Amos 6:12

(Verse 12 onwards) For behold, the Lord will command and strike down the great house with ruins, and the small house with breaches. Can horses run on rocks, or can it be plowed with oxen? For you have turned justice into bitterness, and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood. You who rejoice in nothingness, who say: Have we not taken horns for ourselves in our strength?

Shall horses run upon the rocks? or will one plough there with oxen?....

Note, When our services of God are soured with sin his providences will justly be embittered to us. They had set the judgments of God at defiance, and, confiding in their own strength, thought themselves a match for Omnipotence,

In turning "judgment (justice) into gall (poison), and . . . righteousness into hemlock" (or wormwood, bitter and noxious), ye act as perversely as if one were to make "horses run upon the rock" or to "plough with oxen there" [MAURER]. As horses and oxen are useless on a rock, so ye are incapable of fulfilling justice [GROTIUS].

THESE expressions are proverbs, probably taken from the familiar adages of the country, but, anyhow, right worthy to be used as proverbs. The wiser men become, the more sententious are their utterances, the more terse and full of meaning are their sayings and, therefore, the wisdom of the wise condenses into proverbs and the language of Prophets is sure to abound in them. But a proverb is generally a sword with two edges, or, if such a metaphor might be tolerated, it has many edges, or is all edge and hence it may be turned this way and that way and its back stroke will be as sharp as its direct cut, for every part of it will have force and point. A proverb has often many bearings and you cannot always tell what was the precise meaning of him who uttered it, except by the connection. Now, I believe that the connection would abundantly tolerate two senses in this place. An ancient commentator asserts that there are seven meanings of it and that any one of them would be consistent with the context. I cannot deny the assertion, for if it is correct, it is only one among many instances of the manifold wisdom of the Word of God. Like those curious carved Chinese balls in which there is one ball within another, so in many a holy text there is sense within sense, teaching within teaching and each one worthy of the Spirit of God. The first sense of the text I would say just a word or two upon is this—the Prophet is expostulating with ungodly men upon their pursuit of happiness where it can never be found. They were endeavoring to grow rich and great and strong by oppression. The Prophet says, "you have turned judgment into gall and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock." They had transformed the judgment seat into a place where justice was bought and sold and the Book of the Law was made to be the instrument of chicanery and high-handed fraud.