Amos 4 Study Notes

4:4-5 A priest or prophet would normally pronounce a benediction on pilgrims going to a shrine, encouraging them to go to God with their offerings. Amos asserted sarcastically that when the Israelites went to their shrines, it only increased their guilt.

4:6-12 Behind this passage stand the warnings of Dt 28:15-68, which told the Israelites that if they refused to obey the laws of the covenant, they would be beset with diseases, droughts, crop failures, and military defeats. Should they refuse to repent, they would suffer national destruction and exile. Amos’s point is that they did not repent and thus now must get ready for the judgment of God (Am 4:12). The partial drought that Amos described (vv. 7-8) was evidently of recent occurrence and was fresh in the people’s minds. The plagues on Egypt in the exodus and the destruction of Sodom were prototypical acts of divine judgment; the comparison implied that Israel was as evil in God’s eyes as those nations were.

4:13 This doxology may be an example of the kind of hymns the Israelites sung at their shrines and on their pilgrimages. Here, however, the lofty power of Yahweh is turned against them. This is also a fitting conclusion to the previous passage. Amos had told the Israelites to be ready to meet their God, and this is the kind of God they will meet.