Amos 3:10 For they know not to do right, said the LORD, who store up violence and robbery in their palaces. The conception of Ames is remarkable for grandeur. He sees in prophetic vision the approaching siege of Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, and poetically summons the Egyptians and Philistines to gather themselves together upon the surrounding hills, and to witness the tumults within the city, the assaults from without, and the impending ruin. But the moral significance of history, in the prophet's mind, transcends the pictorial interest; and in this verse he gives utterance to a profound and awful truth with regard to human nature. Wrongdoing corrupts the conscience and interferes with a correct perception of right and goodness. I. IT IS A LAW OF HUMAN NATURE THAT CONDUCT REACTS UPON CHARACTER. No doubt actions are the expression of the moral nature, the moral habits, of men. But, on the other hand, those who persevere in a certain course of conduct are by that very fact moulded and fashioned and even transformed. Thus it is that those who submit to circumstances and who yield to influences are affected even in their inmost moral nature by the experience they pass through. II. PASSION AND INTEREST WARP THE MORAL JUDGMENT. Nations which, like Israel, are guilty of luxury and of idolatry, which pillage their neighbours' goods, and wage unlawful war, involving widespread calamity, thereby blunt their sensibilities to right and wrong. They habituate themselves to regard all questions in the light of their own ambition, or their own aggrandizement and enrichment. As a consequence they are tempted to call evil good, and good evil. Especially are they liable to term a false judgment upon their own conduct. III. THUS WRONG DOING HAS A TENDENCY TO PERPETUATE ITSELF. They who by reason of abandoning themselves to evil courses have silenced the voice of conscience, lose the moral power to do better. Because they "know not to do right," they continue to do wrong. They reap as they have sown. They advance upon the road of sin by the momentum derived from past iniquity. - T. Parallel Verses KJV: For they know not to do right, saith the LORD, who store up violence and robbery in their palaces.WEB: "Indeed they don't know to do right," says Yahweh, "Who hoard plunder and loot in their palaces." |
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