Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 4

Hear you this, you kine of Bashan - The pastures of Bashan were very rich, and it had its name probably from its richness of soil. The Batanea of later times was a province only of the kingdom of Bashan, which, with half of Gilead, was given to the half tribe of Manasseh. For the Bashan of Og included Golan (Deuteronomy 4:43), (the capital of the subsequent Gaulonitis, now Jaulan), Beeshterah (Joshua 21:27), (or Ashtaroth, 1 Chronicles 6:71), very probably Bostra (see above on 1 Chronicles 1:12), and Edrei (Deuteronomy 1:4), in Hauran or Auranitis; the one on its southern border, the other perhaps on its northern boundary toward Trachonitis. Its eastern extremity at Salkah (Deuteronomy 3:10; Joshua 13:11), (Sulkhad) is the southern point of Batanea (now Bathaniyyeh); Argob, or Trachonitis, (the Lejah) was its northeastern fence.

Westward it reached to Mount Hermon (Deuteronomy 3:8; Joshua 12:5; Joshua 13:11; 1 Chronicles 5:23). It included the subsequent divisions: Gaulonitis, Auranitis, Batanea, and Trachonitis.

Of these, the mountain range on the northwest of Jaulan is still “everywhere clothed with oak-forests.” The Ard-el-Bathanyeh, “the country of Batanea or Bashan, is not surpassed in that land for beauty of its scenery, the richness of its pastures, and the extent of its oak forests.” “The Arabs of the desert still pasture their flocks on the luxuriant herbage of the Jaulan.”

Its pastures are spoken of by Micah (Micah 7:14) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 50:19). The animals fed there were among the strongest and fattest (Deuteronomy 32:14). Hence, the male animals became a proverb for the mighty on the earth (Exodus 39:18); the bulls furnished a type for fierce, unfeeling enemies (Psalms 22:12).

Amos, however, speaks of “kine,” not, as David, of “bulls.” He upbraids them not for fierceness, but for a more delicate and wanton unfeelingness—the fruit of luxury, fullness of bread, and a life of sense—which destroy all tenderness, dull the mind, “banker out the wits,” and deaden the spiritual sense.

The female name, “kine,” may equally brand the luxury and effeminacy of the rich men, or the cruelty of the rich women, of Samaria. He addresses these “kine” in both sexes, both male and female. The reproachful name was then probably intended to shame both: men who laid aside their manliness in the delicacy of luxury, or ladies who put off the tenderness of womanhood by oppression. The character of the oppression was the same in both cases. It was done, not directly by those who reveled in its fruits, but through the seduction of one who had authority over them. To the ladies of Samaria, “their lord” was their husband (as the husband is so called); to the nobles of Samaria, he was their king, who supplied their extravagances and debaucheries by grants, extorted from the poor.

Which oppress - Literally, “the oppressing!” The word expresses that they habitually oppressed and crushed the poor. They did not do it directly; perhaps they did not know it was done. They sought only that their own thirst for luxury and self-indulgence should be gratified, and did not know (as those at ease often do not know now) that their luxuries were continually watered by the tears of the poor—tears shed almost unknown except by the Maker of both. But He counts willful ignorance no excuse. “He who does through another, does it himself,” said the pagan proverb.

God says they did oppress, were “continually oppressing, those in low estate,” and crushing the poor (a word is used expressing the vehemence with which they crushed them). They crushed them only through the continual demand of pleasures of sense, reckless how they were procured: Bring, and let us drink. They invite their husband or lord to joint self-indulgence.

The Lord God has sworn by His holiness - They had sinned to profane His “Holy Name” (see the note at Amos 2:7). God swears by that holiness which they had profaned in themselves, on whom His name was called, and which they had caused to be profaned by others. He pledges His own holiness that He will avenge their unholiness: “In swearing by His holiness, God swore by Himself. For He is the supreme uncreated justice and Holiness. This justice each person, in their own degree, should imitate and maintain on earth, and these people had sacrilegiously violated and overthrown it.”

Days shall come upon you (literally, are among) - God’s Day and eternity are ever coming. He reminds them of their continual approach. He says not only that they will certainly come, but they are ever coming. They are holding on their steady course. Each day that passes, they advance a day closer to the sinner.

People put out of their minds what “will come;” they put far the evil day. Therefore, God so often in His notices of woe to come (1 Samuel 2:31; Isaiah 39:6; Jeremiah 7:32; Jeremiah 9:25; Jeremiah 17:14; Jeremiah 19:6; Jeremiah 23:5, 23:7; Jeremiah 30:3; Jeremiah 31:27–31, 31:38; Jeremiah 33:14; Jeremiah 48:12; Jeremiah 49:2; Jeremiah 51:47, 51:52; Amos 8:11), brings to mind that those “days are” ever “coming”; they are not a thing that will be only; in God’s purpose, they already “are”; and with one uniform, steady, noiseless tread “are coming upon” the sinner.

Those days shall come upon you, heavily charged with the displeasure of God, crushing you, as you have crushed the poor. They come doubtless, too, unexpectedly upon them, as our Lord says, and so that day come upon you unwares.

He will take you away (that is, one) - In the midst of their security, they would suddenly be taken away violently from the abode of their luxury, as the fish, when hooked, is lifted out of the water. The image pictures (Ezekiel 29:4–5) their utter helplessness, the contempt in which they would be held, the ease with which they would be lifted out of the flood of pleasures in which they had immersed themselves. People can be reckless, in the end, about themselves, so that their posterity escape, and they themselves survive in their offspring. Amos foretells, then, that these also would be swept away.

Ye shall go out through the breaches - Samaria, the place of their ease and confidence, being broken through, they will go out one by one, each straight before her, looking neither to the right nor to the left, as a herd of cows go one after the other through a gap in a fence. Help and hope have vanished, and they hurry pell-mell after one another, reckless and desperate, like the animals whose sensual life they had chosen.

And ye shall cast them into the palace - Or, better, (since nothing has been named which they could cast) “cast yourselves.” The word may describe the headlong motion of the animal, and the desperate gestures of the hopeless. They will cast themselves from palace to palace, from the palace of their luxuries to the palace of their enemies, from a self-chosen life of sensuousness to be concubines in the harem.

If the rulers are still included, it was reserved for the rich and noble to become eunuchs in the palace of their Assyrian or Babylonian conquerors, as Isaiah foretold to Hezekiah (Isaiah 39:7). It is another instance of that great law of God, wherewithal a man sinneth, by the same shall he be tormented .

They had lived in luxury and wantonness; in luxury and wantonness they would live, but amid the jealousies of an Eastern harem, and at the caprice of their sensual conquerors.

The word, however rendered, “to the palace,” occurring only here, is obscure. The other most probable conjecture is that it is a name of a country, “the mountains of Monah,” that is, perhaps Armenia. This would describe accurately enough the country to which they were to be carried: beyond Damascus; the cities of the Medes. The main sense is the same. They would be cast forth from the scene of their pleasures and oppression, to be themselves oppressed.

The whole image is one which an inspired prophet alone could use. The reproof was not from man, but from God, unveiling their sins to them in their true hideousness. Man thinks nothing of being more degraded than the brutes, so that he can hide from himself, that he is so.

Come to Beth-el and transgress — Having foretold their captivity, the prophet uses irony. But his irony is in telling them to go on doing what they were doing earnestly, what they were set on doing, and would not be deterred from. As Micaiah, in irony, until solemnly charged in the name of God, joined Ahab’s court-priests, telling him, Go to Ramoth-gilead (1 Kings 22:15), where he was to perish; or Elijah said to the priests of Baal, Cry aloud, for he is a god (1 Kings 18:27); or our Lord said, Fill you up then the measure of your fathers (Matthew 23:32); so Amos tells them to do all they did in their divided service of God, but informs them that to multiply all such service was to multiply transgression. Yet they were diligent in their own way.

Their offerings were daily, as at Jerusalem; the tithes of the third year for the poor were paid, as God had ordained (Deuteronomy 14:28; Deuteronomy 26:12). They were punctual in these parts of the ritual and thought much of their punctuality.

So well did they consider themselves to stand with God that there is no mention of sin offerings or trespass offerings. Their sacrifices were sacrifices of thanksgiving and free will offerings, as if out of an exuberance of devotion, such as David said that Zion would offer, when God had been favorable and gracious to her (Psalms 51:18–19).

These things they did; they proclaimed and published them, like the hypocrites whom our Lord reproves for sounding a trumpet before them (Matthew 6:2) when they gave alms, proclaiming these private offerings just as God commanded the solemn assemblies to be proclaimed. For so you love.

They did it because they liked it, and it cost them nothing for which they cared. It was more than most Christians will sacrifice—two-fifteenths of their yearly income, if they gave the yearly tithes, which were also to be shared with the poor.

But they would not sacrifice what God, above all, required: the fundamental breach of God’s law on which their kingdom rested, the sin which Jeroboam made Israel to sin. They did what they liked; they were pleased with it, and they had that pleasure for their only reward, as is true of all that is not done for God.

And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven - But amid this boastful service, all was self-will. In little or great, the calf-worship at Bethel, or the use of leaven in the sacrifice, they did as they chose. The prophet seems to have purposely joined the fundamental change, by which Jeroboam substituted the worship of nature for its God, and a minute alteration of the ritual, to show that one and the same temper, self-will, reigned in all, and dictated all they did.

The use of leaven in the things sacrificed was forbidden for a symbolic reason; that is, not in itself, but as representing something else. The Eastern leaven, like that used in France, consisting of what is sour, had the idea of decay and corruption connected with it. Hence, it was unfit to be offered to God. For whatever was the object of any sacrifice, whether of atonement or thanksgiving, perfection in its kind was essential to the idea of offering.

Hence, it was expressly forbidden. No grain offering, which you shall bring to the Lord, shall be made with leaven, for you shall burn no leaven in an offering of the Lord made by fire (Leviticus 2:11). At other times it is expressly commanded that unleavened bread should be used. In two cases only, in which the offering was not to be burned, were offerings to be made of leavened bread:

1. The two loaves of first-fruits at Pentecost (Leviticus 23:17), and
2. An offering with which the thank offering was accompanied, and which was to be the priest’s (Leviticus 7:13–14).

The special grain offering of the thank offering was to be without leaven (Leviticus 7:12). To offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven was a direct infringement of God’s appointment. It proceeded from the same frame of mind as the breach of the greatest commandments. Self-will was their only rule. What they chose, they kept; and what they chose, they broke. Amos then tells them to go on, as they did in their willfulness, breaking God’s commands intentionally, and keeping them by accident.

Rup.: “This is a most grave mode of speaking, by which He now says, ‘Come and do so and so,’ and He Himself who says this, hates those same deeds of theirs.

He so speaks, not as willing, but as abandoning; not as inviting, but as expelling; not in exhortation, but in indignation.

He adds then (as the case required), ‘for so you loved.’ As if He said, ‘I therefore say, come to Bethel where is your god, your calf, because so you loved, and until now you have come.

I therefore say, transgress, because you do transgress, and you are determined to transgress. I say, come to Gilgal, where there were idols (Judges 3:19, English margin) long before Jeroboam’s calves, because you come and you are determined to come.

I say, multiply transgressions, because you do multiply it, and yet are determined to multiply it. I say, bring your sacrifices, because you offer them and you are determined to offer them, to whom you should not.

I say, offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, because you do so, and you are determined to do it, leavened as you are with the old leaven of malice and wickedness, against the whole authority of the holy and spiritual law, which forbids offering in sacrifice anything leavened.

This pleases your gods, that you be leavened, and without the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Corinthians 5:8). To them then ‘sacrifice the sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven,’ because to Me you, being sinners, cannot offer a fitting sacrifice of praise.

And so doing, proclaim and publish the free offerings, for so you do, and so you are determined to do, honoring the sacrifices which you offer to your calves with the same names by which the authority of the law names those which are offered to Me: burnt offerings, and peace offerings.

And proclaim them with the sound of trumpet and harp, with timbrel and dancing, with strings and organ, upon the well-tuned cymbals and the loud cymbals (Psalms 150:1–6), so that you may be thought to have sung louder and stronger than the tribe of Judah or the house of David in the temple of the Lord, because you are more.’

All these things are said, not with the intention of one willing, but with the indignation of one forsaking, as in many other instances. As that which the same Lord said to His betrayer: what you do, do quickly (John 13:27). And in Revelation we read, He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still (Revelation 22:11). These things, and others similar to these, are not the words of one commanding, or, of His own will, conceding, but permitting and forsaking. ‘For He was not ignorant, (Wisdom says) (Wisdom; Revelation 12:10) that they were a wicked generation, and their malice was inbred, and that their cogitation never would be changed.’ ”

Proclaim and publish the free offerings - ^o : “Value highly what you offer to God, and think that you do great things, as though you honored God fittingly, and were under no obligation to offer such gifts. The whole is said in irony.

For there are some who magnificently appreciate the gifts and services they offer to God. They think they have attained great perfection, as though they made an adequate return for the divine benefits. In doing so, they do not weigh the infinite dignity of the Divine Majesty, the incomparable greatness of the divine benefits, the frailty of their own condition, and the imperfection of their service.

Against such people is what the Savior says, When you shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do (Luke 17:10). Hence, David says, ‘all things come from You, and of Your own have we given You.’ (1 Chronicles 19:14).”