Amos 5:1-3

1-3. A dirge.

Hear ye this word Compare Amos 3:1; Amos 4:1.

Lamentation Hebrews kinah. A technical term for a dirge in memory of a departed friend. It is not a spontaneous expression of grief, but a formal composition, long or short, artificially constructed. These dirges are composed in a peculiar meter, the so-called kinah verse, in which the lines are longer than ordinarily in Hebrew poetry, each consisting of two parts, of which the second is a little shorter than the first, the ratio being about 3 to 2. The lament is contained in Amos 5:2-3; Amos 5:3 giving the explanation of Amos 5:2. The kinah meter is observed only in Amos 5:2; it may be restored approximately in Amos 5:3 by omitting the introductory words and “to the house of Israel” at the close. While it is not possible to reproduce exactly the meter of the Hebrew, the following rendering of Amos 5:2-3 (with the omissions suggested) indicates approximately the character of the kinah compositions: (a) Fallen, no more shall she rise, (b) virgin Israel, (a) Flung down on her own ground (b) no one to raise her.

(a) The city that goeth forth a thousand (b) shall have left a hundred, (a) And she that goeth forth a hundred (b) shall have left ten.

Virgin of Israel “The earliest extant example of the personification of a nation or community as a woman.” Later such personifications became quite common (Jeremiah 18:13; Jeremiah 31:4; Jeremiah 31:21; compare Isaiah 10:32; Isaiah 37:22, etc.; see on Hosea 2:2).

Is fallen The prophetic perfect. The calamity is still future, but the prophet is so certain of its coming that he sings the dirge as if the nation had already died. The wounds inflicted are so grievous that she cannot rise, nor is there anyone to help her up.

Forsaken R.V., “cast down.” The verb implies the use of force flung down and the abandonment to destruction (Ezekiel 29:5; Ezekiel 32:4). Amos 5:3 indicates the nature of the calamity that will reduce Israel to such sore straits; her fighting force is to be reduced to one tenth of its present numbers.

Went out To battle.

A thousand A city that can furnish a thousand fighting men must be of considerable size.

An hundred A smaller town. Great and small cities shall suffer alike.

Justification of the judgment, and exhortation to repentance, 4-10. That Amos believed in the possibility of a universal “return” of Israel is nowhere stated or implied; that he hoped for some salutary effects of his preaching cannot be doubted; it is implied in Amos 5:15, and in the fact that he continues his exhortation to “seek Jehovah.” Who of the people would repent and who would persist in rebellion he could not know; therefore he must exhort all that he may “save some.” This he does in Amos 5:4 ff. At the same time his exhortation supplies the justification for the divine judgment; they have done the things that are not acceptable to God, and have left undone the things in which he takes delight. Notwithstanding the abruptness of transition from 1-3 to 4 the logical connection between the two parts is not difficult to see. In 1-3 the prophet bemoans the humiliation of Israel. He would have been unfit to act as a messenger of Jehovah had not the contemplation of this fate moved him to compassion and aroused a longing that the terrible calamity might be averted. In the anxiety of his heart he bursts forth in a new exhortation, hoping that, perchance, he may yet succeed in bringing at least some to repentance, and thus avert the doom. Harper interprets Amos 5:4-5 as injunctions given in the past, disobedience to which furnishes the reasons for the disaster described in Amos 5:2-3; and he makes Amos 5:6 the beginning of Amos’s exhortation. This interpretation is less natural; it certainly is no improvement over the one commonly accepted.