Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 7:17

"therefore thus saith Jehovah: Thy wife shall be a harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou thyself shalt die in a land that is unclean, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land." — Amos 7:17 (ASV)

Your wife shall be a harlot - These were, and still are, among the horrors of war. His own sentence comes last, when he had seen the rest, unable to hinder it. Against his and her own will, she would suffer this.

Jerome says: “Great is the grief, and incredible the disgrace, when the husband, in the midst of the city and in the presence of all, cannot hinder the wrong done to his wife, for the husband would rather hear that his wife had been slain, than defiled.”

What he adds, your daughters (as well as his sons) shall fall by the sword, is an unusual barbarity, and not part of the Assyrian customs, who carried off women in great numbers, as wives for their soldiers.

Perhaps Amos mentions this unusual cruelty so that the event might impress more upon the minds of the people the prophecies which relate to themselves.

When this had been fulfilled before his eyes, “Amaziah himself, who now gloried in the authority of the priesthood, was to be led into captivity, die in a land polluted by idols, yet not before he saw the people whom he had deceived, enslaved and captive.”

Amos closes by repeating emphatically the exact words which Amaziah had alleged in his message to Jeroboam: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land.

He had not said it before in these precise words. Now he says it, with no allowance for their repentance, as though he would say, “You have pronounced your own sentence; you have hardened yourself against the word of God; you harden your people against the word of God; it remains then that it should fall on you and your people.”

Rupert says: “How and when the prophecy against Amaziah was fulfilled, Scripture does not relate. He lies hidden amid the mass of miseries.”

Scripture has no leisure to relate all that befalls those of the viler sort.

“The majesty of Holy Scripture does not lower itself to linger on baser persons, whom God had rejected.”