Amos 5:18

Woe unto you that Ah! they that. … The interjection Hôy(the same as that used in 1 Kings 13:30 &c. quoted on Amos 5:16) implies commiseration rather than denunciation. It is used frequently, as here, to introduce an announcement of judgement: Isaiah 1:4; Isaiah 1:24; Isaiah 5:8; Isaiah 5:11; Isaiah 5:18; Isaiah 5:20-22; Isaiah 29:1; Isaiah 29:15 &c. (Woe… Isaiah 3:9; Isaiah 3:11; Isaiah 6:5; Isaiah 24:16 &c., is a different word, and is followed by the prep. to).

the day of Jehovah] i.e. the day in which Jehovah manifests Himself in triumph over His foes. The expression is based probably upon the Hebrew use of dayas equivalent to day of battleor victory(Ezekiel 13:5; cf. Isaiah 9:4, the -day" of Midian, i.e. the day of victory over Midian). From the present passage it appears to have been a current popular idea that Jehovah would one day manifest Himself, and confer some crowning victory upon His people: Amos points out that whether that will be so or not, depends upon Israel's moralcondition; the -day of Jehovah," such as the people imagine, would not be necessarily a day of victory to Israel over foreign powers, but a day in which Jehovah's righteousness would be vindicated against sin, whether among foreign nations or His own people: so long therefore as Israel neglects to amend its ways, and continues to treat ritual as a substitute for morality, it will find Jehovah's day to be the reverse of what it anticipates, a day not of triumph but of disaster. The -day of Jehovah," as thus understood by Amos, becomes a figure which is afterwards often employed by the prophets in their pictures of impending judgement. The conception places out of sight the human agents, by whom actually the judgement, as a rule, is effected, and regards the decisive movements of history as the exclusive manifestation of Jehovah's purpose and power. The prophets, in adopting the figure, develope it under varying imagery, suggested partly by the occasion, partly by their own imagination. Thus Isaiah (Isaiah 2:12-21) represents it as directed against the various objects of pride and strength which Judah had accumulated in the days of Uzziah; Joel (Amos 2:1 ff.) derives his imagery from a recent visitation of locusts (as described in ch. 1): for other examples, see Zephaniah 1:7; Zephaniah 1:14-16; Isaiah 13:6-10; Isaiah 24:8; Joel 3:14-16. Comp. further W. R. Smith, Prophets, pp. 397 f.; Schultz, O.T. Theol. ii. 354 ff.; Davidson on Zephaniah 1:7.

to what endis it for you? what good will it do you? See Genesis 27:46, where substantially the same Hebrew expression is thus paraphrased in A.V., R.V.

darkness, and not light figures, respectively, of disaster, and of prosperity or relief, as often in the Hebrew poets: see e.g. Isaiah 5:30; Isaiah 8:22; Isaiah 9:2; Isaiah 58:8; Isaiah 59:9; Jeremiah 13:16.