They had chosen to worship gods other than the Lord their God and had fascination with idolatry. This caused them to be different from their ancestors whom the Lord says His relationship with the ancestors was "like finding grapes in the wilderness. I viewed your ancestors like an early fig on a fig tree in its first season" (Hosea 9:10). These figures of speech were therefore meant to draw the Israelites back to God and create reconciliation. Amos also uses quite a number of figures of speech in his book. Amos successfully uses irony, humor, personification, tension, hyperbole in order to fully portray the message that he intended to put across to the Israelites. In Amos 3:3-8 he uses several rhetorical questions to question the motives of the Israelites against...

He uses these questions to prod the mentality of the Israelites and their conscious to rethink their stand and relation to God. He also uses these questions to indicate the attitude that God has towards the rebellious Israelites, Hosea 3:4 says "Does a lion roar in the thicket when it has no prey? Does it growl in its den when it has caught nothing?" This indicates the anger that God had against the Israelites for their rebellion against Him.
Amos also employs the use of Irony in his writing, in Amos 4:4-5 he employs heavy use of irony towards the children of Israel. The irony he uses towards them is to chide them against the excessive hypocrisy and sin among the Israelites, against the continuation of the ritualistic practices like