Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 4:2

"The Lord Jehovah hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that they shall take you away with hooks, and your residue with fish-hooks." — Amos 4:2 (ASV)

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.