Amos 8:10

And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(10, 11) The imagery is very vivid. The prophet threatens a famine of the word of Jehovah, and a parching thirst for the Water of Life, now no longer attainable. Such terrible destitution often supervenes on the neglect of the Word of God, the power to discern the ever-present Word being exhausted. Then comes the withdrawal of revelation, the silence of seers. One of the awful dooms of unbelief in the next world will be this famine, this hopeless thirst and fathomless suspense.

Benson Commentary

Amos 8:10. I will turn your feasts into mourning — God commanded the Jews to celebrate their festivals with joy and gladness; but this it would be impossible for them to do under such melancholy circumstances and manifestations of the divine displeasure. And all your songs into lamentation — The particular psalms and hymns which used to be sung at the great festivals are here alluded to. And I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins — All sorts of persons shall put on mourning. And baldness upon every head — Shaving the head and beard was a sign of the greatest sadness. I will make it as the mourning, rather, as in the mourning of [or for] an only son — That is, a most heavy mourning; for the death of an only son generally occasions the severest grief; and the end thereof as a bitter day — A sorrowful day, which you shall wish you had never seen, shall succeed your dark night. In other words, the calamities shall increase more and more; so that the last part of these grievous times shall be far more distressing than any that had preceded. This undoubtedly was the case, as the carrying them into captivity would occasion a separation of friends from friends, children from parents, wives from husbands, than which it is not easy to conceive any thing more deplorable.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

8:4-10 The rich and powerful of the land were the most guilty of oppression, as well as the foremost in idolatry. They were weary of the restraints of the sabbaths and the new moons, and wished them over, because no common work might be done therein. This is the character of many who are called Christians. The sabbath day and sabbath work are a burden to carnal hearts. It will either be profaned or be accounted a dull day. But can we spend our time better than in communion with God? When employed in religious services, they were thinking of marketings. They were weary of holy duties, because their worldly business stood still the while. Those are strangers to God, and enemies to themselves, who love market days better than sabbath days, who would rather be selling corn than worshipping God. They have no regard to man: those who have lost the savour of piety, will not long keep the sense of common honesty. They cheat those they deal with. They take advantage of their neighbour's ignorance or necessity, in a traffic which nearly concerns the labouring poor. Could we witness the fraud and covetousness, which, in such numerous forms, render trading an abomination to the Lord, we should not wonder to see many dealers backward in the service of God. But he who thus despises the poor, reproaches his Maker; as it regards Him, rich and poor meet together. Riches that are got by the ruin of the poor, will bring ruin on those that get them. God will remember their sin against them. This speaks the case of such unjust, unmerciful men, to be miserable indeed, miserable for ever. There shall be terror and desolation every where. It shall come upon them when they little think of it. Thus uncertain are all our creature-comforts and enjoyments, even life itself; in the midst of life we are in death. What will be the wailing in the bitter day which follows sinful and sensual pleasures!

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

I will turn your feasts into mourning - He recurs to the sentence which he had pronounced Amos 8:3, before he described the avarice and oppression which brought it down. Hosea too had foretold, "I will cause all her mirth to cease, her feast-days, etc" Hosea 2:11. So Jeremiah describes, "the joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning" Lamentations 5:15. The Book of Tobit bears witness how these sayings of Amos 54ed in the hearts of the captive Israelites. The word of God seems oftentimes to fail, yet it finds those who are His. "I remembered," he said, "that prophecy of Amos, your feasts shall be turned into mourning" (Tobit 2:6).

The correspondence of these words with the miracle at our Blessed Lord's Passion, in that "the earth was darkened in the clear day, at noon-day," was noticed by the earliest fathers , and that the more, since it took place at the Feast of the Passover, and, in punishment for that sin, their "feasts were turned into mourning," in the desolation of their country and the cessation of their worship.

I will bring up sackcloth - (that is, the rough coarse haircloth, which, being fastened with the girdle tight over the loins (see above Joel 1:8, Joel 1:13, pp. 107, 109), was wearing to the frame) "and baldness upon every head." The mourning of the Jews was no half-mourning, no painless change of one color of becoming dress for another. For the time, they were dead to the world or to enjoyment. As the clothing was coarse, uncomely, distressing, so they laid aside every ornament, the ornament of their hair also (as English widows used, on the same principle, to cover it). They shore it off; each sex, what was the pride of their sex; the men, their beards; the women, their long hair. The strong words, "baldness, is balded Jeremiah 16:6, shear Micah 1:16; Jeremiah 7:29, hew off, enlarge thy baldness" , are used to show the completeness of this expression of sorrow. None exempted themselves in the universal sorrow; "on every head" came up "baldness."

And I will make it - (probably, the whole state and condition of things, everything, as we use our "it") as the mourning of an only son As, when God delivered Israel from Egypt, "there was not," among the Egyptians: "a house where there was not one dead Exodus 12:30, and one universal cry arose from end to end of the land, so now too in apostate Israel. The whole mourning should be the one most grievous mourning of parents, over the one child in whom they themselves seemed anew to live.

And the end thereof as a bitter day - Most griefs have a rest or pause, or wear themselves out. "The end" of this should be like the beginning, nay, one concentrated grief, a whole day of bitter grief summed up in its close. It was to be no passing trouble, but one which should end in bitterness, an unending sorrow and destruction; image of the undying death in hell.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

10. baldness—a sign of mourning (Isa 15:2; Jer 48:37; Eze 7:18).

I will make it as … mourning of an only son—"it," that is, "the earth" (Am 8:9). I will reduce the land to such a state that there shall be the same occasion for mourning as when parents mourn for an only son (Jer 6:26; Zec 12:10).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

I will turn your feasts, religious, though idolatrous in your temples, see Amos 8:3, and your ordinary civil feasts in your palaces, into mourning: see Amos 8:3.

And all your songs into lamentation: this ingemination doth assure the thing, and forebode the sadness of their state.

I will bring up sackcloth; as all inwardly shall be sadness, so all that appears outwardly shall speak their sorrow and sadness.

Upon all loins; all sorts of persons should put on this mourning, and gird it close to their loins that it might afflict them the more, a custom very general in those times and places.

Baldness upon every head; partly pulling off the hair of the head through anguish, or shaving the head and beard in sign of greatest sadness, as the Eastern people did: see Micah 1:16.

As the mourning of an only son: this is accounted the greatest mourning, and seems proverbially to express such mourning, Jeremiah 6:26 Zechariah 12:10, which see; so God will afflict this people with greatest sorrows, and fill them with greatest mourning.

The end; you may hope these troubles will be over, and come to an end, but that will be little to your comfort; a bitter day, which you shall wish you had never seen, shall succeed your dark night, as indeed it doth to this day.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation,.... Either their religious feasts, the feasts of pentecost, tabernacles, and passover; at which three feasts there were eclipses of the sun, a few years after this prophecy of Amos, as Bishop Usher (q) observes: the first was an eclipse of the sun about ten digits, in the year 3213 A.M. or 791 B.C., June twenty fourth, at the feast of pentecost; the next was almost twelve digits, about eleven years after, on November eighth, 780 B.C., at the feast of the tabernacles; and the third was more than eleven digits in the following year, 779 B.C., on May fifth, at the feast of the passover; which the prophecy may literally refer to, and which might occasion great sorrow and concern, and especially at what they might be thought to forebode: but particularly this was fulfilled when these feasts could not be observed any longer, nor the songs used at them sung any more; or else their feasts, and songs at them, in their own houses, in which they indulged themselves in mirth and jollity; but now, instead thereof, there would be mourning and lamentation the loss of their friends, and being carried captive into a strange land;

and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins; of high and low, rich and poor; even those that used to be covered with silk and rich embroideries: sackcloth was a coarse cloth put on in times of mourning for the dead, or on account of public calamities:

and baldness upon every head: the hair being either shaved off or pulled off; both which were sometimes done, as a token of mourning:

and I will make it as the mourning of an only son; as when parents mourn for an only son, which is generally carried to the greatest height, and continued longest, as well as is most sincere and passionate; the case being exceeding cutting and afflictive, as this is hereby represented to be:

and the end thereof as a bitter day; a day of bitter calamity, and of bitter wailing and mourning, in the bitterness of their spirits; though the beginning of the day was bright and clear, a fine sunshine, yet the end of it dark and bitter, distressing and sorrowful, it being the end of the people of Israel, as in Amos 8:2.

(q) Annales Vet. Test. ad A. M. 3213.

Geneva Study Bible

And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

10. The lamentation to be produced by such an alarming spectacle.

And I will turn your pilgrimages into mourning] The sacred pilgrimages (Amos 5:21) were occasions of rejoicing: cf. Isaiah 30:29; Hosea 2:11 “And I will cause all her mirth to cease, her pilgrimages, her new moons, her sabbaths, and all her sacred seasons.” Comp. also Lamentations 5:15 “our dance is turned into mourning.”

into lamentation] into a dirge (Amos 5:1). Not unrestrained wailings, but a regularly constructed dirge (see on Amos 5:1), is what Amos pictures as taking the place of joyous songs.

bring up upon] Heb. cause to come up upon, the correlative of come up upon, said idiomatically of a garment (Leviticus 19:19; Ezekiel 44:17).

sackcloth] i.e. rough, coarse hair-cloth, which was bound about the loins in times of mourning (2 Samuel 3:31; Jeremiah 4:8; Jeremiah 48:37 &c.).

baldness] Artificial baldness, produced by shaving off the hair on the forehead (Deuteronomy 14:1), was another sign of mourning, often alluded to by the prophets, as resorted to, both by the Israelites, and among other nations: see Isaiah 3:24; Isaiah 15:2 (in Moab), Isaiah 22:12 (where Jehovah “calls” to it in Jerusalem); Micah 1:16; Jeremiah 47:5; Jeremiah 48:37 (also in Moab); Ezekiel 7:18 (“and on all your heads baldness”), Ezekiel 27:31 (of Tyrian mariners). It is prohibited in Deuteronomy 14:1, on account (as it seems) of its heathen associations.

and I will make it] viz. the lamentation of Israel in that day.

of an only son] Cf. Jeremiah 6:26; Zechariah 12:10 end.

and the end thereof as a bitter day] Most griefs at length wear themselves out: the end of this grief should be not an alleviation, but an aggravation of the distress; it should introduce, viz., a further stage in the threatened doom.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 10. - I will turn your feasts into mourning, etc. (comp. ver. 3: Amos 5:16, 17; Lamentations 5:15; Hosea 2:11; Tobit 2:6). Sackcloth. A token of mourning (1 Kings 20:31; Isaiah 15:3; Joel 1:8, 13). Baldness. On shaving the head as a sign of mourning, see note on Micah 1:16; and comp. Job 1:20; Isaiah 3:24; Jeremiah 16:6; Jeremiah 47:5; Ezekiel 7:18). I will make it; Ponam eam (Vulgate); sc. terram. But it is better to take it to refer to the whole state of things mentioned before. The mourning for an only son was proverbially severe, like that of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:12, etc.; comp. Jeremiah 6:26; Zechariah 12:10). And the end thereof as a bitter day. The calamity should not wear itself out; it should be bitter unto the end. Septuagint, Θήσομαι... τοὺς μέτ αὐτοῦ ὡς ἡμέραν ὀδύνης, "I will make... those with him as a day of anguish." Amos 8:10

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

"And it will come to pass on that day, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, I cause the sun to set at noon, and make it dark to the earth in clear day. Amos 8:10. And turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation: and bring mourning clothes upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and make it like mourning for an only one, and the end thereof like a bitter day." The effect of the divine judgment upon the Israelites is depicted here. Just as the wicked overturn the moral order of the universe, so will the Lord, with His judgment, break through the order of nature, cause the sun to go down at noon, and envelope the earth in darkness in clear day. The words of the ninth verse are not founded upon the idea of an eclipse of the sun, though Michaelis and Hitzig not only assume that they are, but actually attempt to determine the time of its occurrence. An eclipse of the sun is not the setting of the sun (כּוא). But to any man the sun sets at noon, when he is suddenly snatched away by death, in the very midst of his life. And this also applies to a nation when it is suddenly destroyed in the midst of its earthly prosperity. But it has a still wider application. When the Lord shall come to judgment, at a time when the world, in its self-security, looketh not for Him (cf. Matthew 24:37.), this earth's sun will set at noon, and the earth be covered with darkness in bright daylight. And every judgment that falls upon an ungodly people or kingdom, as the ages roll away, is a harbinger of the approach of the final judgment. Amos 8:10. When the judgment shall burst upon Israel, then will all the joyous feasts give way to mourning and lamentation (compare Amos 8:3 and Amos 5:16; Hosea 2:13). On the shaving of a bald place as a sign of mourning, see Isaiah 3:24. This mourning will be very deep, like the mourning for the death of an only son (cf. Jeremiah 6:26 and Zechariah 12:10). The suffix in שׂמתּיה (I make it) does not refer to אבל (mourning), but to all that has been previously mentioned as done upon that day, to their weeping and lamenting (Hitzig). אחריתהּ, the end thereof, namely, of this mourning and lamentation, will be a bitter day (כ is caph verit.; see at Joel 1:15). This implies that the judgment will not be a passing one, but will continue.