Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 5:1

"Hear ye this word which I take up for a lamentation over you, O house of Israel." — Amos 5:1 (ASV)

To impress Israel all the more, Amos begins this, his third appeal, with a “dirge” over its destruction, mourning for those who were full of joy and considered themselves safe and enviable. It is as if a living man, in the midst of his pride, luxury, and buoyant recklessness of heart, could see his own funeral procession and hear, as it were, spoken over himself, “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” This would provoke solemn thoughts, even if he were to impatiently dismiss them. So it must have been for Israel when, after the tide of Jeroboam II’s victories, Amos said, Hear this word which I am lifting up—as a heavy weight to be cast down “against” or “upon you”—a funeral “dirge,” O house of Israel.

Human greatness is so unstable, and human strength so fleeting, that the prophet of decay finds a response in one’s own conscience, however much one may silence or resent it. One would not resent it unless one felt its force.

Dionysius: “Amos, an Israelite, mourns over Israel, as Samuel did over Saul (1 Samuel 15:35), or as Isaiah says, I will weep bitterly; labor not to comfort me, because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people (Isaiah 22:4); images of Him who wept over Jerusalem.” “So those are lamented who do not know why they are lamented, the more miserable because they do not know their own misery.”