Amos 1:3

"For three transgressions ... yea, for four ..." This is a stylized expression, or idiom, having the meaning of, "for many, or for more than enough."[15] As used here, it denotes, "not a small, but a large number of crimes, or ungodliness in its worst form."[16] Of course, "Some critics have taken the terms literally, and have tried to identify that particular number of transgressions in each case; but this is trifling."[17]

"Damascus ..." This city stands here as a representative of all of Syria, a point to be remembered. It was an outstanding city of the nation of Syria, one of Israel's principal adversaries, "throughout the incessant border wars which ran from the ninth century to the beginning of the eighth."[18]

"They have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron ..." This happened in the Syrian war against Israel's land east of the Jordan during the reign of Jehu (2 Kings 10:32,33; 13:7). "They even crushed the prisoners to pieces with iron threshing machines, according to a barbarous war custom that is met with elsewhere (2 Samuel 12:31)."[19]

The grievousness of this sin is seen, not only in the fact of its violation of one of God's most sacred laws, the sanctity of human life, but also that they "had done despite to the covenant people of God: `To attack God's people is to attack God.'"[20]