Amos 6:12

Shall horses run upon the rock? will one plow there with oxen? for ye have turned judgment into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(12) The questions require a negative answer, and show that the conduct of Israel is as inconsistent and senseless as the supposition involved in the interrogation: that horses should climb steep cliffs, or oxen plough in the rocky gorge. The conception of oppression, luxury, and pride being the forerunners of prosperity and peace is anomalous. The idea is, that that which should have insured the stability of the state, the embodiment of its conscience, had been turned into narcotic poison—the self-satisfaction of personal greed. Rôsh, the Hebrew for “gall,” is a poisonous kind of plant with bitter taste, and resembling, according to Jerome, stalks of grass, and propagating itself with such rapidity that it is difficult to exterminate it. (Comp. Hosea 10:4. Speaker’s Commentary suggests “poppy-head.”) In Amos 5:7 the word expressed here by “hemlock” is rendered “worm-wood,” as in Jeremiah 9:15; Jeremiah 23:15; Deuteronomy 29:18, &c., a rendering which should have been retained here. Gall and worm-wood are constantly associated in Old Testament prophecy in this metaphorical sense.

Benson Commentary

Amos 6:12. Shall horses run upon the rock? — “Is it possible that horses should run upon the steep and craggy cliffs? So impossible is it that ye Israelites should continue to prosper, while ye remain thus sinful.” — Bishop Hall. Or, “as horses and oxen are useless in such places, so are ye evidently useless to God.” — Grotius. Several other interpretations are given of this obscure verse. Mr. Scott’s is, “It was as perilous to endeavour to reform the people as it would be to ride a race on the top of a craggy rock, where both horses and horsemen would be in danger of being killed; and as vain as to plough there with oxen, when no impression could be made or increase expected.” For ye have turned judgment into gall, &c. — Ye have rendered the administration of public justice as bitter as gall, and the fruit of righteousness, or the observance of religious ceremonies, as poisonous as hemlock.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

6:8-14 How dreadful, how miserable, is the case of those whose eternal ruin the Lord himself has sworn; for he can execute his purpose, and none can alter it! Those hearts are wretchedly hardened that will not be brought to mention God's name, and to worship him, when the hand of God is gone out against them, when sickness and death are in their families. Those that will not be tilled as fields, shall be abandoned as rocks. When our services of God are soured with sin, his providences will justly be made bitter to us. Men should take warning not to harden their hearts, for those who walk in pride, God will destroy.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The two images both represent a toil, which people would condemn as absurd, destructive, as well as fruitless. The horse's hoofs or his limbs would be broken; the plowing-gear would be destroyed. The prophet gains the attention by the question. What then? they ask. The answer is implied by the for, which follows. Ye are they, who are so doing. As absurd is it to seek gain from injustice and oppression, to which God had annexed loss and woe, temporal and eternal. More easy to change the course of nature or the use of things of nature, than the course of God's Providence or the laws of His just retribution. They had changed the sweet laws of "justice" and equity "into" the "gall" of oppression, and the healthful "fruit of righteousness," whereof they had received the seed from God, into the life-destroying poison of sin. Better to have "plowed" the rock "with oxen" for food! For now, where they looked for prosperity, they found not barrenness, but death.

Others understand the question as the taunt of unbelievers, trusting in the strength of Samaria, that when horses should run on their rocky eminence, or the oxen plow there, then might an enemy look for gain from investing the hill of Samaria. "Shall things which are against nature be done?" "Yes," the prophet then would answer, "for ye have done against nature yourselves. Ye, have "changed justice," the solace of the oppressed, "into wormwood," the bitterness of oppression. Well may what ye think above the laws of physical nature be done, when ye have violated the laws of moral nature. Well may the less thing be done, your destruction, secure as by nature ye seem, when ye have done the greater, violating the laws of the God of nature." Amos, however, when he refers to the sayings of the unbelievers, distinguishes them from his own.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

12. In turning "judgment (justice) into gall (poison), and … righteousness into hemlock" (or wormwood, bitter and noxious), ye act as perversely as if one were to make "horses run upon the rock" or to "plough with oxen there" [Maurer]. As horses and oxen are useless on a rock, so ye are incapable of fulfilling justice [Grotius]. Ye impede the course of God's benefits, because ye are as it were a hard rock on which His favor cannot run. "Those that will not be tilled as fields, shall be abandoned as rocks" [Calvin].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Shall horses run upon the rock? would it not be dangerous to horse and rider? If prophets and pious men exhort, threaten, or advise, they endanger themselves, it does no more good than if you would run your horse on the slippery precipices of rocks. Or, all is lost labour on these hardened sinners.

Will one plough there with oxen? your hearts are hard as the rocks; my prophets’ preaching, my lesser judgments warning you, all gentler means used, are but as a husbandman’s ploughing the rocks. These shall therefore be torn up by the roots, your state and kingdom shall be utterly overthrown.

For ye, you judges and governors in the ten tribes, and in Judah too,

have turned judgment, see Amos 5:7,

into gall, or poison; by those laws they took away life, and forfeited estate, which, had the laws been rightly executed, had saved both.

The fruit of righteousness, all that fruit which equity and justice would have produced by due application of the law, hath been wormwood, grief, and complaints, by your wresting and perverting the law.

Into hemlock, a deadly and pernicious weed so the course of your courts have been.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Shall horses run upon the rocks? or will one plough there with oxen?.... Will any man be so weak and foolish, to propose or attempt a race for horses upon rocks, where they and their riders would be in danger of breaking their necks? or would any man act so unwise a part, as to take a yoke of oxen to plough with them upon a rock, where no impression can be made? as vain and fruitless a thing it would be to attempt to bring such persons under a conviction of their sins, and to repentance for them, and reformation from them, who are given up to a judicial hardness of heart, like that of a rock, as are the persons described in the next clause; or as such methods with horses and oxen would be contrary to all the rules of reason and prudence, so as contrary a part do such persons act whose characters are next given, and there is no probability of bringing them to better sense and practice of things;

for ye have turned judgment into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock; that which would be beneficial to a nation, than which nothing is more so, as the exercise of justice, and judgment, into that which is bitter and pernicious to it, as injustice and oppression; see Amos 5:7.

Geneva Study Bible

Shall horses {n} run upon the rock? will one plow there with oxen? for ye have turned judgment into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into {o} hemlock:

(n) He compares them to barren rocks, upon which it is in vain to bestow labour: showing that God's benefits can have no place among them.

(o) Read Am 5:7.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

12. Do horses run upon crags? doth one plow (there) with oxen? or (dividing one word into two) doth one plow the sea with an ox? that ye have turned judgement into poison, &c.] The two questions are meant to represent what is obviously unnatural and absurd. Do horses run over the jagged crags, or do men plough there with oxen (or with the emendation, Do men plough the sea with oxen), that ye do what is not less preposterous and unreasonable, viz. turn justice into injustice, and so transform what is wholesome into a poison? For the figure ‘turn judgement into poison,’ see Amos 5:7 (“into wormwood”). The emendation proposed (which, though conjectural, is supported by many of the best modern scholars) is recommended by the fact that it avoids the unusual plural beḳârîm and also obviates the necessity of mentally understanding “there” in the second clause of the verse.

gall] poison: Heb. rôsh, occurring also Deuteronomy 32:32-33; Hosea 10:4; Jeremiah 8:14; Lamentations 3:5; Psalm 69:21; Job 20:16; and coupled, as here, with ‘wormwood’ (cf. ch. Amos 5:7), Deuteronomy 29:18; Jeremiah 9:15; Jeremiah 23:15; Lamentations 3:19. Deuteronomy 29:18, Hosea 10:4 shew that some poisonous plant is denoted by the word (so that the rendering gall is certainly wrong), though, since it is quite uncertain what plant is meant, it is impossible to render otherwise than by a perfectly general term, such as poison. As rôsh also signifies ‘head,’ some have thought poppies, of which several species are found in Palestine, to be the plant denoted by the word.

the fruit of righteousness] i.e. the effects of righteousness (or justice), which would normally be wholesome and beneficial to society, but which, as it is perverted by the nobles of Israel into injustice, become wormwood (Amos 5:7), i.e. something bitter and deleterious to all.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 12-14. - The prophet shows the folly of these evil doers who think in their own strength to defy judgment and to resist the enemy whom God is sending against them. Verse 12. - Shall horses run upon the rock? Can horses gallop safely over places covered with rocks and stones? Will one plough there with oxen? Do men plough the rock with their oxen? The answer, of course, is "No." Yet your conduct is equally foolish, your labour is equally lost. Some, dividing the words differently, translate, "Does one plough the sea with oxen?" which reminds one of the Latin proverb, "Litus arare bubus." Thus Ovid, 'Ep. Heroid,' 5:115 -

"Quid facis OEnone? Quid arenae semina mandas?
Non protecturis litora bubus aras." For ye have turned; or, that ye have turned. Judgment into gall (see note on Amos 5:7). Hemlock. Some plant with an acrid juice. Ye turn the administration of justice, which is "the fruit of righteousness," into the bitterest injustice and wrong. It were "more easy," says Pusey, "to change the course of nature or the use of things of nature, than the course of God's providence or the laws of his just retribution." Amos 6:12

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

This judgment also, they, with their perversion of all right, will be unable to avert by their foolish trust in their own power. Amos 6:12. "Do horses indeed run upon the rock, or do men plough (there) with oxen, that ye turn justice into poison, and the fruit of the righteousness into wormwood? Amos 6:13. They who rejoice over what is worthless, who say: with our strength we make ourselves horns! Amos 6:14. For, behold, I raise over you, O house of Israel, is the saying of Jehovah, the God of hosts, a nation; and they will oppress you from the territory of Hamath to the brook of the desert." To explain the threat in Amos 6:11, Amos now calls attention in Amos 6:12, under two different similes, to the perversity with which the haughty magnates of Israel, who turn right into bitter wrong, imagine that they can offer a successful resistance, or bid defiance with their own strength to the enemy, whom the Lord will raise up as the executor of His judgment. The perversion of right into its opposite can no more bring salvation than horses can run upon rocks, or any one plough upon such a soil with oxen. In the second question בּסּלע (on the rock) is to be repeated from the first, as the majority of commentators suppose. But the two questions are not to be taken in connection with the previous verse in the sense of "Ye will no more be able to avert this destruction than horses can run upon rocks," etc. (Chr. B. Mich.). They belong to what follows, and are meant to expose the moral perversity of the unrighteous conduct of the wicked. For הפכתּם וגו, see Amos 5:7; and for ראשׁ, Hosea 10:4. The impartial administration of justice is called the "fruit of righteousness," on account of the figurative use of the terms darnel and wormwood. These great men, however, rejoice thereby in לא דבר, "a nothing," or a thing which has no existence. What the prophet refers to may be seen from the parallel clause, viz., their imaginary strength (chōzeq). They rested this hope upon the might with which Jeroboam had smitten the Syrians, and restored the ancient boundaries of the kingdom. From this might they would take to themselves (lâqach, to take, not now for the first time to create, or ask of God) the horns, to thrust down all their foes. Horns are signs and symbols of power (cf. Deuteronomy 33:17; 1 Kings 22:11); here they stand for the military resources, with which they fancied that they could conquer every foe. These delusions of God-forgetting pride the prophet casts down, by saying that Jehovah the God of hosts will raise up a nation against them, which will crush them down in the whole length and breadth of the kingdom. This nation was Assyria. Kı̄ hinnēh (for behold) is repeated from Amos 6:11; and the threat in Amos 6:14 is thereby described as the resumption and confirmation of the threat expressed in Amos 6:11, although the kı̄ is connected with the perversity condemned in Amos 6:12, Amos 6:13, of trusting in their own power. Lâchats, to oppress, to crush down. On the expression לבוא חמת, as a standing epithet for the northern boundary of the kingdom of Israel, see Numbers 34:8. As the southern boundary we have נחל הערבה instead of ים הערבה (2 Kings 14:25). This is not the willow-brook mentioned in Isaiah 15:7, the present Wady Sufsaf, or northern arm of the Wady el-Kerek (see Delitzsch on Isaiah, l.c.), nor the Rhinokorura, the present el-Arish, which formed the southern boundary of Canaan, because this is constantly called "the brook of Egypt" (see at Numbers 34:5; Joshua 15:4), but the present el-Ahsy (Ahsa), the southern border river which separated Moab from Edom (see at 2 Kings 14:25).