CRITICAL NOTES.] This word] A mournful song (2 Samuel 1:17-27). Take up] Lit. lift up as if to cast down upon them.
Amos 5:2. Virgin] The Israelite state unsubdued by foreigners. Fallen] Violent death (2 Samuel 1:19-25), a figure of the overthrow of the kingdom. Rise] in the existing order.
Amos 5:3. Went] to war. The depopulated city is touchingly described (Deuteronomy 28:62).
HOMILETICS
THE FUNERAL DIRGE.—Amos 5:1-3
“In order to impress Israel the more, Amos begins this his third appeal by a dirge over its destruction, mourning over those who were full of life and thought themselves safe. A dirge like that of David over Saul and Jonathan, over what once was lovely and mighty, but which had perished” [Pusey].
I. The death of the nation. Israel was spiritually dead and debased. Like a virgin, she had lost her purity and fealty to God.
1. The state was destroyed. “She hath fallen.” Fallen by her sins and from her dignity.
(1) Inwardly destroyed. “She is forsaken upon her land.” Her true interests were neglected by her friends. She was forsaken by her own rulers and guides. With all her strength and resources she was morally helpless and none could defend her.
(2) Violently destroyed. “Cast down upon her soil.” She was prostrated by inward tendency and outward force. “Then will I leave thee upon the land, I will cast thee forth upon the open field” (Ezekiel 29:5; Ezekiel 32:4).
(3) Hopelessly destroyed. “There is none to raise her up.” Weakened by moral corruption and intestine strife; despised by men and forsaken by God, she could rise no more. Nothing can prop up a rotten nation, nor save a doomed people. Ichabod may be written when God has departed from us.
2. The people were decimated. The city from which thousands went equipped for war could scarcely muster one hundred. The people, cut off by sword and pestilence, could not furnish more than a tithe of their population. One common doom befell larger and smaller cities. The whole kingdom was helpless and ruined. “And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because thou wouldest not obey the voice of the Lord thy God.”
“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”
II. The mourning for the nation. God is gracious in showing to us our sins, and if we heed the accusation we may escape the lamentation. But people are obstinate and opposed to God.
1. The prophet mourned. This word which I take up against you.” He views the nation as dead, and he attends the funeral. He mourns not in poetic words, but in deep feeling. Every faithful minister at some time or other does the same. Samuel mourned over Saul; David wept because men kept not the law of God; Jeremiah grieved, and Paul had “great heaviness and continual sorrow.” Lamentations over fallen churches and wails over lost souls are most touching and too common! “I will weep bitterly; labour not to comfort me, because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people.”
2. The people mourned. Sad was the change and most distressing the condition of Israel. Sorrow entered every family; the state was deprived of its subjects; and there was none to help in her degraded condition. “If,” says a writer on this book, “an enemy who had depopulated our towns, and killed our fathers and mothers, were to come to our abodes, how would all rise to ruin such an enemy. We should do as the Jews did by Paul when they looked on him as an enemy (Acts 21:27-28), ‘they stirred up all the people and laid hands on him, crying out, Men of Israel, help!’ So should we encourage each other against sin and suppress it, saying:—‘Magistrates, ministers, men and brethren, help; sin is what destroys our people, wastes our cities, unpeoples our towns, opposeth the laws, and brings confusion everywhere.’ ”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5
Amos 5:1-3. In a piteous lamentation of the miserable state of the Church of Christ in England in the reign of Queen Mary, written by that worthy martyr of God Nicholas Ridley (Works, Parker Society), we meet with most affecting reasons for sorrow and tears [Ryan].
“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.” [Shakespeare.]