Amoschapter 3
15 verses · KJVAmos book hub →
Key verse
Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
It stands in Can two walk together? The lion has roared, verses 3 to 8.
The chapter
Chapter summary
The logic chapter. Privilege is not immunity: 'You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities' (3:2). Then a chain of questions that all mean one thing, do two walk together unless they have agreed? does a lion roar without prey? does a bird fall to a snare with no trap set? does a trumpet sound and the people not tremble? Amos speaks because God has spoken: 'Surely the Lord Jehovah will do nothing, except he reveal his secret unto his servants the prophets' (3:7). Even Ashdod and Egypt are called to witness Samaria, where 'they know not to do right.'
Context
Prophecy · Amos · Amos overview
The world behind this chapter
Amos 3The history
The chain of questions in the middle is a countryman's logic, and every image comes from the hills Amos worked. A lion roars over prey it has already caught, not while stalking. A bird does not fall into a trap where no bait was set. And a trumpet sounding in a town means one thing, which is why nobody stays calm.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
The two-legs-and-a-piece-of-an-ear detail is legal, not colourful. Under the Law, and under the wider law codes of the region, a hired shepherd who lost an animal to a predator had to produce the remains as evidence or pay for it himself. Amos is saying Israel will be recovered like that: proof of what was destroyed, not a living flock.
The horns of the altar were the four projections at its corners. A man fleeing a blood-avenger could grab them and claim sanctuary, and the Bible records people doing exactly that. Amos says the horns themselves will be cut off, the last refuge removed.
The winter house and the summer house, and the houses of ivory, were real buildings owned by real people. Excavations at Samaria have turned up hundreds of carved ivory inlays, panels, furniture fittings, figures in Phoenician and Egyptian style, the fittings of the very houses Amos names. The luxury he is describing is in a museum today.
What it meant to them
You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. That inversion is the point of the whole chapter. Election was heard in Israel as a shield; Amos says it is the basis of a higher liability.
The line about God doing nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets told hearers how to treat the man in front of them. If it is God's word, an unimpressive Judean fig-picker is not the issue.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
Where the chapter sits
Amos 3 falls in Sermons against Israel (chapters 3–6). The cows of Bashan, the summer-house-and-winter-house wealthy, those who drink wine in bowls, comfortable Israel indicted.
Before it: Oracles against the nations, chapters 1–2. After it: Five visions and restoration promise, chapters 7–9.
The whole shape of Amos→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. You only have I known of all the families of the earthvv. 1-2
Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you: You only have I known of all the families of the earth is the verse the whole book's argument turns on, and the bench reads known not as bare information but as covenant intimacy, the same word used of a husband and wife, meaning Israel alone stands in the relation of chosen people. Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities draws the conclusion the surrounding nations' oracles have been building toward, election is not a shield against judgment but the very ground of a heavier accountability, since privilege withheld from every other nation was given to this one. The verse answers in advance any hearer who assumed chosen meant exempt.
Amos 3:1
“Amos, like Hosea, rebukes Israel directly, Judah indirectly. He had warned each nation separately. Now, ere he concentrates himself on Israel, he sums up what he had before said to Judah and in the Person of God. “Ye have been alike in My gifts to you, alike in your waste of them and your sins; alike ye shall be in your punishment.” What was said to Israel was said also to Judah: what was directed first to the former people, belongs to us, the later.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Amos 3:1
“Compare Jer 8:3, and Mic 2:3, on "family" for the nation. However, as the prophecy following refers to the ten tribes, they must be chiefly, if not solely, meant: they were the majority of the nation; and so Amos concedes what they so often boasted, that they were the elect people of God [CALVIN], but implies that this only heightens their sins.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Amos 3:2
“You only have I known - I have taken no other people to be my own people. I have approved of you, loved you, fed, sustained, and defended you; but because you have forsaken me, have become idolatrous and polluted, therefore will I punish you. And the punishment shall be in proportion to the privileges you have enjoyed, and the grace you have abused.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
B. Can two walk together? The lion has roared
1. (vv. 3-6)
Amos 3:3
“Sacred parables or enigmas must have many meanings. They are cast on the mind, to quicken it and rouse it by their very mystery. They are taken from objects which in different lights, represent different things, and so suggest them. This series of brief parables have, all of them, this in common, that each thing spoken of is alternately cause and effect, and where the one is found, ‘there’ must be the other. From the effect you can certainly infer the cause, without which it could not be, and from the cause you may be sure of the effect.”
Amos 3:4
“Where a corrupt nation is, there God's instruments of punishment are sure also to be. The lion roars loudly only when he has prey in sight. Will a young lion cry out . . . if he--the "lion," not the "young lion." have taken nothing?--The young lion just weaned lies silent, until the old lion brings the prey near; then the scent rouses him.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 3:4
“Those who study the habits of wild beasts say that the lion, when it is in need of food, roams about powerfully through mountains and glens and forests, turning its eye this way and that, and seeking to catch something of the animals grazing in the woods. But when it sees something suitable for food, then it comes near and makes its attack, roaring terribly and harshly. Why then, He says, do you accuse God, because He makes the threat before the attack of terrible things?”
Cyril of Alexandria· written before 444· Commentary on Amospatristic
Amos 3:5
“When God has come forth to contend with a sinful people it is necessary that they should understand, 1. That it is their own sin that has entangled them; for can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth where no gin is for him?”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 3:5
The foe corresponds to the "snare," suddenly springing from the ground and enclosing the bird on the latter touching it; the Hebrew is literally, "Shall the snare spring from the earth?" Israel entangled in judgments answers to the bird "taken."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Amos 3:6
“Shall a trumpet be blown - The sign of alarm and invasion. And the people not be afraid? - Not take the alarm, and provide for their defense and safety? Shall there be evil in a city - Shall there be any public calamity on the wicked, that is not an effect of my displeasure? The word does not mean moral evil, but punishment for sin; calamities falling on the workers of iniquity. Natural evil is the punishment of moral evil: God sends the former when the latter is persisted in.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Amos 3:6
“But perhaps you say that the outcome of these matters grieves you not moderately. Will there then be an affliction in a city, perchance, which the Lord has not done? It is like as if one should say: Will there then be anyone among men able to afflict a city either with diseases or sieges or destructions of crops or even in some other such way? But if no one of men could do such things, and it lies rather in the authority and power of God, why are you angry with those who announce it beforehand?”
Cyril of Alexandria· written before 444· Commentary on Amospatristic
Amos 3:6
“Yet Israel is not alarmed, though God threatens judgments. shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?--This is the explanation of the preceding similes: God is the Author of all the calamities which come upon you, and which are foretold by His prophets. The evil of sin is from ourselves; the evil of trouble is from God, whoever be the instruments.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Can two walk together, except they be agreed?: A string of short proverbs builds a single argument by accumulation, two walking together only by agreement, a lion roaring only over prey already taken, a bird caught only where a snare was laid, a trumpet raising alarm only because danger is real. Each image insists that effect follows cause, and the last question presses the principle to its hardest edge, shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it, a line the bench reads as divine sovereignty over calamity as judgment rather than a claim that God authors moral evil, the distinction the older commentators are careful to draw. The whole run of questions defends the next section's claim, that Amos speaks because the Lord has spoken, not by his own choice.
2. (vv. 7-8)
Amos 3:7
“Surely the Lord God will do - For the Lord God “doeth” Nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets - So our Lord saith, “And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe” (Joh 14:29; compare Joh 13:19). While it is yet a “secret” counsel within Himself, He admitteth to it His servants the prophets.”
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 3:7
“The secret of God is with them; it is in some sense with all the righteous ( Prov. iii. 32 ), with all that fear God ( Ps. xxv. 14 ), but in a peculiar manner with the prophets, to whom the Spirit of prophecy is a Spirit of revelation.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Amos 3:8
“The lion hath roared - God hath sent forth a terrible alarm, Who will not fear? Can any hear such denunciations of Divine wrath and not tremble? The Lord God hath spoken - And those only who are in communion with him have heard the speech. Who can but prophesy? Who can help proclaiming at large the judgment threatened against the nation? But I think נבא naba, here, is to be taken in its natural and ideal signification, to pray, supplicate, or deprecate vengeance.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Amos 3:8
"A lion will roar, and who will not be afraid? The Lord God has spoken, and who will not prophesy?" It is not the prophets, he says, who bring on the things that come from wrath; how could they? For they are also human in nature, just like you, but they have been honored by God by learning all the things that He might wish to fulfill, and to bring upon cities and lands either good things, perhaps, or things that are accustomed to cause pain.
Cyril of Alexandria· written before 444· Commentary on Amospatristic
Amos 3:8
“Nay, and besides the prophetic impulse which went along with the inspiration, and made the word like a fire in their bones ( Jer. xx. 9 ), they received a command from God to deliver what they had been charged with; and they would have been false to their trust if they had not done it. Necessity was laid upon them, as upon the preachers of the gospel, 1 Cor. ix.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets: Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets states the principle behind the proverbs just given, that prophetic speech is not innovation but disclosure, the prophet made privy to a plan already decided. The lion hath roared, who will not fear, repeats the book's opening image from 1:2 and turns it into Amos's own defense, the compulsion he will name outright to Amaziah at 7:14-15 when ordered to stop prophesying at Bethel. The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy closes the argument as a rhetorical question with only one honest answer, no one.
C. Rescued like two legs or a piece of an ear
1. (vv. 9-10)
Amos 3:9
“Publish - “ye,” they are the words of God, commissioning His prophets In (on) the palaces of Ashdod - , that is, on the flat roofs of their high buidings, from where all can hear And in (on) the palaces in the land of Egypt - Theodoret: “Since ye disbelieve, I will manifest to Ashdodites and Egyptians the transgressions of which ye are guilty.” Amos had already pronounced God’s sentence on “the palaces of Ashdod” and all Philistia, for their sins against Himself in His people (see the notes at Amo 1:6-8).”
2 more voices on this verse
Amos 3:9
“Tumults - The seditious counsels, and rebellious conspiracies among them. The oppressed - Multitudes of oppressed ones, as the usurpers took it to be their interest to crush all they feared or suspected. In the midst - Yea, throughout the whole kingdom of Samaria.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Amos 3:9
“If they have grown impudent in sin, let them bear the shame: " Publish it in Ashdod, in Egypt. " 1. Let them see how black the charge is, and how well proved. Let them observe the behaviour of the inhabitants of Samaria; let them look off from the adjacent hills, and they may see how rude and boisterous they are, and hear how loud they cry of their sin is, as was that of Sodom.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Amos 3:10
“For they know not to do right - So we may naturally say that they who are doing wrong, and to their own prejudice and ruin, must certainly be ignorant of what is right, and what is their own interest. But we say again “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” Their eyes, saith the Lord, they have closed.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Publish in the palaces at Ashdod: The summons goes out to Israel's own historic enemies, Ashdod of the Philistines and the land of Egypt, called as witnesses against Samaria's tumults and oppression, a device the bench finds bitterly ironic, since it means pagan nations can see and name what Israel's own leaders deny. They know not to do right is the charge, moral blindness rather than mere weakness, and it is spoken of a people who store up violence and robbery in their own palaces, the very houses of the powerful named as the treasury of their crimes. The device of outside witnesses returns the argument to where chapter 1 began, nations under judgment for plain cruelty, only now Israel stands accused by the same standard she saw applied to them.
2. (vv. 11-12)
Amos 3:11
“Therefore thus saith the Lord God - There was no human redress. The oppressor was mighty, but mightier the Avenger of the poor. Man would not help; therefore God would. “An adversary” there shall be, “even round about the land;” literally, “An enemy, and around the land!” The prophets speaks, as seeing him. The abruptness tells how suddenly that enemy should come, and hem in the whole land on all sides. What an unity in their destruction!”
Amos 3:12
“As the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the lion - Scarcely any of you shall escape; and those that do shall do so with extreme difficulty, just as a shepherd, of a whole sheep carried away by a lion, can recover no more than two of its legs, or a piece of its ear, just enough to prove by the marks on those parts, that they belonged to a sheep which was his own.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 3:12
“The parallelism of "Samaria" to "Damascus," and the Septuagint favor English Version rather than GESENIUS: "on a damask couch." The Hebrew pointing, though generally expressing damask, may express the city "Damascus"; and many manuscripts point it so.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
An adversary there shall be even round about the land: The adversary named without a name is read by the bench as Assyria, the empire whose shadow lies behind every oracle in the book though Amos never speaks its name outright, its armies to surround the land and spoil the very palaces just named as guilty. The shepherd rescuing two legs or a piece of an ear from the lion's mouth invokes the legal principle of Exodus 22:13, evidence produced to prove a beast was truly killed and the loss not the shepherd's fault, applied here to a remnant so meager it will only prove how total the disaster was, not that it was survived. The corner of a bed and the couch in Damascus, a textual crux the commentators read as either luxury furnishings looted or the posture of the doomed reclining in false security, are named with the readings rather than settled.
D. Horns of the altar cut off, winter and summer houses smashedvv. 13-15
testify in the house of Jacob: The chapter's last oracle names Bethel by its function rather than its fame, the horns of the altar cut off and fallen to the ground, stripping the very place of asylum and atonement the northern kingdom had built to rival Jerusalem's own temple since Jeroboam I. Winter house and summer house together with the houses of ivory recall Ahab's ivory house named at 1 Kings 22:39, and the bench reads the list as evidence that the wealth financing Bethel's calves and Samaria's luxury was the same wealth taken from the poor named two chapters earlier. The great houses shall have an end closes chapter 3 on the same note chapter 1 opened with, judgment reaching from the surrounding nations' palaces to Israel's own, with no exemption left standing.
Amos 3:13
“Hear ye and testify ye in - (Rather unto or against ) the house of Israel; first “hear” yourselves, then “testify,” that is, solemnly “protest,” in the Name of God; and “bear witness unto” and “against” them, so that the solemn words may sink into them. It is of little avail to “testfy,” unless we first “hear;” nor can man “bear witness” to what he doth not know; nor will words make an “impression,” that is, leave a trace of themselves, be stamped in or on people’s souls, unless the soul which utters them have first hearkened unto them.”
Amos 3:14
“In the day that I shall visit - When Josiah made a reformation in the land he destroyed idolatry, pulled down the temples and altars that had been consecrated to idol worship, and even burnt the bones of the priests of Baal and the golden calves upon their own altars. See 2Ki 23:15, 2Ki 23:16, etc.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 3:14
“That--rather, "since," or "for." This verse is not, as English Version translates, the thing which the witnesses cited are to "testify" (Am 3:13), but the reason why God calls on the heathen to witness Samaria's guilt; namely, in order to justify the punishment which He declares He will inflict.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Amos 3:15
“And I will smite the winter house with the summer house - Upon idolatry, there follow luxury and pride. “So wealthy were they,” says Jerome, “as to possess two sorts of houses, “the winter house” being turned to the south, the “summer house” to the north, so that, according to the variety of the seasons, they might temper to them the heat and cold.” Yet of these luxuries, (so much more natural in the East where summer-heat is so intense, and there is so little provision against cold) the only instance expressly recorded, besides this place, is “the winter house” of Jehoiakim.”
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 3:15
“The winter-house - Which probably was in the chief city, whither the great men retired in the winter. The summer-house - The houses of pleasure, where the nobles and rich men spent the summer time.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
This page carries no textual note on Amos 3. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.