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6. Woe to the Complacent

¹ Woe to you who are complacent in Zion,
   and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria,
you notable men of the foremost nation,
   to whom the people of Israel come!
² Go to Kalneh and look at it;
   go from there to great Hamath,
   and then go down to Gath in Philistia.
Are they better off than your two kingdoms?
   Is their land larger than yours?
³ You put off the day of disaster
   and bring near a reign of terror.
⁴ You lie on beds adorned with ivory
   and lounge on your couches.
You dine on choice lambs
   and fattened calves.
⁵ You strum away on your harps like David
   and improvise on musical instruments.
⁶ You drink wine by the bowlful
   and use the finest lotions,
   but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph.
⁷ Therefore you will be among the first to go into exile;
   your feasting and lounging will end.

The LORD Abhors the Pride of Israel

⁸ The Sovereign LORD has sworn by himself—the LORD God Almighty declares:

   “I abhor the pride of Jacob
   and detest his fortresses;
I will deliver up the city
   and everything in it.”

⁹ If ten people are left in one house, they too will die. ¹⁰ And if the relative who comes to carry the bodies out of the house to burn them Or to make a funeral fire in honor of the dead asks anyone who might be hiding there, “Is anyone else with you?” and he says, “No,” then he will go on to say, “Hush! We must not mention the name of the LORD.”

    ¹¹ For the LORD has given the command,
   and he will smash the great house into pieces
   and the small house into bits.

    ¹² Do horses run on the rocky crags?
   Does one plow the sea With a different word division of the Hebrew; Masoretic Text plow there with oxen?
But you have turned justice into poison
   and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness—
¹³ you who rejoice in the conquest of Lo Debar Lo Debar means nothing.
   and say, “Did we not take Karnaim Karnaim means horns; horn here symbolizes strength. by our own strength?”

    ¹⁴ For the LORD God Almighty declares,
   “I will stir up a nation against you, Israel,
that will oppress you all the way
   from Lebo Hamath to the valley of the Arabah.”

The Prophet here reproves the Jews and Israelites for another crime, — that they had often provoked God’s wrath, and ceased not by their sins to call forth new punishments, and in the meantime rejected, through their haughtiness and obstinacy, all his threatening, as if they were vain, and would never be executed on them. We must ever remember what I have said before, — that the Prophet speaks not here of the whole people, but of the chiefs; for the expression, that they drew nigh the throne of iniquity, could not have been applied to the common people. This discourse then was addressed particularly to the judges and counselors, and those who were in power in both kingdoms, in Judah as well as in Israel.

But it is a remarkable saying, that they drove far off the evil day, while they drew nigh the throne of iniquity, or of violence; as though he said, “Ye seek for yourselves a fever by your intemperance, and yet ye drive it far off, as drunken men are wont to do, who swallow down wine without any moderation; and when a physician comes or one more moderate, and warns them not to indulge in excess, they ridicule all their forebodings: ‘What! will a fever seize on me? I am wholly free from fever; I am indeed accustomed to drink wine.’” Such are ungodly men, when they provoke God’s wrath as it were designedly, and at the same time scorn all threatening, as though they were safe through some special privilege. We now then see what the Prophet had in view by saying, that they drove far the evil day, and yet drew nigh the throne of iniquity He means, that they drew nigh the throne of iniquity, when the judges strengthened themselves in their tyranny, and took the liberty to steal, to rob, to plunder, to oppress. When therefore they thus hardened themselves in all kinds of licentiousness, they then drew nigh the throne of iniquity. And they put away the evil day, because they were touched by no alarm; for when the Prophets denounced God’s vengeance, they regarded it as a fable.

In short, Amos charges here the principal men of the two kingdoms with two crimes, — that they ceased not to provoke continually the wrath of God by subverting and casting under foot all equity, and by ruling the people in a tyrannical and haughty manner — and that, in the mean time, they heedlessly despised all threatening, prolonged time, and promised impunity to themselves: even when God seriously and sharply addressed them, they still thought that the evil day was not nigh. Passages of this kind meet us everywhere in the Prophets, in which they show their indignation at this kind of heedlessness, when hypocrites putting off every feeling of grief, as though they had fascinated themselves, laughed to scorn all the Prophets, because they thought that the hand of God was far removed from them. Thus they are spoken of by Isaiah, as saying,

‘Let us eat and drink, since we must die,’
(Isaiah 22:13)

They indeed thought that the Prophets did not seriously threaten them; but they regarded the mention of a near destruction as an empty bugbear. We now then understand what the Prophet meant. It follows —