A Lament and Call to Repentance
Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD!
Q: to what end is it for you?
the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light.
As if a man did flee from a lion,
and a bear met him;
or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall,
and a serpent bit him.
Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light?
even very dark, and no brightness in it?
---I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer Me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.
Take thou away from Me the noise of thy songs;
for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.
But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Have ye offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?
But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images,
the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.
Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith the LORD, whose name is The God of hosts.
Woe unto those that desire the day of the Lord's judgments, that wish
for times of war and confusion; as some who long for changes, hoping to
rise upon the ruins of their country! but this should be so great a
desolation, that nobody could gain by it. The day of the Lord will be a
dark, dismal, gloomy day to all impenitent sinners. When God makes a day
dark, all the world cannot make it light.
As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him - They shall 
go from one evil to another. The suicide is, of all fools, the greatest, for he goes before God with
his own indictments, nay, with his own sentence in his hand. He needs no
trial; he has condemned himself.
The fat of fed beasts, etc. - The fat and the blood are particularly
mentioned, because these were in all sacrifices set apart to God. The
fat was always burnt upon the altar, and the blood was partly sprinkled,
differently on different occasions, and partly poured out at the bottom
of the altar.
I hate, I despise your feast days - I abominate those sacrificial
festivals where there is no piety, and I despise them because they
pretend to be what they are not. When the moral conduct of the offerer is wrong, the Lord will not accept his offering.
The noise of thy songs - the melody of thy viols - They had both vocal
and instrumental music in those sacrificial festivals; and God hated the
noise of the one and shut his ears against the melody of the other.
But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream - This is what God asks for, — righteousness, not sweet music.
But ye have borne - The preceding verse spoke of their fathers; the
present verse speaks of the Israelites then existing, who were so
grievously addicted to idolatry, that they not only worshipped at stated
public places the idols set up by public authority, but they carried
their gods about with them everywhere.
The tabernacle of your Moloch -
Probably a small portable shrine, with an image of their god in it,
such as Moloch; and the star or representative of their god Chiun.
They were led captive by Satan into idolatry, therefore God caused them
to go into captivity among idolaters.
