AN INDICTMENT AGAINST THE UNSCRUPULOUS.
Amos 8:4-7.
You trample upon the needy and make the poor of the land fail (Amos 8:4; cf. Amos 5:11).
Your religious observances are hypocritical, and you cheat your customers with false weights and measures (Amos 8:5).
You enslave the poor and needy and sell the sweepings of the floor (Amos 8:6; cf. Amos 2:6).
The LORD sees and cannot forget these sins:
"The LORD has sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works" (Amos 8:7).
Israel had turned their backs on God, and failed to keep their covenant obligations (particularly towards the poor). God chose not to forget this failure.
In Psalm 47:4, 'the excellency of Jacob' seems to refer to the land. In Amos 6:8, the Lord GOD had 'sworn by Himself' - ('because He can swear by none greater' cf. Hebrews 6:13) - that 'I ABHOR the excellency of Jacob, and hate his palaces: therefore I will deliver up the city with all that is therein.'
From Amos 8:8, 'Shall not the land tremble for this,' the rest of Amos 8 reads like a curse upon the land culminating in the fall, 'never to rise again' of the people in it (Amos 8:14).
These prophecies would be fulfilled with the invasion of the northern kingdom of Israel by Assyria, and the scattering from there of the ten tribes.
