Therefore thus saith the Lord God; An adversary there shall be even round about the land.
The spoiler spoiled
In the previous verse Amos has pronounced God’s verdict on the proud citizens of Samaria; here he proclaims the punishment which is about to come upon them.
I. The first word of the passage, “therefore,” shows us that this spoiling is the direct result of their own sin. They had chosen their path--that of remorseless greed, and of luxury won by oppression and tyranny--and it was the path on which the avenging angels walked with the vials of God’s wrath. Their sin was to be punished by the loss of everything which it seemed to have secured. The history of Assyria is another illustration of this connection between sin and punishment (Isaiah 33:1; Nahum, etc.). God will surely spoil every spoiler.
II. The fruits of this course of oppression. The treasures gained by sin pass away by plunder. “An adversary” (verse 11). Sixty years later the king of Assyria besieged Samaria as Amos foretold, and rifled their glorious palaces. They had filled them with stores of wealth, and had revelled there in luxury; but these things only served to whet the appetite for plunder which brought Assyria to their gates. They built their winter houses and their summer houses, their great houses and their houses of ivory, regardless of the despair of the poor, and of the curses of the oppressed. Even God’s threatenings had not been able to check them for a moment. What end had it served? They had a few years of revelry, but at last that for which they had sacrificed a good conscience and the favour of God was snatched from them in a moment. What an ignominious end verse 12 describes. Melanchthon’s mother said, “Ill-gotten wealth but loss secures.” How true it is! If never before, yet when death comes that for which a man has sacrificed character and conscience is taken from him, and, robbed of all he prized, he must stand in the presence of his Judge.
III. The failure of every stay on which such men might rest in the time of trouble, “In the day that I shall visit the trangressions of Israel upon him I will also visit the altars of Bethel; and the horns of the altar shall be cut off and fall to the ground.” The idols should perish in the same hour as their worshippers, involved in a common destruction. It was from Bethel that they looked for deliverance. There they had presented their offerings and paid their tithes, but the idols failed them in their hour of trouble, and fell by the same visitation. Every arm of flesh must fail when God’s judgments come. (J. Telford, B. A.)