separate nations. For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, the
Lord would not turn away their punishment, because they had despised the
law of the Lord, and had not walked in His commandments. Therefore He
would send a fire on Judah, and it should devour the palaces of
Jerusalem. But Amos is most bitter against Israel, against the court of
King Jeroboam at Samaria, and against the rich men of Israel, the bulls
of Bashan, as he calls them. For three transgressions, and for four, the
Lord would not turn away their punishment. And why?

Now see what I meant when I said that Amos believed not only in the
kingdom of God, but in the righteousness of God. It was not merely that
they were worshipping idols--golden calves at Dan, and Bethel, and
Samaria, at the same time that they worshipped the true God. That was
bad, but there was more behind. These men were bad, proud, luxurious,
cruel; they were selling their countrymen for slaves--selling, he says so
twice, as if it was some notorious and special case, an honest man for
silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes. They were lying down on
clothes taken on pledge by every altar. They were breaking the seventh
commandment in an abominable way. They were falsifying weights and
measures, and selling the refuse of the wheat. They stored up the fruits
of violence and robbery in their palaces. They hated him who rebuked
them, and abhorred him that spoke uprightly. They trod upon the poor and
crushed the needy, and then said to their stewards, "Bring wine, and let
us drink." Therefore though they had built houses of hewn stone, they
should not live in them. They had planted pleasant vineyards, but should
not drink of them. And all the while these superstitious and wicked rich
men were talking of the day of the Lord, and hoping that the day of the
Lord would appear.

You, if you have read your Bibles carefully and reverently, must surely