Amos 1:3-5

3-5. The sin and punishment of Damascus.

Thus saith Jehovah A solemn formula repeated before each denunciation (Amos 1:6; Amos 1:9; Amos 1:11; Amos 1:13; Amos 2:1; Amos 2:4; Amos 2:6). The prophet desires to make it plain that in all he says he is the spokesman of Jehovah (compare Zechariah 1:3).

Three… four There is no reason for thinking that Amos had in mind three or four specific transgressions which exhausted the patience of Jehovah, as Kimchi undertook to show: (1) the campaign against Baasha (1 Kings 15:18 ff.), (2) against Ahab (1 Kings 20:1 ff.), (3) against Jehoahaz (2 Kings 13:3), (4) against Ahaz of Judah (2 Kings 16:5-6). The last one took place about twenty-five years after this prophecy was delivered. The numbers must be explained as ascending enumeration (see on Hosea 6:2); the prophet wants to say that the measure of their guilt is more than full.

Transgressions More correctly, rebellions.

Damascus The capital of Syria, here representing the whole country. The beginnings of the hostility between Israel and Syria may be traced to the days of Solomon, when Rezon established himself in Damascus and became “an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon” (1 Kings 11:23-25). The Syrian power increased steadily, until in the ninth century B.C. Syria became the most powerful nation in western Asia and seriously troubled Israel. In Amos’s days its prestige had begun to decline, Jeroboam II having waged successful war against Damascus (2 Kings 14:25-26; compare 2 Kings 13:25).

I will not turn away the punishment thereof Literally, I will not turn it back. The object must be supplied from the context. Since it is left so indefinite there has been great difference of opinion with regard to it. The more important interpretations are, “I will not convert it,” that is, Damascus; “I will not revoke it,” that is, the wrath of Jehovah, or the resulting sentence of judgment, or a threat uttered at an earlier period and now recalled by Amos. The English translation gives a correct interpretation by adding “punishment.”

Because Introduces a typical example of the transgressions of Damascus.

Threshed Literally, tread down. One primitive method of threshing was to make animals tread out the grain with their feet (Micah 4:13; Deuteronomy 25:4). Even when other methods of threshing were adopted the term was retained.

With threshing instruments of iron The threshing machines to which reference is here made are described by Thomson in The Land and the Book, ii, p. 315, as follows: “The most common mode of threshing is with the ordinary slab, called mowrej, which is drawn over the floor by a horse or yoke of oxen, until not only the grain is shelled out, but the straw itself is ground up into chaff. To facilitate this operation bits of rough lava (or iron teeth, Isaiah 41:15-16) are fastened into the bottom of the mowrej, and the driver sits or stands upon it.… The Egyptian mowrej is a little different from this, having rollers which revolve on the grain, and the driver has a seat upon it.… In the plains of Hamath I saw this machine improved by having circular saws attached to the rollers.” Whether the prophet means that the Syrians actually used these instruments to torture captives, or whether he simply uses the expressions to give a vivid description of cruelties of every sort is not certain (compare 2 Kings 13:7; Proverbs 20:26).

Gilead In the narrow sense, the east Jordan territory between the Yarmuk and the Arnon (Deuteronomy 3:13), in the broader sense, the whole Hebrew territory east of the Jordan; so here, equivalent to “inhabitants of Gilead.” Gilead, being nearest to Syria, would suffer first in the case of a Syrian invasion. The prophet may have in mind the invasion under Hazael during the latter half of the ninth century (compare 2 Kings 8-13).