Amos 6

¹ Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who are secure on the mountain of Samaria, the notable men of the chief of the nations, to whom the house of Israel come!

² Go to Calneh, and see. From there go to Hamath the great. Then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are they better than these kingdoms? Is their border greater than your border?

³ Alas for you who put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near,

⁴ who lie on beds of ivory, and stretch themselves on their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the middle of the stall,

⁵ who strum on the strings of a harp, who invent for themselves instruments of music, like David;

⁶ who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the best oils, but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.

⁷ Therefore they will now go captive with the first who go captive. The feasting and lounging will end.

⁸ “The Lord GOD has sworn by himself,” says the LORD, the God of Armies: “I abhor the pride of Jacob, and detest his fortresses. Therefore I will deliver up the city with all that is in it.

⁹ It will happen that if ten men remain in one house, they will die.

¹⁰ “When a man’s relative carries him, even he who burns him, to bring bodies out of the house, and asks him who is in the innermost parts of the house, ‘Is there yet any with you?’ And he says, ‘No;’ then he will say, ‘Hush! Indeed we must not mention the LORD’s name.’

¹¹ “For, behold, the LORD commands, and the great house will be smashed to pieces, and the little house into bits.

¹² Do horses run on the rocky crags? Does one plow there with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness,

¹³ you who rejoice in a thing of nothing, who say, ‘Haven’t we taken for ourselves horns by our own strength?’

¹⁴ For, behold, I will raise up against you a nation, house of Israel,” says the LORD, the God of Armies; “and they will afflict you from the entrance of Hamath to the brook of the Arabah.”

Around Amos 6

Context

Context for this book is being written. A note appears here only once it names its sources.

AI explanation

About Amos as a whole · Written by an AI model · Not reviewed by a theological reader

This explanation was written by an AI model to help you get started. It names no sources and can contain mistakes. Scripture comes first, and context with sources is shown separately on this page.

What this book is about

He says plainly who he is: “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son”. Amos is a herdsman and tender of fig trees, sent from Judah to the northern kingdom at the height of its wealth. He announces judgment on the surrounding nations, and the hearers nod along. Then, to their shock, he turns on Israel itself. The rich crush the poor, the courts are corrupt, and worship goes on as if nothing were wrong.

A series of visions shows that the end is near. The book’s last verses promise that the fallen house of David will be raised again. Between the warning and the promise sits one of the most famous lines in the prophets: “let justice roll on like rivers, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Background

Amos was a herdsman and tender of fig trees from Tekoa, south of Jerusalem. He spoke around 760 before Christ, a generation before Assyria ended the northern kingdom. He was an outsider from the south, and what he said was not welcome in the north.

How Christians read it

Amos is the prophet most often quoted on justice; his call for justice to roll on like a river (5:24) was made famous again in the twentieth century. He insists that worship without justice is unacceptable to God. In Acts 15 James quotes the closing promise to show that God always meant to include the nations.

About this explanation

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, on 20 October 2026. It draws on the WEB text and general knowledge and was not checked against sources by a person. Every quotation from Scripture is checked automatically against the WEB text.

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