Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 5:16

"Therefore thus saith Jehovah, the God of hosts, the Lord: Wailing shall be in all the broad ways; and they shall say in all the streets, Alas! Alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful in lamentation to wailing." — Amos 5:16 (ASV)

Therefore the Lord, the God of Hosts, the Lord - For the third time in these last three verses Amos again reminds them by whose authority he speaks: His, who had revealed Himself as “I am,” the self-existent God, God by nature and of nature, the Creator and Ruler and Lord of all, visible or invisible, against their false gods, or fictitious substitutes for the true God. Here, over and above those titles, “He is”—that is, He alone is—the “God of Hosts, God of all things in heaven and earth” (which includes the heavenly bodies from whose influences the idolaters hoped for good, and the unseen evil beings (Isaiah 24:21) who seduced them), he adds the title from which people most shrink: “Lord.” He who so threatened was the same one who had absolute power over His creatures, to dispose of them as He willed.

It costs people nothing to acknowledge God as a Creator, the Cause of causes, the Orderer of all things by certain fixed laws. It satisfies certain intellects to acknowledge Him in this way. What humanity, as sinners, shrinks from is that the God is Lord—the absolute disposer and Master of their sinful selves.

Wailing in all streets - Literally, “broad places,” that is, marketplaces. “There,” where judgments were held, where the markets were, and where consequently all the manifold oppressions through injustice in judgments and dealings, and the wailings of the oppressed, had occurred—there “wailing” would come upon them.

They shall say in all the highways - that is, in the streets, “Alas! Alas!” or, in our terms, “Woe! Woe!” It is the word so often used by our Lord: “Woe unto you.” This is no imagery. Truth has a more terrible, sterner reality than any imagery. The terribleness of the prophecy lies in its truth.

When war pressed from outside on the walls of Samaria, and within were famine and pestilence, “Woe, woe, woe!” must have echoed in every street, for in every street was death and the fear of worse. Imagine every sound of joy or din or hum of people, or mirth of children, hushed in the streets, and “Woe, woe!” going up from every street of a metropolis in one unmitigated, unchanging, ever-repeated monotony of grief.

Such were the present fruits of sin. Yet what a mere shadow of the inward grief is its outward utterance!

And they shall call the farmer to mourning - To cultivate the fields would then only provide food for the enemy. His occupation would be gone. One universal sorrow would create one universal employment. To this, they would call those unskilled, with their deep, strong voices; they would, by a public act, “proclaim wailing to those skillful in lamentation.” It was, as it were, a dirge over the funeral of their country. Just as at funerals they employed minstrels, both men and women, who, by mournful anthems and the touching plaintiveness of the human voice, would stir up deeper depths of sorrow, so it was here, over the whole of Israel.

And just as at the funeral of someone respected or beloved they used exclamations of woe, such as “Ah, my brother!” and “Ah, sister! Ah, lord! Ah, his glory!” so Jeremiah bids them, “Call and make haste and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears; for a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion. How are we spoiled!” (Jeremiah 9:17–19). “In joy, people long to impart their joys to others and exhort them to rejoice with them. Our Lord sanctions this in speaking of the Good Shepherd, who called His friends and neighbors together, saying, “Rejoice with Me, for I have found the sheep which I had lost.””

“Nor is it anything new that when we have received any great benefit from God, we call even the inanimate creation to thank and praise God. So David often did, and the three children. So too in sorrow. When anything adverse has befallen us, we invite even senseless things to grieve with us, as though our own tears were not sufficient for so great a sorrow.” The same feeling that makes the rich now clothe their household in mourning is what made those in ancient times hire mourners, so that all might be in harmony with their grief.