Amos 5:1 - Meaning and Application

This chapter begins, like the two before it, with the words, “Hear this word.” When God speaks, we must listen. It is our duty, and it is also for our own good, yet most people are so dull that they need to be called again and again to hear the Lord’s word and pay attention.

“ Hear this word” is a serious, awakening word, and we need to hear it just as much as words of comfort and peace. We must listen to the word that speaks against us as well as the word that speaks for us, because whether we listen or refuse, God’s word will take effect, and none of it will fail. This is the word I, the prophet, bring, but it is more than that, it is the word the Lord himself has spoken (Amos 3:1).

The word to be heard is a lament, a sad report of Israel’s present trouble and a sad warning of its complete destruction. Their condition is tragic: “The virgin of Israel has fallen” (Amos 5:2). She has fallen from the place she once held. Though she was not pure and chaste like a true virgin, she was once beautiful and honored, and many sought her favor. Now she has fallen into shame and poverty, and everyone has turned away from her.

Worse still, her condition is hopeless: she “shall no more rise,” and she will never recover her former honor. God had already begun to weaken Israel (2 Kings 10:32), and because they did not repent, it was not long before he brought them low.

First, their princes, who should have lifted them up, were unable to help. “She is forsaken upon her land.” It was not only foreign allies who failed them, but their own people abandoned them too. They would not have been carried away into a foreign land if they had not first been forsaken in their own land and cast down there, with all their true interests left to their ruin by those who should have cared for them. There was no one to raise them up, no one who could do it, and no one who cared enough to try.

Second, their people, who also should have helped, were reduced in number (Amos 5:3). A city that once sent out 1,000 soldiers and then, after battle, finds only 100 left has suffered terrible loss. In the same way, a city that sent out 100 will find only 10 return. So many will be cut down that very few remain to serve the house of Israel in public safety.

Scarcely one in ten will escape from among the people who should have brought relief to this ruined nation. The shrinking of God’s spiritual Israel, whether by death or by people turning away, is always cause for grief. How can Jacob rise again, and how can the decline of godliness be repaired, when he has been made so small?