Commentary - Amos 4:6-11

Bird's-eye view

In this section of Amos, the Lord Himself takes the stand as the prosecuting attorney against Israel. He lays out a series of five covenantal judgments, five calamities that He personally and sovereignly sent upon His people. This is not a run of bad luck; this is curated, intentional, divine discipline. The structure is stark and repetitive, like the tolling of a funeral bell. Five times God recounts a specific judgment, famine, drought, blight, pestilence, and utter destruction, and five times He delivers the heartbreaking refrain: "Yet you have not returned to Me." The passage is a powerful demonstration of God's active, governing hand in history. He does not sit idly by. He uses hunger, weather, crop failure, disease, and military defeat as tools, as goads, as loving and severe summonses to repentance. But Israel, in her spiritual stupor, refuses to connect the dots. They endure the pain of the discipline without ever learning the lesson. This is a terrifying portrait of a people so hardened in their sin that not even the deliberate dismantling of their prosperity can bring them to their knees.

The central theme is the failure of divine chastisement to produce repentance in a rebellious heart. God is not being capricious; He is acting as a covenant Father, disciplining the son He loves. But the son is obstinate. The climax of the judgments, the overthrow of cities like Sodom and Gomorrah, shows the extremity of the warning. Israel was snatched like a stick from the fire, yet they still would not turn. This sets the stage for the final, ultimate judgment that Amos has been prophesying. God has tried everything short of total destruction, and their continued impenitence now makes that final judgment both necessary and just.

Outline

Context In Amos

This passage directly follows Amos's scathing denunciation of the wealthy, self-indulgent women of Samaria, whom he calls the "cows of Bashan" (Amos 4:1-3). He has condemned their corrupt worship at Bethel and Gilgal, a worship that was meticulous in its outward form but utterly devoid of righteousness (Amos 4:4-5). Now, in verses 6-11, God shifts from condemning their sin to detailing His response to their sin. This section functions as the legal basis for the coming final judgment. God is demonstrating that He has not been silent or inactive. He has sent escalating warnings, the covenant curses promised in Deuteronomy 28. These are not random acts of nature; they are the very voice of God shouting at a deaf people. The relentless refrain, "Yet you have not returned to Me," builds a powerful case for Israel's guilt. They are without excuse. This litany of rejected discipline leads directly into the ominous conclusion of this section: "Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!" (Amos 4:12). The lesser judgments have failed; the ultimate confrontation is now inevitable.

Key Issues

"I Did This... Yet You Did Not"

We live in a therapeutic age that resists the very categories presented here. When disaster strikes, our first instinct is to look for a naturalistic cause or a political scapegoat. We talk about climate change, economic cycles, or geopolitical instability. The one thing we are trained not to do is look up. But the Bible, from cover to cover, teaches a different worldview. God is the Lord of history. He is the one who sends the rain and withholds the rain. He is the one who commands the locusts. He is the one who governs the affairs of nations. As Amos himself says earlier in the book, "Does disaster come to a city, unless Yahweh has done it?" (Amos 3:6).

In this passage, God takes personal responsibility for Israel's suffering. Notice the repeated use of the first person: "I gave you," "I also withheld," "I would send rain," "I struck you," "I sent a pestilence," "I overthrew you." This is the language of direct, sovereign action. God is not a passive observer of Israel's misfortunes. He is the author of them. And He has a purpose in them. These are not retributive punishments designed to destroy; they are disciplinary chastisements designed to restore. They are the actions of a loving father who is willing to cause temporary pain in order to prevent eternal ruin. The entire force of the passage rests on this covenantal cause-and-effect. "I did this, so that you would do that." The tragedy is found in the second half of the equation: "Yet you have not returned to Me."

Verse by Verse Commentary

6 “But I gave you also cleanness of teeth in all your cities And lack of bread in all your places, Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares Yahweh.

The first judgment is famine. God states it plainly: "I gave you... cleanness of teeth." This is a vivid, earthy metaphor for having nothing to eat. Your teeth are clean because there is no food to chew, no residue to get stuck. He also gave them a "lack of bread." This was not a localized problem; it was in "all your cities" and "all your places." This was a national, systemic crisis. And who was the giver of this gift? God was. He is sovereign over the food supply. He can give it, and He can take it away. The purpose of this empty-stomach discipline was to get them to think, to consider their ways, to look up from their empty plates to the God they had offended. But it did not work. The refrain comes like a hammer blow: Yet you have not returned to Me. They felt the hunger, but they did not understand the message.

7-8 “And I also withheld the rain from you While there were still three months until harvest. Then I would send rain on one city, And on another city I would not send rain; One portion would be rained on, While the portion not rained on would dry up. So two or three cities would wander around to another city to drink water, But would not be satisfied; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares Yahweh.

The second judgment is a meticulously managed drought. God did not just turn off the spigot entirely. He managed the crisis with discriminating precision to make His point undeniable. He withheld the rain at the most critical time for the crops, three months before harvest. Then, to remove any thought that this was a random weather pattern, He would make it rain on one town but not the next. He would water one farmer's field but let the field next to it wither. This is what we might call a "checkerboard judgment." The purpose of such a specific, localized drought was to scream "This is not an accident!" It was designed to show that a sovereign intelligence was directing the weather patterns. The result was a water crisis. People from multiple towns would have to travel to the one town that had water, but the supply was not enough. They "would not be satisfied." The discipline was sharp, unmistakable, and frustrating. And yet, the result was the same. Yet you have not returned to Me.

9 “I struck you with scorching wind and mildew; And the gnawing locust was devouring Your many gardens and vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares Yahweh.

The third judgment is agricultural blight. Even if some crops survived the drought, God had other arrows in His quiver. He sent the "scorching wind," a hot east wind that desiccates everything, and "mildew," a fungal disease that ruins what is left. As if that were not enough, He sent the locusts. Notice the specific targets: their "many gardens and vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees." These were not subsistence crops; these were the luxury items, the source of their wealth and pleasure. God was systematically dismantling the very prosperity that had made them arrogant and self-sufficient. Every part of their economy was under divine assault. This is a direct fulfillment of the curses listed in Deuteronomy 28. God said He would do this if they broke covenant, and now He is doing it. But their hearts remained hard. Yet you have not returned to Me.

10 “I sent a pestilence among you after the manner of Egypt; I killed your choice men by the sword along with your captured horses, And I made the stench of your camp rise up even in your nostrils; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares Yahweh.

The fourth judgment moves from the natural world to disease and warfare. God sent a plague "after the manner of Egypt," reminding them of the judgments He brought upon their enemies. Now, because of their sin, He is treating them like the Egyptians. The covenant has been inverted. He also brought military defeat. He killed their "choice men," their elite soldiers, with the sword. Even their warhorses, a symbol of military might, were captured and lost. The result was a scene of total carnage. The "stench of your camp," the smell of death and decay, was so overwhelming it rose up into their own nostrils. God was rubbing their noses in their own defeat. This was a humiliating, devastating blow to their national pride and security. Surely this would wake them up. But it did not. Yet you have not returned to Me.

11 “I overthrew you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, And you were like a firebrand delivered from a blaze; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares Yahweh.

The fifth and final judgment in this list is the most severe. God says, "I overthrew you." This likely refers to a specific, catastrophic event, perhaps the major earthquake mentioned in the first verse of the book. And the comparison He uses is the most extreme imaginable: the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. This was the gold standard of total, fiery, divine judgment. God is saying, "I brought that level of devastation to some of you." Yet, even in this wrath, there was a hint of mercy. They were "like a firebrand delivered from a blaze." A firebrand is a stick pulled out of the fire, singed and smoking, but not entirely consumed. God brought them to the very brink of annihilation and then pulled a remnant back. He saved them, but just barely. This was the loudest possible wake-up call. It was a taste of hell, followed by a gracious rescue. And their response? Nothing. For the fifth and final time, the charge is laid: Yet you have not returned to Me.

Application

The message of Amos 4 is a hard one, but it is a necessary one. We must learn to read the providences of God. When we face hardship, whether it is financial difficulty, sickness, relational turmoil, or national crisis, our first question should not be "Why is this happening to me?" but rather "What is God saying to me?" God speaks through blessings, but He often shouts through suffering. These judgments are God's megaphone to a world that has put its fingers in its ears.

This passage forces us to confront the possibility of our own spiritual deafness. Like Israel, we can endure the discipline of God without ever connecting it to our sin. We can complain about the economy but never repent of our greed. We can lament the decay of our culture but never repent of our own worldliness. We can be frustrated with our circumstances without ever returning to the Lord. The great danger is to be like Israel, to be a firebrand plucked from the flame, only to remain a charred, useless stick. God's discipline is meant to lead to repentance, and repentance is not just feeling bad. It is a turning. It is a conscious, deliberate reorientation of your life back to God, His Word, and His worship.

The good news of the gospel is that for those who are in Christ, the discipline we receive is always paternal, never penal. It is for our good, to make us share in His holiness (Hebrews 12:10). Jesus took the full, penal, Sodom-and-Gomorrah judgment for our sin upon Himself at the cross. He was utterly consumed by the fire of God's wrath so that we could be plucked from it. Because of this, we can receive God's chastening hand not with bitterness, but with gratitude, knowing that it is the loving hand of a Father who is committed to making us like His Son. The question for us, then, is when that hand applies pressure, will we be like Israel and stiffen our necks? Or will we be like true sons and daughters, and return to Him?