Opening Lamentation. Amos Pronounces A Funeral Dirge Over Israel (Amos 5:1-3).
Amos now looks ahead into the future and proclaims a funeral dirge over Israel because her hope has gone (unless she repents). He looks ahead and sees her as having received her deathblow.
‘Hear you this word which I take up for a lamentation over you, O house of Israel.'
‘Hear you this word' is indicative of a break in the narrative (compare Amos 3:1; Amos 4:1). He is taking up a new theme. For having warned of what is coming Amos now sees it as having already come, and mourns for Israel in her passing (he has no joy in what will happen to them).
“The virgin of Israel is fallen,
She shall no more rise,
She is cast down upon her land,
There is none to raise her up.”
The fall of a virgin was seen as a disaster in Israel. Here Israel is seen as lying in misery on the ground having lost her virginity as a result of war and of her own misbehaviour and thus having lost all hope because any who could have sustained her have gone. She will not rise for she is in despair and has nothing to rise for. She has cast herself inconsolably down on the ground recognising her ruin, and will be left there to suffer in her misery because there is no one who will raise her up. The only One Who could do so is the One Whom she has spurned. Compare the vivid description of Jerusalem in Isaiah 51:17-23 and of Babylon in Isaiah 47:1-15.
There is something especially poignant about her having been ‘cast down on her land'. That land was Israel's inheritance from YHWH, but instead it has become their graveyard.
“For thus says the Lord YHWH,
The city which went forth a regiment (a thousand),
Will have a company (a hundred) left,
And that which went forth a company (hundred),
Will have a platoon (a ten) left, to the house of Israel.”
And the reason for the virgin's distress will be because of what has happened to her. This is pictured in terms of Israel's inability to defend herself. The city who watched their proud regiments march forth with ram's horns blaring, will have watched them return decimated, having been reduced to a mere company, while the smaller cities who sent a company will only have seen part of a platoon returning. That is all that would be left to the house of Israel. And it found its fulfilment, firstly in the rape of Israel which resulted in only Samaria being left (2 Kings 15:29), and then in the rape of Samaria, when the cream of the nation were transported (2 Kings 17:6) leaving only a straggled remnant, truly a despoiled virgin. Compare Deuteronomy 28:68.