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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Amos 5:1 - 5:1
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The Elegy. - Amo 5:1. “Hear ye this word, which I raise over you; a lamentation, O house of Israel. Amo 5:2. The virgin Israel is fallen; she does not rise up again; cast down upon her soil; no one sets her up. Amo 5:3. For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, The city that goes out by a thousand will retain a hundred, and that which goes out by a hundred will retain ten, for the house of Israel.” הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה is still further defined in the relative clause אֲשֶׁר וגו as קִינָה, a mournful song, lit., a lamentation or dirge for one who is dead (cf. 2Sa 1:17; 2Ch 35:25). אֲשֶׁר is a relative pronoun, not a conjunction (for); and qı̄nâh is an explanatory apposition: which I raise or commence as (or “namely”) a lamentation. “House of Israel” is synonymous with “house of Joseph” (Amo 5:6), hence Israel of the ten tribes. The lamentation follows in Amo 5:2, showing itself to be a song by the rhythm and by its poetical form. נָפַל, to fall, denotes a violent death (2Sa 1:19, 2Sa 1:25), and is here a figure used to denote the overthrow or destruction of the kingdom. The expression virgin Israel (an epexegetical genitive, not “of Israel”) rests upon a poetical personification of the population of a city or of a kingdom, as a daughter, and wherever the further idea of being unconquered is added, as a virgin (see at Isa 23:12). Here, too, the term “virgin” is used to indicate the contrast between the overthrow predicted and the original destination of Israel, as the people of God, to be unconquered by any heathen nation whatever. The second clause of the verse strengthens the first. נִטַּשׁ, to be stretched out or cast down, describes the fall as a violent overthrow. The third verse does not form part of the lamentation, but gives a brief, cursory vindication of it by the announcement that Israel will perish in war, even to a very small remnant. יָצָא refers to their marching out to war, and אֶלֶף, מֵאָה is subordinated to it, as a more precise definition of the manner in which they marched out (cf. Ewald, §279, b).