NOTES for Amo 5:1-6:14
The prophet Amos denounces the people of Israel for their sins, whose essence is the absence of love, and warns of the coming catastrophe. But the goal of prophecy is not to frighten people so much that their hands fall helplessly, but to move them to change their lives. Prophecies are not so much predictions as pedagogy. Therefore the main thing here is not the coming horrors, but the call to an overturning of human ideas, which is the meaning of the word "repentance" (Amos 5:18-24), and to the restoration of relationship with God (Amos 5:4; 5:14-15).
And Amos continues. Prophets are always very inconvenient: as soon as you have achieved something for yourself and relaxed, there is the prophet, and nothing is right for him. Who gave him such a right? A heart burning with love for God and suffering from our separation from Him. Therefore God calls him to bring us the words of the Lord, and in a certain sense He Himself speaks these words to us through His prophet (see, for example, v. 8 and 14).