Amos 3:1 - Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Bible Comments

Amos, like Hosea, rebukes Israel directly, Judah indirectly. He had warned each nation separately. Now, ere he concentrates himself on Israel, he sums up what he had before said to Judah and in the Person of God. “Ye have been alike in My gifts to you, alike in your waste of them and your sins; alike ye shall be in your punishment.” What was said to Israel was said also to Judah: what was directed first to the former people, belongs to us, the later. What Jesus said to the Apostles, He said also to the Church, and to single souls, “What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch” Mark 13:37.

Hear ye this word - With that solemn threefold call, so frequent in the Old Testament, he summons them thrice Amos 3:1; Amos 4:1; Amos 5:1, as in the Name of the Holy Trinity, to hear God’s words. : “The prophet, at the outset of the chapter, rouses the hearers to anxious consideration. For the words of the most High God are to be heard, not with a superficial, unawed, wandering mind, but with reverence, fear, and love.”

That the Lord hath spoken against - (and upon) you, (coming down from heaven Hebrews 12:25, both “upon” and “against” them) the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt To Abraham God had said, “in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed” Genesis 12:3. So now, in withdrawing that blessing from them. He takes it away from them, family by family Zechariah 12:12. He includes them, one and all, and Judah also, since all had been “brought out of Egypt.”

Amos 3:1

1 Hear this word that the LORD hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying,