Amos 5:16

Croatian Bible

Stog ovako govori Jahve, Bog nad Vojskama, Gospod: "Na svakom će trgu biti kuknjava, po svim će ulicama zapomagati: 'Jao! Jao!' Težake će sazvat' da jauču, narikače da nariču,

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

the Lord: Amos 5:27, Amos 3:13

Wailing: Amos 8:10, Isaiah 15:2-5, Isaiah 15:8, Isaiah 22:12, Jeremiah 4:31, Jeremiah 9:10, Jeremiah 9:18-20, Joel 1:8, Joel 1:11, Joel 1:14, Micah 1:8, Micah 2:4, Revelation 18:10, Revelation 18:15, Revelation 18:16, Revelation 18:19

such: Jeremiah 9:17-19

Reciprocal: Job 3:8 - who are ready Isaiah 24:11 - all joy Jeremiah 30:5 - a voice Jeremiah 50:16 - the sower Ezekiel 6:11 - Alas Ezekiel 27:2 - General Ezekiel 30:3 - a cloudy Hosea 4:3 - the land Joel 1:15 - Alas Amos 5:1 - I take

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus,.... The connection of these words is not with those that immediately precede, but with the whole context; seeing neither promises nor threats, exhortations, good advice, and intimations of grace and mercy, had no effect, at least upon the generality of the people, therefore the Lord declared as follows:

wailing [shall be] in all streets; in all the streets of the towns and cities of Israel, because of the slain and wounded in them:

and they shall say in all the highways, alas! alas! in the several roads throughout the country, as travellers pass on, and persons flee from the enemy; they shall lament the state of the kingdom, and cry Woe, woe, unto it; in what a miserable condition and circumstances it is in:

and they shall call the husbandmen to mourning: who used to be better employed in tilling their land, ploughing, sowing, reaping, and gathering in the fruits of the earth; but now should have no work to do, all being destroyed, either by the hand of God, by blasting, and mildew, and vermin, or by the trampling and forage of the enemy; and so there would be just occasion for mourning:

and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing; that have got the art of mourning, and were expert in making moans, and using plaintive tones, and who assisted at funerals, and other doleful occasions; and who are made use of to this day in some countries, particularly in Ireland; and were the old Romans, by whom they were called "siticines", "praefici", and "praeficae" and these mourning men and women were also employed among the Jews at such times; see Matthew 9:23; in Jeremiah 9:17, the mourning women are called "cunning women"; and so Lucian h calls: them σοφιστας των θρηνων, "sophists at lamentations", artists: at them, well skilled therein, such as those are here directed to be called for. Mr. Lively, our countryman, puts both clauses together, and renders them thus, "the husbandmen shall call to mourning and wailing such as are skilful of lamentation"; to assist them therein, because of the loss of the fruits of the earth; and such a version is confirmed by Jarchi, though he paraphrases it to a different sense;

"companies of husbandmen shall meet those that plough in the fields with the voice of mourners that cry in the streets.''

h Dialog. περι πενθ.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Therefore the Lord, the God of Hosts, the Lord - For the third time in these three last verses Amos again reminds them, by whose authority he speaks, His who had revealed Himself as “I am,” the self-existent God, God by nature and of nature, the Creator and Ruler and Lord of all, visible or invisible, against their false gods, or fictitious substitutes for the true God. Here, over and above those titles, “He is,” that is, He alone is, the “God of Hosts, God of all things, in heaven and earth,” the heavenly bodies from whose influences the idolaters hoped for good, and the unseen evil beings Isaiah 24:21, who seduced them, he adds the title, which people most shrink from, “Lord.” He who so threatened, was the Same who had absolute power over His creatures, to dispose of them, as He willed. It costs people nothing to own God, as a Creator, the Cause of causes, the Orderer of all things by certain fixed laws. It satisfies certain intellects, so to own Him. What man, a sinner, shrinks from, is that the God is Lord, the absolute disposer and Master of his sinful self.

Wailing in all streets - Literally, “broad places,” that is, market-places. “There,” where judgments were held, where were the markets, where consequently had been all the manifold oppressions through injustice in judgments and in dealings, and the wailings of the oppressed; “wailing” should come on them.

They shall say in all-the highways - that is, “streets, alas! alas!” our, “woe, woe.” It is the word so often used by our Lord; “woe unto you.” This is no imagery. Truth has a more awful, sterner, reality than any imagery. The terribleness of the prophecy lies in its truth. When war pressed without on the walls of Samaria, and within was famine and pestilence, woe, woe, woe, must have echoed in every street, for in every street was death and fear of worse. Yet imagine every sound of joy or din or hum of people, or mirth of children, hushed in the streets, and woe, woe, going up from every street of a metropolis, in one unmitigated, unchanging, ever-repeated monotony of grief. Such were the present fruits of sin. Yet what a mere shadow of the inward grief is its outward utterance!

And they shall call the farmer to mourning - To cultivate the fields would then only be to provide food for the enemy. His occupation would be gone. One universal sorrow would give one universal employment. To this, they would call those unskilled, with their deep strong voices; they would, by a public act, “proclaim wailing to those skillful in lamentation.” It was, as it were, a dirge over the funeral of their country. As, at funerals, they employed minstrels, both men and women , who, by mournful anthems and the touching plaintiveness of the human voice, should stir up deeper depths of sorrow, so here, over the whole of Israel. And as at the funeral of one respected or beloved, they used exclamations of woe, “ah my brother!” and “ah sister, ah lord, ah his glory,” so Jeremiah bids them, “call and make haste and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears: for a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion. How are we spoiled!” Jeremiah 9:17-19. : “In joy, men long to impart their joys to others, and exhort them to joy with them. Our Lord sanctions this, in speaking of the Good Shepherd, who called His friends and neighbors together, “rejoice with Me, for I have found the sheep which I had lost.”

Nor is it anything new, that, when we have received any great benefit from God, we call even the inanimate creation to thank and praise God. So did David ofttimes and the three children. So too in sorrow. When anything adverse has befallen us, we invite even senseless things to grieve with us, as though our own tears sufficed not for so great a sorrow.” The same feeling makes the rich now clothe those of their household in mourning, which made those of old hire mourners, that all might be in harmony with their grief.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse 16. They shall call the husbandman to mourning — Because the crops have failed, and the ground has been tilled in vain.

Such as are skilful of lamentation — Jeremiah 9:17.