Amos 8:3

Songs. Perhaps the religious songs connected with the idolatrous “temple” of Bethel. Or they may have been the songs of the revelers mentioned in eh. 6:5. In either case, these songs were to be changed into a lamentation for the dead (see eh. 8:10).

Silence. An indication of the apathy or speechlessness that accompanies severe, inescapable suffering, suffering too deep to be expressed in words.

The mournful conditions of the land pictured here in primary reference to the land of Israel after the Assyrian captivity was an exhibit on a small scale of the effects of the fourth of the seven last plagues (see GC 628).