A nation's crimes.
The ministry of Amos was mainly to the northern kingdom. With this passage commences the long impeachment and warning which the prophet was inspired to address to Israel. The previous denunciations are pungent, but brief; now Amos puts forth all his strength of invective, reproach, and expostulation.
I. UNGODLINESS IS AT THE ROOT OF A NATION'S MORAL DEBASEMENT. Israel did not, indeed, abjure religion; but Israel abjured God. "The house of their god," says the prophet with a quiet irony, referring to the idol temples which the people had taken to frequenting. The reverence of the supreme Lord of righteousness is the very root of national morality. Let a people worship such deities as were worshipped by Israel's neighbours, the Philistines, the Amorites, the Syrians, and it is well known to what fatal results such worship will surely lead. And let a nation abandon all worship, and live a life of sense, and it is certainly upon the high road to moral ruin.
II. GREED AND OPPRESSION ARE AMONG THE FRUITS OF NATIONAL UNGODLINESS. In the state of society with which Amos was conversant, these immoral habits displayed themselves in the enslavement of the poor or in their deprivation of the ordinary comforts of life. There was no human law to prevent some of the base transactions mentioned, and all belief in a Divine Law was abandoned. History gives us many proofs of the pernicious effect of secularism and superstition upon human relations. Not only are all restraints, save those of civil law and physical force, spumed and ridiculed; there is no impulse and no motive to a higher than the selfish and animal life.
III. FLAGRANT LICENTIOUSNESS IS ANOTHER FRUIT OF A NATION'S IRRELIGION. The passions which lead to such atrocities as those here mentioned are, no doubt, deep seated in human nature. But religion assists men, not in repressing them wholly, but in controlling and guiding them. It is believed by many that Amos refers to some of the practices which were encouraged by the idolatries to which the Israelites were conforming. Certain it is that infidelity is often associated with the vilest principles of an immoral life, and tends to the letting loose of that wild beast-sensual appetite—which works dire devastation in society.
APPLICATION. These considerations should induce those who prize true religion for themselves to seek its maintenance at home against the assaults of infidelity, and to seek its propagation in lands where its absence is so morally deleterious.—T.