Amos 1:2, commentary and pictures

The verse opens the series of judgments Amos pronounces against the surrounding nations and against Judah and Israel. Those judgments reach beyond Judah to Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab, and their condemnation of other nations stands as a warning to Judah and Israel. Its shepherding imagery and vivid figures and images reflect Amos's work as a herdsman. Amos used the earthquake as a basis for spiritual instruction, turning a great calamity into a means of stirring the conscience. Zion is God's dwelling place in heaven, so the roar from Zion and the voice from Jerusalem is a voice from on high in heaven.

The roar is a roar of judgment that brings mourning to the dwellings and pastures of the shepherds and withering to the top and heights of Carmel, bringing mourning and desolation. In its original setting the prophecy addressed backslidden Israel and the wicked nations around it, teaching that God requires righteousness rather than mere profession and ceremony, and the book holds lessons for later times.

The verse foretells the final day of wrath and recompense, the great and dreadful day of God, identified with Christ's second coming and return and the events surrounding it. At that time the divine voice shakes heaven and earth and accompanies the shaking of the earth, with scorching heat that makes vegetation fade and fire that consumes the earth and its inhabitants, and the threatened mourning and withering is a real judgment and not merely a figure of speech. That last-day judgment destroys the wicked and God's enemies while delivering God's people, including the deliverance of those who sleep in Jesus, when the earth casts out God's people and the dead in Christ rise and Zion's children are manifested.