Amos 5:27

Beyond Damascus— The way into Assyria, whither the ten tribes were conveyed, was by Damascus. Amos does not expressly declare into what place the Israelites were to be removed; he only foretels that their banishment should be far remote; not at Damascus; whither they were carried by the kings of Syria, by whom they had before often been conquered and led captive. See Houbigant.

REFLECTIONS.—1st, The prophet cannot but be himself affected with the miseries that he foresees coming upon the people: while, therefore, he demands of them attention to the doleful tidings, he laments in elegiac strains of woe the virgin of Israel fallen, as if she was already a dead corpse, since God had pronounced her doom.

1. Her ruin is irrecoverable. She is not only fallen, but fallen to rise no more, having never been a kingdom since the ten tribes were carried captive by Salmaneser. She is forsaken upon her land, both of God, her allies, and her own people; there is none to raise her up, either able or willing to help her; for those impenitent sinners whom God is determined to destroy, none can save.

2. The inhabitants shall be diminished, and brought very low. Before the final vengeance overtook them, a variety of calamities had reduced their numbers; so that the city which could formerly muster a thousand men, could on that invasion raise but a hundred; and the village which had a hundred inhabitants was reduced to ten: or these numbers only remained after the campaign, but one in ten escaping the ravages of war.
2nd, The blessings of obedience, and the miseries of sin, are topics upon which we should often dwell, that we may choose the one and avoid the other.
1. The sins of Israel are brought to their remembrance, that they might repent, and amend the evil of their ways. In general, God charges them with manifold transgressions and mighty sins; he knew them, however secretly committed, and now produces them for their conviction. Note; The sinner who is brought to a true knowledge of his state, stands amazed at the multitude of his transgressions, by thought, word, and deed committed against the divine Majesty; and is shocked at the flagrant enormities which cry for vengeance against him.

[1.] They were idolaters flying to Beth-el and Gilgal, where their idols were, instead of having recourse to God at his temple.

[2.] They practised the most flagrant injustice; ye turn judgment to wormwood, acting in direct opposition thereto, and leave off righteousness in the earth, having not the least regard for it, but trampling it under foot.

[3.] They were oppressors of the poor, not only plundering them of burdens of wheat, their very gleaning, or the fruit gotten by hard labour; but also trod them under foot. Imperious, insolent, and cruel to them, they afflicted the just, perhaps hated them because they were so, and took every opportunity to harass and torment them. They take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right; be the right of the cause never so clear, the bribe carries it against law and equity; and they who cannot bribe them, need not expect redress of the most flagrant injuries.

(4.) They were malicious persecutors of God's faithful ministers and people. They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, the ministers and prophets, who openly preached against their iniquities; and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly; the conversation, yea, the very person of such is their abhorrence, as they are a constant and living reproof to their iniquities. And in those evil days, when the enmity of the wicked is so avowed, the prudent shall keep silence in that time. When a man will be made an offender for a word, it is as dangerous to complain, as fruitless to reprove. Note; Good men are often driven to unwilling silence, though it is a pain and grief to them.

2. Their punishment is foretold, except they repent. The head-quarters of their idolatry, Beth-el and Gilgal, shall come to nought, and the inhabitants go into captivity. A fire shall devour the house of Joseph; it shall consume the whole nation, and none of their idols at Beth-el shall be able to quench it; so little protection can any creature afford us in the day of wrath. Though by the fruits of oppression they reared magnificent abodes for themselves, they shall not be suffered to dwell in them, nor eat the fruits of the pleasant vineyards which they had planted, by death cut off, or by captivity removed far away. Note; What is not honestly got, is not likely to be long enjoyed.

3. To prevent this threatened vengeance, they are exhorted speedily to seek the Lord for pardon and grace, in order that their hearts and lives may be reformed and changed. Seek ye me, saith the Lord, my mercy and favour, and return to my worship and service, and yea shall live; notwithstanding all that is past, their guilt shall be forgiven, and their forfeited lives restored; they shall be suffered still to dwell in their own land; and, what is far better, as partakers of God's grace, and, perseveringly cleaving to him through faith, shall live spiritually his people on earth, and eternally with him in heaven. But they must renounce their idolatries at Beth-el and Gilgal, for while these remained, no mercy could be hoped for: and what wretched vanities were these, compared with him whom they were exhorted to seek, and to whose favour they were invited; he maketh the seven stars, called the Pleiades, and Orion, another constellation, with all the heavenly hosts, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night, directing the constant revolutions of day and night; or able to turn the deepest night of distress into the day of exultation and joy; or the meridian brightness of prosperity into the darkness of most abject wretchedness; that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth, as in the deluge, to punish an ungodly world; or, by exhalations from the great abyss of waters, replenishes the clouds, which drop down the rain to water the earth; the Lord is his name, Jehovah, the self-sufficient, all-sufficient God: that strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, enabling them to stand against their oppressors; yea, though vanquished before, raising them above their conquerors, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress, besiege and take it. However desperate, therefore, their national affairs might appear, if God became their friend, they might be easily retrieved: if then they would be delivered from danger, they must return to God, and the paths of duty. Seek good and not evil, putting away all your abominations, and desiring henceforward to know God's holy will, and walk in all his holy ways; that ye may live, as God hath promised; and so the Lord God of Hosts shall be with you, as ye have spoken, as once they boasted he was, or as now they prayed he might be; and his gracious presence is better than life itself. Hate the evil, not only because it is so fatal to your souls, but because it is so offensive and odious to the holy God; and love the good, God himself, his people, his ways, his worship, delighting in the Lord, and in every good word and work which may advance his glory: and, particularly, what they had hitherto so neglected, establish judgment in the gate, that justice may be administered to all impartially, freely, speedily; it may be that the Lord God of Hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph; though reduced to a few, this conduct would be the means of restoring their prosperity; at least the remnant of the truly faithful souls should find favour and grace in the eyes of the Lord. Note; The way of duty is the path of safety, and God hath never yet failed those who seek him.

3rdly, The clause from Amos 5:16 to the conclusion of the chapter, declares what would be the case, if neither judgments, mercies, nor exhortations wrought upon them.

1. Such calamities were coming upon them, as would raise a bitter and universal mourning. Their streets should echo with wailing, and their highways resound with lamentations; even the husbandman and the vine-dresser shall leave their employments, to join the general cry, Alas! alas! while those, whose profession it had been to awaken the sorrows of others, shall now with no fictitious notes of woe pour forth their anguish, and raise the melancholy sound; for I will pass through thee, saith the Lord, with such fearful vengeance and desolations, as when of old the destroying angel passed through the land of Egypt.

2. The scoffers are particularly and severely rebuked. Many of the profane and ungodly mocked at the warnings given, and with daring insolence and hardened infidelity bid the day come, as if they neither believed nor feared it. Therefore woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord; it would come faster than they were aware; to what end is it for you? it would make them wish a thousand times that their impious speeches were unsaid; for the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light: a terrible day for them. And it is repeated, to affect them with a sense of their danger, even very dark, and no brightness in it, when the hopes with which these sinners, and all who are like them, flattered themselves, shall be lost in black unfathomable despair. No door of escape shall then be open; it shall be as if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him, such a multitude of dire calamities should surround them; or went into a house and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him; for no place in a day of wrath can afford the impenitent sinner shelter or support. Perhaps some wished for these troublesome times which were threatened, hoping to make their own advantage of them; but, to their cost, they would find themselves dreadfully involved in the common calamity.

4thly, Amidst abounding ungodliness, they flattered themselves that the form of godliness which they observed would preserve them from ruin; but they are woefully mistaken.
1. Their sacrifices and services, so far from being pleasing to God, were his abomination; and their sacred songs grated harsh discord in his ears. Not only they were performed contrary to his institution, at Beth-el instead of Jerusalem; but also their allowed iniquity and barefaced hypocrisy made them doubly displeasing and loathsome in his sight. Note; (1.) Formality and hypocrisy are more odious to God than open profaneness; these shall receive greater damnation. (2.) Many flatter themselves that their duties and devotions will carry them to heaven, when their pride, and vain confidence in these things, only the more certainly lead them down to hell.

2. What God required of them was righteousness and judgment, without which no sacrifice could avail. Let judgment run down as waters, freely, copiously, without interruption; and righteousness as a mighty stream, bearing down before it ungodliness and wrong.

3. To idols, not to God, had their sacrifices been offered. Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years? No. The greatest part of the time none were offered; and, of the few sacrifices which they did bring, the golden calf had a chief share: so soon idolatry began, and had continued ever since among them. Ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch, little shrines or small images of this hated idol, probably the sun, in honour of whom they burnt their children in the fire; and Chiun, the same as Remphan, Acts 7:43 representing also Moloch, or perhaps the planet Saturn; your images; the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves; the worship of the heavenly hope being the most ancient idolatry, which they had adopted, worshipping and serving the creature instead of the Creator.

4. For these things they are doomed to an ignominious captivity. Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, into a more distant and strange land, even beyond Babylon, as Stephen quotes it, Acts 7:43 and the infallible certainty of the prediction is confirmed by thus saith the Lord, whose name is the God of Hosts, almighty to execute, and true to accomplish, the threatenings of his word.

See commentary on Amos 5:25