The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up.
The virgin of Israel is fallen, forsaken upon her land with none to raise her up again and no restoration to follow. In its setting as the message of Amos to the northern kingdom, this announces punishment upon a people whose prosperity rested on violence and robbery, who oppressed the poor and rejected justice and responsibility. That fall came from abandoning God and becoming spiritually unfaithful through alliance with Babylon and rejection of His precepts.
The chapter containing the verse is God's warning to unprepared Israel before chastisement fell in its severest form upon the nation, recounting His dealings and Israel's crooked ways to force home conviction of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Justice is joined with love, mercy, and long-suffering by giving individuals opportunity to repent before the national stroke — to seek God and live, to hate evil and love good and establish judgment in the gate — with the promise that God may be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. What this shows of God's relation to His church and to the world and His manner of dealing with them holds in principle in every age. It applies to the Advent people who had come out of the churches but rejected further light, whose refusal to advance in understanding marks them as the fallen people.
The virgin of Israel is fallen, forsaken upon her land with none to raise her up again and no restoration to follow. In its setting as the message of Amos to the northern kingdom, this announces punishment upon a people whose prosperity rested on violence and robbery, who oppressed the poor and rejected justice and responsibility. That fall came from abandoning God and becoming spiritually unfaithful through alliance with Babylon and rejection of His precepts.
The chapter containing the verse is God's warning to unprepared Israel before chastisement fell in its severest form upon the nation, recounting His dealings and Israel's crooked ways to force home conviction of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Justice is joined with love, mercy, and long-suffering by giving individuals opportunity to repent before the national stroke — to seek God and live, to hate evil and love good and establish judgment in the gate — with the promise that God may be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. What this shows of God's relation to His church and to the world and His manner of dealing with them holds in principle in every age. It applies to the Advent people who had come out of the churches but rejected further light, whose refusal to advance in understanding marks them as the fallen people.