Amos 5

This chapter opens with a tender and pathetic lamentation, in the style of a funeral song, over the house of Israel, Amos 5:1 , Amos 5:2 . The prophet then glances at the awful threatening denounced against them, Amos 5:3 ; earnestly exhorting them to renounce their idols, and seek Jehovah, of whom he gives a very magnificent description, Amos 5:4-9 . He then reproves their injustice and oppression with great warmth and indignation; exhorts them again to repentance; and enforces his exhortation with the most awful threatenings, delivered with great majesty and authority, and in images full of beauty and grandeur, Amos 5:10-24 . The chapter concludes with observing that their idolatry was of long standing, that they increased the national guilt, by adding to the sins of their fathers; and that their punishment, therefore, should be great in proportion, Amos 5:25-27 . Formerly numbers of them were brought captive to Damascus, 2 Kings 10:32 , 2 Kings 10:33 ; but now they must go beyond it to Assyria, 2 Kings 15:29 ; 2 Kings 17:6 .