Amos 3:1—9:10 covers Jehovah’s contending, His verbal fighting, with the house of Jacob. As we saw in the previous message, in chapters three through five we have Jehovah’s three reproofs to Israel. In 6:1—9:10 we have the plagues of the five signs seen by Amos, and in 9:11-15, a word concerning the restoration of the house of Israel with the rebuilding of the fallen tabernacle of David for the kingdom of Christ.
Amos 6:1-14 is an introduction to the plagues of the five signs.
In this introduction Israel, especially the high class, is described as living at ease a life of luxuries and pleasures but turning justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood, rejoicing in things of vanity, and boasting of taking horns for themselves by their own strength (vv. 1-6, 12-13). They boasted that they enjoyed everything and had everything by their own strength and through their own capability.
Because of this, Jehovah’s punishment would be meted out through the enemy‘s oppression, captivity, killing, and destruction (vv. 7-11, 14).
The plague of the first sign was that of the locusts eating the herbage of the land (7:1-3). The locusts symbolize the enemy’s army.
When the prophet saw that the eating of the herbage of the land was complete, he prayed, “O Lord Jehovah, forgive, I beseech You! How will Jacob stand, for he is small?” (v. 2). Some of the punishments ordained of God have not taken place because some of God’s loving ones, the prophets, prayed for Israel, warning God that Israel might not endure.
When Jehovah heard Amos’s prayer, He repented and stopped the plague (v. 3).