Thus says Yahweh: "For three transgressions of Damascus, yes, for four, I will not turn away its punishment; Because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron;
I will not turn away the punishment thereof - Literally, “I will not turn it back.” What was this, which God would not turn back? Amos does not express it. Silence is often more emphatic than words. Not naming it, he leaves it the rather to be conceived of by the mind, as something which had been of old coming upon them to overwhelm them, which God had long stayed back, but which, since He would now stay it no longer, would burst in, with the more terrific and overwhelming might, because it had been restrained before. Sin and punishment are by a great law of God bound together. God’s mercy holds back the punishment long, allowing only some slight tokens of His displeasure to show themselves, that the sinful soul or people may not be unwarned. When He no longer withholds it, the law of His moral government holds its course. “Seldom,” said pagan experience , “hath punishment with lingering foot parted with the miscreant, advancing before.”