Amos 3:10

For they know not to do right, saith the Lord,.... What is just and fight between man and man, no, not in one single instance; they did not regard it, or advert to it; they were under no concern

For they know not to do right, saith the LORD, who store up violence and robbery in their palaces.

For they know not; those who oppress others do it as unlearned lawyers and judges do, they are shamefully ignorant of the law of God. To do right; what is equal between man and man they will not consider, nor do they care whether it be done or not. Store up; as men lay up wealth in their treasures, they fill their houses. Violence; perverting judgment, first condemning the innocent, next seizing all as forfeited by law; so they did, no doubt, in those times of rebellion and usurpations; sequestrations and decimations, &c. were then too. Robbery; the true name of all their proceedings, however palliated. In their palaces: this intimates to us that the greatest among them were chief actors herein; see ; but as they stored up violence, they also treasured up misery and desolation too, as the Hebrew elegantly imports.

Amos 3:10 For they know not to do right, saith the LORD, who store up violence and robbery in their palaces.Ver. 10. For they know not to do right] They have done wrong so long together, against knowledge and conscience, that now they are given up to a reprobate sense, to an injudicious mind, ειςνουναδοκιμον, Romans 1:28, having sinned away the light they had, and lost that little knowledge they had learned out of the law of Moses concerning good works: this they had wickedly blotted out of their own minds; as also those common notions of good and evil, that glimmering of Divine light left in the natural man; this in a defiled conscience is wholly extinct. "Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge?" No, not they, as appears by what follows: "they eat up my people as they eat bread," Psalms 14:4. These cannibals, like pickerels in a pond, or sharks in the sea, devour the poorer as they the lesser fishes. And though they cannot but know this to be evil, condemned by the light of nature, and much more of Scripture, yet they do it, and will do it; their eyes being put out with the dust of covetousness, and their hearts so exercised therewith, 2 Peter 2:14, that they can say, as that wretched fellow did, We are masters of our consciences, we can do what we will for all them; and as Balaam resolved at length, to curse, whatever came of it. Who store up violence and robbery in their palaces] Till the screech owls of woe cry aloud from the walls, and the beams out of the timber make answer, Habakkuk 2:11-12; till their cursed hoards of evil gotten goods witness against them, and eat their flesh as it were fire, James 5:3; till very Philistines and Egyptians cry shame on them, and say, as the Indians did of the cruel Spaniards, that they carried themselves neither like Christians nor men, but like devils; that it had been better the Indies had been given to the devils of hell than to them; and that if the Spaniards went to heaven when they were dead, they would never come there. Let no man think to thrive, violentia et vastitate, by rapine and robbery; to treasure up sin is to treasure up wrath, Romans 2:5, which, as a fire, will devour their palaces, and it shall not be quenched, Jeremiah 17:27.

(10) Know not to do right.—Not merely have lost the perception of what is and what is not right, but are indifferent to such distinctions. They know not and care not; the awful state of utter moral impotence, wherein not only the intellectual consciousness, but the impulses to action, are languid or even paralysed—a dead conscience! Nothing is more condemnatory than this brief sentence. The light within them is darkness.

Verse 10. For they know not to do right] So we may naturally say that they who are doing wrong, and to their own prejudice and ruin, must certainly be ignorant of what is right, and what is their own interest. But we say again, "There are none so blind as those who will not see." Their eyes, saith the Lord, they have closed.

10. know not to do right] Wrong-doing has become their second nature. Right (a rare word) is properly what is straight in front, fig. clear, true, straightforward (Isaiah 26:10; Isaiah 59:14; 2 Samuel 15:3). store up violence and robbery in their palaces] The nobles and great men, in Samaria as in Jerusalem (Isaiah 1:23; Isaiah 3:14, &c.) the irresponsible oppressors of the poor, are referred to: they accumulate treasures, but as these are amassed by violence and robbery, they in reality treasure up violence and robbery in their palaces (cf. Isaiah 3:14, end). robbery] A strong word, implying violent treatment, and often more adequately represented by wasting or devastation (cf. Amos 5:9; cp. on Joel, p. 81). Coupled with violence, as here, Jeremiah 6:7; Jeremiah 20:8, Ezekiel 45:9, Habakkuk 1:3 (A. V. spoil or spoiling).

For - (and) they know not to do right They “have not known,” they have least all sense and knowledge, how “to do right” (literally, what is “straight-forward”) because they had so long ceased to do it.

9, 10. Summons of the surrounding nations. Amos 3:9 connects with Amos 3:2. The prophet, having presented his credentials, continues his message of denunciation and judgment.