearly, fully, and in all the circumstances of them, what moves you to do so, what pretences of law you make: all your evasions…

Therefore, because that men are so universally impatient of hearing reproof, and yet their sins so much abound, and so much deserve reproof; since they will sooner turn against the speaker, than turn from the sin spoken against.

Seek good; turn to the law of God, study it, that ye may do the good it requireth in works of piety, justice, and charity. And not evil: you have devised evil, and done it in works of impiety, injustice, and cruelty. Or this may be the same with Amos 5:4–6, which see.

Slight dislikes will do little in this ease, you rulers and judges must heartily hate, and show that you hate, the evil, both ways, doings, contrivers, and abettors of the evil among the people and yourselves; and love the good; commend, encourage, defend, and reward all good in others, and do it…

The prophet foreseeing their obstinacy in their sins, and their refusing to obey his counsel from the Lord, doth proceed to denounce judgment against them.

In all vineyards shall be wailing: in these places was usually the greatest jollity, and they gathered their vintage with joy; but now it is quite contrary, either vines are blasted, or eaten up, or destroyed of the enemy.

That desire, scoffingly, or not believing any such day would come: the prophets had long threatened such a day, but these scoffers thought no such thing could overtake them, and if it did they would know the worst of it; alter their course they will not, whatever comes on it, and they are confident…

As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him: here proverbially is expressed the continuance and succession of evils one after another; it will be a long calamity, when your civil dissensions waste you first, next God’s armies of locusts and palmer-worms, and the Assyrians too, until all…

All these things considered, ye secure, profane, and atheistical scoffers, speak yourselves, will not that day be as dark as I have described, and as little to your comfort?

I hate, I despise your feast days; impure and unholy they are, whatever they seem to be, and therefore the Lord hateth them, they are abomination to him, Prov. 15:8, Isa. 1:13–14. Worthless and contemptible they are, and as such God rejecteth them, Isa. 1:10–12;c.

Though ye, that have departed from my temple, law, and institutions, you of the ten tribes, offer me burnt-offerings; which was wholly burnt on the altar; no part due to any but God; of this these hypocrites had a high esteem, Mic. 6:6, because they accounted it an entire gift to God.

The noise of thy songs; by way of contempt and loathing, God calls their songs noise; how harmonious, delightful, and ravishing soever they might be to their ears, they were not pleasing unto God.

But, Heb. And judgment: some interpret this of penal judgment, by God threatened against these hypocrites; but it is better understood of justice to be administered by rulers, whose office it was to determine between party and party.

Their fathers and they, though at so great distance of time, are one people, and so the prophet considers them in this place. Have ye offered? did you not frequently omit to offer, and yet were not reproved or plagued for the omission, when your frequent removes, and many other difficulties, made…

But ye, the idolatrous children of idolatrous fathers, have borne, carried along with you in the wilderness, the tabernacle, or little chapel, or shrine, or canopy, in which the image of their idol was placed.

Therefore, for all your idolatry and other sins in which you have obstinately continued, will I cause you to go into captivity; you shall certainly be subdued and captivated; and this shall be done so that my hand shall appear evidently in it.