4:1 Amos opened this second message as he did the first (ch. 3), with the cry, "Hear this word."He addressed the wealthy women of Samaria, calling them "cows of Bashan."Bashan was a very luxuriant region of Transjordan east and northeast of the Sea of Chinnereth (Galilee) where cattle had plenty to eat and grew fat (cf. Ps. 22:12; Jer. 50:19; Ezek. 39:18; Mic. 7:14). These women, along with their men, were oppressing (threatening) the poor and crushing (harassing) the needy. They were even ordering their husbands to wait on them and bring them drinks. The Hebrew word adonim, translated "husbands,"means "lords"or "masters."By using it Amos was stressing the role reversal that existed. The picture is of spoiled, lazy women ordering their husbands to provide them with luxuries that the men had to oppress the poor to obtain.
4:2-3 Sovereign Yahweh had not just said what He would do, but He had sworn that He would do it. When God swore He provided an external guarantee, in addition to His word, that He would indeed do something (cf. Isa. 62:8; Jer. 44:26; Heb. 6:16). He made this solemn declaration in harmony with His holiness. As surely as God is separate from humankind and cannot tolerate sin, these women would surely suffer His judgment one day.
An enemy would cart them off as butchers carry beef with large meat hooks and as fishermen carry fish with hooks. This description may imply that the enemy would tie them in lines with ropes and lead them away since this is how fishermen strung their fish on lines. Carved reliefs that archaeologists have found show Assyrians leading people by a rope attached to a ring in the jaw or lip of their captives. Alternatively it may mean that their dead bodies would be disposed of as so much meat.42The enemy would carry the bodies of these women (living or dead) off through breaches in Samaria's walls. The women would be carried off without any complications; each one would go straight ahead to captivity or to burial through any one of the many passageways made through the broken walls.
The enemy would take them to Harmon, perhaps an alternative spelling of Mt. Hermon.43Mt. Hermon was to the north of Bashan, so these cows of Bashan would end up near Bashan. This is, in fact, the direction the Assyrians took the Israelite captives as they deported them to Assyria.
"Those who oppress the poor and crush the needy in order to support an extravagant lifestyle can expect God's harsh judgment to fall upon them."44
