Amos 6:12 Do horses run on the rocky crags? Does one plow the sea with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness--

◄ Amos 6:12 ►

Parallel Verses

Cross References

James 3:18
And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

1 Kings 21:7
And Jezebel his wife said to him, Do you now govern the kingdom of Israel? arise, and eat bread, and let your heart be merry: I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.

Isaiah 59:13
In transgressing and lying against the LORD, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.

Isaiah 59:14
And judgment is turned away backward, and justice stands afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.

Hosea 10:4
They have spoken words, swearing falsely in making a covenant: thus judgment springs up as hemlock in the furrows of the field.

Amos 2:3
And I will cut off the judge from the middle thereof, and will slay all the princes thereof with him, said the LORD.

Amos 3:10
For they know not to do right, said the LORD, who store up violence and robbery in their palaces.

Amos 5:7
You who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

Amos 5:11
For as much therefore as your treading is on the poor, and you take from him burdens of wheat: you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink wine of them.

Jump to Previous

Bitter Bitterness Crags Fruit Gall Hemlock Horses Judgment Justice Oxen Plant Plough Ploughed Plow Poison Possible Righteousness Rock Rocks Rocky Run Running Sea Thereon Turned Wormwood

Jump to Next

Bitter Bitterness Crags Fruit Gall Hemlock Horses Judgment Justice Oxen Plant Plough Ploughed Plow Poison Possible Righteousness Rock Rocks Rocky Run Running Sea Thereon Turned Wormwood

Commentaries

Matthew Henry's Commentary

6:8-14 How dreadful, how miserable, is the case of those whose eternal ruin the Lord himself has sworn; for he can execute his purpose, and none can alter it! Those hearts are wretchedly hardened that will not be brought to mention God's name, and to worship him, when the hand of God is gone out against them, when sickness and death are in their families. Those that will not be tilled as fields, shall be abandoned as rocks. When our services of God are soured with sin, his providences will justly be made bitter to us. Men should take warning not to harden their hearts, for those who walk in pride, God will destroy.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown

12. In turning "judgment (justice) into gall (poison), and … righteousness into hemlock" (or wormwood, bitter and noxious), ye act as perversely as if one were to make "horses run upon the rock" or to "plough with oxen there" [Maurer]. As horses and oxen are useless on a rock, so ye are incapable of fulfilling justice [Grotius]. Ye impede the course of God's benefits, because ye are as it were a hard rock on which His favor cannot run. "Those that will not be tilled as fields, shall be abandoned as rocks" [Calvin].