CRITICAL NOTES.]
Amos 6:7. Head] Chiefs in transgression must be first in the procession to captivity. Banquet] Lit. making merry with shouts.
Amos 6:8. Sworn] “Like ch. Amos 4:2, except that it is by himself instead of by his holiness, but the sense is the same, for the nephesh of Jehovah, i.e. his inmost self or being, is his holiness” [Keil].
Amos 6:9. Ten] A rare case (ch. Amos 5:3).
Amos 6:10. Uncle] Any relative who had to bury the dead (Genesis 25:9: Judges 16:31). Burn.] in case of necessity. Bones] i.e. the dead body (Genesis 50:25; Exodus 13:19). Say] Ask one discovered if he is the only survivor. Hold] The burier bids the survivor be silent, lest by invocation God should make him a victim of death. All hope from God has utterly gone.
Amos 6:11.] Smite] by earthquake, or by pestilence and sword during siege; every house, great and small.
HOMILETICS
NATIONAL RETRIBUTION UPON SINFUL INDULGENCE.—Amos 6:7-11
The punishment is now threatened. Their “mighty sins” would bring heavy retribution. Those pre-eminent in crime would be pre-eminent in captivity. The nation must suffer by pestilence and plague. The ruin will be universal, and religious privileges would not avert it.
I. National captivity. Those who live in luxury often lose their liberty, and the most dignified are reduced to servitude.
1. Disgraceful captivity. The chief in rank were chief in sin, and first to go into captivity. Their disgrace was most conspicuous. Those who delight only in the pleasures of sense shall be removed from them. Those who think themselves secure, and put the evil day from them, will find it nearer than they imagine. The banquets of luxury and wantonness will be removed, and men who give themselves to mirth when God calls them to mourn will not go unpunished in their sin (Isaiah 22:14).
2. Mournful captivity. The shouting of wine-bibbers would cease. Feasting would end in weeping, and desolation would spread throughout the land. Carnal ease and sinful excess often end in hopeless misery.
II. National rejection. The cities and kingdom with all their wealth would be delivered into the hands of the enemy.
1. National glory abhorred. “I abhor the excellency of Jacob.” The house of God, rightly valued and properly used, was their glory and defence. Their priesthood, temple, and religious privileges raised them above other nations. But these were polluted and despised. God was dishonoured by idolatry and provoked to anger. The strength of “the city” and splendour of the “palaces” availed not. The glory departed. When God abhors he will soon abandon. External services are mere mockery. When national glory rivals God, and men blessed with distinguished excellency take pleasure in things base and inferior, God will reject them. “Therefore will I deliver up the city, with all that is therein.”
2. Dreadful mortality abounded. The inmates of some houses would be entirely swept away. “Ten men in one house shall die.” Few if any domestics were left to bury the dead. The uncle or distant relatives must bury or burn them. God’s arrows were so piercing, and his anger so fierce, that relatives and survivors were agreed to keep solemn silence under the rod. Pestilence overtook those who escaped the sword. Hopeless despair seized men. Cut off from God, there was no help in man. They had to submit to appointed doom.
3. Universal destruction prevailed.
(1) Destruction of the population. “In the multitude of the people is the strength of the prince,” and God Almighty cut off that strength.
(2) Destruction of the capital. The city or chief cities of the kingdom would be destroyed. They would therefore be robbed of defence, open to danger, and become an object of pity and contempt. “Like a city that is broken down, and without walls.”
(3) Destruction most terrible. “He will smite the great house with breaches,” &c. The mighty and the mean have sinned and must be punished. God will smite not some, but all families and societies. “Princes’ palaces are not above, the poor man’s cottage is not beneath the judgment of God.”
(4) Destruction most certain. “God hath sworn by himself” (Amos 6:7). Sensuality produces stupidity. God seeks to rouse men by an oath to end the controversy. “The Lord commandeth.” We should see God’s hand and purpose in great distress. He makes it effectual and irresistible. When nations are ripe for judgment foreign armies are only Divine instruments. How hopeless the condition of those who harden themselves under Divine chastisements, and whose ruin God has sworn to accomplish!
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Mark the gradation of consequences in the whole paragraph. First the chiefs are punished. Then the people, influenced by their example, are drawn into captivity. The present generation are carried off by death, appointed ordinances are taken away, and the rod of God smites families great and small. “The Lord hath given a commandment concerning thee, that no more of thy name be sown” (Nahum 1:14; Jeremiah 47:6).
Amos 6:10. What a sad condition when men tremble at the name of God! What an exhibition of power upon an evil conscience, when men flee from instead of turning to God. Ten righteous men would have saved Sodom, but here all were destroyed.
He who has obstinately abused the intellectual powers given him by God to cavil against God’s truth, will be forsaken by him at the last, and will not be able to utter his name [Wordsworth].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
Amos 6:7. Banquet.
“So comes a reckoning when the banquet’s o’er,
The dreadful reckoning, and men smile no more.” [Guy.]
Amos 6:9. Die. How terrible the features of this plague! The entire sweeping away of all the inmates of some houses. A solemn spectacle for others to witness, displaying the fierceness and power of God’s anger. In the great plague of Marseilles, 1720, and in that of the village of Eyam, 1666, we have similar scenes. “In 1813,” says one, “such was the violence with which the plague raged at Malta, such the certain destruction which attended the slightest contact with the infected, that at last every better feeling of the heart was extinguished in a desire of self-preservation, and nobody could be procured to perform the melancholy offices which make up the funeral train of sickness and death.”
Amos 6:11. Great and small.
“With equal pace impartial fate
Knocks at the palace as the cottage gate.” [Horace.]