Amos 5:18

Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(18) Desire the day of the Lord.—Expecting that day to bring you deliverance and judgments upon your enemies. It shall bring the reverse! There is a dark side to the pillar of fire.

Benson Commentary

Amos 5:18-20. Wo unto you that desire the day of the Lord — Scoffingly, not believing any such day will come: for this seems to be spoken of some among them, who, in mockery, expressed a desire of seeing those things which the prophet predicted brought to pass. Or, it may respect those who, notwithstanding all the prophet had said, still expected God would appear in their favour, not to their destruction: see Isaiah 5:19. To what end is it for you? — To what purpose should you desire to see the day of the Lord? The day of the Lord is darkness — Adversity, black and doleful, and not light — No joy or comfort in it. It will certainly be a very dismal time to you, and indeed to all in the country, when evils shall succeed one another so fast, that he who seeks to escape one, shall fall into a greater. As if a man did flee from a lion — A creature that has something of generosity in his nature; and a bear met him — Which never spares any thing that comes in its way. Or went into the house — Namely, for fear of being devoured by beasts, or to avoid some other danger which threatened him without; and a serpent bit him — And a viper, whose sting is incurable, should creep out of the wall and bite him. Serpents sometimes concealed themselves in the holes and chinks of the walls of the eastern houses. Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness — It might indeed well be described as darkness; even very dark, without any brightness in it — Since it was to be no less than the destruction of the towns and cities, the desolation of the country, the slaughtering of the people, or the carrying of them into captivity, and even the overturning of the whole kingdom.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:18-27 Woe unto those that desire the day of the Lord's judgments, that wish for times of war and confusion; as some who long for changes, hoping to rise upon the ruins of their country! but this should be so great a desolation, that nobody could gain by it. The day of the Lord will be a dark, dismal, gloomy day to all impenitent sinners. When God makes a day dark, all the world cannot make it light. Those who are not reformed by the judgments of God, will be pursued by them; if they escape one, another stands ready to seize them. A pretence of piety is double iniquity, and so it will be found. The people of Israel copied the crimes of their forefathers. The law of worshipping the Lord our God, is, Him only we must serve. Professors thrive so little, because they have little or no communion with God in their duties. They were led captive by Satan into idolatry, therefore God caused them to go into captivity among idolaters.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Woe unto you that desire - for yourselves.

The Day of the Lord - There were "mockers in those days" 2 Peter 3:3-4; Jde 1:18, as there are now, and as there shall be in the last. And as the "scoffers in the last days" 2 Peter 3:3-4; Jde 1:18 shall say, "Where is the promise of His coming?" so these said, "let Him make speed and hasten His work, that we way see it, and let the council of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it" Isaiah 5:19. Jeremiah complained; "they say unto me, where is the word of the Lord? let it come now!" Jeremiah 17:15. And God says to Ezekiel, "Son of man, what is that proverb that ye have in the land of Israel, saying, the days are prolonged, and every vision faileth? The vision that he seeth is for many days, and he prophesieth of the times far off" Ezekiel 12:22, Ezekiel 12:27. "They would shew their courage and strength of mind, by longing for the Day of the Lord, which the prophets foretold, in which God was to shew forth His power on the disobedient."

Lap.: "Let it come, what these prophets threaten until they are hoarse, let it come, let it come. It is ever held out to us, and never comes. We do not believe that it will come at all, or if it do come, it will not be so dreadful after all; it will go as it came." It may be, however, that they who scoffed at Amos, cloked their unbelief under the form of desiring the good days, which God had promised by Joel afterward. Jerome: "There is not," they would say, "so much of evil in the captivity, as there is of good in what the Lord has promised afterward." Amos meets the hypocrisy or the scoff, by the appeal to their consciences, "to what end is it to you?" They had nothing in common with it or with God. Whatever it had of good, was not for such as them. "The Day of the Lord is darkness, and not light." Like the pillar of the cloud between Israel and the Egyptians, which betokened God's presence, every day in which He shows forth His presence, is a day of light and darkness to those of different characters.

The prophets foretold both, but not to all. These scoffers either denied the Coming of that day altogether, or denied its terrors. Either way, they disbelieved God, and, disbelieving Him, would have no share in His promises. To them, the Day of the Lord would be unmixed darkness, distress, desolation, destruction, without one ray of gladness. The tempers of people, their belief or disbelief, are the same, as to the Great Day of the Lord, the Day of Judgment. It is all one, whether people deny it altogether or deny its terrors. In either case, they deny it, such as God has ordained it. The words of Amos condemn them too. "The Day of the Lord" had already become the name for every day of judgment, leading on to the Last Day. The principle of all God's judgments is one and the same. One and the same are the characters of those who are to be judged. In one and the same way, is each judgment looked forward to, neglected, prepared for, believed, disbelieved. In one and the same way, our Lord has taught us, will the Great Day come, as the judgments of the flood or upon Sodom, and will find people prepared or unprepared, as they were then. Words then, which describe the character of any day of Judgment, do, according to the Mind of God the Holy Spirit, describe all, and the last also. Of this too, and that chiefly, because it is the greatest, are the words spoken, "Woe unto you, who desire," amiss or rashly or scornfully or in misbelief, "the Day of the Lord, to what end is it for you? The Day of the Lord is darkness and not light."

Rup.: "This sounds a strange woe. It had not seemed strange, had he said, 'Woe to you, who fear not the Day of the Lord.' For, 'not to fear,' belongs to bad, ungodly people. But the good may desire it, so that the Apostle says, 'I desire to depart and to be with Christ' Philippians 1:23. Yet even their desire is not without a sort of fear. For 'who can say, I have made my heart clean?' Proverbs 20:9. Yet that is the fear, not of slaves, but of sons; 'nor hath it torment,' 1 John 4:18, for it hath 'strong consolation through hope' Hebrews 6:18; Romans 5:2. When then he says, 'Woe unto you that desire the Day of the Lord,' he rebuketh their boldness, 'who trust in themselves, that they are righteous' Luke 18:9." "At one and the same time," says Jerome, "the confidence of the proud is shaken off, who, in order to appear righteous before people, are accustomed to long for the Day of Judgment and to say, 'Would that the Lord would come, would that we might be dissolved and be with Christ,' imitating the Pharisee, who spake in the Gospel, "God, I thank Thee, that I am not as other men are" Luke 18:11-12.

For the very fact, that they "desire," and do not fear, "the Day of the Lord," shows, that they are worthy of punishment, since no man is without sin 2 Chronicles 6:36, and the "stars are not pure in His sight" Job 25:5. And He "concluded all under sin, that he might have mercy upon all" Galatians 3:22; Romans 11:32. Since, then, no one can judge concerning the Judgment of God, and we are to "give account of every idle word" Matthew 12:36, and Job "offered sacrifices" Job 1:5 daily for his sons, lest they should have thought something perversely against the Lord, what rashness it is, to long to reign alone! 1 Corinthians 4:8. In troubles and distresses we are accustomed to say, 'would that we might depart out of the body and be freed from the miseries of this world,' not knowing that, while we are in this flesh, we have place for repentance; but if we depart, we shall hear that of the prophet, "in hell who will give Thee thanks?" Psalm 6:5. That is "the sorrow of this world" 2 Corinthians 7:10, which worketh "death," wherewith the Apostle would not have him sorrow who had sinned with his father's wife; the sorrow whereby the wretched Judas too perished, who, "swallowed up with overmuch sorrow" 2 Corinthians 2:7, joined murder Matthew 27:3-5 to his betrayal, a murder the worst of murders, so that where he thought to find a remedy, and that death by hanging was the end of ills, there he found the lion and the bear, and the serpent, under which names I think that different punishments are intended, or else the devil himself, who is rightly called a lion or bear or serpent."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

18. Woe unto you who do not scruple to say in irony, "We desire that the day of the Lord would come," that is, "Woe to you who treat it as if it were a mere dream of the prophets" (Isa 5:19; Jer 17:15; Eze 12:22).

to what end is it for you!—Amos taking their ironical words in earnest: for God often takes the blasphemer at his own word, in righteous retribution making the scoffer's jest a terrible reality against himself. Ye have but little reason to desire the day of the Lord; for it will be to you calamity, and not joy.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

That desire, scoffingly, or not believing any such day would come: the prophets had long threatened such a day, but these scoffers thought no such thing could overtake them, and if it did they would know the worst of it; alter their course they will not, whatever comes on it, and they are confident the prophets fright them with bugbears: but woe to such scoffers!

The day of the Lord: see Joel 1:15 2:1 Zephaniah 1:14.

To what end is it for you? what do you think to get by it? what good can you expect when darkest calamities overwhelm you?

The day of the Lord is darkness; all adversity, most black and doleful, therefore called in the abstract darkness.

And not light; no joy, hope, or comfort in it.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord,.... Either the day of Christ's coming in the flesh, as Cocceius interprets it; and which was desired by the people of Israel, not on account of spiritual and eternal salvation, but that they might be delivered by him from outward troubles and enemies, and enjoy temporal felicity; they had a notion of him as a temporal Saviour and Redeemer, in whose days they should possess much outward happiness, and therefore desired his coming; see Malachi 3:1; or else the day of the Lord's judgments upon them, spoken of by the prophet, and which they were threatened with, but did not believe it would ever come; and therefore in a scoffing jeering manner, expressed their desire of it, to show their disbelief of it, and that they were in no pain or fear about it, like those in Isaiah 5:19;

to what end is it for you? why do you desire it? what benefit do you expect to get by it?

the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light; it will bring on affliction, calamities, miseries, and distress, which are often in Scripture expressed by "darkness", and not prosperity and happiness, which are sometimes signified by "light"; see Isaiah 5:30; and even the day of the coming of Christ were to the unbelieving Jews darkness, and not light; they were blinded in it, and given up to judicial blindness and darkness; they hating and rejecting the light of Christ, and his Gospel, and which issued in great calamities, in the utter ruin and destruction of that people, John 3:19.

Geneva Study Bible

Woe unto you that {k} desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light.

(k) He speaks in this way because the wicked and hypocrites said they were content to endure God's judgments, whereas the godly tremble and fear; Jer 30:7, Joe 2:2,11, Zep 1:15.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

18. Woe unto you that] Ah! they that.… The interjection Hôy (the same as that used in 1 Kings 13:30 &c. quoted on Amos 5:16) implies commiseration rather than denunciation. It is used frequently, as here, to introduce an announcement of judgement: Isaiah 1:4; Isaiah 1:24; Isaiah 5:8; Isaiah 5:11; Isaiah 5:18; Isaiah 5:20-22; Isaiah 29:1; Isaiah 29:15 &c. (Woe … Isaiah 3:9; Isaiah 3:11; Isaiah 6:5; Isaiah 24:16 &c., is a different word, and is followed by the prep. to).

the day of Jehovah] i.e. the day in which Jehovah manifests Himself in triumph over His foes. The expression is based probably upon the Hebrew use of day as equivalent to day of battle or victory (Ezekiel 13:5; cf. Isaiah 9:4, the ‘day’ of Midian, i.e. the day of victory over Midian). From the present passage it appears to have been a current popular idea that Jehovah would one day manifest Himself, and confer some crowning victory upon His people: Amos points out that whether that will be so or not, depends upon Israel’s moral condition; the ‘day of Jehovah,’ such as the people imagine, would not be necessarily a day of victory to Israel over foreign powers, but a day in which Jehovah’s righteousness would be vindicated against sin, whether among foreign nations or His own people: so long therefore as Israel neglects to amend its ways, and continues to treat ritual as a substitute for morality, it will find Jehovah’s day to be the reverse of what it anticipates, a day not of triumph but of disaster. The ‘day of Jehovah,’ as thus understood by Amos, becomes a figure which is afterwards often employed by the prophets in their pictures of impending judgement. The conception places out of sight the human agents, by whom actually the judgement, as a rule, is effected, and regards the decisive movements of history as the exclusive manifestation of Jehovah’s purpose and power. The prophets, in adopting the figure, develope it under varying imagery, suggested partly by the occasion, partly by their own imagination. Thus Isaiah (Isaiah 2:12-21) represents it as directed against the various objects of pride and strength which Judah had accumulated in the days of Uzziah; Joel (Amos 2:1 ff.) derives his imagery from a recent visitation of locusts (as described in ch. 1): for other examples, see Zephaniah 1:7; Zephaniah 1:14-16; Isaiah 13:6-10; Isaiah 24:8; Joel 3:14-16. Comp. further W. R. Smith, Prophets, pp. 397 f.; Schultz, O.T. Theol. ii. 354 ff.; Davidson on Zephaniah 1:7.

to what end is it for you?] what good will it do you? See Genesis 27:46, where substantially the same Hebrew expression is thus paraphrased in A.V., R.V.

darkness, and not light] figures, respectively, of disaster, and of prosperity or relief, as often in the Hebrew poets: see e.g. Isaiah 5:30; Isaiah 8:22; Isaiah 9:2; Isaiah 58:8; Isaiah 59:9; Jeremiah 13:16.

18–20. Those who desire the “Day of Jehovah,” as though it could be anything but an interposition in their favour, will find to their surprise that it is a day fraught with peril and disaster.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 18-27. - The prophet enforces the threat by denouncing woe on those that trust to their covenant relation to God, expecting the day when he would punish the heathen for their sakes, and thinking that external, heartless worship was acceptable to him. Verse 18. - The day of the Lord. Anycrisis in the nation's history is so called, when God interposes to punish and correct. To our minds it looks forward to the final judgment. It is often mentioned by the prophets (e.g. Isaiah 2:12; Isaiah 13:6, 9; Joel 2:1, 11; Joel 3:18; Zephaniah 1:7, 14) as a time when the heathen should be judged, all the enemies of Israel defeated, and when Israel herself was exalted to the highest pitch of prosperity and dominion. Without any regard to the moral condition affixed to the realization of these expectations (see Joel 2:32), the people "desired" the appearance of this day, thus foolishly confirming themselves in their sinful life and false security. Some think scoffers are intended, but the context shows that the persons signified are sincere but mistaken believers in the safety of Israel's covenant position. To what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness; Why would ye have the day of the Lord? It is darkness. Why do ye, such as ye are, want this day to come? Ye know not what ye ask. It will be the very contrary to your expectations; it will be darkness, and not light, tribulation and misery, not joy and triumph for you (comp. Micah 7:8). Amos 5:18

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The first turn. - Amos 5:18. "Woe to those who desire the day of Jehovah! What good is the day of Jehovah to you? It is darkness, and not light. Amos 5:19. As if a man fleeth before the lion, and the bear meets him; and he comes into the house, and rests his hand upon the wall, and the snake bites him. Amos 5:20. Alas! is not the day of Jehovah darkness, and not light; and gloom, and no brightness in it?" As the Israelites rested their hope of deliverance from every kind of hostile oppression upon their outward connection with the covenant nation (Amos 5:14); many wished the day to come, on which Jehovah would judge all the heathen, and redeem Israel out of all distress, and exalt it to might and dominion above all nations, and bless it with honour and glory, applying the prophecy of Joel in ch. 3 without the least reserve to Israel as the nation of Jehovah, and without considering that, according to Joel 2:32, those only would be saved on the day of Jehovah who called upon the name of the Lord, and were called by the Lord, i.e., were acknowledged by the Lord as His own. These infatuated hopes, which confirmed the nation in the security of its life of sin, are met by Amos with an exclamation of woe upon those who long for the day of Jehovah to come, and with the declaration explanatory of the woe, that that day is darkness and not light, and will bring them nothing but harm and destruction, and not prosperity and salvation. He explains this in Amos 5:19 by a figure taken from life. To those who wish the day of Jehovah to come, the same thing will happen as to a man who, when fleeing from a lion, meets a bear, etc. The meaning is perfectly clear: whoever would escape one danger, falls into a second; and whoever escapes this, falls into a third, and perishes therein. The serpent's bite in the hand is fatal. "In that day every place is full of danger and death; neither in-doors nor out-of-doors is any one safe: for out-of-doors lions and bears prowl about, and in-doors snakes lie hidden, even in the holes of the walls" (C. a. Lap.). After this figurative indication of the sufferings and calamities which the day of the Lord will bring, Amos once more repeats in v. 20, in a still more emphatic manner (הלא, nonne equals assuredly), that it will be no day of salvation, sc. to those who seek evil and not good, and trample justice and righteousness under foot (Amos 5:14, Amos 5:15).