And I will smite the winter house with the summer house; and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall have an end, saith the LORD.
And I will smite the winter ... with the summer house - (Judges 3:20; Jeremiah 36:22). Winter houses of the great were in sheltered positions facing the south, to get all possible sunshine; summer houses in forests and on hills, facing the east and north.
And the houses of ivory - having their walls, doors, and cielings inlaid with ivory. So Ahab's house (1 Kings 22:39; Psalms 45:8).
Remarks:
(1) Thrice the prophet addressed the same solemn summons, Hear ye this word (Amos 3:1; Amos 4:1; Amos 5:1). The mystery of the Trinity of the God in whose name he spake seems to be involved in this three-fold call. When the great God speaks, man's part is to hear with fixed attention, reverence, and love.
(2) Here the message is one of judgment "against the whole family" which formerly God had chosen out of "all the families of the earth," that in it, and especially in the promised seed which was to be of it, all families of the earth should be blessed (Amos 3:2; Genesis 12:3). God had drawn them in especial nearness to Himself, knowing them and acknowledging them as His special people above all peoples. Therefore would He "punish them for all their iniquities." The greater is the light against which one sins, the greater will be the penalty. For the angels, who sinned against the highest degree of light, there is no redemption provided. Of Jerusalem, the city which enjoyed the greatest degree of religious privileges in the Old Testament dispensation, it is written, "Under the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done upon Jerusalem" (Daniel 9:12). So, as our Christian light and privileges are greater than Israel's light and privileges, our responsibilities also are proportionably greater than theirs; and if we reject so great salvation as that which is now offered to us in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus, how awful shall be our increased weight of condemnation! If we will not glorify Him by our salvation, He will glorify His own justice in our punishment.
(3) The prophet desires, in the person of God, to rouse the people to serious self-examination, by pregnant, enigmatic questions, calculated to excite their curiosity to discover his meaning. When God asks "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" the thought suggests itself to each, Am I at agreement with God? If not, I am not walking with God now, nor can I hope to be forever with God hereafter. God cannot be agreed with the self justifying sinner. The first step, therefore, toward walking in agreement with God is that the sinner should realize his own guilt and danger, and then that he should avail himself of the atonement, so as to be reconciled to God.
(4) Israel thought that God was not with the prophets in their denunciation of the coming ruin upon the nation. But their denunciations were just what might have been expected under the circumstances. For just as the lion's roaring (Amos 3:4) proves that the prey is near, since it is not without an object he roars, so God's terrible threats by His prophets are just what might have been looked for, seeing that the nation, the object of those threats, was utterly guilty, and called for the judicial vengeance of God. God would not threaten if He did not mean to punish: God will not always speak in a still small voice.
(5) Again, as the bird, in trying to ascend, is brought down by the snare (Amos 3:5), so surely, saith the prophet, will the guilty people be brought down from their seeming rise to prosperity under Jeroboam II by the word of God, of which the prophets are but the mouthpiece. Let us hence learn to take alarm and "fear" (Amos 3:8) in time, when God gives the "trumpet" note of coming "evil" (Amos 3:6). The evil of sin comes from ourselves, the evil of punishment from God. But God, before He judicially does aught of evil to a people or a church, mercifully forewarns them of it through "His servants the prophets," who are admitted to the knowledge of some of His "secret" counsels (Amos 3:7). The written prophecies of Scripture are our perpetual note of warning, that so the great day of the Lord may not take us unawares and unprepared.
(6) The man of God "cannot but speak the things which he hath seen and heard" (Amos 3:8; Acts 4:20). Amos therefore tells Israel that even the idolatrous Philistines, who were already doomed to destruction along with their "palaces" (Amos 1:7) would, if they were summoned from those palaces to the commanding heights that surrounded the hill of Samaria (Amos 3:9), condemn Israel for the enormities perpetrated in its capital. Often sinners can be awakened to a sense of shame before their fellow-men, though they have no sense of it toward God: nay, even they will, to avoid temporary shame before man, rush into everlasting shame. It is well, then, when men can be shamed out of their wrong conduct, so as to escape everlasting shame.
(7) The pagan Philistines and Egyptians, sitting on the surrounding mountains as the tribunal, in viewing Israel's enormities, would "testify" (Amos 3:13) and vindicate God's justice in Israel's terrible punishment. Men often will condemn in others what they do themselves. Israel thought that by her "violence and robbery" she was storing up riches (Amos 3:10) in her palaces; but what she was really storing was not the perishing riches, but the abiding sin, violence and robbery, and its awful and inseparable fruit, a treasure of "wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God" (Romans 2:5). She had become blinded by the habit of sin, so as "not to know to do right." Men gradually lose the power of discriminating good from evil-spiritual light from darkness. Let us see that we do not, by the worship of Mammon, and pleasure, and self, which are so awfully prevalent among professing Christians, lose the knowledge of the right way, and be given up as reprobates to congenial darkness! Let us be "wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil" (Romans 16:19).
(8) A remnant only of Israel was to be reserved from the jaws of destruction (Amos 3:12), even the "remnant according to the election of grace" (Romans 11:5). The "palaces," which were once her storehouses of "robbery," have been long since, in just retribution, robbed by the "spoiler" (Amos 3:11). Their luxurious beds of down have for long been exchanged for a state wherein they as a people find no ease, neither has the sole of their foot rest (Deuteronomy 28:65). The scattered people of Israel are now everywhere a standing witness of the truth of God's threats, and a vindication of His justice in punishing transgressors, without respect of persons. The blood-sprinkled "horns" of their "altar," so far from atoning for sin, as they hoped, have themselves been regarded by God as the especial sin which brought destruction alike on the altar and the worshippers. All the appliances of Israel's luxury and pride, which are so close akin to idolatry, have long ago "perished" (Amos 3:15), "smitten" by God. The religion of nature can never be a substitute for the religion of revelation. They who reject the latter for the former will find out their fatal mistake too late. God makes men's transgressions come "upon" them (Amos 3:14) as a terrible part of their eternal punishment.