Commentary - Amos 6:12-14

Bird's-eye view

In this stinging conclusion to the second woe, Amos the prophet employs a series of biting rhetorical questions to expose the utter absurdity of Israel's behavior. The northern kingdom, fat and complacent, has managed to accomplish the unthinkable. They have so inverted the created order and God's moral law that it is comparable to running horses on sheer rock faces or plowing the sea with oxen. Their pride in their military victories, which they attribute to their own strength, is a hollow boast in "nothing."

Yahweh's response to this prideful perversion is swift and decisive. The Lord of hosts, the one who commands the armies of heaven, declares that He will raise up a nation to crush this arrogant house of Israel. The judgment will be total, stretching from the northernmost border to the southernmost extremity. This is not a partial rebuke; it is a comprehensive dismantling of a nation that has mistaken God's blessing for a license to pursue injustice and self-glorification. The passage is a stark reminder that when a people turns justice into poison, God will administer a potent antidote of judgment.

Outline

Context In Amos

This passage concludes the second of three major sections of woe oracles that began in chapter 5. Amos has been systematically dismantling the false security of the northern kingdom of Israel. They trusted in their military might, their economic prosperity, and their corrupted religious observances. Amos has already declared God's hatred for their festivals and assemblies (Amos 5:21) and has called for justice to roll down like waters (Amos 5:24).

Chapter 6 zeros in on the arrogant complacency of the leadership in both Zion (Judah) and Samaria (Israel). They are "at ease," living in luxury, and indifferent to the moral collapse of their nation, which Amos calls the "affliction of Joseph" (Amos 6:6). Verses 12-14 serve as the capstone to this denunciation. The leaders' actions are not just wrong; they are unnatural and insane. Their self-congratulatory pride is the final piece of evidence in God's lawsuit against them, and the verdict of judgment is therefore pronounced with chilling finality.

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 12 Do horses run on rocks? Or does one plow them with oxen? Yet you have overturned justice into gall And the fruit of righteousness into wormwood,

Amos begins with two rhetorical questions, and the answer to both is a resounding and obvious "of course not." You don't run a team of horses on a cliff face. You don't try to plow the sea with a yoke of oxen. To do so would be idiotic, a fool's errand, a complete contradiction of the way the world is put together. The created order has a grain to it, a logic. Horses are for fields and roads, not for rocks. Oxen are for soil, not for the sea. This is plain common sense.

And then Amos brings the hammer down. "Yet you..." In other words, what you people are doing is just as insane, just as contrary to nature, as these absurd examples. You have taken justice, which is meant to be a source of health and life for a society, and you have turned it into "gall," a bitter poison. You have taken the "fruit of righteousness," which should be sweet and nourishing, and transformed it into "wormwood," a plant known for its toxic bitterness. You have fundamentally inverted God's moral order. Just as there is a physical order, there is a moral order. And to defy that moral order is to engage in a kind of societal madness. You think you are being clever and sophisticated, but God, through his hick prophet, is telling you that you are acting like lunatics.

v. 13 You who are glad in Lo-debar And say, “Have we not by our own strength taken Karnaim for ourselves?”

Here the prophet names the specific source of their pride. Israel, under the strong reign of Jeroboam II, had recently enjoyed significant military success, recapturing territory east of the Jordan that had been lost. Amos names two of these victories: Lo-debar and Karnaim. But he does it with a biting pun, a bit of prophetic wordplay. "Lo-debar" sounds like the Hebrew for "a thing of nothing." So he says, "You who are glad in 'Nothing.'" You are celebrating a void. Your great victory is an empty puff of smoke.

And why is it nothing? Because of what they say to themselves: "Have we not by our own strength taken Karnaim for ourselves?" The name "Karnaim" means "two horns," a symbol of strength in the Old Testament. So they are boasting that by their own strength they have taken "Strength." It is the sin of Nebuchadnezzar, who looked at Babylon and said, "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built... by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" (Dan. 4:30). This is the root of their poisoned justice. When men believe they are the source of their own strength, they will inevitably believe they are the source of their own law. They become their own gods, and the result is that they turn righteousness into wormwood for everyone else.

v. 14 “For behold, I am going to raise up a nation against you, O house of Israel,” declares Yahweh God of hosts, “And they will press down on you from Lebo-hamath To the brook of the Arabah.”

The response to their self-glorification is immediate and severe. Notice the name of God used here: "Yahweh God of hosts." This is the Lord, the God of armies. Israel was proud of its little army and its reconquest of a couple of towns. God reminds them who is the true general. He is the one who commands the real hosts, the armies of heaven, and He can "raise up a nation" as easily as a man might pick up a stick to discipline a rebellious son. The nation in view here is Assyria, a truly terrifying military machine that would, within a generation, utterly obliterate the northern kingdom.

And the judgment will be total. It will extend "from Lebo-hamath to the brook of the Arabah." This describes the entire northern and southern extent of Israel's kingdom, from its ideal northern border to the Dead Sea in the south. There will be no escape. The oppression will be comprehensive. Because they perverted justice throughout the land, the judgment will cover the land. Because their pride was all-encompassing, the destruction will be all-encompassing. When a people celebrates their own strength in a world governed by the God of hosts, they are picking a fight they cannot possibly win. God will not be mocked, and a nation that builds its house on the foundation of injustice and pride is a nation that God Himself will tear down.