Amos 6:2, commentary and pictures

Israel is told to pass over to Calneh and look, to go from there to great Hamath, then to go down to Gath of the Philistines, and to ask whether those kingdoms are better than these kingdoms or whether their territory is larger than Israel's own. The call summons Judah and Israel to measure themselves against those neighboring powers. In holding up Calneh, Hamath, and Gath for comparison, it sets Judah and Israel in a prominent place among the nations around them. By bidding Israel consider what befell those cities, it warns that prosperity and strength give no security against punishment.

The challenge stands within a woe pronounced on those at ease in Zion, a prophecy applying more or less to the present time. It is aimed at those who push the evil day far away, who chant to the viol and devise instruments of music, who drink wine from bowls and anoint themselves while feeling no grief over affliction. It is aimed also at those who rejoice in a thing of nothing and boast that horns have been taken by their own strength. Their boasted spires, numbered by thousands, stand as horns and emblems of pride, marked out as special objects of divine vengeance in the day of wrath.

The appeal is one instance of the prophets setting themselves against the idle, selfish, insolent, luxurious, and sensual. Its warning against complacent luxury belongs together with their defense of the poor and oppressed. Israel's ruin came after excessive luxury and drunkenness, so the woe was the outcome of pride and debauchery and not an arbitrary act of God.