What is the meaning of Amos 6:12? Do horses gallop on the cliffs? “Do horses gallop on the cliffs?” (Amos 6:12) • Everyone knows a horse is built for open ground; forcing it to sprint over jagged crags would be cruel and reckless. • Amos uses that absurd picture to spotlight how Israel’s leaders were behaving: just as foolish, just as destructive. • God had called His people to stand firm on His law (Deuteronomy 17:18-19), yet they insisted on living the opposite way, putting nation and neighbor at risk. • Similar prophetic images: Isaiah 5:4-7 shows a well-tended vineyard yielding only wild grapes; Micah 6:3-8 asks what more God could have done for His people. The point: choosing sin over obedience is as senseless as racing a stallion across knife-edged rocks—someone is going to get hurt. Does one plow the sea with oxen? “Does one plow the sea with oxen?” (Amos 6:12) • Another comic impossibility: yokes, furrows, and seawater simply don’t mix. • The question drives home how unproductive Israel’s pursuits had become. Instead of sowing seeds of covenant faithfulness (Hosea 10:12), they were wasting energy on self-indulgence (Amos 6:4-6) that could never bring a harvest of blessing. • Psalm 127:1 reminds us that all labor done apart from the Lord is vanity; Israel was learning that the hard way. God never designed His people to churn waves with ox-drawn plows; He designed them to cultivate justice on solid ground. But you have turned justice into poison “But you have turned justice into poison” (Amos 6:12) • Justice, meant to heal and protect, had become toxic under corrupt courts and crooked markets (Amos 5:10-12). • Isaiah 59:14-15 describes a similar collapse: “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far off.” • When leaders twist God-given standards for personal gain, the result is venom—social life deteriorates, the weak suffer, and God’s name is profaned. What should have been a stream of life (Psalm 72:1-4) now poisoned the nation’s soul. and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood— “and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood—” (Amos 6:12) • Wormwood is a bitter herb symbolizing sorrow and judgment (Deuteronomy 29:18; Revelation 8:11). • Righteousness is supposed to bear sweet fruit—peace, stability, flourishing (Proverbs 14:34; James 3:18). • By replacing righteousness with self-interest, Israel ensured that what should have sweetened life instead left a foul taste. God’s warning is clear: if righteousness is abandoned, bitterness will follow, personally and nationally. summary Amos stacks two absurd images—horses sprinting over cliffs, oxen plowing the sea—to expose how senseless Israel’s sin had become. Called to cultivate justice and righteousness, they had instead poisoned their society, turning God’s good gifts into bitter wormwood. The passage teaches that abandoning God’s standards is never a neutral choice; it is as reckless and unproductive as the prophet’s pictures, and it inevitably yields pain instead of blessing. |
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