Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Amos 5:1 - 5:12

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Amos 5:1 - 5:12


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:



Israel's only Safety in Seeking the Lord

v. 1. Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel, an elegy, dirge, or mournful song sung over the downfall of Israel.

v. 2. The virgin of Israel,
the people called thus because they were to be the Lord's congregation, His chaste bride, is fallen; she shall no more rise, not return to her former powerful and prosperous state; she is forsaken upon her land, stretched out upon her soil, by a violent overthrow; there is none to raise her up.

v. 3. For thus saith the Lord God, The city that went out by a thousand,
sending so many soldiers into war, shall leave an hundred, the rest being destroyed by war and pestilence, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel, all the rest being devoured by the punishment of the Lord.

v. 4. For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel,
in a last attempt to save its people from themselves, Seek ye Me, in sincere worship of the one true God, and ye shall live;

v. 5. but seek not Bethel,
where idolatry was so openly and blasphemously practiced, nor enter into Gilgal, another center of idol-worship, and pass not to Beersheba, in the extreme southern part of Canaan, where evidently another altar had been erected to idols; for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, its idols unable to save it, and Bethel shall come to naught, its heathenish worship unable to save it.

v. 6. Seek the Lord,
to serve and worship the God of the covenant only, and ye shall live, lest He break out like fire in the house of Joseph, a name for Ephraim, the son of Joseph and the ancestor of the mightiest tribe of the northern kingdom, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel, even their mightiest idols being powerless before the might of Jehovah.

v. 7. Ye who turn judgment to wormwood,
by perverting justice into a bitter wrong, and leave off righteousness in the earth, casting it down, trampling it under foot,

v. 8. (seek Him) that maketh the seven stars,
one of the constellation of the sky, and Orion, Cf Job 9, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, the darkest hour being just before dawn, and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the sea and poureth them out upon the face of the earth, in fearful tidal waves and floods:. the Lord is His name, the one true God;

v. 9. that strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong,
literally, "who makes desolation to flash upon the strong," as the catastrophes caused by Him suddenly take hold of men, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress, rather, "and desolation comes upon the fortress," for none can withstand the power of the Almighty.

v. 10. They hate him that rebuketh in the gate,
him who raises his voice against the universal unrighteousness, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly, for the very fact that some one is honest and true is a rebuke to the hypocrisy of the wicked.

v. 11. Forasmuch, therefore, as your treading is upon the poor,
in the oppression which was then so generally practiced, and ye take from him. burdens of wheat, exacting such gifts by methods of violence:. ye have built houses of hewn stone, costly dwellings, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, with their unlawful gains, but ye shall not drink wine of them.

v. 12. For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins,
outstanding even in the midst of a nation steeped in wickedness; they afflict the just, making life a burden for him, they take a bribe, causing such bribe money to be paid, in order that men might buy their freedom from the oppression of these same rulers, and they turn aside the poor in the gate, where the courts of justice were held, from their right. Thus the poor were without champions of their right and were obliged to bow to the mighty, a condition which still prevails almost universally.