Judgment Brings Mourning

Amos now turns from an indictment to a judgment brings mourning lament. Their sins and coming judgment are a cause for lamenting. Israel will fall, and only a few will remain. During the lament, Yahweh twice appeals for them to seek him and not their false gods. Their false gods will fail them; Yahweh will not.

Israel rejected righteousness and justice in favor of elevating themselves and their wealth, and they rejected Yahweh in favor of false gods. But justice and righteousness will be established through their judgment, and Yahweh will triumph over their gods. This call for lament over their coming judgment continues in the next section, with a focus on their false worship.

This passage is built around three appeals: (1) for spiritual reformation, Seek me … seek the LORD (vss. 4–6); (2) for personal and social reformation, Seek good … maintain justice (vs. 14f.); (3) for religious reformation, Let justice roll … did you bring me sacrifices …? (vs. 24f.) But the appeals are bracketed by affirmations of disaster (vss. 1–3, 26–27) and interspersed with diagnoses of how things are (vss. 7, 10–13, 16–20). The therefore of v 16 gives us a clue how the chapter is to be understood: how can an appeal (14–15) have as its consequence (therefore, v 16) a forecast of inconsolable sorrow? Only if Amos is recalling appeals made and refused! The chapter, therefore, is a record of an opportunity lost and of the grim consequences now inevitable. Once more, God is not mocked.

Judgment brings mourning in Amos 5. It is a funeral dirge sung over the deceased. It is made of three parts. A chiasm in Amos 5:1-17. A lament in Amos 5:18-20. An indictment of crimes in Amos 5:19-27. Amos 5 could be titled The Book of Woes.

Amos 5 is structured in artistic fashion like no other unit in the book. Judgment brings mourning may sound grim and gloomy, but the chiastic structure shows Hebrew poetry at its finest.

A chiasm is a sequence in which similar sounds (phonemes), identical words (lexemes), or identical or similar ideas or concepts are presented and then repeated in reverse order. The structure of a chiasm is represented by letters, each letter representing a new idea. So, if our judgment brings mourning chiasm has two ideas, then idea one is represented by the letter “A” and idea two is represented by the letter “B.”

The chiastic features of this rhetorical unit are set forth by me. The overarching structure of the unit may be observed in the following arrangement:

         5:1–3      A First Lamentation.

           5:4-6        B First warning

               5:7           C First accusation

                    5:8         D Hymn

                        5:8a        E The LORD is His name.

                    5:9          D Hymn

           5:10–13      C Second accusation

        5:14–15    B Second warning

     5:16–17   A Second Lamentation

The centerpiece of this unit is the hymn stanza in Amos 5:8–9 (cf. 4:13), which sets forth the nature of Israel’s God. Another feature of this unit is the interweaving of the words of Amos (vv. 1–2, 6–9, 14–15) with the words of God (vv. 3–5, 10–13, 16–17). Judgment brings mourning is the overall theme. What happens between death and judgment day are not answered. Where do souls go before judgment day falls on deaf ears in Amos 5. Final judgment in Revelation answers these questions.

Judgment brings mourning, but how? The day of the Lord brings the wrath of God (vss. 18-20). No one can escape.