The Judgment on the Proud
1Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who are secure on the mountain of Samaria, the notable men of the chief of the nations, to whom the house of Israel come! 2Go to Calneh, and see; and from there go to Hamath the great; then go down to Gath of the Philistines. are they better than these kingdoms? or is their border greater than your border? 3Those who put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near; 4Who lie on beds of ivory, and stretch themselves on their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the middle of the stall; 5who strum on the strings of a harp; who invent for themselves instruments of music, like David; 6who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the best oils; but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. 7Therefore they will now go captive with the first who go captive; and the feasting and lounging will end. 8“The Lord Yahweh has sworn by himself,” says Yahweh, the God of Armies: “I abhor the pride of Jacob, and detest his fortresses. Therefore I will deliver up the city with all that is in it. 9It will happen, if there remain ten men in one house, that they shall die. 10“When a man’s relative carries him, even he who burns him, to bring bodies out of the house, and asks him who is in the innermost parts of the house, ‘Is there yet any with you?’ And he says, ‘No;’ then he will say, ‘Hush! Indeed we must not mention Yahweh’s name.’ 11“For, behold, Yahweh commands, and the great house will be smashed to pieces, and the little house into bits. 12Do horses run on the rocky crags? Does one plow there with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness; 13you who rejoice in a thing of nothing, who say, ‘Haven’t we taken for ourselves horns by our own strength?’ 14For, behold, I will raise up against you a nation, house of Israel,” says Yahweh, the God of Armies; “and they will afflict you from the entrance of Hamath to the brook of the Arabah.”
Born sinners because of Adam, people come to receive Christ through someone’s witness as they go through life, and they become believers. From that moment they are God’s children and live as people held in honor. A prince sent away from the palace to escape an illness is no less a prince; in the same way, those God has chosen live in this world as his children, receiving his grace. Yet those whose hearts have been captured by the glitter of the world cannot give full thanks for that grace, and they still fall to Satan’s temptations.
Satan deceived Eve, telling her that on the day she ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil her eyes would be opened and she would be like God. Those deceived by Satan still commit the sin of pride today, presuming to stand on equal footing with God and exalt themselves. But to protect his children from evil spirits and the evil one, the Holy Spirit always walks with them and helps them gain wisdom.
Just as the Holy Spirit and Satan are fundamentally different, God’s people and the world walk different roads. We have to recognize that a person who lives as though the world were everything and a person who lives believing in the Kingdom of God lead lives of an entirely different spiritual quality. And if a believer leans on the world, they will live a life of failure.
Amos 6:5
5who strum on the strings of a harp; who invent for themselves instruments of music, like David;
Praise and the world’s songs are on entirely different planes, yet if worship leaders sing to satisfy people, they commit a grave sin. Pastors must proclaim only the word; if they tell meaningless jokes to please people, hold up those who succeeded by the world’s methods as examples, and teach a religion that seeks blessing, they are not servants of God.
Singers sing for their own lives and their own satisfaction, but worship leaders have a calling: to help the congregation open their hearts wide and resolve once more to live by faith. Not all pastors and worship leaders are like this, but stirring people’s emotions by the world’s methods is neither praise nor preaching. If a leader watches people raise their hands and weep as they sing and grows puffed up, as if they themselves had given that grace, that person is not fit to minister. When ministers open the hearts of the congregation so that they can praise God in reverence, and the people go back to their own lives and live by faith, full of the Holy Spirit, then those ministers are approved by God.
When believers sing loudly and shed tears, they feel full. But if they go back to their lives and grow hard again, like a heart seared as with a hot iron, they have not repented and turned back; they have been deceived by their own feelings. Because God looks at the heart, he does not accept zeal that is only for show. The almighty God examines the hearts of his people closely, so we must always show him a true faith.
Israel formed choirs that played all kinds of instruments and stationed many people, offering sacrifices that were satisfying to look at. But those sacrifices served their own greed and pleasure, their desire to gain still more blessing in the world. Israel was judged because they overestimated themselves, despised others, acted however they pleased as though they alone were right, and committed evil without a qualm.
When Israel made Damascus a vassal, its rulers fell into the conceit that they would never have to struggle again as long as they lived, and they lived lazy, extravagant, complacent lives. Once they forgot that the abundance they enjoyed was a blessing from God, they began to worship even the gods of the Gentile nations in order to prosper in the world. They defied the word of God, who had said that they must have no other gods besides him and must not make idols, bow down to them, or serve them.
Though they had received great grace from God, far from exalting him, they fell into corruption of their own accord. Sadder still, the poor who had been abused by the wicked rulers now envied the rulers’ way of life and began to live as they did. They came to think that if only they could prosper like those wicked rulers, it would not matter if they left God at any time. Israel, chosen by the almighty God, compromised with the world and was stained by evil.
When Israel threw away his grace, God in his anger said he would judge them, but they persecuted the prophets and committed the sin of mocking God. Instead of offering peace offerings according to God’s law, they even committed the sin of slaughtering lambs and calves for lavish feasts. And all the while they said they were content to live in such ease in Zion, and they delighted in feeling secure on the mountain of Samaria.
When Samaria grew strong militarily and economically, its leaders fell into the illusion that they were great men ruling a powerful nation. But they must not forget that everything is God’s grace. God told them to go and learn how cities that, like them, had once thought themselves great had fallen. He told them to cross over to Calneh and see, to go to Hamath the great and see, and to go down to Gath of the Philistines, to look on their downfall and learn from it.
Calneh and Hamath were cities in Aram to the north, and between BC 854 and 846 they were trampled by Assyria while Shalmaneser III was out on campaign. Gath, in Philistia [Palestine], was laid waste in BC 815 by Hazael, king of Aram; it was also the city that produced Goliath.
In verse 5, the word for their idle strumming means broken or broken off, describing something that has collapsed from its normal state. It is like people babbling whatever comes into their heads in a stupor, or a drunkard playing music on a whim.
David played and danced with all his heart in the fear of God. He praised because he loved God alone, but these people played on a whim, drunk and rowdy, as if mocking God, so their faith was nothing like David’s.
One who praises with all their heart and one who drinks and sings, carried away by their own mood, can never be the same. The people of Israel knew that if they offered sacrifice to almighty God wrongly, they could die on the spot, but because they were drunk, they made up tunes they liked and hummed them. God did not strike them dead right there for such wickedness, because he was preparing a terrible judgment.
The praise we sing in worship must be offered with an earnest longing for God to accept it. Singing with gusto when I am in a good mood and not singing when I do not feel like it may bring rebuke, because then the one at the center is not God but myself. If our hearts toward God change with our circumstances and feelings, that is not faith. Only when our love for God holds firm in every situation will God lead our lives along the good path as well.
Those who drank in the temple and lived as they pleased disparaged David’s faith, saying that David too had made instruments for his own pleasure. They said this because their consciences pricked them for having made instruments to indulge themselves, and so they put their own conduct on a level with David, whose faith God had approved. David did not make instruments and write psalms of praise to God in order to exalt himself. He made them in faith because he longed to praise God’s glory with every instrument there was, and to disparage such a man shows how corrupt they had become.
Though their nation stood on the brink of destruction, they paid it no attention at all and drank to satisfy the desires of the flesh. If those who govern a nation do not work for the nation and its people, it will fall, even if it is Israel, the chosen people.
2 Samuel 23:1-2
1Now these are the last words of David. David the son of Jesse says, the man who was raised on high says, the anointed of the God of Jacob, the sweet psalmist of Israel: 2“Yahweh’s Spirit spoke by me. His word was on my tongue.
The psalms that record David’s praise show how faithful he was. Yahweh’s Spirit spoke by David. This means David knew God’s will well and lived uprightly, and that the Holy Spirit was at work so that David would lead the people in faith. Even so, in God’s eyes, the faith of the Old Testament’s people of faith, of the disciples, and of believers built on the solid rock is not a special faith; it is the most normal faith there is.
It is fine to build a large church building and to decorate it splendidly, to provide many fine instruments and form a large choir. The point is that the faith behind it must be like David’s, who wanted to bring glory to God with every instrument and every person he could gather.
Amos 6:6
6who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the best oils; but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.
The bowls here are the basins used for sacrifices in the temple, that is, the holy vessels. They drank wine from those holy vessels, and that shows how far they despised God and how dissolute their lives had become. If they used the vessels of sacrifice, they must have been leaders or priests. Those who should have taught the nation to serve God well were themselves leading the way in the sin of mocking and despising him. These bowls were meant to hold the blood of animals that stood in for human sin; to fill holy vessels in the temple with wine and drink from them is a wicked act that refuses to acknowledge God’s very existence.
People who drink say that the Bible contains no command against drinking. Jesus drank wine, and so did the people of Israel, they say, so why forbid it? When Jesus drank wine, it was diluted dozens of times over and drunk in place of water. And Scripture testifies that those who drank all lost their reason and became Satan’s tools; that is why we say not to drink. Moreover, the command not to get drunk is plainly written in Scripture. Churches and believers who behave this way now are no different from Israel awaiting God’s judgment. How could angels with pure spirits wait on such people, and how could God share his holy glory with them?
These corrupt people anointed their bodies with the finest oils and indulged in pleasure, and they had no heart for the affliction of Joseph, that is, for the work of salvation. The leaders took taxes paid with the people’s sweat and blood, rubbed costly oil on their bodies, chased after pleasure, and cared nothing for the people’s faith; from this we can tell that they did not fear the judgment the prophet Amos proclaimed either.
Exodus 30:37-38
37The incense which you shall make, according to its composition you shall not make for yourselves: it shall be to you holy for Yahweh. 38Whoever shall make any like that, to smell of it, he shall be cut off from his people.”
To make clear the relationship between Creator and creature, God forbade eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; in the same way, he said that the incense offered to him is holy, so they must never make it for themselves, and that whoever made it would die. God had said never to make this holy oil and never even to smell the incense, yet they made it and rubbed it on their bodies. That is the same sin as Adam eating from the forbidden tree, so they cannot escape judgment.
Israel acted this way because they thought their power was great, which is why they felt no guilt at all even after committing grievous sins. When God did not strike them dead at once, even though they drank in the holy temple and rubbed the holy oil on their bodies, they sank into deeper corruption. On the day God’s judgment comes, these lovers of the world will be the first to be carried off captive, and the songs they sang in their revelry will turn to screams. Then regret will be useless, and repentance will come too late. Only those who have the wisdom to listen when God warns can live.
Micah 6:8-9
8He has shown you, O man, what is good. What does Yahweh require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? 9Yahweh’s voice calls to the city, and wisdom sees your name: “Listen to the rod, and he who appointed it.
Micah showed the people what it means to live a good life. What God wants from Israel is only to act justly, to love mercy, and to obey his word. Obedience and faith mean doing first what God wants, rather than offering him our devotion. God said that if people do not do what is good, he will take no pleasure in them even if they bring thousands of rams or tens of thousands of rivers of oil, and he will not accept it even if they burn their own children as an offering.
Those who had amassed wealth lived dissolutely yet thought that giving large offerings and sacrificing many times made for good faith. But offerings and sacrifices become a reward when God approves them. God does not accept sacrifices and offerings given for one’s own satisfaction, so such giving only heaps up sin.
God accepts an upright life and faith offered in spirit and truth, so he does not accept the worship and offerings of those who will not obey his word. God’s people must never forsake faith and loyalty, because betraying God, the King of Israel and its protector, is a tremendous sin. Those who are not grateful for the grace they have received from God and from others do not deserve to be blessed. Amos knew this, and that is why he cried out for them to turn.
When God’s judgment comes, the leaders who stretched out in their ivory palaces and began each day at ease will be the first to be dragged away captive, and their possessions and families will all fall to the enemy. When the riches piled high in their great storehouses are taken by their foes, they will beat their breasts over the empty years they spent gathering them. As they watch the palaces they boasted of go up in flames, the tears they shed will only stir the anger of those they had made to suffer.
The wicked who turned God’s justice and righteousness into poison and bitterness will fall, under his wrath, into a suffering more bitter than wormwood. They were destroyed because they stayed right where they were in their sin, even though God had warned them in advance.
God’s promise that those who seek him and keep seeking him will live never changes. So if we give our whole lives to walking in holiness by faith, we can walk in the blessing of his grace not only in the world to come but here on earth as well.
Israel was destroyed by nations of cruel character. They had been proud, as though they had achieved the abundant life they enjoyed by themselves, but only after they were judged would they have realized that God had been protecting them. The great earthquake that struck two years after Amos prophesied was God’s first warning. But having failed to understand even after suffering greatly in the earthquake, they were destroyed by the Assyrian attack.
The comfortable life you enjoy now is all God’s grace. Of course, you have probably worked hard out in the world, but you can hold the place you have now because God has protected your life, your circumstances, and your health. Those who believe in God’s protection and give thanks for it need not worry, however harsh the world may be, because God will protect them to the end. But if you proudly take all the credit for yourself, he will remove the hedge of his love, and you will be left fully exposed to the attacks of the wicked and of evil spirits.
The moment God withdraws his grace, we are laid bare before Satan. Then, as with Israel, no amount of weeping will help; when the wealth gathered over a lifetime goes up in flames, no one will come to our aid, and if our lives fall apart, those who were once oppressed will rejoice.
This is how human pride calls down God’s wrath. Human injustice will be judged by the right arm of the righteous God. When God is angry, the proud become worthless lives, shattered to pieces like this.
We need to understand that without God’s grace, sin cannot be forgiven. I hope you will exalt the horn of God and give glory with thanksgiving and praise to the God who rules in righteousness and justice. You are God’s treasured people, and angels minister to you. Here on earth your health may sometimes weaken and you may face financial hardship, but the Holy Spirit is always with you, helping you.
God has shown us Israel’s life, made wretched by sin, and told us not to sin. Even so, if we cannot let go of our greed and so betray God, we cannot receive the protection of the almighty God. We should enjoy peace and rest in this world too, but after death we must live the blessed life of meeting Jesus Christ in glory and singing praise toward the throne with all the saints who have been saved and with the angels.
In heaven, where we will live with Jesus Christ, there are no poor and no sick, and no Satan or wicked people to make us afraid. To reach so beautiful a place, we must grieve over the affliction of Joseph and, by faith, fulfill our calling to spread the gospel.
Rather than setting your heart on a finite world, as Israel did and was judged, may you hope for the eternal Kingdom and become treasured saints who lead holy lives of praise and worship.