Therefore now (that is, shortly) shall they go captive with the first (at the head) of those who go captive - They had sought eminence; they should have it. Jerome: “Ye who are first in riches, shall, the first, endure the yoke of captivity, as it is in Ezekiel, ‘begin from My sanctuary’ Ezekiel 9:6, that is, from the destruction of the Temple which is holy. For ‘mighty men shall be mightily tormented’ (Wisdom Ezekiel 6:6); and, ‘to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more’ Luke 12:48.”
And the banquet - Probably, “the screech.” The root, רדסח radsach, whose consonants contain most of those of our screech, signifies the loud sharp cry, which the mind cannot control, either in revelry or distress. Here it is probably, the drunken scream, or reckless cry of revelry, whose senseless shrillness is more piercing, in its way, than the scream of distress, of which Jeremiah Jeremiah 16:5 uses it. For it is the scream of the death of the soul. Amos seems to have purposely joined together similar harsh sibilants or guttural sounds in order the more to express the harshness of that scream of luxurious self-indulgence. סרוּחים מרזח mı̂rezach seruchı̂ym, the screech of the outstretched.” Of this he says, “it shall depart,” and forever. “In that very day all his thoughts perish” Psalms 146:4. It shall “depart;” but by what should it be replaced to those to whom it was their god and their all? On earth, by siege, pestilence, death or captivity: after death, by hell to the unrepentant.