Amos 6:12 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Shall horses run upon the rock? would it not be dangerous to horse and rider? If prophets and pious men exhort, threaten, or advise, they endanger themselves, it does no more good than if you would run your horse on the slippery precipices of rocks. Or, all is lost labour on these hardened sinners. Will one plough there with oxen? your hearts are hard as the rocks; my prophets preaching, my lesser judgments warning you, all gentler means used, are but as a husbandman's ploughing the rocks. These shall therefore be torn up by the roots, your state and kingdom shall be utterly overthrown. For ye, you judges and governors in the ten tribes, and in Judah too, have turned judgment, see Amos 5:7, into gall, or poison; by those laws they took away life, and forfeited estate, which, had the laws been rightly executed, had saved both. The fruit of righteousness, all that fruit which equity and justice would have produced by due application of the law, hath been wormwood, grief, and complaints, by your wresting and perverting the law. Into hemlock, a deadly and pernicious weed so the course of your courts have been.