’Come to Beth-el, and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression; and bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes after three years:  5.  And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, and proclaim and publish the free offerings; for this liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord God. 6.  And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places; yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. 7.  And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest; and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city; one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. 8.  So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied; yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. 9.  I have smitten you with blasting and mildew:  when your gardens, and your vineyards, and your fig-trees, and your olive-trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them:  yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. 10.  I have sent among you the pestilence, after the manner of Egypt; your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils; yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. 11.  I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning; yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. 12.  Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel; and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. 13.  For, lo, He that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The Lord, The God of hosts, is His name.’—­AMOS iv. 4-13.

The reign of Jeroboam II. was one of brilliant military success and of profound moral degradation.  Amos was a simple, hardy shepherd from the southern wilds of Judah, and his prophecies are redolent of his early life, both in their homely imagery and in the wholesome indignation and contempt for the silken-robed vice of Israel.  No sterner picture of an utterly rotten social state was ever drawn than this book gives of the luxury, licentiousness, and oppressiveness of the ruling classes.  This passage deals rather with the religious declension underlying the moral filth, and sets forth the self-willed idolatry of the people (vs. 4, 5), their obstinate resistance to God’s merciful chastisement (vs. 6-11), and the heavier impending judgment (vs. 12, 13).