"Woe to you who desire the day of Yahweh! Why do you long for the day of Yahweh? It is darkness, And not light.
Lap.: “Let it come, what these prophets threaten until they are hoarse, let it come, let it come. It is ever held out to us, and never comes. We do not believe that it will come at all, or if it do come, it will not be so dreadful after all; it will go as it came.” It may be, however, that they who scoffed at Amos, cloked their unbelief under the form of desiring the good days, which God had promised by Joel afterward. Jerome: “There is not,” they would say, “so much of evil in the captivity, as there is of good in what the Lord has promised afterward.” Amos meets the hypocrisy or the scoff, by the appeal to their consciences, “to what end is it to you?” They had nothing in common with it or with God. Whatever it had of good, was not for such as them. “The Day of the Lord is darkness, and not light.” Like the pillar of the cloud between Israel and the Egyptians, which betokened God’s presence, every day in which He shows forth His presence, is a day of light and darkness to those of different characters.