Israel’s wealth, their detestable worship, their coming punishment
4
📚Hear this word, you cows of Bashan 📖,who are on the mountain
of Samaria,
who oppress the poor,
who crush the needy 📖,
who say to their husbands,
“Bring something,
and let us drink 📖”.
2 📚The Lord God has sworn
by his own holiness 📖:
“See, the days are coming on you
when he will take you away
with hooks 📖,
and your posterity with fishhooks.
3 📚And you will go out the breaks
in the wall,
each one straight ahead of her,
and you will throw down
your riches in the palaces”,
says the LORD.
4 📚“Come to Bethel, and transgress!
At Gilgal multiply transgression!
And bring your sacrifices
every morning 📖,
and your tithes 📖 every
three years 📖,
Former punishment had not produced good results
5 📚And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving 📖
with yeast,
and proclaim and announce
the freewill offerings 📖:
for this you love to do, 📖
O children of Israel”,
says the Lord God.
4:4-5 He tells them to go ahead and do what He knows they are determined to do anyway (compare Rom 1:28). Here He is speaking ironically. Bethel and Gilgal were once places where God’s people erected memorials to the one true God, but Israel now worshiped false gods there (Gen 28:10-19; 35:1; Josh 4:20-24).⚜
6 📚“But I have also given you cleanness
of teeth 📖 in all your cities,
and lack of bread in all your places.
Yet you have not returned to me”,
says the LORD.
7 📚“And I have also withheld
the rain from you,
three months before the harvest;
and I caused it to rain on one city,
and withheld the rain on another city.
One part was rained on, and the piece
which was not rained on dried up.
8 📚So two or three cities wandered
to another city to drink water,
but they were not satisfied.
Yet you have not returned to me”,
says the LORD.
9 📚“I have struck you with blight
and mildew.
When your gardens and your vineyards
and your fig trees and your
olive trees increased,
the locust devoured them.
Yet you have not returned to me”,
says the LORD.
10 📚“I have sent plague among you,
like the plague of Egypt 📖.
I have slain your young men by the sword 📖,
and have taken away your horses,
and have made the stench
of your camps to come up into your nostrils.
Yet you have not returned to me”,
says the LORD.
11 📚“I have overthrown some of you,
as God overthrew Sodom 📖
and Gomorrah,
and you were like a firebrand snatched
out of the blaze.
Yet you have not returned to me 📖”,
says the LORD.
12 📚“Therefore this is what
I will do to you,
O Israel; and because
I will do this to you,
prepare to meet your God, O Israel”.
4:12 They had ignored all His words, warnings, chastisements, and methods. So God would bring on them one final punishment – Amos 3:11-15. There would be no escape for the nation as a whole, and they should prepare to face God’s judgment. This may be the meaning of “prepare to meet your God”. But this phrase may also be taken as a call to repentance. They should turn their backs on their sins and prepare to hear what God has to say to them. Compare Amos 5:4-6.⚜
4:6-12 The Lord speaks of methods He had used to turn His people back to Him. They were chastisements and warnings. But Israel refused to repent and stubbornly went on its own way, so there was no remedy – Hos 11:7; 2 Kings 17:14-20.⚜
13 📚For, see, he who forms the mountains,
and creates the wind,
and declares his thought to man 📖,
he who darkens the morning,
and treads on the high places
of the earth,
The LORD God of hosts is
his name.
4:13 The God with whom they must deal is the almighty Creator of the universe (Gen 1:1; Isa 40:25-26; 42:5).⚜