Amos 5:4

5:1-6 The convincing, awakening word must be heard and heeded, as well as words of comfort and peace; for whether we hear or forbear, the word of God shall take effect. The Lord still proclaims mercy to men, but they often expect deliverance from such self-invented forms as make their condemnation sure. While they refuse to come to Christ and to seek mercy in and by him, that they may live, the fire of Divine wrath breaks forth upon them. Men may make an idol of the world, but will find it cannot protect.

Amos THE SINS OF SOCIETYAmos 5:4 - Amos 5:15 . The reign of Jeroboam II, in which Amos prophesied, was a period of great prosperity and of great corruption. Amos, born in the Southern Kingdom, and accustomed to the simple life of a shepherd, blazed up in indignation at the signs of misused wealth and selfish luxury that he saw everywhere, in what was to him almost a foreign country. If one fancies a godly Scottish Highlander sent to the West end of London, or a Bible-reading New England farmer’s man sent to New York’s ‘upper ten,’ one will have some notion of this prophet, the impressions made, and the task laid on him. He has a message to our state of society which, in many particulars, resembles that which he had to rebuke. There seems to be a slight dislocation in the order of the verses of the passage, for Amos 5:7 comes in awkwardly, breaking the connection between Amos 5:6 and Amos 5:8 , and itself cut off from Amos 5:10 , to which it belongs. If we remove the intruding verse to a position after Amos 5:9 , the whole passage is orderly and falls into three coherent parts: an exhortation to seek Jehovah, enforced by various considerations { Amos 5:4 - Amos 5:9 }; a vehement denunciation of social vices { Amos 5:7 , Amos 5:10 - Amos 5:13 }; and a renewed exhortation to seek God by doing right to man { Amos 5:14 - Amos 5:15 }. Amos’s first call to Israel is but the echo of God’s to men, always and everywhere.

All circumstances, all inward experiences, joy and sorrow, prosperity and disaster, our longings and our fears, they all cry aloud to us to seek His face. That loving invitation is ever sounding in our ears. And the promise which Amos gave, though it may have meant on his lips the continuance of national life only, yet had, even on his lips, a deeper meaning, which we now cannot but hear in it. For, just as to ‘seek the Lord’ means more to us than it did to Israel, so the consequent life has greatened, widened, deepened into life eternal. But Amos’s narrower, more external promise is true still, and there is no surer way of promoting true well-being than seeking God. ‘With Thee is the fountain of life,’ in all senses of the word, from the lowest purely physical to the highest, and it is only they who go thither to draw that will carry away their pitchers full of the sparkling blessing. The fundamental principle of Amos’s teaching is an eternal truth, that to seek God is to find Him, and to find Him is life. But Amos further teaches us that such seeking is not real nor able to find, unless it is accompanied with turning away from all sinful quests after vanities. We must give up seeking Bethel, Gilgal, or Beersheba, seats of the calf worship, if we are to seek God to purpose. The sin of the Northern Kingdom was that it wanted to worship Jehovah under the symbol of the calves, thus trying to unite two discrepant things.

Amos 5:4-5. For — Or rather, nevertheless, seek ye me, and ye shall live — That is, ye shall be prosperous again; for life, in the Scripture language, is used to express prosperity, or happiness. This shows, that what was said in the 2d verse, of their being fallen to rise no more, is to be taken as it is there explained; namely, in case they did not repent, but continued in their wickedness. But seek not Beth-el, nor enter into Gilgal, &c. — The places here named, it is probable, were all seats of idolatrous worship. The sense of the verse, therefore, is, that if they continued in their idolatries they should certainly be carried into captivity, and come to naught — For it was only by returning and seeking God’s favour by true repentance and humiliation, and ceasing from their idolatry, that they could be saved from ruin.

For, or yet, truly. Thus saith the Lord; amidst all those threats there is still a reserve, a conditional proviso, and the Lord here does by his prophet declare it. Unto the house of Israel; though apostate both in sacred and civil things, though polluted and defiled greatly, and this through many scores of years, yet after all repentance would help them. Seek ye me; inquire for my law, and repent of your despising it, obey it in all things for the future, inquire diligently what promises I have made and wait for them, believe, obey, and repent; for this is to seek the Lord, when a people have turned from the Lord, as you have done, O house of Israel. Ye shall live; it shall be well with you, your persons, families, and the whole kingdom shall prosper, as the Hebrew phrase importeth.