Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Amos 8:1
Thus hath the Lord GOD showed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit.
Amo 8:1 to Amo 9:11. The visions resumed.
Amo 8:1-14. The fourth vision (Amo 8:1-3). The basket of summer fruit.
1. Thus did the Lord Jehovah cause me to see ] The same formula as before, Amo 7:1; Amo 7:4.
a basket of summer fruit ] Partly the thought of Israel’s ripeness for judgement, but chiefly the Heb. word tz, “end,” brings up before the prophet’s mental eye in his vision, agreeably with the principles explained on Amo 7:1, the basket of aitz, “summer fruit [189] .” Similarly, in Jeremiah’s inaugural vision (Jer 1:11-12), the thought of Jehovah’s watching ( shd) over His word to perform it, produces by association of sounds the image of the almond-tree ( shd), the symbolism of which is afterwards explained, as that of the “summer fruit” is explained here.
[189] The two words, though similar in sound, are not however connected etymologically: in the corresponding Arabic words, the last letter is not the same.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Thus hath the Lord God showed me – The sentence of Amaziah pronounced, Amos resumes just where he left off, before Amaziah broke in upon him. His vehement interruption is like a stone cast into the deep waters. They close over it, and it leaves no trace. Amos had authenticated the third vision; Thus hath the Lord God shewed me. He resumes in the self-same calm words. The last vision declared that the end was certain; this, that it was at hand.
A basket of summer fruit – The fruit was the latest harvest in Palestine. When it was gathered, the circle of husbandry was come to its close. The sight gives an idea of completeness. The symbol, and the word expressing it, coincide. The fruit-gathering qayits, like our crop, was called from cutting. So was the word, end, cutting off, in ( qets). At harvest-time there is no more to be done for that crop. Good or bad, it has reached its end, and is cut down. So the harvest of Israel was come. The whole course of Gods providences, mercies, chastenings, visitations, instructions, warnings, in spirations, were completed. What could have been done more to My vineyard, God asks Isa 5:4, that I have not done in it? To the works of sin, as of holiness, there is a beginning, progress, completion; a sowing of wild oats, as people speak, and a ripening in wickedness; a maturity of peoples plans, as they deem; a maturity for destruction, in the sight of God. There was no more to be done. heavenly influences can but injure the ripened sinner, as dew, rain, sun, but injure the ripened fruit Israel was ripe, but for destruction.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Amo 8:1-2
A basket of summer fruit.
A basket of summer fruit
As God set before Amos a basket of summer fruit, as a sign or parable concerning Israel; so, at harvest-tide God sets before us a basket of summer fruit, to teach us lessons to our souls health.
1. In preparing the earth for a harvest crop, and our lives for a crop of holiness, we must expect hard labour, and often sorrow. Whether we cultivate the fields or our souls, we must do it in the sweat of our face, with hard labour. Both the ground and our nature need cultivation, and that implies labour, and frequently sorrow. After the great fire of London, a flower called the Golden Rocket appeared, and beautified places wasted by the flame, though it had never been seen in that district before. The seeds were lying in the ground, but it needed the fire to make them live and grow. Some times we need the fire of affliction to bring out the good in us. It is Gods love, not anger, which sends the fire. Our life needs clearing, purging, that it may bring forth new and better fruit. Some of us can only be saved as by fire.
2. We must plough deep. The man who wants a good crop will not just scratch the surface of the earth, he will drive in the ploughshare deep. So we must drive down the ploughshare of self-examination, we must break up the hard ground of pride and self-righteousness, where no good thing can grow.
3. There must be sowing of seed. What we sow we reap. Our good deeds and our evil deeds bear their fruit here. Your words, your acts, your thoughts are seed; you may cast them forth carelessly, but like seed thoughtlessly dropped in the ground, they will grow, and if it be bad seed, you will be terrified at your harvest. Remember this,–You may not have sown bad seed, but if you have sown nothing for God, you will reap nothing from God. If you have no loving fellowship with God here, you will have none hereafter. Neglect of duty is a great sin. If we neglect our souls they degenerate, our spiritual natures grow weak. Let us learn to thank God, not only for bread which strengthens mans heart, but also for the better bread of holy teaching which the harvest provides, bread to strengthen mans soul. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)
A basket of summer fruit
Is there any similarity between the Gospel and summer fruit? They both, in the first place, mean health. God every summer doctors the ailments of the world by the orchards and groves. The Gospel means health. It makes a man mighty for work, and strong for contest. It cures spiritual ailments. The analogy is also found in the fact that summer fruit is pleasant to the eye and the taste. So the Gospel, when a man rightly sees it and tastes it, is very pleasant. If summer fruit is not taken immediately, it soon fails. First, the speck; then a multiplication of defects; after a while a softening that is offensive; and then it is all flung out. So all religious advantages perish right speedily if you do not take them. I suppose you have noticed how swiftly the days and the years go by. Every day seems to me like a basket of summer fruit, the morning sky is vermilion, the noonday is opaline, the evening cloud is fire-dyed. How soon the days are gone! Notice the perishable nature of all religious surroundings. Christian associations readily fade away from the soul. Every opportunity of salvation seems to be restless until it gets away from us. Going away the sermons; going away the songs; going away the strivings of Gods eternal Spirit. The practical question is now; will you miss your chance? The day of grace will soon be past. (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)
Religion in the garden
In our great cities one of the most welcome sights of summer is to be found in the baskets of fruit exposed for sale in the shop windows. Reflect on some of the things God would teach us from a basket of summer fruit.
I. Fruit is the end and reward of labour. Fruit-bearing is the end contemplated in the seed-sowing and cultivation of the husbandman. Jesus said, My Father is the husbandman. We are thus led to think of God working in us and for us by His grace with a constancy and care like that of the owner of a vineyard. And the end contemplated by that gracious work of God is that we should bear fruit, and thus minister to His delight and glory. We are not left ignorant as to the nature of the fruit that God looks for in man. St. Paul says, The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance. These are the results that God works for and waits to see exhibited by those who call themselves by the name of Christ. When our lives bring forth these fruits of the Spirit, we become, in very truth, gardens of the Lord.
II. When the fruit fails there is disappointment and loss. Many things are necessary to bring the work of the garden to a successful issue–good seed and stock, congenial soil and situation, favourable climate and intelligent cultivation. Yet when all has been attended to that wisdom and experience command, there are occasional failures that disappoint and perplex the gardener. Young trees that put forth healthy shoots and vigorous branches, and gave great promise at first, when they have grown are found to be barren and unfruitful. Some trees never blossom at all, some have blossom that never comes to fruit. Whole crops of fruit are sometimes destroyed by the pests of the garden, and are at times stolen by thieves. Over these losses the husbandman sorrows because he has laboured in vain. See the parable of the barren fig-tree. May not some of our lives he equally disappointing to God? He has surrounded us with privileges, opportunities, and helps to the attainment of a holy life, yet the spiritual results may be nowhere visible. There are the leaves of a cold morality, but no blossoms of grace; the flowers of a shallow profession, but none of the fruits of a consistent life. How long shall we continue thus to abuse the blessings of God, and try His patience as cumberers on His holy ground?
III. The glory of the garden is carried away in the fruit basket. The garden has a spent and dreary look after its beauty and treasure have been gathered. But this dreariness is only temporary. The husbandman knows well how to repair the waste. Some of us have a like experience. We can think of a time when duty demanded a great sacrifice, or when duty had to be done in the face of great danger and temptation. But then we were spent in the great effort, almost broken by the severe strain. Then God came and called us to come apart and rest a while. In delightful fellowship with Him strength and inspiration gradually returned, and we were even more ready than before when the next call of duty came. (James Menzies.)
Harvest or summer fruits
God teaches the world in two ways; by symbols and sayings. By this basket of summer fruit He taught Amos that Israel was ripe for judgment. These summer fruits remind us of–
I. The beneficence of God. In the summer fruit He gives us the useful and the beautiful. In these fruits of the earth pro visions are made for our physical wants. They are beautiful as well as useful. How beautiful are these fruits of the earth! Their exquisite forms, in bound less variety; their lovely tints, their bloom and gorgeous hues, how beautiful! Deep within us all is the love for the beautiful. The God who planted within us the sentiment ministers abundantly to it in these baskets of fruit. Gods beneficence in these fruits of the earth is shown to be–
(1) Abundant,
(2) Unremitting,
(3) Undeserved.
II. The maturing forces of divine government. This basket of summer fruit is the outcome of a very long and complicate process. Snow and ice, showers and dews, clouds and sunshine, storm and calm, bleak winds of winter, genial airs of spring, and the hot breath of summer, the constant care and toil of the labourers in the fields and orchards, have all co-operated in bringing out this result. Antecedently, this result would not have been expected. Suppose a man in the depths of winter being told for the first time that those leafless fruit trees, shivering in the winds, and hung with icicles, should, in a few months, be loaded with clusters of apples, and plums, and pears, and grapes, would he have believed it? The thing to him would have been incredible. Things will ever be occurring in Gods universe upon which antecedently no finite being could calculate. Therefore do not argue
(1) Against the conversion of the world, or
(2) Against the resurrection of the dead.
III. THE DESTINED DECADENCE OF ALL ORGANIC LIFE. In that basket of summer fruit there is death. In a few short days it will be reduced to utter corruption. So it is with all material life: no sooner is perfection reached than decay begins. (Homilist.)
A basket of summer fruit
Fruits always seem fairest, freshest, and finest when they are seasonable–that is, when not forced into being before their proper time of ripening or preserved artificially beyond the period of their natural growth in the gardens. And each of the seasons, unless it be winter, seems to have its own peculiar fauna and flora which lend it beauty and distinction. The prophet Amos, who was a herdsman accustomed to the open air and to the nomad life of the free East, and who uses accordingly many rural figures in his writings, speaks of a basket of summer fruit. We may figuratively take his words, now, to represent those traits of nature and those moral results which seem to be particularly characteristic of summer.
1. In the first place we may say that there goes into the basket of summer fruits an innocent joyousness of heart. God does not intend that we should live to be happy, but He does desire that we should be happy while we live. Joy is a Christian grace. If any one has the right to be joyful it is the believer, with countless spiritual blessings at his service in this world, and all the bright, brave, beautiful things of the world to come before him. Rejoice evermore! is a whole Decalogue in itself. And it seems easier to rejoice in the summer time, when all things take on their brightest look, each day seems a gala day, and nature dons her loveliest garments. And we are then out of doors more, which is a condition conducing to greater health and happiness. All this now is natural and right, if the joy be drawn from the right sources and based upon the right things.
2. Very like in nature to this summer fruit of joyousness is that of gratefulness. For who makes it possible for us to be reasonably happy, innocently gleeful? It is God, who is Himself the source and fount of joy.
3. The summer is a good time to cultivate the grace of worship. The spirit of worship is for the whole year. And at no period of the year should the regular services of the sanctuary be neglected, as the manner of many is.
4. Again, there is the summer fruit of generosity, which certainly it would seem should thrive in the expansive out-of-door life of that season. When the restrictions of indoor life have given way to the freedom of the fields, the woods, and the hills, a broadening of the sympathies should certainly be experienced. If we breathe a fresher air and more of it our pulses should quicken at the same time with a more abundant fellow-feeling for mankind about us.
5. The basket of summer fruit also makes room for the grace of good humour. Summer is the cross season, many think, which will excuse bad temper in themselves and perhaps in others when the thermometer goes up into the nineties. The hot weather certainly tries peoples tempers, of what sort they are: and the curious thing is that the individuals who have lost their temper most often seem to have the most temper left. But the summer months should be marked by many little sufferances and patiences, which will come most surely of numerous small prayers and pleadings at the throne of grace. Let us try to be good-humoured and amiable even when circumstances might seem to excuse petulance.
6. And then no basket of summer fruit would be complete without the grace of Christian hopefulness. Hope, we may say, is the joy of the future–that is, the joy which we obtain even now from the anticipation of delights to come. Like faith, it is the substance, or assured impression, of things that are yet to be. And the summer time may be really a continuous jubilee, one prolonged brightsome poem–a lyric of flowers and fruits and spiritual feasting and trustful uplift of heart, as the soul, like a plant touched by a sun in the heavens and blown upon by breezes from off the eternal hills, opens out constantly into the fuller, freer life of God, and grows toward the ideals of saintly living which shall be realised at last somewhere beyond the skies and stars. We may always have summer in our hearts. There are those who have no summer, to whom it is always arctic night, chilling and drear; but the child of God has the spring-tide in his heart now, and looks hopefully forward to entrance sometime into a land where cold blasts never blow and storms never beat, but where all things are surrounded by an atmosphere of genial godliness, of beatific beauty, and perfect love. (C. A. S. Dwight.)
Ripeness for judgment
I. Wicked nations grow ripe for judgment. The basket of summer fruit. This symbol suggests–
1. That Israels present moral corruption was no hasty production. The ripe fruit in that basket did not spring forth at once, it took many months to produce. Men do not become great sinners at once. The character of a people does not reach its last degree of vileness in a few years, it takes time. The first seed of evil is to be germinated, then it grows, ripens, and multiplies until there is a crop ready for the sickle.
2. That Israels season for improvement was past and gone. The ripened fruit in that basket had reached a stage in which improvement was impossible. The bloom was passing away, and rottenness was setting in. Nations become incorrigible.
3. That Israels utter ruin was inevitable. Nothing awaited that basket of summer fruit but rottenness. Its decomposition was working, and would soon reduce it to putrescent filth. So it was with Israel.
II. True prophets are made sensible of this ripeness. God gives Amos a vision for the purpose. To every true teacher God says at the outset, What seest thou? Hast thou a clear vision of this basket of summer fruit? Hast thou a clear idea of this subject on which thou art about to discourse? Thus He dealt with Moses, Elijah, Daniel, Paul, John.
III. Almighty God makes his prophets sensible of the ripeness of a peoples corruption in order that they may sound the alarm. Why was Amos thus Divinely impressed with the wretched moral condition of the people of Israel? Simply that he may be more earnest and emphatical in sounding the alarm. What was the calamity he was to proclaim?
I. Universal mourning. The songs of the temple shall be howlings. The inevitable tendency of sin is to turn songs of gladness into howlings of distress.
2. Universal death. And there shall be many dead bodies in every place, and they shall cast them forth with silence. (Homilist.)
Fully ripe
1. The end of the season of trial under the emblem of a basket of summer fruit (Amo 8:1-3). The emblem meant that a period was approaching when their time of probation would be over, and the result of that would be a great destruction of life, accompanied with gloomy silence on the part of the miserable survivors. The emblem has a general application to all periods of the Churchs history. It suggests the idea of a tree which had been tended, planted, watered with the rain and the dew. It had blossomed, budded, brought forth fruit; its work was done; the fruit was gathered; no pains of the gardener, no change in the season, no influence of the sun could now alter the character of the fruit. They were either apples of Sodom, or pleasant to the eye, and good for food. Now was the time, not to cherish their growth, but to try their quality. As there are means of hastening the growth and ripeness of summer fruit, so do privileges and mercies hasten the maturity of the soul for the inheritance of the saints in light on the one hand, and for the righteous vengeance of God on the other. This consideration shows the fearful character of unrepented sin. Perseverance therein causes ripeness for judgment. It teaches us what our chief aim ought to be; not so much eagerness for outward privilege, as an earnest desire that the heart may be right with God.
2. The close connection between evil imaginations respecting Gods service, and unjust dealings towards men (Amo 8:4-6). Contempt for and abuse of Gods ordinances is here shown to be closely connected with doing wrong to the poor. He who forgets his duty towards his Maker, is sure to be wanting in his duty towards those who bear his Makers image. The best friends of the poor are those who earnestly contend for the rights of God.
3. The universality of Divine knowledge, on the one hand, and the effects of Divine judgments on the other (Amo 8:7-10). Man, in his hurry to become rich, often does many things unrighteously. But all things are at all times naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. No lapse of time, nor change of scene, nor combination of circumstances, nor crowding together of different pursuits, veils for one moment the acts of ungodliness and wrong which men have done. Iniquity is never forgotten till it is forgiven.
4. A crowning judgment, which implied the absence of God, the childrens food taken from them (Amo 8:11-14). Among the Jews the absence of prophetical teaching would be a famine of the Word of the Lord. Direction from Him was a part of their peculiar blessedness. The want of that direction left them in a very helpless condition. In a Christian land, where the Word of God is freely circulated, we have the law, the testimony, and direction in all the duties of life. The precepts of the Gospel are so full, and its principles so clear, that we need never be at a loss. And where there is a scriptural ministry, the public mind may be kept as clearly instructed in the will of God as ever the Jews were by the teaching of the prophets. Christian communities, however, have been visited with a famine of the Word of God. Often, in the case of individuals, a famine of the Word of God comes upon the soul. (Vincent W. Ryan, M. A.)
Ripe for gathering
The point of the vision is rather obscured by the rendering summer fruit. Ripe fruit would be better, since the emblem represents the northern kingdom as ripe for the dreadful ingathering of judgment. Just as the mellow ripeness of the fruit fixes the time of gathering it, so there comes a stage in national and individual corruption, when there is nothing to be done but to smite. That period is not reached because God changes, but because men get deeper in sin. Because the harvest is ripe, the sickle is called for. It is a solemn lesson, applying to each soul as well as to communities. By neglect of Gods voice, and persistence in our own evil ways, we can make ourselves such that we are ripe for judgment, and can compel long suffering to strike. The tragedy of that fruit-gathering is described with extraordinary grimness and force in the abrupt language of verse
3. The crimes that ripened men for this terrible harvest are next set forth in Amo 8:4-6. The catalogue of sins is left incomplete, as if holy indignation turned for relief to the thought of the certain juugment. Amos heaps image on image to deepen the impression of terror and confusion. Everything is turned to its opposite these threats were fulfilled in the fall of the kingdom of Israel. But that day of the Lord was, in principle, a miniature foreshadowing of the great final judgment. The last section (verses 11-14) specifies one feature of judgment, the deprivation of the despised Word of the Lord. The truth implied is universal in its application. Gods message neglected is withdrawn. Conscience stops if continually unheeded. The Gospel may still sound in a mans ears, but have long ceased to reach further. There comes a time when men shall wish wasted opportunities back, and find that they can no more return than last summers heat. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Israels overthrow foretold
At home the nation of Israel appeared to the eye of its citizens to possess every needed element of stability and prosperity, in a strong government, domestic tranquillity, plentiful harvests, and multiplying riches. And looking abroad, there appeared no occasion for anxiety. But along with apparent political and economic prosperity, sad religious and moral corruption prevailed. Apostasy had accompanied revolution when Israel was founded. Other sins followed in the train of apostasy. To this people, victorious, prosperous, wealthy, avaricious, dishonest, luxurious, corrupt, immoral, irreligious, God sent a messenger with a message. Amos Goes from Tekoa to Bethel, the royal sanctuary and abode of Israel. Here he denounces the sins of the nation, proclaims the displeasure of Jehovah, and threatens destruction. Tradition reports that the fearless preacher was mobbed and beaten, scarce escaping with his life. But he had done his work. He had warned the people. The vision and the voice come down to us to-day. Behold, Amos says, a basket of summer fruit. The meaning does not lie on the surface. In Palestine fruit was the last crop to be gathered in. The sight of fruit suggested to Amos that the end of the prosperity of Israel was near. Additional force was given to this suggestion by a play upon words which we can in no way reproduce in English. The word here used for fruit was derived from the same root as the word which commonly signified end. The significance was of course primarily political. No nation could long stand which was so undermined with irreligion, and honeycombed with immorality as was the nation of Israel. Like a summer storm clouding the noon, disaster soon overshadowed the brightness of Israels day. Less than a hundred years after Amos came to Bethel, and was scorned and hunted thence, Shalmanezer came, and Israel was no more. It is to be remembered that the destruction of the national life of Israel was due to itself, its own faults, its own corruptions. No nation was ever destroyed from without. A people that is fit to live cannot be made to die. The Assyrians only made an end of the fruit that was already rotten as well as ripe. It is a lesson for all lands. Our prosperity is no certain token of our permanence. Size is not certain strength; numbers and riches are not certain strength. The empire of Alexander fell to pieces by its own weight. Spain was ruined by its riches. There is special warning in this chapter against one class of corrupting influences–those which grow out of the greed of gain. The dangers which beset the fabric of society in these days link themselves very largely with the production, accumulation, and distribution of wealth. The denunciations of Amos illuminate with wonderful clearness the unjust and dishonest practices which had become prevalent in that day. Greed, dishonesty, haste to be rich, may destroy, the fabric of our society. If the growth of vast fortunes and estates is regarded with popular and legislative favour, and government and society and Church are deaf to the cries and indifferent to the struggles of honest poverty, sinking deeper into abject and hopeless pauperism; and ostentation, luxury, and extravagance replace our old time simplicity, frugality, and economy; if the craze to be immensely rich fevers the blood of the whole people; if fraud, illegal or legalised, if gambling in lotteries and in futures, if corners and stock-watering, if dishonesty, in short, in all its forms continues to increase; if thus such sins as ruined Israel taint our business and social life ever deeper and deeper,–then the basket of summer fruit will become symbol as apt for us as it was for them: the end cannot be far off. The end may not, however, come in a political catastrophe of subjugation by a foreign conqueror. It came not thus to France a century ago. Learn to distrust even the prosperity which seems the greatest, and carefully to scrutinise its cost and its consequences. To seek first to be right, then to seek to prosper,–not first to prosper, regardless of right, is as important for the soul as for the nation. Let us each lay the corner-stone of our life-work in the fear of God and in Christian faith, and rear the edifice in honesty, morality, kindness, service. Then surely ours shall be the blessing of the Lord; it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it. (D. F. Estes.)
Israel s overthrow foretold
The nation, Gods chosen, is doomed. This is the import of the vision. The rest of the chapter is devoted to justification of this decree and description of its execution.
1. God is just. No man ever felt this truth more deeply than Amos. He betrays its hold upon him by the way in which he constructs his prophecies. He could not endure that they should have the slightest excuse for charging God with injustice. They, however, were not concerned about God s justice, though they might pretend to question it. To them, therefore, his habit of speech must have been extremely annoying. He was like a bad conscience. No wonder that they wanted to get rid of him. The passage before us contains an excellent illustration of the point in question. He shows that the question is not, How could God destroy Israel? but, How could He prevent their destruction? A community of self-seekers is an impossibility.
2. The greater part of this passage is predictive. This is not the most essential part of prophecy. A prediction is a picture of the future. Amos saw the kingdom of Israel over thrown by the Assyrians. Probably he did not expect his conventional details would ever be fulfilled. His claim to inspiration is sufficiently vindicated by the fact that the kingdom of Israel was actually overthrown, and the people carried into captivity by a power which, when Amos prophesied, seemed on the verge of extinction. (Hinckly G. Mitchell.)
A basket of summer fruit
1. The perfection and beauty of summer affords an illustration of the goodness of God. God is the Creator as well as the Redeemer.
2. The beauty and perfection of summer suggest to us some interesting spiritual analogies.
(1) They are the result of growth. So is character. As the nature of the fruit is dependent upon the nature of the seed, so does our character depend upon our principles.
(2) They are the product of culture. And our nature has need of spiritual culture.
(3) The beauty of summer is an emblem of that spiritual transformation which is accomplished in the soul by the grace of God. The same Spirit who renews the face of the earth is able to renew the soul of man.
(4) The perfection of summer reminds us of approaching change. The moment the fruits of summer are ripened, they begin to decay. And the greater portion of our lives is gone. Whatever length of days may await you, the most vigorous and active years are spent–years that can never be recalled. Whatever work you have to do must be done at once–whoever talks of delay, you cannot. Finally, remember that all things here are transitory and uncertain. Lifes changes admonish us to set our affection on things above. There is a covenant that abides–a Saviour who changes not–a world where death never enters. Have we laid hold on that covenant? have we faith in that Saviour? (H. J. Gamble.)
A basket of summer fruit
Amos was a herdsman, a keeper of cattle, and all through his book you find him continually alluding to his peasant life. He is also called a gatherer of sycamore fruit, or better, a bruiser, a trainer or preparer of sycamore fruit. It was believed in the East that this fruit would ever ripen except it was a little bruised, and so some person was employed with an iron comb to scratch and wound the skin. Unwounded, the fruit, even when ripe, was too bitter to be eaten; but after it had been wounded, it ripened rapidly, and became sweet and eatable. Here is a basket of summer fruit which is so ripe that it has been gathered; and it is a sort of fruit–summer fruit–which will not keep, will not lay by for the winter, but must be eaten at once. Amos sees that Gods purposes were now ripe with regard to His people Israel, and that the nation had become ripe in its sin, so ripe that it must be destroyed, We may learn that there is a ripeness of men, as well as of summer fruit; there is a ripening in holiness till we are gathered by the hand of Jesus for heaven, and a ripening in sin till we are swept away with the rough hand of death, and are cast away into the rottenness of destruction.
I. Gods purposes may have a ripeness: God always times His decrees. Many men are wise too late. God proves His wisdom, not only by what He doeth, but by the time when He doeth it. Notice two of Gods greatest acts. The First Advent, and the Second Advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. Apply this great truth of the ripeness of Gods purposes to your own personal affairs. All Gods acts are well-timed.
II. Nations have their ripeness, and when they come to their ripeness they must be destroyed. We may see in this basket of summer fruit a picture of them. It was necessary to eat that ripe fruit at once. And there is need when a nation has become ripe in sin that it should be given up to destruction. There are such things as national sins, and there are consequently such things as national punishments.
III. Here is the picture of what some of us are, and all of us must be.
1. With the righteous man there is a time of ripening. The Christian when converted is, as it were, but a bud upon the tree. There is need that he grow unto perfection, and that fruit should become ripe fruit. Believers are ripened by every providence which passes over them. We are daily ripening in knowledge. In spirituality. As he ripens in spirituality, he ripens in savour.
2. There is a ripeness with which the sinful and ungodly are ripening. You are being ripened from within; the depravity of your own heart is developing itself every hour. And Satan is daily busy with you, to try and make you grow in vice. Sinners ripen in knowledge of sin, in love to sin, and in that hardness of heart which enables them to commit sin with impunity. With some sin has attained such a ripeness that they dare to blaspheme God. They have grown so rotten ripe that they will even dare to say there is no God, or think that He is blind, or ignorant, and will not see and punish sin in the sinner. It is an awful sign of nearness to hell when a man begins to think that he can doubt the existence of God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
A basket of summer fruit
Fruit was the last sign of harvest in Palestine. When the fruit was gathered the harvest was over. What then is the meaning of this vision of a basket of summer fruit? The meaning is that Amos saw the end. Summer fruit had a mournful suggestion about it in Palestinian times and lands. What seest thou? The end; the gathered harvest, the upmaking of all things, the year in its results: good or bad, there it is. Can this fruit be changed now? No. Will not the sun work some miracle of ripening upon it? Never more. What it is, that it is. There is an end of ministry, of service, of stewardship, of life. Oh that men were wise, that they understood these things, that they would consider their latter end–the basket of summer fruit, the ingathering of the fields and the vintages. How stands it with us this audit day? (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER VIII
This chapter begins with a fourth vision denoting the certainty
and nearness of the destruction of Israel, 1-3.
The prophet then proceeds to reprove their oppression and
injustice, 4-7.
Strong and beautiful figures, by which is represented the
complete dissolution of the Israelitish polity, 8-10.
The people threatened with a most awful judgment; a FAMINE of
the word of God, 11-14.
NOTES ON CHAP. VIII
Verse 1. A basket of summer fruit.] As summer fruit was not proper for preserving, but must be eaten as soon as gathered, so the Lord intimates by this symbol that the kingdom of Israel was now ripe for destruction, and that punishment must descend upon it without delay. Some think the prophet means the fruits at the end of autumn. And as after the autumn no fruit could be expected, so Israel’s summer is gone by, her autumn is ended, and she shall yield no more fruit. Or, the autumn of her iniquity is come; the measure is filled up, and now she shall gather the fruit of her sin in the abundance of her punishment.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me: and behold: see Amo 7:1,4,7.
A basket; a hook, say some, with which the gatherer might either pull down the bough, or pull off the ripe fruit; or a basket into which the ripe fruit gathered was put to be carried away.
Summer fruit; not the early ripe fruit, but that which, as it needed, so had the whole summers heat to ripen it, and was gathered in at the end of the summer.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. summer fruitHebrew,kitz. In Am 8:2 “end”is in Hebrew, keetz. The similarity of sounds implies that, asthe summer is the end of the year and the time of theripeness of fruits, so Israel is ripe for her lastpunishment, ending her national existence. As the fruit isplucked when ripe from the tree, so Israel from her land.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me,…. Another vision, which is the fourth, and after the following manner:
and, behold, a basket of summer fruit; not of the first ripe fruit, but of such as were gathered at the close of the summer, when autumn began. So the Targum,
“the last of the summer fruit;”
such as were fully ripe, and would not keep till winter; or, if kept, would rot; but must be eaten directly, as some sort of apples, grapes, c. denoting the people of Israel being ripe for destruction, and would be quickly devoured by their enemies and that, as they had had a summer of prosperity, they would now have a sharp winter of adversity.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Vision of a Basket of Ripe Fruit. – Amo 8:1. “Thus did the Lord Jehovah show me: and behold a basket with ripe fruit. Amo 8:2. And He said, What seest thou, Amos? And I said, A basket of ripe fruit. Then Jehovah said to me, The end is come to my people Israel; I will not pass by them any more. Amo 8:3. And the songs of the palace will yell in that day, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah: corpses in multitude; in every place hath He cast them forth: Hush!” from , to lay hold of, to grasp, lit., a receiver, here a basket (of basket-work), in Jer 5:27 a bird-cage. : summer-fruit (see at 2Sa 16:1); in Isa 16:9; Isa 28:4, the gathering of fruit, hence ripe fruit. The basket of ripe fruit ( qayits ) is thus explained by the Lord: the end ( qets ) is come to my people (cf. Eze 7:6). Consequently the basket of ripe fruit is a figurative representation of the nation that is now ripe for judgment, although qets , the end, does not denote its ripeness for judgment, but its destruction, and the word qets is simply chosen to form a paronomasia with qayits . as in Amo 7:8. All the joy shall be turned into mourning. the thought is not that the temple-singing to the praise of God (Amo 5:23) would be turned into yelling, but that the songs of joy (Amo 6:5; 2Sa 19:36) would be turned into yells, i.e., into sounds of lamentation (cf. Amo 8:10 and 1 Maccabees 9:41), namely, because of the multitude of the dead which lay upon the ground on every side. is not impersonal, in the sense of “which men are no longer able to bury on account of their great number, and therefore cast away in quiet places on every side;” but Jehovah is to be regarded as the subject, viz., which God has laid prostrate, or cast to the ground on every side. For the adverbial use of cannot be established. The word is an interjection here, as in Amo 6:10; and the exclamation, Hush! is not a sign of gloomy despair, but an admonition to bow beneath the overwhelming severity of the judgment of God, as in Zep 1:7 (cf. Hab 2:20 and Zec 2:13).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Vision of Summer Fruit. | B. C. 785. |
1 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. 2 And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. 3 And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord GOD: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence.
The great reason why sinners defer their repentance de die in diem–from day to day, is because they think God thus defers his judgments, and there is no song wherewith they so effectually sing themselves asleep as that, My Lord delays his coming; and therefore God, by his prophets, frequently represents to Israel the day of his wrath not only as just and certain, but as very near and hastening on apace; so he does in these verses.
I. The approach of the threatened ruin is represented by a basket of summer-fruit which Amos saw in vision; for the Lord showed it to him (v. 1) and obliged him to take notice of it (v. 2): Amos, what seest thou? Note, It concerns us to enquire whether we do indeed see that which God has been pleased to show us, and hear what he has been pleased to say to us; for many a thing God speaks, God shows once, yea twice, and men perceive it not. Are we in the midst of the visions of the Almighty? Let us consider what we see. He saw a basket of summer-fruit gathered and ready to be eaten, which signified, 1. That they were ripe for destruction, rotten ripe, and it was time for God to put in the sickle of his judgments and to cut them off; nay, the thing was in effect done already, and they lay ready to be eaten up. 2. That the year of God’s patience was drawing towards a conclusion; it was autumn with them, and their year would quickly have its period in a dismal winter. 3. Those we call summer-fruits that will not keep till winter, but must be used immediately, an emblem of this people, that had nothing solid or consistent in them.
II. The intent and meaning of this vision is no more than this: It signifies that the end has come upon my people Israel. The word that signifies the end is ketz, which is of near affinity with kitz, the word used for summer-fruit. God has long spared them, and borne with them, but now his patience is tired out; they are indeed his people Israel, but their end, that latter end they have been so often reminded of, but have so long forgotten, has now come. Note, If sinners do not make an end of sin, God will make an end of them, yea though they be his people Israel. What was said ch. vii. 8 is here repeated as God’s determined resolution, I will not again pass by them any more; they shall not be connived at as they have been, nor the judgment coming turned away.
III. The consequence of this shall be a universal desolation (v. 3): When the end shall come sorrow and death shall ride in triumph; they are accustomed to go together, and shall at length go away together, when in heaven there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, Rev. xxi. 4. But here in a sinful world, in a sinful nation, 1. Sorrow reigns, reigns to such a degree that the songs of the temple shall be howlings–the songs of God’s temple at Jerusalem, or rather of their idol-temples, where they used, when, in honour of the golden calves, they had eaten and drunk, to rise up to play. They were perhaps wanton profane songs; and it is certain that sooner or later those will be turned into howlings. Or, if they had a sound and show of piety and religion, yet, not coming from the heart, nor being sung to the glory of God, he valued them not, but would justly turn them into howlings. Note, Mourning will follow sinful mirth, yea, and sacred mirth too, it if be not sincere. And, when God’s judgments are abroad, they will soon turn the greatest joy into the greatest heaviness, the temple-songs, which used to sound so pleasantly, not only into sighs and groans, but into loud howlings, which sound dismally. They shall come to the temple, and, finding that in ruins, there they shall howl most bitterly. 2. Death reigns, reigns to such a degree that there shall be dead bodies, many dead bodies in every place (Ps. cx. 6), slain by sword or pestilence, so many that the survivors shall not bury them with the usual pomp and solemnity of funerals; they shall not so much as have the bell tolled, but they shall cast them forth with silence, shall bury them in the dead of the night, and charge all about them to be silent and to take notice of it, either because they have not wherewithal to bear the charges of a funeral, or because, the killing disease being infectious, none will come near them, or for fear the enemy should be provoked, if they should be known to lament their slain. Or they shall charge themselves and one another silently to submit to the hand of God in these desolating judgments, and not to repine and quarrel with him. Or it may be taken not for a patient, but a sullen silence; their hearts shall be hardened, and all these judgments shall not extort from them one word of acknowledgment either of God’s righteousness or their own unrighteousness.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
AMOS – CHAPTER 8
THE BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT
Verses 1-3:
Israel Is Soon To Perish, v. 1-3
Verse 1 describes a fourth vision that Amos had from the Lord regarding the coming judgment of Israel. It follows those visions of grasshopper-locusts, fire, and the plumbline. The people are told to behold and consider a basket of summer fruit, plucked ripe from the tree. It symbolizes Israel as ripe for plucking from her land, as her summer’s day is over, ending her national existence.
Verse 2 recounts the Lord’s asking him what he saw, to which he replied, “a basket of summer fruit,” late fruit, ripe, once desirable, but so soon to perish, Jer 24:1-3; 2Sa 16:1; Mic 7:1. Then the Lord said to Amos, “The end is come upon my people, Israel; I will not again pass by them anymore,” meaning, I will not any more or further delay, my judgment upon them, as found Amo 7:8-9.
Verse 3 explains prophetically that the joyful songs and emotional-highs of the Bethel royal temple, the “king’s chapel,” shall be turned to howlings or lamentations of woe and despair, in the day of judgment, Amo 7:13; Zep 1:7. There will be instead, many dead bodies with the shock of dead silence, void of the presence of former professional mourners to wail for their death, Amo 5:16. The fear of both God and their enemies will cause the few left alive to grieve in silence, with closed lips, Amo 6:10.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
By these words or by this vision the Prophet confirms what we have already observed — that paternal chastisements would no longer be exercised towards the people of Israel. God indeed, as it is well known, had so treated that people, that he ever spared them even in their greatest calamities. It was with a suspended hand that God ever struck that people, until after many trials they at length seemed so refractory, as not to be benefited by such remedies. This subject then Amos now pursues: but a vision was shown to him to confirm more fully God’s judgment, or at least to produce a greater impression on the minds of the people.
God showed to him a Basket full of summer-fruit. By summer-fruit, I doubt not, he means a ripe punishment, as though he said, that the vices of the people had ripened, that vengeance could no longer be deferred: for an exposition of the vision immediately follows, when he says, that the end of the people had come, etc.; and this we have already explained in the third vision. But there is a similarity in the Hebrew words, which cannot be expressed either in Greek or Latin. קיץ, kits means a summer-fruit, קץ, kots, signifies an end: one letter only is inserted in the word, summer-fruit, which God showed in a basket; and then he adds that קץ, kots, the end had come. But as to the main point, we see that there is nothing ambiguous. We will now return to the first thing.
Thus God showed to me. There is no need of repeating what I have already discussed. The Prophet here prefaces, that he adduced nothing without authority, but only faithfully related what had been commanded him from above. And this ought to be carefully observed; for God ever so employed his Prophets, that he yet reserved for himself entire the right of teaching, and never transferred his own office to men, that is, as to the authority. Then he says, The Lord Jehovah showed to me, and, lo, a basket of summer-fruit. We may understand cherries by summer-fruit, and those fruits which have no solid vigor to continue long; but this is too refined. I take the simple meaning, that punishment had now become ripe; for the people had not repented, though they had been so often warned; it was then as it were summer. He showed to me a basket of summer-fruit. But as to God asking his Prophet what he saw, we have already explained the reason why it was done: it behaved the Prophet to be at first filled with astonishment, that the people might be made more attentive; for when we hear of a conference between God and the Prophet, our minds are awakened; inasmuch as it must immediately occur to us, that there is something worthy of being remembered. God then rouses in this manner the minds of his people. So we see there is nothing superfluous in this repetition.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
AMOSOR HEATHENISMANCIENT AND MODERN
Amo 1:1 to Amo 9:15
THE opening sentences of this Book give us briefly, and yet somewhat fully, the history of the Prophet whose name it wears. He belonged to the herdmen of Tekoa, and prophesied in the days when Uzziah was king of Judah, and Jeroboam, Son of Joash, sat upon the throne of Israel, and two years before the earthquake.
There are few Prophets the date of whose living is so definitely fixed. It is known that Uzziah and Jeroboam were contemporary kings in the period 809 to 784 B. C. It is certain, therefore, that sometime in these twenty-five seasons, Amos spoke. Some have thought to fix it accurately by referring to the history of this earthquake, which was one of the most terrible visitations the country had ever known of its kind. Josephus assigned, as the immediate occasion of this earthquake, the act of pride on the part of Uzziah in offering incense, for which God smote him with leprosy, and says, Meanwhile a great earthquake shook the ground and the Temple parting, a bright ray of the sun shone forth and fell upon the kings face, so that forthwith the leprosy came over him. And above the city, at the place called Eroge, the western half of a hill was broken off and rolled half a mile to the mountain Eastward, and there stayed, blocking up the ways, and the kings garden.
But it ought to be said, in all candor, that those people who swear by Josephus, but doubt the inspiration of the biblical writers, have poor occasion for their conduct. This ancient Jewish historian is so often writing down legend, tradition, and even his own imagination, for history, that one dare not receive his statement concerning this earthquake as authentic, and the very year of Amos writing remains undetermined.
The place of his residence is put past dispute, however. It was at Tekoa, a little village twelve to fourteen miles from Jerusalem, and six miles south of old Bethlehem, the very one whence Joab brought the wise woman to intercede for Absalom, and which the king Rehoboam made a fortified town.
His humble station was also affirmed; not even the owner of sheep, but a hireling, who as opportunity offered, followed the herds; and when there was no employment in that avocation, turned to the gathering and selling of sycamore fruit or figs.
The most of the Old Testament Prophets are the sons of honored fathers, descendants from famed families; but already God is beginning to manifest forth the fact, which finds so many illustrations in New Testament teachers, namely,
How that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:
But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
That no flesh should glory in His presence? (1Co 1:27-29).
But in keeping with the humble station of this man, and his equally humble estimate of self, he spent only a single verse upon his personal history,
as if the man were of little moment; while Gods message to the people was the subject of supreme concern.
With what a sentence did he smite the ears of his auditorsThe Lord will roar from Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither.
It is not difficult to imagine him a successful street preacher, for these words were doubtless uttered in the alley-like avenues of Jerusalem. When he had finished that first sentence, every Jew within hearing of it would be riveted in attention, and ready to give eager ear to all that followed. It is interesting now to note, either the consummate genius of the speaker, or else Gods evident inspiration for both arrangement and expression of his thought.
It seems to me that this Book, upon close study, falls naturally into four parts and considered as a sermon or discourse, is ideal in its arrangement.
The first of these divisions has to do with
THE PROPHETS NEIGHBORS
Amo 1:3 to Amo 2:3
From Amo 1:3 to Amo 2:3 Amos speaks solely concerning the heathen round about. He denounces Damascus; he condemns Gaza; he excoriates Tyrus; he reproves Edom, he censures Ammon; and delivers sentence against Moab. What an introduction for a street discourse in Jerusalem! Every Jewish auditor would be delighted, for these were their hated enemies, and to have a man whose very mien and tongue told of his Divine appointment to the order of Prophet, utter such excoriations, would arouse the smouldering hatred which the Jews held against these into a flame of enthusiasm for the man speaking such words.
Now, before passing from this subject, let us see some essential truths suggested in these sentences.
First of all, The Prophets ministry is predetermined. His speech was no trick of the elocutionist to catch his auditors by condemning their enemies. Amos disclaims all originality and responsibility for these words, introducing his deliverance by the sentence, Thus saith the Lord. There are people who seem to entertain an impression that a prophet has no right to interfere in any affairs of another, and no occasion to condemn even the bad doings of his neighbors. It is not unusual to hear it said, You belong in the Church; and at the most your ministry should spend itself within the circle of her membership. You may have a right to instruct her youth, and even admonish her adults, but what have you to do with others? Those politicians who live and move in another realm; those science Professors who instruct Truth in skepticism, those liquor sellers who lure you to debauch, that realm of commerce, created for barter, not to speak of other confessedly unchristian circleswhat business have you with them?
They recognize no allegiance to your views, no obligation to your opinions; they regard your speech, concerning their conduct, a presumption. Why, therefore, persist in taking upon yourself a service which is despised by the very ones of whom you speak?
Amos answer to all of this is sufficient! Thus saith the Lord.
That is the answer of every true prophet. He is not spying out his neighbors sins, and speaking against them because the sermon brings him either pleasure or profit, but because God has said,
Preach the Word; he instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
* * But after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the Truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry? (2Ti 4:2-5).
Only a few years ago some nominal Christians all over this country were voicing a certain amount of sympathy with the Boxer movement; and taking their cue from the cry of these murderers Down with the foreign devils, asked, What right have we to force our views upon these people when they do not want them?a question which can be answered in two sentences. Christians never force their views upon any, only preach them; and their warrant for doing that is in His Word. He who created China and has never signed a quitclaim to His right in that land and that people, namely, Jesus Himself, says, Go ye therefore, and teach ail nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Gods Prophets who call the Chinese to repentance, are there, commissioned of God Himself. Who will object to His conduct? Shall the creature take issue with the Creator?
The Prophets message also is God-given. When Amos uttered these words concerning Damascus, and Gaza, and Tyrus, and Edom, and Ammon, and Moab, he was not speaking of himself, But I will send a fire into the house of Hazael and I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza, and I will send a fire on the wall of Tyrus and I will send a fire upon Teman, etc., etc. Such would have been utterly meaningless had it originated at the mouth of the Prophet.
There are many people who object to Gods fire, kindled against His enemies, consuming the wicked. But let us not quarrel with Gods Prophet. This blaze was not born of his breath. When the minister reads from Revelation, The fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death, dont quarrel with John for the speech. Like Amos of old, his authority for the utterance is in the sentence Thus saith the Lord.
When Hugh Latimer, one New Years day, went along with the bishop and nobles, who were carrying their presents to the king, with a Bible in his hand, and presented that as His gift, and the king opening it read, Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge he was angry with Latimer; and, Herrick says, It is a wonder that bluff and fiery King Hall did not take off Hughs head.
Possibly the reason is found in the fact that even that fiery king knew that these were not Latimers words, and whatever quarrel he had was with God. The man who delivers Gods message is not to be blamed; and the man who does not present it is not Gods Prophet! How shall they preach except they be sent?
When Moses was called to be a Prophet for God he poorly apprehended the Prophets part. His answer was O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. And the Lord answered him, Who hath made mans mouth * * Go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say. The man, who, like Amos, gets his message from God is Gods minister.
This Prophets judgment represents Divine justice. When he says For three transgressions, and for four, of Damascus, Gaza, Tyrus, Edom, Ammon, Moab, I will send a fire, there is absolute justice in the sentence declared. Damascus must suffer because they have Threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron; Gaza because they have carried away captive the whole captivity, to deliver them up to Edom; Tyrus, for participating in the same, and forgetting the brotherly covenant; Edom because he did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually, and he kept his wrath for ever; Ammon because he ripped up the women with child * * that they might enlarge their border: and Moab because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Men did not object when houses, infected with the black plague, were burned. There are some infections that can only be consumed in the flame. And there are some sins which can never be removed away save by the fire of Divine judgment; and that judgment always represents Divine justice also.
Not a few people have spoken to me concerning a sermon once delivered by my colleague, Dr. Frost, expressing their gratitude in that he made it clear that the innocent were never punished on account of the guilty; and that the guilty never suffered above their deserts; and that judgment was always tempered with mercy.
I confess to surprise that these things should strike any as new truths; they are as old as Revelation itself. Aye, they are inseparable from the very character of God.
John Watson, in his Mind of the Master tells us that what has filled many honorable minds with resentment and rebellion is not the fact of separation, but the principle of execution; not the dislike of an assortment, but the fear that it will not be into good and bad. And he continues, But Jesus rested judgment on the firm foundation of what each man is in the sight of the Eternal. He anticipated no protest in His parables against the justice of this evidence; none has ever been made from any quarter. The wheat is gathered into the garner. What else could one do with wheat? The tares are burned in the fire. What else could one do with tares? When the net comes to the shore, the good fish are gathered into vessels; no one would throw them away. The bad are cast aside; no one would leave them to contaminate the good. The supercilious guests who did not value the great supper were left severely alone. If men do not care for Heaven, they will not be forced into it. The outcasts, who had never dared to dream of such a supper, were compelled to come. If men hunger for the best, the best shall be theirs.
That is the truth of Gods judgment everywhere. And when He consumed these nations with the besom of destruction it was only because to continue them would be to condone sin by reproducing sinners, and stain the earth, calling into question His own wisdom by letting iniquity go unpunished. Say what you will of these judgments, you must commend their justice. Who art thou that repliest against God?
But from the Prophets neighbors we turn to
THE PROPHETS NATIONS
Amo 2:4 to Amo 6:14
To be sure Amos belonged by birth to Judah, but both these nations were his, by kinship, and by Divine appointment of Prophet to them. He came out of Judah, but he spake to Judah and to Israel. What a change must have come over the audience when this man, with eloquent speech, flaming with the evident enthusiasm of a Divine commission, turned suddenly from his denouncement of neighbors, to a kindred condemnation of the favored nations.
For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have despised the Law of the Lord, and have not kept His Commandments, and their lies caused them to err, after the which their fathers have walked:
But I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem.
Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes (Amo 2:4-6).
Heathenism is not all with the heathen. You read the words of this Prophet from Amo 2:4 to Amo 6:14 and you will find the elect backsliders, and indulging in the abominations of their neighbors. It is a phrase employed too often, I fear, by those unwilling to go, or through their gold and silver to send, Why be interested in the heathen or foreign lands when there are so many heathen at home?
Such speak better than they desire. The heathen are at home; aye, the heathen, here, were the very company who called themselves saints. And this Prophets descriptions are not ancient; they are up to date!
No single discourse upon which my hand has fallen has been comparable in clearness of expression, and vigor of thought, to one, once delivered by my late loved friend, Dr. John O. Rust, on The New Heathenism, and printed in the Presbyterian Quarterly, October, 1902, and reprinted in pamphlet form by Whittet and Shepperson, of Richmond, Va. Rusts opening sentence is, We are prone to think that we have left heathenism far behind us in the centuries of the past; or that it is banished from our shores to hide its shame in the remote and darkened corners of the earth; and one is almost stung into a feeling of resentment when the charge is made that there is a lively revival of heathenism at our very doors, here in enlightened America, in this blessed day of grace.
Then Rust continues to show that commercialism has carried many a so-called Christian into heathen practices. The poet has written:
It is success that colors all in life;Success makes fools admired, makes villains honest;All the proud virtues of this vaunting world Fawns on success and power, howeer acquired.
Rust thinks stheticism also has been chosen as a term with which to clothe our cultured heathenism. He says, When the people get rich suddenly they wish to acquire culture quickly. The consequence is that elegant ladies and gentlemen, strong in the languor of luxury, lounge in dainty drawing-rooms, and cultivate an Attic difference to virtue, and a Roman contempt for enthusiasm of robust manhood.
Occultism has, within the last ten years, enjoyed a ridiculous revival. Teachers whose chief qualifications are long hair and soiled linen, profess an acquaintance with the mysteries of philosophy which would appall the real learning of the world. Hypnotists reveal the deep secrets of psychology on a months tuition which has been hidden from the wisdom of the world for ages. And the amazing thing about it is that thousands of people listen to the babble of these fellows who will not heed the oracles of God. A certain statistician has computed that there has been an increase of 300 per cent in fools in this country in the last fifty years, and one is half inclined to believe the estimate.
Socialism represents an extreme reaction against the proud, arrogant and esoteric tendencies, and by its very consciousness of wrong, it is attempting to get its rights by an attack upon all society.
Now I confess it was most interesting to me to take that address of Rusts, and compare his words with those of the Prophet Amos. Commercialism cursed Gods people in the times of Amos also, and they were called to judgment because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes.
stheticism found then the same sensual expression which it is receiving today, They [stretched] themselves upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar. They [drank] the wine of the condemned in the house of their god. By their increased riches, through the oppression of the poor, they bought unto themselves beds of ivory, and stretched themselves upon their couches, and ate the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall, and chanted to the sound of the viol, and invented to themselves instruments of music, defaming David, by saying they were the same as his; and setting aside the little glasses, emptied great bowls of wine.
And, by anointing themselves with the chief ointment imagined that they were a sweet incense to God, forgetting to grieve for the affliction of Joseph, until the drunkards of Ephraim came to be a byword in the streets of Jerusalem.
As to Occultism, they turned from the worship of the True God to such false shrines and sorcerers that a temple to Asherah was restored in Samaria; the gold and silver images to Baal were set up; the smoke of sacrifice to idols could be seen upon their mountain tops, and incense smelt in the shade of every grove until the word was Gilead was given to idols. They transgressed at Bethel, and multiplied transgressions at Gilgal.
And then the socialism that always attends oppression! Selfish and sensual living stirred in the breasts of the unsuccessful, and made it easy to bring against their divided forces nations that should afflict them from the entering of Hamath unto the river of the wilderness.
Beloved, what greater danger to the land in which we live than these same, before which the ancient people of God sadly fell? Is not the Church itself threatened by commercialism in which, as Rust puts it, The evangelist has become the finangelist? The denominations which twenty-five years ago existed on a creedal basis, today continue on a commercial basis. Are not our missionary treasuries pauper-stricken too often because even the people who wear the Name of God, have learned to love palatial residences, and expend upon person and pleasure the whole of their income. And, are not many being brought to the bar of judgment and condemned with the charge having been substantiated against them, by the Lord God Himself, In tithes and offerings ye have robbed Me?
Let us see another thing to be inferred from the language of the Prophet Amos. Sonship does not insure against chastisement. The true father may witness the most evil deeds upon the part of his neighbors child without speaking a word of correction, or claiming the right of chastisement. But not so when his own children go into sin. His very love of them compels their correction; while his past favors give him that paternal prerogative, God makes that the basis of Israels chastisement. He reminds the Children of Israel that He alone had brought them up from Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.
It is an Old Testament illustration of the New Testament assertion, Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. For those who have been the recipients of Divine favor in our day, the poets sentences speak this same truth.
But if your ears refuse The language of His grace,Your hearts grow hard, like stubborn Jews,That unbelieving race.
The Lord with vengeance drest,Shall lift His hand and swear,You that despised My promised restShall have no portion there.
Beastly conduct necessitates bitter correction. Sometime when you have looked upon people whose moral filth and sensual living was such that your whole nature reacted from the sight, you have been tempted to adopt the language of the street and call them cattle. Perhaps you did not know that it was also the language of Scripture, and that it is possible for men to go so deeply into sin that God looks upon their condition as that of a beast in an unclean stall.
To these ancient Israelites He said,
Hear this Word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink.
The Lord God hath sworn by His holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that He will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.
And ye shall go out at the breaches, every cow at that which is before her; and ye shall cast them into the palace, saith the Lord (Amo 4:1-3).
These are rude words of the Prophet; but let us remember that they were not his words, but Gods instead. It is an awful thing for one to come to that moral condition where his conduct reminds God of the cattle of the field!
Such a condition cannot be covered over by feasts, offerings and ceremonies. It is in vain for such to come to Bethel, which means the House of God, and to Gilgal to bring sacrifice every morning, and tithes after three years, and offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, and proclaim and publish a free offering. As Joseph Parker says, There is one thing wanting in all that elegant program, and for want of that one thing the whole arrangement dies in the air like a gilded bubble. What is omitted from this rehearsal? The sin offering, the trespass offering. They will come with sacrifices every morning as donor to God; they will come with service and sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven; they will throw money into the treasury, and announce the sum in plain figures. But where is penitence? Where is contrition? Where is heart-wringing? Where is the tearing conscience, the presence of tormenting agony in the innermost life? Most worship is partial; many will have a little partial religion. Some attention has to be paid to custom, to the habit, wont, and use of life; some mean coin must at least be thrown into the treasury, and thrown in with some ostentation; hymns must be sung, and fault must be found with the music, and judgment must be pronounced upon the rabbi, the priest, the teacher for the time being, and for a certain period there must be an odor of sanctity about what we say and do. All this trickery is possible; but it never reaches the Heaven of God. And God only answers it all by saying,
Seek not Beth-el, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba * *.
Seek the Lord, and ye shall live * *.
Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is His Name (Amo 5:5-6; Amo 5:8).
But to pass on in our study of this Book, we come upon
THE PROPHETS OPPONENTS
Amo 7:1 to Amo 9:10
It would be a marvel indeed if such a man as this went on without opposition. They beheaded Paul; they killed James, the Just; they crucified Jesus, and Amos reveals no spirit of compromise. How then can he hope to pass on in peace?
The Prophet cannot escape the opponent. There is an Amaziah for every Amos. He will send to Jeroboam, the king, saying,
Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the House of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words.
For thus Amos saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land (Amo 7:10-11).
It is not pleasant to be pricked by the truth; to be irritated by an inspired word; to feel the lash upon the conscience, quickened by Sacred Scripture; and men always have opposed it, and they always will.
Perhaps in modern times we have had no more faithful minister of the Gospel than was Charles Spurgeon. But he had to learn how to be slandered, he says, in order that he might be made useful to God. His statement is, Down on my knees I have often fallen, with the hot sweat rising from my brow, under some fresh slander poured upon me; in an agony of grief my heart has been well-nigh broken; till at last I learned the art of bearing all and caring for none. * * If to be made as the mire of the streets again, if to be the laughing-stock of fools and the song of the drunkard once more will make me more serviceable to my Master, and more useful to His cause, I will prefer it to all this multitude, or to all the applause that man could give.
That was exactly Amos answer when told to prophesy no more at Beth-el, since it was the kings chapel, and the kings court. He replied, confessing his humble estimate of himself,
I was no Prophet, neither was I a Prophets son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit:
And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord send unto me, Go, prophesy unto My people Israel.
Now therefore hear thou the Word of the Lord.
It is the only answer one needs to make to his opponent; and it is the only answer one can make that carries with it any assurance of success. Do you remember that when David, the lad, after being scoffed by his elder brother, and scorned by Goliath, the giant, said to that Philistine, Thou contest to me with a sword, and with a spear and with a shield: but I come to thee in the Name of the Lord of Hosts. Oh, beloved, whoever our opponents are, and whatever our opposition, that is the only Name in which we can stand; and that Name is sufficient!
Speaking in that Name we cannot be silenced by secular powers. Amaziah, in his inability to meet Amos single-handed, tried the trick of the pious politician, namely, arraying the secular powers against this servant of the Lord. It is an old trick; it was done in the days of Elisha; and repeated in the days of the Son of Man. He was charged with opposition to Caesar; as were His Apostles with rebellion against the civil government. It is most amazing how patriotic some men become, once the preaching of the truth reveals their personal sins, and those which they have in common with so-called statesmen, at one and the same time.
They are not welcomed by the fallen, and sometimes are most bitterly opposed by men who have proclaimed themselves children of the King. Be it remembered, however, that the same Amaziahs who rise to charge Gods Prophets with treason will be compelled to listen, eventually, to the Divine sentence of the Lord,
Thou sayest, Prophesy not against Israel, and drop not thy word against the House of Isaac.
Therefore thus saith the Lord; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou shalt die in a polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land (Amo 7:16-17).
And yetThe Christians courage will accord with the Divine commission. Amos only needs to answer, The Lord took me as I followed the flock, and * * said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My people Israel. When you have spoken in the language of Scripture, and are conscious that your purpose was to help and not hinder; to reform and not deform; to convert and not divert, then fear will flee away, and like Peter and the other Apostles of Jesus, you can answer the command of silence, We ought to obey God rather than man, and We are His witnesses of these things.
S. E. Herrick, speaking of Savonarola, in the times when all Florence was ablaze, having been basely betrayed by their ruler, says that Savonarola remained the one calm spirit, and assigns as the reason, He is the man who dwells unmoved in (The secret place of the Most High, and under the shadow of the Almighty
Every man ought to dwell there who is consciously seeking the glory of God, and faithfully presenting the Truth of God. Paul seems to have entertained that opinion of the whole Christian life, when he wrote the Ephesians,
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with Truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
And your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace;
Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked (Eph 6:10-16).
This Book concludes with the
PROPHETS PREDICTION
Amo 9:11-15
I want to make that also the conclusion of this chapter. This prediction is brief, but how blessed!
In that day will I raise up the Tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by My Name, saith the Lord that doeth this.
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.
And I will bring again the captivity of My people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them.
And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God (Amo 9:11-15).
Take the three points of this prediction and delight thyself in them.
The restitution of the House of David is pledged.
That day will I raise up the Tabernacle.
That promise is found in a hundred forms in this Old Testament, and was made the occasion of James appeal to missionary endeavor, when, at the council of Jerusalem, he stood before the people saying,
Men and brethren, hearken unto me:
Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His Name.
And to this agree the Words of the Prophets; as it is written,
After this I will return, and will build again the Tabernacle of David, which is fallen dawn.
Simeon did not see that Tabernacle rebuilt; James was not privileged to witness it; nor have we; and yet the Word of the Lord will not fail. The House of David is yet to be exalted in the earth.
Dr. Gordon tells us, There is a fragment of Jewish legend that has floated down to us, which represents two venerable rabbis as musing among the ruins of Jerusalem after its destruction. One is giving way to unrestrained lamentation, saying, Alas! alas! this is the end of all. Our beautiful city is no more; our Temple is laid waste, our brethren are driven away into captivity. The other, with greater cheerfulness, replies: True; but let us learn from the verity of Gods judgments, which we behold about us, the certainty of His mercies. He hath said, I will destroy Jerusalem, and we see that He hath done it. But hath He not also said, I will rebuild Jerusalem, and shall we not believe Him? The latter rabbi was right! The same God who, by His might, said to His people, I will sift the House of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve; and speedily fulfilled the threat, also declared of one day in the future, In that day will I raise up the Tabernacle of David that is fallen. He will fulfil His promise. And I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by My Name, saith the Lord that doeth this (Amo 9:11-12).
There is your pledge of the gathering out of the Gentiles. The heathen which are called by Gods Name. Isaiah had long ago said, The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Jesus once reminded the multitudes of the promises of God concerning His SonIn His Name shall the Gentiles trust. But more explicit still is that other statement of His concerning the destiny of JerusalemJerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
Beloved, this is your age and mine; the period in which we who were aliens, by nature, are being grafted into the True Vine. Arthur T. Pierson has at some time expressed the thought that he never succeeds in winning a soul to the Saviour without entertaining the hope that this may be the last man needful to the filling up of the time of the Gentiles. But, oh, how such a suggestion ought to stir apprehension in the breasts of all Gentile-unbelievers, lest we approach the day of the Lord, and the time of our opportunity will be past!
Finally:The Prophet also predicts the return of the Jews to their own land.
I will bring again the captivity of My people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them.
And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God (Amo 9:14-15).
My brethren sometimes ask whether I see what appears clear evidences of the signs of the times; and if I do, there is something marvelous in this Zionist movement. Only a short time ago a clipping from your own paper here says that in the city of Milwaukee alone thousands of Jews have given their most ardent support to this Zionist movement to buy back again their own land, and make it the place of refuge to their persecuted people. So the movement has enlisted the Jews of St. Paul and Minneapolis. They do not see the significance of such a barter, but who knows but God is already beginning to fulfil literally those promises of His Word,
Surely the isles shall wait for Me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far * *.
And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee: for in My wrath I smote thee, but in My favour have I had mercy on thee (Isa 60:9-10).
And again,
I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion (Jer 3:14).
The first-fruits of that final restoration which is fully pledged, and made emphatic by a hundred repetitions, and when, according to Jeremiah, God will gather the remnant of His scattered flock out of all countries into which He has driven them, and bring them again into their fold. And they shall be fruitful and increase, for in those days He will raise up unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and execute judgment and justice in the earth (Jer 23:3; Jer 23:5).
O then that I
Might live, and see the olive bear
Her proper branches, which now lie
Scattered each where,
And without root and sap decay,
Cast by the husbandman away,
And sure it is not far!
For surely He
Who loved the world so as to give
His only Son to make us free,
Whose Spirit, too, doth mourn and grieve
To see man lost, will, for old love,
From your dark hearts this veil remove.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL NOTES.] The visions continued from ch. Amo. 7:9
Amo. 8:2. Summer] Late fruit, fully ripe (2Sa. 16:1; Mic. 7:1); a symbol of a people ripe for judgment
Amo. 8:3. Howl.] Songs of joy (ch. Amo. 6:5; 2Sa. 19:36) would be turned into lamentation on account of the dead. Silence] Lit. silently, not with customary rites and professional mourners; the terror of God and dread of the enemy would make them afraid to speak. An admonition to bow beneath the overwhelming severity of the judgment of God, as in Zep. 1:7 (cf. Heb. 2:18 and Zec. 2:13).
HOMILETICS
A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT.Amo. 8:1-2.
Under a new type the final subversion of the state is represented. As summer fruits portend ripe harvests, so the sins of Israel ripened them for destruction. Taking the basket of fruit as an emblem of ripeness for judgment, notice
I. A ripeness which is gradual. Nothing is matured at once. There must be seed-time before harvests; buds and flowers before fruits. Individual character is of slow growth. Seeds of national ills ripen secretly. The interval between the spring and the reaping time is defined in nature and religion.
II. A ripeness which is ruinous. Men grow in wickedness as well as in holiness; ripen for destruction as well as for salvation. Gods dealings influence according to moral condition. The sun which melts the wax hardens the clay. The dew and rain water the earth, but injure the fruit. Gods mercies and judgments ripen for glory or for shame. A condition which is spiritually rotten can produce nothing but decay and untimely end. Some people are like stubble laid out to dry in the sun and ripen for the fire. They shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.
III. A ripeness which terminates existence. The end is come upon my people. In summer nothing more is to be done but reap the crops. Good or bad, the time is come and it must be cut down. Gods dealings with Israel were completed. They had neglected to reform. Their harvest was past and their summer ended. A period comes when God no longer spares a people. The fruit must be gathered and devoured by the enemy. The days are fulfilled and the end is come (Lam. 4:18). An end is come, the end is come; it watcheth for thee; behold, it is come.
FRUIT FROM THE HEAVENLY ORCHARD
We may derive from these words the following lessons.
1. God gives fruit. The fruit of the Spirit, &c. The tree of Life that beareth all manner of precious fruit.
2. Gods fruit is ripe. It is summer fruit. The fruit of sin is sour; sweet to the taste, but bitter afterwardspleasures of sin for a season. Hence
3. Gods fruit is wholesome, like all ripe fruit, regulating and adjusting food of other sort. Christianity is a grand controlling and regulating force. The soil that grows the fruits of the Spirit cannot nourish growths of an opposite character.
4. Gods fruit is satisfying. Even ripe fruit is not long satisfying. Lawful pleasures do not bring contentment. The fruit that the soul craves grows not in earthly orchards.
5. Gods fruit is sustaining. Certain kinds of fruit will appease appetite for awhile without any sustentation. The fruit of God imparts strength that is permanent; in care, sickness, bereavement, and death.
6. Gods fruit is stimulating. It is the fruit of the vine, the true vine, yielding the best wine. It is the stimulus of waning powers; prompts to action where energies would otherwise be dormant.
7. Gods fruit is plentiful. A basket of fruit, always replenished, multiplying in the use, like the twelve baskets of fragments, &c. The basket always filled. There is no dearth in Gods orchard; no grudging in his supplies; enough for all, everywhere, at all times.
8. Gods fruit is cheap. Wine and milk, without money and without price, &c. [The Study].
A DAY OF SADNESS.Amo. 8:3
The prophet now describes the greatness of approaching judgments to rouse attention to a sense of dangeruniversal mourning and universal death would afflict the land.
1. Temple music would be turned into grief. The songs and sacred solemnities of the temple would cease. Mirthful music would end in grievous misery. Sin turns the greatest joy into the greatest heaviness, the loudest music into the bitterest howlings. If men do not sing in a day of grace, they will howl in a time of wrath. Those that will not serve God with gladness of heart, says an old author, in the abundance of all things, shall serve him in sadness of heart in the want of all things (Deu. 28:47-48).
2. Mortality would be prevalent in every place. Sin brings sword, pestilence, and famine (Eze. 14:21); sweeps away its thousands, and fills the land with lamentation and mourning. History tells of populations carried away by Divine judgments like leaves before the wind (Isa. 64:6). The picture in Israel is a type of many a fact in providence. Many deaddead in every place and buried in common pits, without customary rites. Grief could find no vent to relieve itself. The sorrow could not wear away in utterance. The burden was intolerable and the silence universal. The living and the dead were solemn as the grave. How sad that everlasting death which awaits an ungodly race!
Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow [Young].
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Amo. 8:1. A basket, &c.
1. A type of Gods goodness in nature. He gives fruit in due season, in rich abundance, &c. He never left himself without a witness (Act. 14:17).
2. A type of human diligence in co-operating with God. Beasts eat without industry. Man has to till the ground and cultivate the trees. The fruit must be gathered and the basket made. If we do not work, neither can we eat. There is a basket of fruit which is so ripe, that it has been gathered, and it is a sort of fruitsummer fruitwhich will not keep, which will not lay by until winter, but must be eaten at once. It teaches
1. That there is a ripeness in Gods purposes. God always times his decrees. In the first and second advent of Jesus Christ. In our own personal affairs God gives deliverance not in thy time, but in his. Trust him for mercy in its time, &c.
2. That nations have their ripeness, and that when they come to their ripeness they must be destroyed. Sceptics may entertain doubts concerning individual transgression and personal punishment, but history proves that national judgments have been sent from God. Take Babylon, Greece, and Rome. We as a people are guilty, and should not be proud and self-righteous.
3. That there is a ripeness of men as well as of summer fruit. With the righteous a time of ripening for heaven, a ripening in knowledge, experience, and spirituality. With the ungodly a ripening in the love of sin and hardness of heart, a ripening for eternal judgment! Take heed! Be renewed in heart and ripened for eternal glory [Spurgeon].
Amo. 8:1-2. The manner in which the truth is conveyed to the prophets mind by different representations reminds us of the course pursued towards the apostles by the Lord, and teaches that we should endeavour to answer the purpose of God, and to let the truth sink deeply into our minds, that being clearly understood it may powerfully affect us, and make us ready to impart it to others [Ryan].
First, those nearest destruction are often the most negligent and stupid. They need to be told often of their danger and roused to diligence. God warns them often and leaves them without excuse. Second, the servants of God have need to be instructed that they may warn others. Attention to the revelation must be quickened. Behold. The vision itself must be seen and explained. What seest thou? They must declare nothing but what they have received. Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me.
Meditate carefully on the object presented to view. It suggests the idea of a tree which had been planted, tended, watered with the rain and dew; it had blossomed, budded, brought forth fruit; its work was done; the fruit was gathered; no pains of the gardener, no change in the season, no influence of the sun, could now alter the character of that fruit. At previous times, when the leaves and blossom came forth, there would be room for anxiety or hope; there would afterwards be room for doubt as to its future size and goodness, according to its progress during the weeks of its growth,but now all was over. They were either apples of Sodom, or pleasant to the eye and good for food. Now was the time not to cherish their growth, but to try their quality. The end is come [Ryan].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 8
Amo. 8:1-2. God hath done more for Britain, or certainly as much, as he did for Abrahams race, and even if we have not rebelled as often as Israel in the wilderness, yet our little rebellions are great because of the greatness of Gods goodness. Oh, Christians, be in earnest that the land may be filled with grace; that the torrent of our iniquities may be dried up, lest haply that supposition of a great historian should at last become a fact, and the New Zealander should yet sit on the broken arch of London Bridge, wondering that so great a city could have passed away [Spurgeon].
Amo. 8:3. Mirth. Many a sigh is heaved amid the loud laughter of folly. Take the fullest cup of earths best joys. What is this to satisfy desire, to allay trouble, to meet eternity? Even the present end of this short-lived mirth is heaviness, sometimes so intolerable, that death is fled to as the cure of anguish; and to avoid the fear of hell the wretched sinner leaps into it. At best eternity will change this mirth, when that will remain which would be the most desirable riddancethe sting of conscience, as enduring as the pleasures of sin were momentary [Bridge].
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CAUSES OF JUDGMENT PROPHESIEDGODS LONGSUFFERING HAS EXPIRED
TEXT: Amo. 8:1-6
1
Thus the Lord Jehovah showed me: and, behold, a basket of summer fruit.
2
And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said Jehovah unto me, The end is come upon my people Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.
3
And the songs of the temple shall be wailings in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah: the dead bodies shall be many; in every place shall they cast them forth with silence.
4
Hear this, O ye that would swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to fail,
5
saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit;
6
that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and sell the refuse of the wheat?
QUERIES
a.
How does a basket of summer fruit symbolize the end of Israel?
b.
What is the meaning of casting them forth with silence?
c.
How will the ephah be made small and the shekel great?
PARAPHRASE
Then the Lord showed me a vision a basket full of ripe fruit. He asked me, What do you see, Amos? And I replied, I see a basket of summer-ripe fruit. Then the Lord God said to me, So are my people Israel ripe for destruction. I will not defer their punishment again. The songs of joy which the people sing at their riotous feasts in their temple will be turned into weeping and wailing. There will be dead bodies by the thousands where God has cast them down in many places; there will be a deathly silence as those living are overwhelmed at the terrible judgment of God. Listen to this, you who greedily plan to devour the poor mans possessions. You who sigh with impatience for the legal holidays and days of religious worship to be over and done with so you can get on with cheating the poor. You cheat and rob the poor by using short measures and raising prices; you cheat by weighing merchandise on rigged scales; you cheat by selling for grain the sweepings from the floor of your granaries. All this you do to make the poor man so poor he cannot even pay for a pair of shoes and then he is forced to become a slave to his creditors.
SUMMARY
Israel is ripe for destruction. Why? Because of her rebellion against Jehovah and His Law and all that is righteous and just. Gods judgment will terrify!
COMMENT
Amo. 8:1-2 . . . BEHOLD, A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT . . . THE END IS COME UPON MY PEOPLE . . . The prophet is given another vision, What he sees is symbolic of Israels future. He sees a basket filled with summer fruit, There can be no doubt as to what it symbolizes for God Himself has given the interpretation. Just as a basket of summer fruit indicates the reaper has gone through the vineyard and that the time for growing and developing has ended so God the reaper has passed through Israel and her time has ended (cf. Isa. 18:5; Jeremiah 24; Hos. 9:10; Joe. 3:13; Mic. 7:1; Nah. 3:12; Rev. 14:15; Rev. 14:18). The harvest is past, the summer is ended and we are not saved (Jer. 8:20), could be written over the palaces and homes of Israel! Their last opportunity has come and gone according to the vision given to Amos. Most certainly there comes a time (known only to God, of course) when Gods longsuffering runs out. His Spirit will not always strive with man (Gen. 6:3). It was revealed to Amos that this terrible moment was about to come to Israel.
Amo. 8:3 . . . THE SONGS OF THE TEMPLE SHALL BE WAILINGS IN THAT DAY . . . DEAD BODIES SHALL BE MANY . . . THEY CAST THEM FORTH WITH SILENCE, When that terrible day of the Lord shall come the songs of frivolous joy and merriment sung in their temples (plural in Israel) will be turned into howling shrieks of mourning; they will be weeping and wailing instead of laughing and singing. There will be cries of terror, fear; tears of mourning for the multitudes of dead bodies cast out in many places. Then after the first expressions of mourning there will come the awed silence born of the overwhelming severity of the judgment of God they experience (cf. Zep. 1:7; Hab. 2:20; Zech. 2:17). There will be the furtive whispers and glances as they literally feel the omnipotent wrath of God in their very presence.
Amo. 8:4-6 HEAR THIS . . . YE . . . THAT . . . SWALLOW UP THE NEEDY . . . SAYING, WHEN WILL THE NEW MOON BE GONE, THAT WE MAY SELL GRAIN . . . MAKING THE EPHAH SMALL . . . AND SELL THE REFUSE OF THE WHEAT? Israel is a nation of greedy profiteers, Swallowing up the poor. The original text pictures the rich panting after the poor man and his possessions like a wild beast pants for its victim. The greedy rich harassed the poor and literally stalked them. The rich merchants and officials could barely wait while they punctiliously performed religious holidays until they could get back to cheating the poor and powerless. As far as the rich were concerned they only went through the motions of observing religious holidays for the sake of expediency. It helped them maintain control in governmental affairs and gave them a show of being religious. That was as far as religion went in their lives. When they got to their houses of merchandise or judgment seats it was do the other man before he has a chance to do you.
The Chodesh (the new moon) was a holiday on which all trade was suspended just as it was on the Sabbath (cf. 2Ki. 4:23; Isa. 1:13; Hos. 2:13). (For regulations concerning the Sabbath day see Exo. 20:9-10).
The ephah (in dry measure) is about 3/5 of a bushel. The shekel, in Amos day, was probably a hunk of crude, shapeless precious metal, heavy enough so as to approximate the value of the item purchased in actual weight. The buyer usually weighed his money to the seller. The Jewish shekel was such a weight (shekel literally means weight). Among the Jews the shekel was used for the temple tax, poll tax, and for redemption from the priesthood (Exo. 30:11-16; Exo. 13:13; Num. 3:44-51). Most historians believe that the earliest money pieces, as such, were struck about 700 B.C. in the small kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor. So in Amos day they were probably still using shekels as weights. In Jesus day, of course, the shekel was struck in coin form and the value of a shekel then was worth about a days wages. Now we can begin to see that if the greedy merchants made the ephah basket smaller than usual and increased the weight of the shekel over what it usually was then they were robbing the poor unmercifully. Not only that but they were using scales upon which to weigh grain that were rigged. Furthermore, they were selling the chaff for wheat. The poor were being robbed so thoroughly that they did not even have enough to pay the very smallest debt (a pair of shoes). The poor debtor would either have to sell himself to his creditor (Lev. 25:39) or wait for the courts (which were also unjust) to hand him over to his creditor for enslavement.
Honeycutt says, One of the most frighteningly disturbing events upon which an individual can contemplate is the end. Whether it be the end of human existence as known in this life, the end of the cosmos as often stressed in some eschatological forecasts, or the end of an era of vitality for an institution; the end is never a pleasant topic of conversation. Consideration of its reality is intensified in its sense of dread, however, when one comes to understand that the end is not just a future event . . . Amos anticipated this when he spoke of the end as having already come upon Israel. The end of the nation had been so firmly fixed that he viewed it as already achieved. The nature of her character and her reaction to God had been such that Amos could speak of the end of Israel as a present reality.
When current political and religious structures and behaviours are examined, one often has this same feeling concerning the present reality of the end. The seeds of dissolution and destruction have been sown in both political and religious life and the end seems to be upon us now! It seems as though the end has already come!
In the case of Israel social injustice as a principle of life and conduct was cited as characteristic of a nation of whom it could be said the end has come. We firmly believe that whether it be ancient Israel embroiled in the problems of the eighth century B.C. or contemporary America, the principle is the same. Social injustice as an accepted fact of life will bring about the destruction of any society, ancient or modern, The same is true of the manifestations of superficiality in religion.
QUIZ
1.
How are we to interpret the figure of the basket of summer fruit? Why?
2.
How severe will be the judgment of God upon Israel?
3.
How were the rich cheating the poor?
4.
Could Israels destiny be a lesson for contemporary society? Why?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1, 2) The visions are resumed as though the priest at Bethel had trembled at the presence of Amos, and had ceased to persecute him. There is a remarkable play of words, qaits being the Hebrew for summer fruit, and qts for end. It is harvest time, the end of the agricultural year. Israel is ripe for his final doom, that shall sweep down like a scythe. For pass by see on Amo. 7:8.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT, Amo 8:1-3.
Under the figure of a basket filled with ripe fruit Jehovah shows the prophet that Israel is ripe for judgment. The picture is chosen (1) because of the similarity in sound between the words translated “summer fruit” Hebrews kayis and “end” Hebrews kes; (2) because of the similarity in the ideas of the two words. The opening formula is the same as in Amo 7:1; Amo 7:4.
Basket The word occurs again only in Jer 5:27 “cage”; it is a general term for any receptacle.
Summer fruit Ripe fruit, ready to be gathered in. On the question see remarks on Amo 7:8. The prophet having replied, Jehovah explains the vision.
The end is come It is close at hand; the time of mercy is past (Amo 7:8).
Amo 8:3 gives a brief and forceful description of the end. Slaughter and mourning will be everywhere. Harper, without sufficient reason, places Amo 8:3 after Amo 8:9.
Songs Expressions of joy and happiness (Amo 8:10; Amo 5:23; Amo 6:5).
Temple If this is the correct rendering the reference must be to the rejoicing accompanying the religious feasts (Amo 5:23). The word may also mean “palace” (so margin R.V.), and the context favors this rendering. If so, comparison should be made with Amo 6:4-5. The above is the common translation of the Hebrew. However, the original presents two peculiarities: (1) A literal translation is, “And the songs of the palace shall howl,” or, wail songs being the subject; but this is a strange construction. The sense is improved but little if songs is made the object, “They shall howl songs of the palace.” (2) The feminine plural ending with the word song is unusual; ordinarily it has the masculine ending. To remove these peculiarities a slight emendation has been suggested, “The female singers of the palace shall howl” (Amo 5:16), that is, for the dead.
In that day The day of the end.
Amo 8:3
Dead bodies The avenger will do his worst; death and despair will be everywhere (Amo 6:9-10).
They shall cast them forth Literally, he shall cast them forth that is, Jehovah. He strikes the blow through the human agent, and dead bodies are scattered everywhere. The construction may be intended, however, to be understood as impersonal, “one shall cast forth” they shall cast forth they shall be cast forth (G.-K., 144d) From streets and houses the dead bodies are gathered, but there is no time for honorable burial; they are thrown anywhere.
With silence Literally, hush. An interjection, as in Amo 6:10, “Hold thy peace.”
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Vision Of Approaching Judgment ( Amo 8:1-3 ).
Amo 8:1
‘ Thus the Lord YHWH showed me, and, behold, a basket of summer fruit.’
Once more we have emphasis on ‘the Lord YHWH’. The One Who was Lord over all was going about His work, and he showed Amos a basket of summer-fruit, the final harvest of the agricultural year before the rains came and the whole cycle began again.
Amo 8:2
‘And he said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then YHWH said to me, “The end is come on my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more.” ’
He then drew Amos’s attention the basket of summer fruit by asking him what he saw. And naturally Amos’s answer was, a basket of summer fruit. YHWH (note the softening of the Name when speaking to His servant) then explained the significance of the basket of summer fruit. Just as the basket of summer fruit was an indication of the end of the agricultural year, so also was it an indication in this case that His people Israel were also approaching their end. The time of harvest was near. YHWH would not pass by them any more, They were about to be brought to account. The lesson was reinforced by a play on words between ‘summer fruit’ (qayits) and ‘end’ (qets).
Amo 8:3
‘And the songs of the temple (palace) will be wailings in that day, says the Lord YHWH. The dead bodies will be many. In every place will they cast them forth with silence.”
And it would not be pleasant. The joyous songs of their temple would become wailings in that day (compare Amo 9:1). Compare how in Amo 7:9 their sanctuaries would be laid waste. All joy would have gone from their worship, for they would have nothing to rejoice about. The word also means ‘palace’ and it may therefore equally indicate that the royal house and its adherents, and the houses of the rich, would have no causes for celebration, indeed, in view of what would happen to the house of Jeroboam (Amo 7:9), and the kings who followed, and to their riches, they would be in mourning. This was the word of the Lord YHWH. And there would be an overabundance of dead bodies as many would be slain. And those who cast them, out so that they could be collected by the body-gatherers (who came into service when circumstances resulted in a profusion of deaths), would do so in awed silence, not even wailing for the dead because they would not want to draw attention to them, or to themselves. It was possible that they might be the next to suffer YHWH’s judgments. Compare for this silence in such circumstances Amo 6:10.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The Fourth Vision – The Vision Of The Basket Of Summer Fruit Indicating That Israel Were About To Be Harvested ( Amo 8:1-14 ).
In his fourth vision Amos was shown a basket of summer fruit (e.g. figs and pomegranates). This was an indication that the end was near for His people Israel (the gathering of summer fruit came at the end of the agricultural year prior to the Feast of Tabernacles, in or around September). No longer would He overlook their sins. No longer would He hold back His judgment on them. Their singing of Psalms would be turned into wailings, many would die prematurely, and there would be no mourning for the dead, for men would be fearful because it was YHWH Who would have done it (Amo 6:10). And it would all be because they had been so taken up with growing rich that they had forgotten YHWH’s requirement for compassion, and mercy towards the poor and needy, and had rather sought to squeeze them dry.
The only thing that they would therefore be able to look forward to would be trembling, and mourning, and weeping (just as they had made the poor tremble and mourn and weep), and it would appear as though the world was collapsing. Even the day would appear to be shortened. And worst of all they would have no access to those who proclaimed the word of YHWH.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The Four Visions ( Amo 7:1 to Amo 8:14 ).
In a similar way to the seven judgments in Amo 1:2 to Amo 2:5, followed by the expanded judgment on Israel, which all initially followed a similar pattern, so here Amos now recounts three visions threatening judgment on Israel, followed by a fourth which again expands into a judgment on Israel, and all four initially follow a similar pattern. All commence with ‘thus YHWH (He) showed me, and behold –’ (Amo 7:1; Amo 7:4, Amos 7: Amo 8:1), but they then divide into two distinct patterns as in the first two Amos appeals to YHWH to show mercy, and YHWH grants it and promises that He will not carry out the judgment, whereas in the remaining two YHWH asks Amos what he sees, and when Amos replies, declares what action He is going to take. These remaining two then expand into a wider application resulting from the action.
The patterns may be seen as follows:
Visions 1 & 2. The Locust Swarm and the Devouring Fire.
a
b Amos sees the judgment carried out in vision.
c The judgment comes to its completion.
b Amos intercedes on the grounds of how puny Israel is.
a YHWH repents and promises that it will not be.
Visions 3 & 4 The Plumbline and The Basket Of Summer Fruit.
a
b YHWH asks Amos what he sees.
c Amos replies by describing what he sees.
b YHWH declares what He is going to do and that He will not pass by Israel any more.
a YHWH declares doom on their sanctuaries accompanied by death.
In both cases this is then followed by an application related to what has been said.
Thus in the first two visions we have an indication of YHWH’s compassion and unwillingness totally to destroy His people, and in the second two we have an indication of the inevitability of YHWH’s determined judgments and the effects that they will have on the sanctuaries and the people.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Amo 8:1-3 The Vision of the Basket of Summer Fruit Amo 8:1-3 gives the fourth vision that the prophet received from the Lord called the Vision of the Basket of Summer Fruit.
Amo 8:4-14 Prophecy of Israel’s Certain Doom Amo 8:4-14 contains a prophecy of Israel’s certain doom.
Amo 8:5-6 Comments – Amo 8:5 describes corrupt and abuse in the market places of the nation.
“Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat” Comments – The children of Israel were eager to get past the time of celebrating the Lord of the Harvest during national holidays, and get back to their materialistic pursuits.
“making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit?” Comments – These Jewish merchants reduced the portions they sold and raised their prices, deceitfully manipulating their profits. They abused not only their own people, but those foreign merchants whom they traded with.
“ That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes ” Comments – This corruption degenerated into wealthy merchants taking pleasure in bankrupting and selling their own people into slavery and bondage.
“yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?” – Comments – Even the products they sold were of inferior quality, being sold at premium prices.
Comments – Amo 8:5-6 describes the behavior I have encountered for years in Uganda’ market places. Such behavior reflects a culture where deceit is systemically embedded within the hearts and minds of a society, so that corruption dominates the behavior of a nation.
Amo 8:7 The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.
Amo 8:7
Amo 8:7 Comments – In Amo 8:7 the Lord swears by an irrevocable oath for the third time in the book of Amos. God has earlier sworn by “His holiness” (Amo 4:2) and by “Himself” (Amo 6:8).
Amo 4:2, “The Lord GOD hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.”
Amo 6:8, “The Lord GOD hath sworn by himself, saith the LORD the God of hosts, I abhor the excellency of Jacob, and hate his palaces: therefore will I deliver up the city with all that is therein.”
He now swears “by the pride of Jacob” ( ). The phrase “pride of Jacob” is used earlier in Amo 6:8 in a negative sense as a reference to national arrogance, which the Lord abhorred. This same Hebrew phrase is used in Psa 47:4 in a positive sense to refer to the Lord’s pride in Israel as His excellent people.
Psa 47:4, “He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved. Selah.”
Interpreting the Phrase in a Positive Sense The more popular view is to interpret the phrase “by the excellency of Jacob” in a positive sense as a reference to God’s pride in His chosen people, or as an appellation, or title, for God. Stuart interprets this phrase in a positive sense, “Thus Yahweh here ‘swears by’ the ‘sworn land,’ Israel’s most precious possession Yahweh’s great gift to them.” [34] Thomas McComiskey understands this phrase as “an appellation for God,” literally meaning “Jacob’s glory,” which is the Lord. He notes the context of the book of Amos, where the other two oaths (Amo 4:2; Amo 6:8) were made using variations of His name. He also notes Hos 5:5; Hos 7:10 where God calls Himself “the Pride of Israel”. [35] Otto Schmoller give the same interpretation and says, “by himself who was the pride and glory of Israel.” [36]
[34] Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, in Word Biblical Commentary: 58 Volumes on CD-Rom, vol. 31, eds. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard and Glenn W. Barker (Dallas: Word Inc., 2002), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), comments on Amos 8:7.
[35] Thomas McComiskey, Amos, in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 7, ed. Frank E. Gaebelien, J. D. Douglas, Dick Polcyn (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Pub. House, 1976-1992), in Zondervan Reference Software, v. 2.8 [CD-ROM] (Grand Rapids, Michigan: The Zondervan Corp., 1989-2001), comments on Amos 8:7.
[36] Otto Schmoller, The Minor Prophets, Exegetically, Theologically, and Homiletically Expounded, in Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, vol. 14, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1886), 52.
Hos 5:5, “And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face: therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity; Judah also shall fall with them.”
Hos 7:10, “And the pride of Israel testifieth to his face: and they do not return to the LORD their God, nor seek him for all this.”
Most modern English verses translate the phrase, “by the pride of Jacob” ( RSV, YLT), “by the Pride of Jacob” ( NIV), or “by the excellency of Jacob” ( ASV).
Interpreting the Phrase in a Negative Sense A less popular view is to interpret the phrase “by the excellency of Jacob” in a negative sense as the arrogance of a backslidden Israel. William Harper understands this phrase in a negative sense, saying, “it is rather the vainglorious boasting of Israel.” He uses Amo 6:8 and Hos 5:5; Hos 7:10 as testimony to support his view. [37] A few modern English versions give a negative sense to this phrase as well, translating it as the Lord swearing “against the pride of Jacob” ( AB, DRC).
[37] William R. Harper, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Amos and Hosea, in The International Critical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, eds. Charles A. Briggs, Samuel R. Driver, and Alfred Plummer (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905), 179.
Amo 8:8 Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.
Amo 8:8
Amo 8:9 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day:
Amo 8:10 Amo 8:10
Amo 8:11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD:
Amo 8:11
Amo 8:12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.
Amo 8:13 Amo 8:13
Amo 8:14 They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.
The Vision of the Basket of Summer-Fruit.
v. 1. Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me, v. 2. And he said, v. 3. And the song’s of the Temple, EXPOSITION
Amo 8:1-14
5. In the fourth vision, the basket of summer fruit, the Lord shows that the people is ripe for judgment. Explaining this revelation, Amos denounces the oppression and greed of the chieftains (verses 4-10), and warns them that those who despise the Word of God shall some day suffer from a famine of the Word (verses 11-14).
Amo 8:1
A basket of summer fruit; Septuagint, , “a fowler’s vessel;” Vulgate, uncinus pomorum, which Jerome explains,” Sicut uncino rami arborum detrahuntur ad poma carpenda, ita ego proximum captivitatis tempus attraxi.” The word chelub is taken to mean “a basket of wickerwork;” it is used for “a cage” in Jer 5:27, but is found nowhere else. The gathering of fruit was the last harvest of the year, and thus fitly typified the final punishment of Israel. This is set forth by the play on the word in the next verse.
Amo 8:2
The end (kets). This is very like the word for “fruit” (kaits). Pass by (see note on Amo 7:8).
Amo 8:3
The songs of the temple; Septuagint, , “the pannels of the temple;” Vulgate, cardines templi. These versions point to a different reading. It is better rendered, “the songs of the palace,” referring to the songs of the revellers mentioned already (Amo 6:5). These shall be changed into howlings of lamentation for the dead which lie around (comp. Amo 8:10). There shall be many dead bodies. The Hebrew is more forcible: “Many the corpses: in every place he hath cast them forth. Hush!” The Lord is represented as casting dead bodies to the ground, so that death is everywhere; and the interjection “hush!” (comp. Amo 6:10) is an admonition to bend beneath the hand of an avenging God (comp. Zep 1:7). Orelli takes it as an expression of the apathy that accompanies severe and irremediable sufferingsuffering too deep for words. The Greek and Latin versions take this onomatopoetic word has! “hush!” as a substantive. Thus the Septuagint, , “I will cast upon them silence;” Vulgate, projicietur silentiuman expressive rendering, but one not supported by grammatical considerations.
Amo 8:4
The prophet, by admonishing the grandees of their iniquities, which they will not cast away, shows how ripe they are for judgment. That swallow up; better, that pant after (Amo 2:6, Amo 2:7), like a beast after its prey, eager to devour. Even to make the poor of the land to fail; and cause the meek of the land to fail. They grasp at the property of the unresisting poor, adding field to field, and impoverishing them in various ways, to root them out of the land.
Amo 8:5
When? expresses impatience and desire, as in the hymn
“Thy joys when shall I see?”
The new moon. The first day of the month was a holiday, on which all trade was suspended. It is not mentioned in Exodus, Leviticus, or Deuteronomy; but its observance is enjoined in Num 28:11, and various notices of this occur in later Scriptures; e.g. 1Sa 20:5; 2Ki 4:23; Hos 2:11; Col 2:16. These greedy sinners kept the festivals, indeed, but they grudged the time given to them, and considered it as wasted. The sabbath. Compare the difficulties with which Nehemiah had to contend in upholding the sanctity of the sabbath (Neh 10:31; Neh 13:15-22). May set forth; literally, open; so Septuagint, . The word expresses the opening of the granaries and storehouses. The ephah, by which corn was measured (see note on Mic 6:10). This they made small, and so gave lees than was paid for. The shekel. The weight by which money was weighed. This they made great, and thus gained too high a price for the quantity of corn. Coined money of determined value seems not to have been used before the return from Captivity, all payments of fixed amount previous to that period being made by weighing (comp. Gen 23:16; Gen 33:19; Gen 43:21; Exo 30:13; Isa 46:6). Falsifying the balances by deceit; better, as in the Revised Version, dealing falsely with balances of deceit. To increase their gains they falsified their scales or used fraudulent weights (see Le 19:36). Thus they cheated the poor probably in three waysby small measure, exorbitant price, and light weight.
Amo 8:6
Buy the poor for silver (comp. Amo 2:6). The probable meaning is that they so reduced the poor marl by their exactions and injustice, that he was compelled to pay his debt by selling himself into slavery (Le 25:39; Deu 15:12). For a pair of shoes. For the smallest debt they would deal in this harsh manner. The refuse; literally, that which fell through the sieve; Septuagint, , “We will trade in every kind of produce;” Vulgate, Quisquilias frumenti vendamus, “Let us sell the refuse of corn.”
Amo 8:7
Such crimes as these, which sap the very foundations of social life, shall meet with vengeance. The Excellency of Jacob. This is a title of God himself, as in Hos 5:5; Hos 7:10, where it is rendered “pride.” Thus the Lord is said to swear by his holiness (Amo 4:2), by his soul. So here he swears by himself, who is the Glory and Pride of Israel; as truly as he is this, he will punish. The Vulgate treats the sentence differently, Juravit in superbium Jacob, i.e. “The Lord hath sworn against the pride of Jacob,” against the arrogancy with which they treat the poor, and trust in their riches, and deem themselves scours. So the Septuagint, , I will never forget, so as to leave unpunished. Literally, if I forget, equivalent to a most decided denial, as Heb 4:8, Heb 4:5, etc. “Nec mirum est, si Deus jurare dicatur; quum dormientibus dormiat et vigilantibus vigilet; hisque qui sibi thesaurizaverunt iram in die irae dicatur irasci” (St. Jerome).
Amo 8:8
Shall not the land tremble for this? “This” is the coming judgment, or the oath with which God announced it in the previous verse and the prophet asks, “Shall not the land tremble as with an earthquake when the Lord comes to judgement?” The LXX; rendering , takes the reference to be to the “works” or sins of the people (Amo 8:7); but the thought in these two verses is the punishment of the transgressions, not the transgressors themselves. And it shall rise up wholly as a flood (Amo 9:5). The LXX; pointing differently, renders, , “And destruction shall come up as a river;” the Vulgate, Et ascendet quasi fluvius universus; it is best, however, to refer both clauses to the Nile: “Yea, it shall rise up wholly like the river”the land shall heave and swell like the waters of the Nile at its annual rising. And it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt; better, it shall be tossed up and sink again, like the river of Egypta picturesque comparison, which would allude to a phenomenon well known to the Israelites. It is as though the whole earth were turned into a sea, tossing and labouring under a tempestuous wind (comp. Isa 24:4).
Amo 8:9
I will cause the sun to go down at noon. This is probably to be taken metaphorically of a sudden calamity occurring in the very height of seeming prosperity, such as the fate of Israel in Pekah’s time, and Pekah’s own murder (2Ki 15:29, 2Ki 15:30; see also 2Ki 17:1-6). A like metaphor is common enough; e.g. Joe 2:2 : Joe 3:15; Mic 3:6; Job 5:14; Isa 13:10; Jer 15:9. Hind calculates that there were two solar eclipses visible in Palestine in Amos’s time, viz. June 15, B.C. 763, and February 9, B.C. 784. Some have suggested that the prophet here predicts the latter in the year of Jeroboam’s death; but this, it is discovered, would have been so partial as hardly to be noticeable at Samaria. And it is improbable that such natural phenomena, unconnected with God’s moral government, should be the subject of the prophet’s prediction (Pusey). Doubtless a sudden reverse is signified (comp. Mat 24:29, etc.), expressed in terms rendered particularly appropriate by some late and well remembered eclipse. The Fathers note here how the earth was darkened at the Passion of our Lord.
Amo 8:10
I will turn your feasts into mourning, etc. (comp. Amo 8:3 : Amo 5:16, Amo 5:17; Lam 5:15; Hos 2:11; Tobit 2:6). Sackcloth. A token of mourning (1Ki 20:31; Isa 15:3; Joe 1:8, Joe 1:13). Baldness. On shaving the head as a sign of mourning, see note on Mic 1:16; and comp. Job 1:20; Isa 3:24; Jer 16:6; Jer 47:5; Eze 7:18). I will make it; Ponam eam (Vulgate); sc. terram. But it is better to take it to refer to the whole state of things mentioned before. The mourning for an only son was proverbially severe, like that of the widow of Nain (Luk 7:12, etc.; comp. Jer 6:26; Zec 12:10). And the end thereof as a bitter day. The calamity should not wear itself out; it should be bitter unto the end. Septuagint, , “I will make those with him as a day of anguish.”
Amo 8:11
This shall be the bitterness at the end; they had rejected the warnings of the prophets (Amo 7:12, etc.); now the Word of God and the light of his teaching should fail them. Famine. When the light of God’s revelation is withdrawn, their longing for the Word, however sore and great, shall remain unsatisfied, like that of Saul (1Sa 28:6). They may grieve like the psalmist, “We see not our signs; there is no more any prophet; neither is there among us any that knoweth how long” (Psa 74:9); but it will be in vain (see a similar punishment threatened, Lam 2:9; Eze 7:26; Mic 3:7).
Amo 8:12
They shall wander; literally, they shall reel. The verse implies the eagerness of their unsatisfied desire, which seeks everywhere for the revelation which for their sin is denied them. From sea to sea. This expression is taken, by Keil and others, to mean here “all the world over,” as Psa 72:8; Mic 7:12; Zec 9:10; but it is probably used by the prophet in a more restricted sense, as it would not be natural for him to refer in the first place to the seeking of the words of God beyond the limits of the Holy Land. Therefore “from sea to sea” means from the Sea of Galilee or the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean; and from the north even to the eastfrom the north round again to the east, the south not being mentioned, because there alone was the true worship of God to be found, and they refused to seek it there (Pusey). Of course, according to the wide scope taken by prophecy, which is not exhausted by one fulfilment, we may see hero the fate of the Jews to the present time hopelessly seeking Messiah and the Word of God, never finding that which they once recklessly rejected. By some error the LXX. render, ..; unless they mean, “They shall be tossed as waters,” etc.
Amo 8:13
This verse is parallel to the preceding. The thirst, spiritual and physical, shall affect the fair virgins and young menthose in all the freshness, beauty, and vigour of youth. Shall faint; literally, shall be veiled, covered, expressive of the feeling of faintness, when the sight grows dim and a mantle of darkness drops over one (Jon 4:8). If the strongest thus fail, much more will the rest succumb to the threatened calamity.
Amo 8:14
They who trusted in idols shall find no help in them. They who swear by. Those who reverence and worship, as Deu 6:13; Deu 10:20. The sin of Samaria. The golden calf at Bethel (comp. Deu 9:21; Hos 8:5, Hos 8:6). Septuagint, , “by the propitiation of Samaria.” Thy god, O Dan, liveth; i.e. as thy god liveth, by the life of thy god. This was the other calf erected at Dan, near the source of the Jordan, in the extreme north (1Ki 12:29). The manner of Beersheba liveth; Septuagint, , “Thy god, O Beersheba, lives.” Some commentators, ancient and modem, think that the actual road which led to Beersheba is here meant, and would translate, “As the way to Beersheba liveth,” “By the life of the way to Beersheba,” as Mohammedans swear by the pilgrimage to Mecca. But it is best to take the word rendered “manner” in the sense of “way,” as is used in Acts (Act 9:2; Act 19:9, Act 19:23) for mode of worship, or form of religion, the ritual, or use of the service there. (For Beersheba, see note on Amo 5:5.) From Dan to Beersheba is just a hundred and forty-four miles. They shall fall, etc. This was partially fulfilled by the destruction of the kingdom of Israel and the deportation of its inhabitants; and its truth to this day is demonstrated by the fate of the Jews who will not receive Jesus as the promised Messiah.
HOMILETICS
Amo 8:1-3
A nation ripe for ruin.
While immunity lasts iniquity will go on. Men only love it less than they fear suffering. In the actual presence of the penalty the hand of the transgressor is stayed. The murderer will not strike the death blow under a policeman’s eye. The blasphemer will not move a lip when the thunderbolt is crashing through his roof. But by so little does the one feeling master the other that if punishment be not both certain and at hand, the fear of it will fail to deter from sin. “My lord delayeth his coming.” Let escape be out of the question, yet even the chance of respite will turn the scale in favour of doing the forbidden thing. Israel, sentenced and to be destroyed some time, sinned with a high hand. Israel, sentenced to be destroyed soon, yet sinned still. Perhaps Israel, sentenced to be destroyed at once, may be brought to bay. Here God tries the experiment.
I. THERE IS A TIME WHEN THE VINE OF SODOM RIPENS ITS FRUIT. Sin has its day. It disturbs the harmony of things, and when derangement reaches a climax a catastrophe comes, and arrests the process with a “thus far and no further.” Israel’s wicked course had reached this critical point.
1. Idolatry, the archetypal sin against the first table, had practically superseded the worship of God. It was the religion of the king, and court and people. It was established and endowed, by the state. Its rites were observed at Bethel and elsewhere, in profane mimicry of the Levitical worship at Jerusalem. The substitution of it for the worship of Jehovah was part of the royal policy. Short of this the national apostasy could go no further. Interference, if it would be in time to save anything, must take place at once.
2. Oppression, the archetypal sin against the second table, had reduced society to dissolution. The safeguards of property, liberty, and life were alike removed (Amo 3:9, Amo 3:10; Amo 5:7, Amo 5:12; Amo 6:3). The order of society had been converted into chaos. Incapable of using liberty without perverting it into licorice, it was high time to deprive Israel of the grossly abused trust. As slaves they would be under a regime of the strong arm, which was the only one that suited them in present circumstances. There are chains forging somewhere for the man who can neither consider others nor rule himself.
II. SUCH RIPENING FOREBODES AN EARLY GATHERING. (Amo 8:2. “The end is come upon my people of Israel.”) The sickle is put in as soon as the harvest is ripe. No practical husbandry could delay the operation longer.
1. The crop has then reached the limits of its growth. Like the corn ripe unto harvest, or the grape purple and mellow, the natural life of Israel had fully developed itself. Tastes were matured, habits acquired, and characters settled into crystalline form. Things generally had put on an aspect of finality, and the sickle of judgment that follows the ripening of character need no longer wait. Let the ripe sinner beware the scythe. The fruits of unrighteousness full grown are suggestive of the harvesters on their way.
2. It is then ready to serve its natural purpose. Green grapes are useless in the vat, and green faggots would only put out the fire. It is in the harvest, when both are mature, that the wheat and the tares alike are sent to their ultimate destination. One purpose, a high and noble one, Israel had at last proved their unfitness to serve; their exclusive fitness for another purpose had only now by the same events become apparent. Reward and punishment alike take typical form only when they have reference to lives and characters which have assumed an aspect of finality. The hard grain and the dry faggot are waiting respectively for the mill and for the fire.
3. After this it will be in the way of the next crop. When the reaper goes the ploughman comes. If the harvesting were neglected the ploughing must be postponed. Israel had failed utterly to accomplish its Divine mission, and, left longer alone, would only prevent its accomplishment by other agency. “Take the talent from him, and give it to him that hath ten talents.” The unfruitful become in a little while cumberers of the ground, and a necessary measure of practical husbandry is then to cut them off.
4. At this stage it will begin naturally to decay. Overripe fruit will “go bad “at once. If not used or preserved when ripe, it will be lost altogether. National decline waits on the development of national corruption. Israel become utterly dissolute would go to pieces according to a natural law, even if the Assyrian never came. Indeed, it was in the degeneracy already apparent that the invader saw his opportunity and found the occasion of his coming. The disease that stops the career of the sensualist means God’s judgment on one side, and the natural breakdown of his constitution on the other.
III. THE DUNGHILL IS THE DESTINATION OF ALL TAINTED PRODUCE. (Amo 8:3.) The incorrigible wrong doer is involved at last in overwhelming calamity. God’s judgments must fall, his mercy notwithstanding. Indeed, they are an aspect of it. “A God all mercy is a God unjust.” He is leaving the lion to prey on the lamb. The most merciful course is that which offers most effective opposition to the wicked doings of wicked men. Israel’s manners are past reforming, and past enduring. By their intolerable abuse of freedom they showed their fitness only to be slaves. And according to character and capacity they must be treated. What is bad for the table may be good for the dunghill. The life of many had become a curse, and it only remained to stop that, and make their death a warning. That is one crop which even the sluggard’s garden cannot refuse to bear (Pro 24:30-32).
IV. THE OCCASION OF SUCH A HARVEST HOME TOO DEPLORABLE FOR WORDS. (Amo 8:3, “Hush!”) When judgment is overwhelming, silence is fitting.
1. As opposed to songs. These had resounded from the palace. They spoke of mirth and revelry. But they would be turned into yells ere long. In awestruck anticipation of the utterance of pain and horror, the prophet bids the revellers be silent.
2. As opposed to lamentations. You cannot always “give sorrow words.” There is a grief that “speaks not”the grief of the overwrought heart. “I was dumb, opening not the mouth, because this stroke was thine.” Such grief would befit a time like this. Words, however strong, must be beneath the occasion. Let them then remain unspoken, and let the eloquence of silence meet the overwhelming severity of the visitation.
3. As opposed to reproaches. Israel had outlived the period of probation, and therefore of expostulation. Its “great transgression” was committed, its course unchangeably chosen, its doom sealed. The condemned and sentenced murderer is removed to his cell in silence. In sterner measures than abuse of words must his crime be expiated. His very life is to be exacted, and windy denunciation may well be spared. “Let him alone” is of all measures the most sternly significant. It is the preternatural hush of the elemental world, presaging the thunder crash that shall make the very earth to reel.
Amo 8:4-6
The covetous man’s way.
Punishment, however stern, is proportioned rigidly to sin. They answer to each other as face to face. From the contemplation of Israel’s deplorable fate we turn to the horrors of her crime. And they are dark beyond exaggerating. To idolatry, dethroning God and robbing him of his glory, is added covetousness defrauding and destroying men. Indeed, the one is but a department of the other. The worst type of mammon worshipper, the covetous, is an idolater in a very real sense. And Israel’s covetousness, detached as it was from all religious restraints, and operating in a purely heathen connection, was of the most aggravated and repulsive kind. Acting in character, observe that
I. IT SELECTS AN EASY PREY. (Amo 8:4, “the poor; the meek.”)
1. The poor cannot defend themselves. Their poverty makes them helpless, and the weakness which ought to commend them to protection commends them to plunder. Covetousness, the meanest of the vices in any circumstances, goes down to the nadir of paltriness when it wrings its gold “from the hard hands” of the poor.
2. The meek will not resist. Their position and disposition are both against it. They would “rather suffer wrong.” And they get enough of it to suffer. Weak on one hand, and unresisting on the other, they are a doubly tempting prey to the pitiless vulture’s beak.
II. IT HAS MURDER IS ITS HEART. “Gape to destroy,” as the beast of prey its victim at hand. There is a covetousness that puts its own paltriest gain above another’s life. It will have men’s money although their life should pay the forfeit. This is the very spirit of murder. To make money, at the necessary cost of human life, is to break the sixth commandment as well as the eighth.
III. IT HANKERS AFTER SUNDAY TRADING. (Amo 8:5, “When is the new moon over,” etc.?) These people retained the form of sabbath observance, but the reality had been altogether abandoned. They occupied its sacred hours with wishes that they were over. “Sabbath days and sabbath work are a burden to carnal hearts” (Henry). The hours drag heavily. Time-killing devices are exhausted. “Behold, what a weariness it is!” is the verdict on God’s day, given weekly through all their years. “When shall I come add appear before God?” a question that the spiritually minded ask, is one which the carnally minded cannot even understand. They are making markets mentally in the very house of God, and, with the words of worship on their lips, “their heart goes after covetousness.” From Sunday devising to Sunday transacting of business the step is but a small onetoo small not to be taken when opportunity and temptation meet.
IV. IT PRACTICES UNFAIR DEALING. (Amo 8:5, Amo 8:6.) As they fear not God, neither do they regard man. When religion is abandoned, morality is undermined. Given arced present, and religious restraint absent, and dishonest dealing is inevitable.
1. One device is the use of a false balance. “Make the ephah small, and the shekel great,” i.e. give thirteen pounds to the stone, and charge twenty-one shillings to the pound. They perpetrate thus a double swindle, robbing “with both hands earnestly.” Such fraud is too unscientific and direct for any but the coarser cheats. There are more delicate ways of fraudulent dealing, which the more refined rogues affect. Such a method is:
2. Selling an adulterated or inferior article. “The refuse of the corn we will sell” (Amo 8:6). This is probably the commonest form of commercial fraud. There are few who possess the strength of moral fibre to avoid it entirely. We might arrange it on a graduated scale. At one end is the man who bluntly sells one thing under the name of another. At the other end is the man who, in selling, insinuates the impression that the thing is of better quality than it really is. Between these two are dishonest artifices of all varieties and shades. All, however, originate in covetousness, eventuate in injustice, and deserve the generic name of fraud.
V. IT TRAFFICS IN HUMAN LIFE, AND THAT FOR A CONTEMPTIBLE PRICE. (Amo 8:6.) The law, compelling the poor to sell themselves to their creditors to work for what they owed, was enforced in the case of the paltriest debts, and the needy might be brought into bondage for want of the price of even a pair of shoes. To work such hardship on such trifling occasion argues inhumanity too gross to be long endured. The worker has inverted the natural order, has lost out the sense of reverence, is blind to the dignity of human nature, and has conclusively shown that he is an eyesore, and his life a curse, to the society in which he lives. His selfishness puts the least interest of his own above the most essential interest of others. His greed of gain has so intensified that he is blind at last to all other considerations. He has fallen altogether beneath the human level, and when a man has done this, the chances are that he has lived his day. Well may we pray, “Incline my heart to thy testimonies, and not to covetousness.”
Amo 8:7
Confirming by an oath.
God’s judgments sometimes take, and will continue to take, the wicked by surprise (Mat 24:36-39). But this need not be, and should not be, and can be only where blindness, or heedlessness, or incredulity make warning useless. God always warns before he strikes. Sometimes he warns by divers methods at once. Often he warns again and again. Invariably he warns with a solemnity that makes disbelief a crime and stupid. Here is a case in point.
I. THE OATH THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN. “God is not a man, that he should lie.” To do so would be a natural impossibility, a contradiction of himself. For the same reason his truthfulness can have no degrees; his slightest word is absolutely inviolable. Yet to human apprehension an oath is peculiarly convincing, and, accommodating himself to men’s weakness, God condescends, on peculiarly, solemn occasions, not merely to say, but swear. Here he swears:
1. By himself. “The Pride of Jacob” is Jehovah himself. Elsewhere explicitly God swears by “himself” (Jer 51:14), by his “great Name” (Jer 44:26), by his “holiness” (Amo 4:2), by his “life” (Eze 33:11). This is of necessity. Men “swear by the greater.” God, “because he can swear by no greater, swears by himself” (Heb 6:17, Heb 6:13). In this form of oath the greatest Being is invoked, and so the maximum of solemnity is reached, whether it is God who swears or man.
2. By himself in his ideal relation to Israel. “By the Pride of Jacob” Israel, alas! did not “glory in the Lord.” They gloried in their idols. “These be thy gods, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt,” they had said, in their blind fatuity, of the molten calf. God had been forgotten and his wonders ignored before they were many days accomplished, and in this forgetfulness they had persistently gone on. Yet was he none the less their Glory still, the Strength of Israel, their Light and Life, the Founder, Builder, Sustainer, of their kingdom, the one Source and Spring of all that made them great, This fundamental relation he emphasizes here in vowing vengeance on their sin. By this character, as their Life and Strength and Excellence, he swears he will now degrade and destroy them utterly. The nearer God’s tie to the rebels, the greaser outrage is their rebellion, and the more embittered the after relations. It is on the ruins of violated friendship that the most irreconcilable enmity arises. Not even the heathen is as hateful, or doomed to a fate as direful, as the apostate.
II. THE RECORD THAT CANNOT BE ERASED. “I will not forget and forever.” To forget is to forgive, put out of sight, treat as non-existent. “I will remember their iniquities no more.” Sin unatoned for cannot be forgiven. God must be just in his justifying, and justice demands satisfaction. From the provided satisfaction the unbelieving sinner has turned away, and so from the grace of his own salvation. Neither can sin unforsaken. The sinner is in actual conflict with God, and the rebel may not he forgiven with arms in his hands. Neither can sin unrelated of. Still loving sin, the impenitent is not in a moral condition to appreciate pardon, and the gift of God is not to be thrown away. By such a threefold cord was Israel bound to inevitable destruction.
III. THE WORKS THAT CANNOT BE FORGOTTEN. There are sins more heinous, and for the authors of which it will be less tolerable in the judgment than for others (Mat 11:22).
1. Such are the sins committed against the poor and needy. “God hath chosen the poor of this world” Their poverty presents the minimum of resistance to his grace. Their hardships excite his special pity. Their helplessness commends them to his special protection. He gives them the most prominent place in his religion. He champions them against their enemies. He requires his people to do the same. He identifies himself with them in the judgment, and he deals with men then in terms of their relation to the duties they owe the needy (Mat 25:35-45). While God is “the Avenger of all such,” oppression of the poor shall not go unpunished.
2. Such especially are the sins committed against the poor by those who bear his Name. The clement of beneficence bulked large in Judaism. Besides the general injunctions to regard the poor (Deu 15:7-11), there were special enactments allocating to them a poor tithe (Deu 14:28, Deu 14:29), the spontaneous produce of the soil (Le 25:5), the droppings from the sheaves, and the produce of the corners of the fields (Le 19:9, 10; 23:22), also sheaves accidentally dropped (Deu 24:19), as much from vineyard or field as the hungry wayfarer required to eat on the spot (Deu 23:24, Deu 23:25), and periodical entertainments at the tables of the rich (Deu 16:10, Deu 16:11). Thus nothing could be more utterly antagonistic to the genius of the Jewish religion than to rob or oppress the poor. The Israelite guilty of it sinned against Scripture, against custom, against education, against every deterrent powerful with men and increasing guilt before God. Christianity, too, is essentially benevolent. To “love one another,” and “do good unto all,” is the very spirit and essence of the religion of Christ. Injustice or oppression under Christian auspices is sin in its most abominable and heinous form.
Amo 8:8-10
Carried away as with a flood.
A man in earnest is always graphic. If he be also inspired he can afford to be explicit. In this passage Amos is both. The words were spoken before the convulsions they foretell, and written after some of them had occurred. But the descriptions of events, transpired between the speaking and the writing, have no flavour of an ex post facto deliverance. There is a bare record of the original verbal utterance without the attempt to write into any part of it details of what meantime had become history. Such an apologetic device, suicidal in any case, is a thing to which a man who is God’s mouthpiece could not and needs not stoop.
I. THE EARTH TREMBLING WHEN GOD SWEARS. “For this” (verse 8), i.e. the oath of God, and its purport. That oath means a catastrophe on the way in the shock of which the earth would tremble. The very utterance of it was a cause of trembling. “He uttered his voice, the earth melted.” His word is a word of power. It operates in the physical forces, and shakes the whole frame of nature. In the poetic language of the psalmist, “the voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars,” “shaketh the wilderness,” “divideth the flames of fire.” In the world of matter, as in the world of spirit, the great ultimate force is the word of God.
II. THE CREATION SUFFERING IN THE SUFFERINGS OF MEN. Man sins, and the earth is smitten. It was so at first with the ground. It was so at the Deluge with the lower animals and plants. It is so here. The universe is one throughout, and all its parts are in closest connection and interdependence. “Not a leaf rotting on the highway but is an indissoluble part of solar and stellar worlds” (Carlyle). Our life, our animal spirits, our reason itself, have fundamental and probably undiscovered relations with the sun and moon and stars. Relations so intimate may be assumed to be mutual, and we need not be surprised if we find casualties meant primarily for either extending to both.
III. GOD‘S JUDGMENTS, LONG MENACED, TAKE THE INCREDULOUS BY SURPRISE AT LAST. (Verse 9.) The antediluvians were no better prepared for the Flood by their hundred and twenty years’ warning. They absorbed themselves in their work and pleasure, and knew not till the Flood came (Mat 24:38). So with the Sodomites, warned by Lot (Gen 19:14); and the inhabitants of Jerusalem at its capture, warned by Christ (Mat 24:33). Warning is thrown away on unbelief, and its end is always a surprise. In this case the sun would set at noon. The end would come untimely. In the midst of days and prosperity Israel would be cut off. There would be no anticipation, no fear, no suspicion even, of such an event. So with the ungodly at last. The judgment will surprise them and look untimely, but only because their incredulity will be unconquerable.
IV. RETRIBUTION CLOSELY ADJUSTED TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CRIMINAL. (Verse 10.) Sinners are smitten in their joys. The covetous in their possessions, the luxurious in their luxuries, the revellers in their revelries. When sackcloth and ashes are substituted for “ivory couches,” and baldness for hair fragrant with the chief ointments, when howls rend the throats till lately melodious in song, the stroke is identified as that of One who never “beats the air.” The fly of judgment, selecting infallibly the sore spot of the sufferer, reveals its mission as from God himself. The joys in which the sinner is smitten are, moreover, those most closely connected with his sins. God’s stroke is as obviously righteous as appropriate. Falling on the sins that provoke them, God’s judgments are self-interpreting. Israel’s luxurious appliances were simply plunder, the wages of iniquity, sometimes even the price of blood. Hence God singles them out for special attack, and will plague Israel rigorously in every pleasure that has its root in sin.
V. THE FINALITY OF GOD‘S RETRIBUTIVE ACT. The rule is that judgment is more severe in proportion as it is long delayed.
1. It makes an end. The sun goes down, and ends the day of life. After that nothing can come but nightthe night of death. Destruction for sinners of Israel, destruction for all such sinners while the world stands, is the Divine provision. When the last measure of retribution is executed, the last shred of the sinner’s good has been torn away.
2. That end unspeakably bitter. The wine cup of God’s fury is necessarily a bitter draught. There is wounded dignity in it, and wasted mercy, and outraged love, and all ingredients which are gall and wormwood in the mouth. They are digging for themselves Marah pools no branch can sweeten, who “heap up wrath against the day of wrath,” etc.
3. That bitterness the bitterness of utter desolation. “And make it like mourning for an only one.” That is bitter mourning indeed. The loss of an only one is total loss, including our all. It is irreparable loss, for the dead cannot come back. It is loss not physical merely, nor sentimental merely, but loss wringing the heart strings, and leaving us with the very jewel of life torn from its setting. Such is the mourning in which unforgiven sin is expiated at last. It is heart agony, unrelieved, unmitigated, and never to end. “Son, remember;” “There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth;” “Their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched.”
Amo 8:9
A sunset at noon.
This language is at once prophetic and figurative. It predicts an event in the moral world under the figure of an analogous event in the physical world. The symbolical event is not an eclipse of the sun, which the language does not suit, but his going down at midday; and the event symbolized is clearly death in the midst of young life. Israel was rich and prosperous and young. To all outward seeming she was just in the meridian of her life. But her sun would never reach the west. Her end would be premature, sudden, and tragic. As if the sun dropped in an instant beneath the horizon from mid-sky, and the radiancy of noon gave place in that instant to the darkness of night; so Israel’s day would darken suddenly, and the night of death fall in a sky all lit with the golden glow of noon.
I. THERE IS TO MEN A NATURAL TERM OF EXISTENCE, WHICH IS THEIR DAY. There is a natural life term to all earthly creatures. This varies endlessly for each, between limits so far apart as a millennium and a day. There are cheloniae that lengthen out their slow existence to centuries, and there are insects that sport out their little life in an afternoon. Intermediate between these widely distant limits is man with his three score years and ten (Psa 90:10). This period is his day. Beyond it few may hope, and none expect, to live. To reach it even there must be normal conditions of life within and around. This is not a long time at best, Let the utmost diligence be used, and the work that can be done in it is not much. Take from it the two childhoods, infancy and infirm age, and it becomes greatly shorter still. Not more than fifty active years enter into the longest life. On the most sanguine assumption these are the working hours of our day of life. What we do for God and men is done while they pass. They may not be so many, but they can scarcely be more, and if they are all given us we may thankfully reckon that we have lived our time.
II. THERE ARE EXCEPTIONAL OASES IN WHICH THIS PERIOD IS CUT SHORT. The normal life term is not the actual one. The overwhelming majority never see it. When the septuagenarian has his birthday feast, the friends of his youth are not one in ten among the guests. From childhood till that hour they have been dropping off, and now nine-tenths and more are gone.
1. A moiety of the race die in childhood. Infant mortality is an obscure subject. Whether from the standpoint of equity or economy, there is much in it we cannot explain. Their death before they have transgressed brings up the solemn mystery of original sin, and the suffering of one for the sin of another (Rom 5:14). Then their death before activity begins or consciousness dawns, and so apparently before they have been used, raises the almost equally perplexing questionIs there, so far as this life goes, a single human being made in vain?
2. Many more die before or at maturity. They are healthy till growth is almost complete. The body has acquired the strength and hardness needed for the burden of life’s work. The mind has received the training which fits it to solve the problems of existence, and govern and use the body in accomplishing the highest purposes of both. Yet just now, when the tool has been formed and tempered and finished, it is broken before it has once been used at its best in the more serious work of life. Here we are face to face not only with an apparently purposeless creation, but also with what seems an unproductive training.
3. Many also die with their work to all appearance unfinished, or only well begun. Their capacity is growing; their field is widening; their influence is increasing. They are in the full swing of activity and usefulness. Yet at the very moment when the richest fruit of their life work is beginning to form, they are cut downcut down, too, where their death leaves a permanent blank, and no one is available to take up their work. Their mysterious character and solemn interest prepare a field for faith in the fact that
III. THESE SUNSETS AT NOON ARE DIVINELY ORDERED. “I will cause,” etc. To kill and to make alive are Divine prerogatives. Let the sun set where he will, the event is God’s doing. And, in the light of Scripture and observation, a philosophy of such events is not altogether impossible to conceive.
1. Take noon sunsets in sin. These are often untimely and far from unaccountable.
(1) Sin is war against God; and while he is omnipotent and righteous and the Disposer of life, it cannot conduce to length of days. The wickedness of men is a continual provocation of his just judgment, and therefore an inevitable shortener of life.
(2) Sin is also war against the species. The wicked are hateful and hating one another. The essential selfishness of the corrupt heart is misanthropy in another aspect. Misanthropy, again, is murder in its earlier stage (1Jn 3:15), leading on to the other stages of it (Jas 4:1, Jas 4:2); and a dispensation of universal murder must mean many a life cut short and many a sun untimely set.
(3) Sin does violence to our cure nature The normal life of the body is a pure one; the direction of appetites only to their legitimate objects, and to these in the strictest moderation. This is obviously the royal road to health and length of days. Perversion of appetite on the one hand, and excessive indulgence of it on the other, do violence to the natural order. If the life is impure, in fact, and as it is impure, it is unnatural, and therefore likely to be short. There is no “fleshly lust” which does not “war against the life” (1Pe 2:11) of soul and body both. Of course, the operation of second causes, such as the laws of reciprocity and health, is not something distinct from the Divine agency, but the instrumentality it employs. The laws of nature are simply God’s executive, the hands and fingers which weave the threads of his purpose into the web of his work.
2. Take noon sunsets in grace. These also are not unknown. The good die young. Sometimes they die through the sin of others, sometimes in consequence of sin of their own. These, however, are the occasions only of their removal. The reason of it lies deep in the purposes of God.
(1) Some are taken away from the evil to come. (Isa 57:1.) The young Ahijah, “because in him was found some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam” was carried peacefully to his rest before the failing of the provoked disaster (1Ki 14:10-14). The good King Josiah also, because he the previous removal of some gentle spirit from their circle becomes intelligible as a merciful folding of the tender lamb before the crash of the nearing storm.
(2) Some are taken away because their work, although apparently only beginning, is really done. Not every man’s life work can be identified, during its progress, by either his cotemporaries or himself. Sometimes it is incidental, aside from his line of effort, and altogether unconscious. A child lives to awake by its endearing ways a parent’s sleeping heart. A youth lives by the tokens of early grace to bring brothers and sisters to look at the unseen, and the life for God. A man lives to carry some movement over its crisis, which, in its after stages, will require a different hand. If we only knew “the end of the Lord” (Jas 5:11), we should see that it is always attained before the means are discontinued; that he never breaks a tool till its work is done.
(3) Some can only do their work by dying. The errand of Bathsheba’s first child into the world was by its death to bring David to his knees and a right mind (2Sa 12:18-23). And how many an early death in a careless family has been that family’s salvation! Even the minister cut down in his early prime, with a life of usefulness opening out, as it seems, before him, may preach a sermon by his death mere potent for good than all he could have said alive. Untimely death may even in certain cases anticipate the loss of influence for good. We know men of influence in the Church who in their erratic age are undoing the good they were honoured to do in their earlier years. Such men have only lived too long. If their sun had set at noon their life work would have been far greater, humanly speaking, than it will now be. Looking as we do at the surface of things, and blind to their deeper relations and far-reaching issues, we are not in a position to criticize the providential arrangements of God. To believe that there is order in the seeming tangle, and ultimate and wider good behind the present partial evil, is the attitude of that enlightened faith which argues that Infinite Wisdom, omnipotent on the one hand and benevolent on the other, being at the helm of things, will steer in character.
Amo 8:11-14
The scarcity that swallows the residue of good.
To waste is to want, in things temporal and spiritual alike. Abuse is inevitably followed by deprivation, and the prodigal is one who is purveying for himself a suit of rags. God caps our “will not” with his “shall not,” and the rude hand of change soon spills the cup of good we have refused to taste. Under the operation of this law the nation of Israel would now come. They had wasted the Word of God, neglecting it, despising it, and at last forbidding it to be spoken. Now they should “want” it as a penal result. It would, be taken from them in anger, and that at a time when even their inappreciation would long for it as for life itself. Observe here
I. THE WORST OF ALL FAMINES. “Not a hungering for bread, nor a thirst for water, but to hear the words of Jehovah.” This is a new form of disaster, and one that is specially severe. This follows from the fact that:
1. It is in the spiritual sphere. “Fear not them which kill the body.” It is the least part of us. Whether it live or die, enjoy or suffer, is a question involving trivial interests, and these during a limited period. The soul is the man, and its well being, next to God’s glory, the great interest. For its injury there is no compensation, for its loss no parallel. When it suffers, the worst has happened.
2. It is due to the loss of a necessary of spiritual life. The deepest need of humanity is a communication from God. “This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God,” etc. Hence the Word which God speaks is the Word of life. Apart from it spiritual life is impossible.
(1) It is the revelation of spiritual things. God and his will and way; the soul, its duty and destiny,are subjects on which it alone throws adequate light. The light of nature makes known the existence of God, and some features of his character. But its twilight, whilst touching here and there a mountain top, leaves all the valleys in darkness. After trying four thousand years, “the world by wisdom knew not God,” and did not because it could not. In all saving relations Christ is the Revelation of the Father (Heb 1:1; Joh 1:18), and Scripture alone reveals Christ (Joh 5:39), and the way of life through him.
(2) It is the vehicle of spiritual power. “The power of God unto salvation” is Paul’s synonym for the gospel. Spiritual energy, no doubt, inheres in the Holy Spirit, but he operates only through or with the truth It carries the power by which life is given (1Pe 1:23), by which life functions are discharged (Rom 10:17), by which the life principle is sustained (Jer 15:16), by which growth is promoted (1Pe 2:2). In fine, the “engrafted Word,” received with meekness, “is able to save our souls,” The power that begins, that sustains, that develops, that matures religious life is a power linked inseparably to the Word. That any saving grace is attainable in the absence of it is a thing impossible of proof, and which all Scripture testimony bears against.
(3) It is the assurance of spiritual good. “We are saved by hope,” and it is through patience and comfort of the Scriptures that this heavenly candle is lighted in the soul (Rom 8:24; Rom 15:4). The Scriptures reveal the heavenly blessings in store, and thus supply the warp and woof out of which the web of comfort is woven. What we shall have, and that we shall have it, is the burden of the Word of promise, which, making the rich future sure, makes thus the present glad and strong. Poor indeed would man be if there were no such word to twine the heart’s ease when his brow is wrung in anguish and distress. To Israel, sinful but penitent, God elsewhere, allotting the bread of adversity, promises, “Thine eyes shall see thy teachers,” etc. (Isa 30:20, Isa 30:21). This is calamity, but with compensation. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh out of the mouth of God;” and with God, their Guide and Counsellor, no scarcity of bread could make them altogether wretched. But, vice versa, the proposition will not hold. For the loss of the Word there is no offset possible. The impoverishment is central and radical, and all hedging is out of the question.
3. This loss at a time when it would be most keenly felt. “The Word of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision.” The mere fact of the sudden withdrawal of the Word would create an immediate demand for it. In this case the demand would rest on a practical necessity. “Crushed by oppressors, hearing only of gods more cruel than those who make them, how will they hunger and thirst for any tidings of One who cares for the weary and heavy laden?” (Maurice).
II. THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT PROVOKE IT. The unique rigour of the penalty suggests some special circumstances in the provoking crime. One of these would be:
1. Extreme heinousness. “There is a sin unto death.” It will never be forsaken. It precludes the idea of penitence. It involves the perversion, or rather inversion, of character, which “calls evil good, and good evil.” There is nothing for it but the extreme penalty of being let alone. And even that will be inflicted. Saul had provoked it when “God answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.” Israel had provoked it when God said to his servant, “Thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be to them a reprover” (Eze 3:26; Eze 7:26). When a man sins on principle, he is not far off “a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.”
2. Failure of other judgments to turn. “Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more.” Other judgments bad been for reformation and had failed; this would be for destructionthe only alternative left. When “cure” is out of the question, what else is to be done but “kill”?
3. Chafing under and rejecting the Word itself. Israel had heard more of the words of the Lord than they wished. They had made an effort to get rid of them, or some of them, by forbidding his prophets to speak his message. More of the Word to men in that mind would have been thrown away, and God never wastes his gifts. If we shut our eyes, he will take away the light. If we close our ears, “the voice of the charmer” will soon be silent. The men who will not have the words of the Lord shall be treated to a dispensation of silence.
III. THE PERSONS IT ASSAILS. When judgment falls upon a nation, the righteous often suffer with the wicked. Yet here there are persons against whom the shock is specially directed. They are:
1. Those who put their trust in idols. The idolater would naturally feel the extreme of dislike to the Word of God, and adopt the strongest measures against his prophets. He was therefore in that moral condition which needed, and that opposing attitude which provoked, the heaviest stroke. God will not give his “praise to graven images,” and he will give the man who trusts in them an early opportunity of discovering whether they will suffice for his needs. The more unreservedly he has chosen them, the more entirely will he be left to them.
2. The young and buoyant among these. (Verse 13.) Youth and hope are hardest to overcome. There is a buoyancy in them, and a recuperative energy, that rises above calamity to which the old and broken would succumb. Yet even these would not avail. Physical suffering, breaking down even youth and vigour, mental suffering, overwhelming the most buoyant hopefulness, were among the enginery of the wrath of God.
IV. THE EFFECTS IT PRODUCES. These are distressing as the calamity producing them is stern (verse 12).
1. They seek the Word in rain. It is sought as a last resource. In the extremity of trouble, and the failure of other help, men turn perforce to God. And then the quest is vain. It is made too late, and from a motive to which there is no promise given (Pro 1:24-28). It is sought in an extremity, as the lesser evil of two; and in abject fear, in which there is no element of loyalty or love; and, thus sought, cannot in the nature of things be found. The time for God to give it has passed, because the time has passed in which men might have received it to any effect of spiritual good.
2. They faint in the search. “They shall reel from sea to sea.” The word [reel] is used of the reeling of drunkards, of the swaying to and fro of trees in the wind, of the quivering of the lips of one agitated, and then of the unsteady seeking of persons bewildered, looking for what they know not where to find” (Pusey) It is characteristic that search is made everywhere but in the South, where alone the true worship of God was, and where, if anywhere, his Word might have been found. Wrong seeking is wrong all round, and so is of necessity in vain. It is a less of effort, which is “a grievous labour won.” It wearies itself out in aimless blind exertion, made out of season, and vitiated by the very ills that drive men to make it.
3. They fall and never rise. God will “make an end.” The time for it had come. Sin had reached a climax. Evil character had reached a final fixity. Calamity had ceased to improve. The tardy anxiety for a Divine communication meant simply that every other resource was exhausted. “Cut it down” is the one process of husbandry for which the tree is fitted.
(1) There is a famine of the Word on Israel still. “Blindness in part has happened” to them, in that, “when Moses is read, the veil is on their heart.” This practically amounts to the removal of the Word. It is a sealed book to themsealed by their blindness to its spiritual sense. Not heathen ignorance is more effectually cut off from the knowledge of the truth than Jewish prejudice and hate.
(2) It rests on them for the same reason for which it came. Persistently, blindly, bitterly, they rejected the truth of the gospel. They made it evident that they would not have it (Act 13:46). And so sadly, reluctantly, but sternly, it was taken from them. “Lo, we turn to the Gentiles.” When that Word was spoken, Israel was left to the darkness it loved. In that chosen darkness they still grope, and will till the latter-day glory dawns.
(3) It will give place one day to a period of plenty. “God hath not cast off his people which he foreknew.” There is a remnant to which the promise belongs, and with which it will be kept (Rom 9:27; Rom 11:5). “When it shal turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.” The period, extent, and occasion of this turning are not revealed, but it will be the crowning triumph of the “glorious grace” of God.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON
Amo 8:1
Ripeness in iniquity.
The figure here employed by Amos comes very naturally from him who had been a gatherer of the fruit of the sycomore tree. But at the same time, it is somewhat of a shock to the reader of this prophecy to find such a similitude employed for such a purpose. Our associations with “a basket of summer fruit” are all agreeable; but here the ripeness is in iniquity, and is unto condemnation and destruction.
I. A PAST PROCESS OF MATURITY IN SIN IS IMPLIED. As the fruit has been ripened during months of growth unto maturity, so the nation of Israel has gradually and progressively come to such a condition as that lamented and censured by the prophet of the Lord.
1. Past privileges have been misused. No nation had been so favoured as the descendants of Jacob; the greater the privileges, the greater the guilt of neglect and abuse.
2. Past warnings have been despised. If the people could not, in the exercise of their own faculties, foresee the end of all their misdeeds, they had no excuse, for prophet after prophet had arisen to rebuke them for unfaithfulness, and to warn them of impending judgment.
3. Past invitations have been unheeded. Often had the messengers of God mingled promises with threats, invitations with censure. But in vain. The voice of the charmer had been disregarded; the tenderness of Divine compassion had been despised. Hence the process of deterioration had gone on. And circumstances which should have ripened the national character into heroic virtue, into saintly piety, had only served to mature irreligiousness and rebellion. Thus the sun and the showers which ripen the corn and the wholesome fruit bring also every poisonous growth to perfection.
II. A SPEEDY PROSPECT OF CONSEQUENT DESTRUCTION IS REVEALED. The ripe fruit speaks not only of the sunshine of the bygone days, but of the consumption which awaits it. In this passage the figurative language of the prophet is to be interpreted as foreboding approaching ruin. “He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.”
1. Perseverance in irreligiousness issues in deterioration of character. The very years, the very privileges, which make the good man better, make the bad man worse. It was so with Israel as a nation. The operation of the same law may be traced in human society today.
2. Perseverance in irreligiousness will, under the Divine government, involve chastisement and punishment. The captivity foretold was to be accompanied by the desolation of the capital and the cessation, or at least the interruption, of national life. “The end is come,” saith God, “to my people Israel; The prosperity and superficial peace of the wicked must be brought to a disgraceful close.T.
Amo 8:2
My people.
The occurrence of this expression in such a connection as this is very amazing and very encouraging. Even when, by the mouth of his prophet, the Lord is uttering language of regretful denunciation, the prediction of sore chastisement, he still calls Israel his own! God’s ways are indeed higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts.
I. THIS LANGUAGE IN A REMINISCENCE OF PAST ELECTION. God called Israel his people, because he had chosen them from among the nations of the earth, to be the depositary of his truth, the recipients of his Law, the instrument of his purposes among men. As early associations are strong amongst men, as we always retain a tender interest in those whom we have watched over, befriended, and benefited from their childhood, so the Lord represents himself as cherishing kindness for the people whom he had called as it were in their childhood, and nursed into maturity. He did not forget the days “when Israel was a child.”
II. THIS LANGUAGE IS PROOF OF PRESENT KINDNESS. tie does not say, “Ye were my people;” for they are his people still.
Mine is an unchanging love, Even in carrying out his threats of punishment, Jehovah does not act in anger and vindictiveness. He is the Father chastening the child whom he loveth. He does not abandon the disobedient; he subjects them to discipline which may restore them to submission and to filial love.
III. THIS LANGUAGE IS PREDICTIVE OF FUTURE RECONCILIATION. As long as God says, “My people,” there is hope for the future. He has not abandoned; he will not abandon. The city may be razed, but it shall be built again. There shall be captivity; but he deviseth means whereby his banished ones shall return. Wounds shall be healed. The grave shall give up her dead. The wanderer shall return, and shall be clasped to the Father’s patient, yearning, rejoicing heart. “My people” are mine forever.
APPLICATION. God in the midst of wrath remembers mercy. When sin is recognized and realized as such, when chastening has answered its purpose, when the disobedient are penitent and the rebellious are submissive, then is there hope. Not in any excellence connected with man’s repentance, but in the grace of the Father’s heart, in the faithfulness of the Father’s promises. Not Israel alone, but mankind at large, are designated by the Eternal “my people.” Therefore he who sent his Son to seek and to save that which is lost is described as “the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe.”T.
Amo 8:4-6
Covetousness.
It was not for heterodoxy in theology, it was not for remissness in ritual, that Amos chiefly reproached the Israelites. It was for injustice, violence, and robbery; it was for seeking their own wealth and luxury at the expense of the sufferings of the poor. Avarice, or undue love of worldly possessions, is a serious vice; covetousness, or the desiring to enrich self at the cost of neighbours, is something very near a crime, for to crime it too often leads.
I. THE MORAL DISEASE OF COVETOUSNESS. The symptoms may differ in different states of society; and there are details in the text which apply rather to the state of society in Samaria of old than to the England of today. But the malady is the same, deep-rooted in the moral constitution of sinful men. This sin is:
1. Injurious to the person who commits it. He who sets his affection upon this world’s good, who carries his selfishness so far as to deprive, or even to wish to deprive, his neighbour of what is hisfar more he who uses fraud or violence to gratify this desireis working his own ruin. He is subverting the standard of value, by setting the material above the spiritual. He is dragging his aspirations down from the stars above his head to the dust beneath his feet.
2. Mischievous to society. If all men follow the example of the covetous, and long for the possessions of others, then human society becomes a den of wild beasts bent upon devouring one another, and earth becomes a very hell. Instead of being members one of another, in the case supposed, every man sees an enemy in his neighbour, and seeks his harm. The bonds of society are strained, are even broken.
3. Displeasing to God. In the ten commandments a place was found for the prohibition of this spiritual offence: “Thou shalt not covet.” This fact is sufficient to show how hateful is this sin in the eyes of the great Lord and Ruler of all.
II. THE DIVINE REMEDY FOR COVETOUSNESS.
1. The recognition of the benevolence and bounty of God. From him cometh down “every good gift and every perfect boon.” He is the Giver of all, who openeth his hands, and supplieth the need of every living thing. He who would share the Divine nature must cherish an ungrudging and liberal spirit.
2. The remembrance of the “unspeakable Gift,” and of the incomparable sacrifice of the Redeemer. Our Saviour’s whole aim was to impart to men the highest blessings, and in the quest of this aim he gave his life for us. His constraining love alone is able to extirpate that selfishness which in human nature is the very root of covetousness.
3. The adoption of the counsels and the submission to the spirit of Christ. It was his saying, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”T.
Amo 8:7
The mercy of God.
This language is actual truth, although it is based upon and accords with the experience of created intelligences. Memory is one of the primitive endowments of intellect, admitted to be such even by philosophers, who are very loth to admit that the mind of man can possess any such endowments. A man who should never forget would indeed be a marvel, a miracle. But it would be inconsistent with our highest conceptions of God to suppose it possible for anything to escape his memory. In his mind there is, of course, neither past nor future, for time is a limitation and condition of finite intelligence. To the Eternal all is present; all events to him are one eternal now.
I. A GENERAL TRUTH CONCERNING THE DIVINE NATURE AND GOVERNMENT. Nothing is unobserved by God, and nothing is forgotten by him. All men’s actions as they are performed photograph themselves indelibly upon the very nature of the Omniscient and Eternal. Nothing needs to be revived, for nothing ever becomes dim.
II. A SOLEMN TRUTH CONCERNING THE CONDUCT AND PROSPECTS OF THE SINFUL. Parents forget the wrong doing of their children, and rulers those of their subjects. Hence many evil deeds escape the recompense which is their due. But Jehovah, who “remembered” (to use the expression necessarily accommodated to our infirmity) all the acts of rebellion of which the chosen people had been guilty, does not lose the record of any of the offences committed by men. On the contrary, they are written “in a Book of remembrance”a book one day to he unrolled before the eyes of the righteous Judge.
III. A PRECIOUS ASSURANCE CONCERNING THE GOOD PURPOSES AND ACTIONS WHICH GOD DISCERNS AND REMARKS IN HIS PEOPLE. Thus we find saintly men of old in their prayers beseeching the Lord to remember them: “Remember me, O Lord, for good;” “Remember me with the favour thou showest unto thy people.” He who said, “I know thy works,” who said, “I will never forget any of their works,” is a Being to whom we may safely commend ourselves and all that is ours which he himself creates and which he approves.
APPLICATION.
1. In our confessions let us be frank and open with God, who searcheth the heart, and who forgetteth nothing. It would be folly to suppose that he forgets our sins; it would be wickedness to strive to forget them ourselves. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive.”
2. In our prayers for pardon let us bear in mind that there is a sense in which he will “remember no more” the offences of his penitent and believing people. He will treat us as if he had forgotten all our rebellion, and as if he remembered only our purposes and vows of loyalty.T.
Amo 8:10
A bitter day.
There is something incongruous in this language. Day is the bright and beauteous gift of God, and its sunlight and all the glory it reveals may justly be taken as the emblem of happiness and prosperity. The light is sweet; the day is joyous. Yet here there is depicted a bitter day! The context makes it evident that this is attributable to sin, which makes all sweet things bitter, and all bright things dim.
I. THE BITTER DAY OF ISRAEL CONTRASTS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF SWEETNESS. Festivals and songs are mentioned in the context as distinctive of the religious life of the chosen people. And in times of national plenty and prosperity there had never been wanting abundance and even luxury, mirth and music, festivity and joy. These things have vanished into the past now that the “bitter day” has dawned.
II. THE BITTER DAY OF ISRAEL IS MARKED BY CIRCUMSTANCES OF TERRIBLE DISTRESS. The sun goes down, the land is darkened, mourning and lamentation are heard, sackcloth is worn, the hair is shaved off the heads lately anointed for the banquet and wreathed with flowers; the signs are those of “mourning for an only son.” The fallen and wretched condition of the nation could not be depicted more graphically. The prophet artist is skilful to heighten the dark colours which are expressive of Israel’s woe.
III. THE BITTER DAY OF ISRAEL IS THE RESULT OF ISRAEL‘S SINS. What is called misfortune and calamity is often really punishment. There was nothing accidental in what befell this nation. On the contrary, Israel brought disaster upon itself by unfaithfulness, disobedience, rebellion. As the people had sown, so they were to reap. Under the government of a just God it cannot be otherwise. The fruit of sin cannot be otherwise than bitter.
IV. THE BITTER DAY OF ISRAEL IS SUGGESTIVE OF LESSONS OF WISDOM TO EVERY NATION. The rule of a righteous God is a fact not to be disputed. The retributive consequences of that rule are not to be evaded. Let not the people imagine a vain thing, or the rulers take counsel together against the Lord.T.
Amo 8:11
Famine of the Word of God.
There are many blessings which are not suitably valued until they are withdrawn and missed. It is so with bodily health, with political liberty, with domestic happiness. And the prophet assumes that it will be found the same with the Word of God. When it is possessedwhen the Scriptures are read and the Gospel is heardit is too often the ease that the privilege is unappreciated. But what must it be to be shut off from all communication with Heaven! And such, it was foretold, was to be the lot of Israel in the days of retribution and calamity which were about to overtake Israel
I. THE WORDS OF GOD ARE TO THE SOUL AS BREAD AND WATER TO THE BODY. Man’s bodily constitution is such that food and drink are a necessity to health and even to life; to be even partially starved is to be disabled and to be rendered wretched. Even so, the truth, the righteousness, the love of God, are the necessary aliment of the spiritual nature. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Fellowship with God by his Word is indispensably necessary in order that a high, holy, and acceptable service may be rendered.
II. A FAMINE OF THE WORD OF GOD IS TO BE DREADED AS DETRIMENTAL TO SPIRITUAL LIFE AND WELL BEING.
1. If the knowledge of God himself be withheld, there is for man no solution of all the mysteries of the universe, the mysteries of his being.
2. If the Law of God be concealed, there is no sufficient guide through human life.
3. If the gospel of Christ be withheld, there is no peace for the conscience, no sufficient inspiration for duty, no assurance of immortality.
4. If revelation be denied, there is no power, no principle sufficient to guide and to govern human society.
III. THOSE WHO POSSES THE WORD OF GOD SHOULD BY THESE CONSIDERATIONS BE INDUCED TO STUDY IT AND TO USE IT ARIGHT. Neglect of the Divine Word may not in our case entail the actual deprivation foretold in the text. But it certainly will entail an indifference and insensibility to the truth, which will be equally injurious and disastrous. Now the Word is ours; let us listen to it with reverence and faith; let us obey it with alacrity and diligence. “Walk in the light while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.”T.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS
Amo 8:1-3
Ripeness for judgment.
“Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit,” etc. The text suggests three general truths.
I. WICKED NATIONS GROW RIPE FOR JUDGMENT. The “basket of summer fruit,” now presented in vision to Amos, was intended to symbolize that his country was ripe for ruin. This symbol suggests:
1. That Israel‘s preset moral corruption was no hasty production. The ripe fruit in that basket did not spring forth at once; it took many months to produce. It came about by a slow and gradual process. Men do not become great sinners at once. The character of a people does not reach its last degree of vileness in a few years; it takes time. The first seed of evil is to be quickened, then it grows, ripens, and multiplies until there is a crop ready for the sickle.
2. That Israel‘s season for improvement was least and gone. The ripened fruit in that basket had reached a stage in which improvement was impossible. The bloom was passing away, and rottenness was setting in. Nations become incorrigible. The time comes when it may be saidThe harvest is past, all cultivation is impossible. What boots your sowing seed under the burning sun of July or August? The fructifying forces of nature will not cooperate with you.
3. That Israel‘s utter ruin was inevitable. Nothing awaited that “basket of summer fruit” but rottenness. Its decomposition was working, and would soon reduce it to putrescent filth. So it was with Israel.
II. TRUE PROPHETS ARE MADE SENSIBLE OF THIS RIPENESS. God gives Amos a vision for the purpose. “Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer frail Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel.” God always gives his true ministers a clear vision of the subjects of their discourse. This clearness of vision is in truth their call and qualification for their Divine mission. Men, alas! often assume the work of the ministry whose mental vision is so dim that they are unable to see anything with vivid clearness; hence they always move in a haze, and their language is circumlocutory and ambiguous. Amongst the vulgar, those who should be condemned for their obtuseness get credit for their profundity. To every true teacher God says at the outset, “What seest thou?” Hast thou a clear vision of this basket of summer fruit? Hast thou a clear idea of this subject on which thou art about to discourse? Thus he dealt with Moses, Elijah, Daniel, Paul, John.
III. ALMIGHTY GOD MAKES HIS PROPHETS SENSIBLE OF THE RIPENESS OF A PEOPLE‘S CORRUPTION IN ORDER THAT THEY MAY SOUND THE ALARM. Why was Amos thus divinely impressed with the wretched moral condition of the people of Israel? Simply that he might be more earnest and emphatical in sounding the alarm. “‘The end is come upon my people of Jsrael; I will not again pass by them any more. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cut them forth with silence.” What was the calamity he was to proclaim?
1. Universal mourning. “The songs of the temple shall be howlings.” Where the shouts of mirth and the songs of joy had been heard, there should be nothing but the howlings of distress. The inevitable tendency of sin is to turn songs of gladness into howlings of distress.
2. Universal death. “And there shall be many dead bodies in every place; and they shall cast them forth with silence.” The reference is to sword, pestilence, and famine multiplying the dead so rapidly as to render impossible the ordinary decencies and ceremonies at funerals. “Cast them forth with silence.”
CONCLUSION. How stands our country? Is not its moral depravity ripening in every direction? Is it not filling up its measure of iniquities, treasuring up wrath against the last day? Does it not become all true teachers to sound the alarm? The time seems past for crying, “Peace and safety.” Destruction is at hand; the fields are white for harvest.D.T.
Amo 8:4-10
Avarice.
“Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land. to fail,” etc. The prophet here resumes his denunciatory discourse to the avaricious oppressors of the people. The verses may be taken as God’s homily to greedy men. “Hear this.” Hush! pay attention to what I am going to say. Listen, “ye that swallow up the needy.” The words suggest three remarks concerning avarice.
I. IT IS EXECRABLE IN ITS SPIRIT.
1. It is sacrilegious. “When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?” Bad as Israel was, it still kept up the outward observances of religion, yet these observances they regarded as commercial inconveniences. In their hearts they wished them away, when they seemed to obstruct their greedy plans. With sacrilegious spirit, they treated religious institutions as worthless in comparison with sordid gain. Avarice in heart has no reverence for religion.
2. It is dishonest. “Making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit.” It is always overreaching, always cheating; it generally victimizes the poor; it makes its fortunes out of the brain and muscles, the sweat and life, of the needy.
3. It is cruel. “Ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes.” Avarice deadens all social affections, steels the heart, and makes its subject utterly indifferent to all interests but its own; it will swallow up, or as some render it, gape after, the needy just as the wild beast pants after its prey. “Greedy men are a generation whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from amongst men” (Pro 30:14).
II. IT IS ABHORRENT TO JEHOVAH. “The Lord hath sworn by the Excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.” Some render the “Excellency of Jacob” the “Pride of Jacob,” and suppose the expression to mean that Israel professed to regard him as its Glory; and therefore it is by himself that he swears, for he can swear by no one greater. God observes all the cruelties which avarice inflicts upon the poor. Nothing is more abhorrent to his benevolent nature than covetousness. One of the leading principles in his moral code is, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house,” etc. Against no sin did his blessed Son preach more earnestly. “Take heed, beware of covetousness,” said he (Luk 12:1-59.]5). He closes the gates of heaven against covetousness. “The covetous shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven” (1Co 6:10).
1. It is repugnant to his nature. His love is disinterested, unbounded love, working ever for the good of the universe. Greed is a hideous antagonist to this.
2. It is hostile to universal happiness. He created the universe in order to diffuse happiness; but greed is against it.
(1) It is against the happiness of its possessor. The soul under the influence of covetousness can neither grow in power nor be gratified in desire. Avarice is an element of hell. It is in truth one of the fiery furies of the soul.
(2) It is against the happiness of society. It prompts men to appropriate more of the common good than belongs to them, and thus to diminish the required supplies of the multitude. It is the creator of monopoly, and monopoly is the devil of social life.
III. IT IS A CURSE TO SOCIETY. See what punishment comes on the land through this! “Shall not the land tremble for this,” etc.? Observe:
1. How God makes nature an avenging angel He makes “the land tremble.” He “toucheth the hills, and they smoke;” pours out waters as a flood. He can make the world of waters deluge the earth as the overflowing Nile at times inundates the land of Egypt. He can (to use human language) roll back the sun. “I will cause the sun to go down at noon.”
2. How God makes a multitude to suffer on account of the iniquities of the few. “And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentations; and I will bring up sackcloth,” etc.
CONCLUSION. Avoid covetousness. It is the chief of the principalities and powers of darkness. It may be considered the great fountain whence all the streams of crime and misery flow forth. It is eternally opposed to the virtue and happiness of the universe. The fable of Midas in Grecian mythology is strikingly illustrative of this tremendous evil. Bacchus once offered Midas his choice of gifts. He asked that whatever he might touch should be changed into gold. Bacchus consented, though sorry that he had not made a better choice. Midas went his way rejoicing in his newly acquired power which he hastened to put to the test. He could scarcely believe his eyes when he found a twig of an oak, which he had plucked, become gold in his hand. He took up a stone, and it changed to gold. He touched a sod; it did the same. He took an apple from a tree; you would have thought he had robbed the garden of the Hesperides. His joy knew no bounds; and when he got home he ordered the servants to set a splendid repast on the table. Then he found to his dismay that whether he touched bread, it hardened in his hand, or put a morsel to his lips, it defied his teeth. He took a glass of wine, but it flowed down his throat like melted gold. In utter terror, fearing starvation, be held up his arms shining with gold to Bacchus, and besought him to take back his gift. Bacchus said, “Go to the river Pactolus: trace the stream to its fountainhead; there plunge your head and body in, and wash away your fault and its punishment.” Hence Midas learned to hate wealth and splendour.D.T.
Amo 8:11-13
Soul famine.
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord,” etc. The Israelites now despised the message of the prophets, and by a just retribution, in addition to all their other calamities, they should experience a total withdrawal of all prophetic communications. In whatever direction they might proceed, and whatever efforts they might make to obtain information relative to the issue of their trouble, they should meet with nothing but disappointment. The subject of these words is soul famine, and they suggest three general remarks.
I. THAT THE PROFOUNDEST WANT OF HUMAN NATURE IS A COMMUNICATION FROM THE ETERNAL MIND. This is implied in the Divine menace of sending a worse famine than the mere want of bread and water. They were special communications from himself, not the ordinary communications of nature, that Jehovah here refers to. And man has no greater necessity than this; it is the one urgent and imperial need. Two great questions are everlastingly rising from the depths of the human soul
1. How does the Eternal feel in relation to me as a sinner? Nature tells me how he feels in relation to me as a creature; but nature was written before I fell.
2. How am I to get my moral nature restored? I have a sense of guilt that is sometimes intolerable; the elements of my nature are in eternal conflict; I have sadly terrible forebodings of the future. Now, the special Word of God can alone answer these questions. These are the problems of men the world over. God’s Word is to the human soul what food is to the bodythat which alone can strengthen, sustain, and satisfy. But as the soul is of infinitely greater importance than the body, the Divine Word is more needed than material food.
II. THAT THE GREATEST DISEASE OF HUMAN NATURE IS A LACK OF APPETITE FOR THIS COMMUNICATION. Which is the greater want of the bodythe want of food, or the want of appetite for food? The latter, I trow, for the latter implies disease. It is so with the soul. The vast majority of souls have lost the appetite for the Divine Word. They are perishing, shrivelling up, for the lack of it. The desire is gone. They die, not for the want of the food, but for the want of appetite. As a rule, the starvation of souls is not for the lack of food, but for the lack of appetite. The worst of this disease is
(1) men are not conscious of it;
(2) it works the worst ruin.
III. THAT THE GREATEST MISERY OF HUMAN NATURE IS A QUICKENED APPETITE AND NO SUPPLIES. “They shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the Word of the Lord, and shall not find it.”
1. The appetite will be quickened sooner or later. Sometimeswould it were ever so!it is quickened here, where supplies abound. Hear Job’s cry, “Oh that I knew where I might find him!” And hear Saul’s cry at Endor, “Bring me up Samuel.” Oh for one word from his lips, one loving sentence from the mouth of the great Father! “Bring me up Samuel”
2. When the appetite is quickened and there is no supply, it is an inexpressible calamity. Such a period will come. “The days shall come,” says Christ, “when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it” (Luk 17:22). And again, “Ye shall seek me, and not find me: for where I am, thither ye cannot come” (Joh 7:34). Oh miserable state of immortal souls, to be crying to the heavens, and those heavens to be as hard as brass!D.T.
Amo 8:14
Religious sincerity.
“They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.” “The sin of Samaria” means the idolatry of Samaria. In Samaria they worshipped the golden calf as the chief object; but it would seem there were other inferior idols. The god of Dan was the golden calf sot up by Jeroboam in Dan (1Ki 12:1-33.). “The fulfilment,” says Delitzsch, “of these threats commenced with the destruction of the kingdom of Israel and the carrying away of the ten tribes into exile in Assyria, and continues to this day in the case of that portion of the Israelitish nation which is still looking for the Messiah, the Prophet promised by Moses, and looking in vain because they will not hearken to the preaching of the gospel concerning the Messiah who appeared as Jesus.” The words suggest a thought or two in relation to religious sincerity.
I. THAT RELIGIOUS SINCERITY IS NO PROOF OF THE ACCURACY OF RELIGIOUS CREED. These Israelites seem to have been sincere in their worship of the golden calf; “they swore by it.” That dumb idol to them was everything. To it they pledged the homage of their being. Yet how blasphemously erroneous, how contrary to the expresss mandate of Jehovah, “Thou shalt have none other gods but me”! How contrary to the dictates of common sense and all sound reasoning! Idolatry, in every form and everywhere, is a huge falsehood. Hence sincerity is no proof that a man has the truth. There are millions of men in all theologies and religions, who are so sincere in believing lies, that they will fight for their lies, make any sacrifice for their lies, die for their lies. Error, perhaps, can number more martyrs than truth. Saul of Tarsus was sincere when he was persecuting the Church and endeavouring to blot the name of Christ from the memory of his age. “I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth,” etc. (Act 26:9). Hence sincerity is not necessarily virtuous. A man is sincere when he is faithful to his convictions; but if his convictions are unsound, immoral, ungodly, his sincerity is a crime. The fact that thousands have died for dogmas is no proof of the truth of their dogmas.
II. THAT RELIGIOUS SINCERITY IS NO PROTECTION AGAINST THE PUNISHMENT THAT FOLLOWS ERROR. “They shall fall, and never rise up again.” The sincerity of the Israelites in their worship in Bethel and at Dan prevented not their ruin. There are those who bold that man is not responsible for his beliefsthat so long as he is sincere he is a truthful man, and all things will go well with him. In every department of life God holds a man responsible for his beliefs. If a man takes poison into his system, sincerely believing that it is nutriment, will his belief save him? Error leads evermore to disappointment, confusion, and oftentimes to utter destruction. To follow error is to go away from reality; and to leave reality is to leave safety and peace.
CONCLUSION. Whilst there is no true man without sincerity, sincerity of itself does act make a man true. When a man’s convictions correspond and square with everlasting realities, then his sincerity is of incomparable world.D.T.
Amo 8:1. A basket of summer fruit Of autumnal fruit; or, “Of the last season of the year.” Houbigant; and so in the next verse, where, instead of the end, he reads the last end, keeping up the allusion, and the expressive play of the words keits, and kaiits, in the original: whereby is signified, that as, after the autumnal fruits, no others are produced from the earth, or gathered from the tree; so it shall come to pass that the kingdom of Israel shall no more produce any fruit, nor re-flourish in the following years. After Jeroboam the second all things became worse and worse, till the kingdom of Israel was totally destroyed. See Jeremiah 24.
Amos 8
Fourth Vision: Israel ripe for Destruction. Days of Mourning threatened against the Ungodly. Afterwards a Famine of the Word.
1 Thus the Lord Jehovah showed me,
And behold, a basket with ripe fruit.1
2 And he said, What seest thou, Amos?
And I said, A basket with ripe fruit. I will not pass by them any more.
3 And the songs of the palace3 shall howl
In that day, saith the Lord Jehovah; 4 Hear this, ye who pant6 for the poor,
And to destroy the meek7 of the earth,
5 Saying, when will the new moon be over,
That we may sell grain, 6 Buying the poor for silver,
And the needy for a pair of shoes, 7 Jehovah hath sworn by the pride of Jacob,
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
8 Shall not the earth tremble for this,
And every dweller therein mourn? And shall heave and sink9 like the Nile of Egypt.
9 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah,
That I will cause the sun to go down at noon, 10 And will turn your festivals into mourning,
And all your songs into lamentation; And the end of it like11 a bitter day.
11 Behold, days are coming, saith the Lord Jehovah,
When I will send a hunger into the land, 12 And they shall stagger from sea to sea,
And rove about from the north12 even to the east,
To seek the Word of Jehovah, and shall not find it.
13 In that day the fair virgins shall faint,
And the young13 men, for thirst.
14 They who swear by the sin of Samaria,
And say, By the life of thy God, O Dan! EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Amo 8:1-3. Fourth Vision.The basket with ripe fruit. No more forbearance. Amo 8:1. This basket is an image of a people ripe for judgment. The play upon words between the original for ripe fruit and that for end, indicates more, clearly the necessary result of the ripeness, namely, the downfall of the people.
Amo 8:3. Songs become howlingswherefore? The answer follows: because of the multitude of the dead. The exclamation Hush! is an admonition to bow beneath the tremendous severity of the divine judgment.
Amo 8:4-14. What has been briefly expressed in Amo 8:1-3 is here expanded into a longer discourse, the sinful conduct of the great which makes them ripe for judgment, and the heavy penalty which they must suffer.
(a.) Amo 8:4-6. Hear this, ye who, etc. A description of their wanton course. They pant after the poor and destroy the meek by grasping all property for themselves. Cf. Job 22:8; Isa 5:8. This is further defined in the two following verses, in which the prophet makes the men describe their own feelings and conduct.
Amo 8:5. They cannot even wait for the end of the festival in order to resume their traffic. The new moon was a holiday, like the Sabbath, on which trade and business ceased. To open wheat=to open the granaries; cf. Gen 41:56. What Joseph did for the benefit of the poor, these did for their own advantage, making usurious gains from others poverty. With this they united fraud; by diminishing the measure and increasing the shekel=by demanding one of greater weight than the right standard; and by falsifying the scales=using scales arranged so as to cheat.
Amo 8:6. Thus the poor man was made so poor that he was compelled to sell himself either for a piece of silver which be owed, or for a pair of shoes which he had gotten and was unable to pay for. Thus he could not meet the smallest expenditure. To complete the case, only the refuse grain was sold to them, for which yet they had to pay the same as for good grain.
(b.) Amo 8:7-14. Punishment of such wickedness. (1.) Amo 8:7-10. Hath sworn by the pride of Jacob, i.e., by himself who was the pride and glory of Israel. By leaving such sins unpunished He would deny his glory in Israel. (Keil.)
Amo 8:8. Therefore or for this, namely, for these deeds. These are Jehovahs words, and carry out the thought of not forgetting the deeds, by a delineation of the impending judgment. The question, Shall not, etc., is intended to forestall the idea that such things could be left unpunished. It is incorrect to refer the for this, to the punishment as if it were intended to emphasize that. The form of the speech, i.e., the question, does not suit this view; and besides, in that case the punishment itself would be really indicated only in Amo 8:7, so that this unusual prominence of its impressiveness would be without a motive. The same words recur in Amo 9:5, but there as a description of Gods omnipotence, manifesting itself, however, in judgments. The earth heaves, because the Lord touches it (Amo 9:5). The trembling of the earth as a heaving and sinking is explained by comparison with the rise and fall of the Nile.
Amo 8:9. In that day, i.e., the day of the judgment, in which what has just been mentioned is to take place. In close connection with the trembling of the earth is its becoming dark: the one is not conceivable without the other. At bottom Amo 8:8 describes a return of the earth to its original condition of chaosthe sun go down at midday; not a mere eclipse, but a catastrophe which subverts the order of nature. [An eclipse is not the going down of the sun. The minute calculations of Hitzig and Michaelis, repeated and extended by Pusey, are therefore quite aside from the purpose.C.]
Amo 8:10 describes more minutely the general mourning already touched upon in Amo 8:8. Cf. Amo 5:3; Amo 5:16; Hos 2:13. Baldness upon every head. The shaving of a bald place was a sign of mourning. Cf. Isa 3:24.
(2.) Amo 8:11-14. A new and peculiar trait in the delineation of the judgment, the bitter day. The Word of God, which men now despise, they will then long for, but in vain. Too late! This threat bears obliquely upon the insatiable avarice of those who live in luxury through their oppression of the poor. At the same time they are the persons who now will not listen to the Word of God.
Amo 8:12. They stagger, because plagued by hunger and thirst. From sea to sea, indefinitely, the sea being conceived of as the end of the earth (Psa 72:8). From the north to the east = from north to south, and from east to west, i.e., to every quarter of the globe.
Amo 8:13. So great is the torment of this unsatisfied hunger and thirst that the strongest succumb to it; these are individualized as the young men and the maidens; if they fail, much more the weak.
Amo 8:14. The sin of Samaria = that by which Samaria sins, the golden calf at Bethel. This is the most probable explanation, because of the corresponding expression in the next clause, the god of Dan = the golden calf there. By the life of the way; by the life of, is a customary formula of swearing, here improperly used in reference to a thing. The way of Beersheba = the way by which men go to Beersheba, to the worship there. The swearing by these objects shows that the young men and maidens are worshippers of these idols and make pilgrimages to Beersheba.
DOCTRINAL AND MORAL
1. According to our chapter the ripeness of the people for judgment is due to the violence and injustice practiced by the rich and noble upon the poor. These are peculiarly flagitious sins which call down the judgments of God. As such a statement reveals to us a degree of moral corruption which is frightful, so we learn from the severity with which the sins are rebuked and condemned, not only the spirit of justice but also the compassion which belongs to the religion of the Old Testament. It desires that every one, even the poorest, should have his rights, and even comes forward to protect the poor as such against the violence of the rich. They have a counsellor in God, who, as He protects them by the law, continues to do so by the penalties imposed upon the transgressors of the law. He does indeed bear long with those transgressors who oppress the poor, so that it may appear as if He had forgotten them; but as He owes, so to speak, the duty of sympathy with the poor and their necessities, so does He also that of forbearance with their oppressors, because He desires not the death of the sinner but rather that he would turn and live. 3. When divine judgments come and give flaming proof of Gods existence to a race which has forsaken and forgotten Him, the once despised and hated word of the Lord is appreciated again. Men hunger and thirst for it, but often at first not in the right way. They desire as speedily as possible to hear of promises and consolations, and to these every ear is open. But it is in vain. We now need expect no new revelation from God. We have his Word in the Scripture. But when this is a long time despised, it follows at last that there is no one to preach it, and without a living preacher, it is finally lost. Or if it is preached, it has no power to console, and men fail to find what they seek. Thus there ensues a longing which is not satisfied. The result is otherwise only when men bow themselves in penitence under the divine threatenings as deserved, and under the divine Spirit inwardly blame themselves for their previous apostasy. But who knows whether man will find room for repentance? Before he reaches that point, while he is in the midst of his vain longing for comfort, he may be snatched away.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
[Amo 8:1. Thus the Lordshewed me. The sentence of Amaziah being pronounced, Amos resumes just where he had left off before. Amaziahs vehement interruption is like a stone cast into deep waters. They close over it, and it leaves no trace. The last vision declared that the end was certain; this, that it was at hand. (Pusey.)
Amo 8:2. A basket with ripe fruit. At harvest time there is no more to be done for the crop. Good or bad, it has reached its end and is cut down. So the harvest of Israel was come Heavenly influences can but injure the ripened sinner, as dew, rain, sun, but injure the ripened fruit. Israel was ripe, but for destruction. (Ibid.) Rev 16:18, Gather the clusters of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe. (Ibid.)
Amo 8:3. The songs shall howl. When sounds of joy are turned into wailing, there must be complete sorrow. They are not merely hushed but turned into their opposite. Just the reverse is promised to the godly: Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh (Luk 6:21). (Ibid.)
Amo 8:5. When will the new moon be over? The Psalmist said, When shall I come and appear before God? These said, When will this service be over that we may be our own masters again?
Sin in wrong measures once begun is unbroken. All sin perpetuates itself; it is done again because it has been done before. But sins of a mans daily occupation are continued of necessity, beyond the simple force of habit and the ever increasing dropsy of covetousness. To interrupt them is to risk detection. How countless then their number! When human law was enforced in a city after a time of negligence, scarcely a weight was found to be honest. Prayer went up to God on the Sabbath, and fraud on the poor went up to God in every transaction on the other six days. (Pusey.)
Amo 8:7. Jehovah hath sworn, etc. God must cease to be God, if He did not do what He sware to dopunish the oppressors of the poor, (lb.) Wo, and a thousand woes, to that man that is cut off by an oath of God from all benefit by pardoning mercy. (M. Henry.)C.] The evil deeds of the wicked are inscribed in a perpetual memorial before God; but the sins of believers are cast by Him into the depths of the sea so that they never again come into mind. Mic 7:19. (Pf. B. W.)
[Amo 8:8. Shall not the earth tremble for this? Those who will not tremble and mourn as they ought for national sins shall be made to tremble and mourn for national judgments. (M. Henry.)
Amo 8:9. The sun goes down at noon. Sorrow is saddest when it comes upon fearless joy. God commonly in his mercy sends heralds of coming sorrow; very few burst suddenly upon man. Now in the meridian brightness of the day of Israel, the blackness of night should fall upon him. (Pusey.)
Amo 8:10. Turn your feasts into mourning. As to the upright there ariseth light in the darkness which gives them the oil of joy for mourning, so on the wicked there falls darkness in the midst of light which turns their joy into heaviness. The end of it as a bitter day. There is no hope that when things are at the worst, they will mend. No, the state of impenitent sinners grows worse and worse; and the last of all will be the worst of all. (M. Henry.)
Amo 8:11. Not a hunger for bread. In death and dreariness, in exile from the land of their fathers, crushed by oppressors, hearing only of gods more cruel than those who make them, how will they hunger and thirst for any tidings of one who cares for the weary and heavy-laden, one who would have man-servant and maid, the cattle and the stranger within the gates to rest as well as the prince; of one who had fixed the year of jubilee that the debtor might be released and the captive go free, O, what a longing in a land of bondage to hear of such a Being; to believe that all that had been told of Him in former days was not a dream, to have a right to tell their children that it was true for them! (Maurice.)
Amo 8:12. From sea to sea, etc. Even the profane, when they see no help, will have recourse to God. Saul in his extremity inquired of the Lord, and He answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. (Pusey.) Such is the present condition of the Jews. They roam in restless vagrancy about the world and seek the word of God; but they find it not, because they have killed the incarnate Word revealed in the written word. (Jerome.)C.]
Footnotes:
[1]Amo 8:1., harvest, summer, here=summer-fruit, or gathered fruit, i.e., fully ripe, as 2Sa 16:1; Mic 7:1.
[2]Amo 8:2.The paronomasia in and is marked and forcible. Cf. Eze 7:6]
[3]Amo 8:3. here manifestly is palace, not temple.
[4]Amo 8:3. has Jehovah for its subject (Keil). Others take it impersonally (Henderson), but Wordsworth supplies every one as the subject.
[5]Amo 8:3. is by some, as E. V., rendered as an adverb=quietly; but always elsewhere it is an interjection, and should be so considered here.
[6]Amo 8:4.,=pant after [like a dog or wild beast yelping and panting after its prey. Wordsworth]. This sense is clearly required by the second member, where is to be supplied before .
[7]Amo 8:4. . There seems no reason for departing from the textual reading here.
[8]Amo 8:8. is a defective form for (cf. Amo 9:5), a reading which is found in many of the MSS.
[9]Amo 8:8. is a softened form for , which is given in the Keri, and also in many MSS. Cf. , Amo 9:5.
[10]Amo 8:10.The suffix in refers to the following [but Keil makes it refer to all that has previously been mentioned as done upon that day. So Pusey. Henderson refers it to , understood.
[11]Amo 8:10.The in , is Caph. veritatis.
[12]Amo 8:12. This word is used of the reeling of drunkards, of the swaying to and fro of trees in the wind, of the quivering of lips, and then of the unsteady seeking of persons bewildered, looking for what they know not where to find. Pusey.]
[13]Amo 8:14.. Meiers correction of this into ,=thy beloved, is conjectural and needless.
CONTENTS
The Prophet is here again in this Chapter instructing by figure. By a basket of summer-fruit is shown the state of Israel. The Chapter closeth with the threatenings of famine.
By the similitude of summer-fruit, which of course as soon as it ripens hastens to decay, is shewn, in a lively representation, the transitory state of all men; not only Israel, but all flesh: for all is as grass, and as the flower of the field. But in this place there is a peculiar reference to Israel’s hastening to captivity. In a spiritual sense the image is still more striking. How truly short are all the summers of our spiritual enjoyments!
“a Basket of Summer Fruit.”
Amo 8
“Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit” ( Amo 8:2 ).
Amos continued his visions notwithstanding the rude and mendacious interruption of the false priest Amaziah who sent a lie to Jeroboam. Amos confronted the false priest, as we have just seen, boldly and destructively. You cannot reply to a thunderstorm. Anything that a man may say after a whirlwind is very feeble. We have heard the great speech of Amos, as it rolled round and round the withering Amaziah like tempest on tempest Now Amos stands up as if nothing had happened, and in one of his quiet moods he tells us that he had a vision. A sweet familiarity distinguishes the style of the prophet as he approaches this department of his revelation. The Lord is represented as calling him by name, “Amos, what seest thou?” In the Bible there is a wonderful familiarity of this kind; often there is a species of conversation, friendly interview, domestic talk, as if the Lord had concentrated himself upon the individual in question; as, for example, “When Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and said, Zacchus.” “The Lord said unto Moses, I know thee by name.” There is always something tender when our knowledge comes to a knowledge of name, especially when that name stands up as a signal of truth, honour, love, music. When we mention some names our eyes fill with tears, because they are names that have histories in them; they recall times of darkness, desolation, long nights of loneliness, or days of harvest and festival and mutual joy. The Lord spake thus to his servant; and the familiarity never interfered with the revelation. It is the familiarity of love; it is not the familiarity of contempt or disregard or indifference. There is a way of naming a person which means that you are going to whisper some heart-secret into his ear. There is an offhand naming of men which amounts to nothing; but there is another naming which amounts to baptism, and still fuller sacrament; a masonic sign which means that heart is going to talk to heart. This was in the tone of the Lord as he said, “Amos, what seest thou?” The Lord knows what we see, but he wants us to tell him. We need not pray in the sense of endeavouring to give God information, but he likes to hear our lisping, our broken speech, our poor grammar; he takes an interest in our stumbling and blundering; he will not answer all we say because he knows we would not say it if we really knew what it meant, but he will answer that part of it which is for the soul’s health and enrichment and invigoration. “What seest thou?” What wouldst thou? What is thy desire and what is thy petition? and it shall be granted unto thee. He knows it before we begin to make any statement; yet he likes us to talk. We are educated by speech; we startle ourselves by the sound of our own voices. There are men who could not pray aloud and retain their reverence. There are other men who have the gift of praying audibly, and the gift of understanding what a thousand hearts all want at once, and they exercise that prophetic and intercessory function to the infinite advantage of the world.
Every man has his own vision of God. The vision changes. Amos saw the incoming of the grasshoppers and the wonderful work which they did amid the grass of the land; then he saw the Lord with a plumbline in his hand; and now he sees a basket of summer fruit: and in all this he is a fool to the worldly man. We have just seen that the insincere man never can understand sincerity; the little-minded man never can comprehend magnanimity; the worldly soul can never enter into the mystery of prayer, except by such pedantic criticism as affects to despise, or at least question its rationalism and its utility. Let every man talk in his own way. There is an insanity of wisdom; there is a transcendentalism of feeling which will make its own speech, and thus affright those who live within the speech which has been made for them. It will do us good to hear all kinds of speech, and see all manner of visions; we shall be startled out of our insularity, and be made to feel that there is nothing lonely in God’s universe; that the least of the worlds is a nexus, connecting us with the infinite, the boundless, the divine.
“A basket of summer fruit” ( Amo 8:2 ).
Fruit was the last sign of harvest in Palestine. When the fruit was gathered the harvest was over. What, then, is the meaning of this vision of a basket of summer fruit? The meaning is that Amos saw the end. This is the crop. A basket of summer fruit was no poetry in the estimation of Amos. It was not an ornamental selection of fruits, looking upon which men would say, How lovely, how luscious, how delightful, how appetising! Summer fruit had a mournful suggestion about it in Palestinian lands and times. “What seest thou?” The end, the gathered harvest, the upmaking of all things, the year in its results: good or bad, there it is. Can this fruit be changed now? No. Will not the sun work some miracle of ripening upon it? Never more. There is an end of ministry, of service, of stewardship, of life. We are reminded of such end by the end of the day, the end of the month, the close of the year: the harvest is past, the summer ended, and the year waits to tell all its little story of thought and action, purpose and prayer, suffering and triumph. Oh that men were wise, that they understood these things, that they would consider their latter end the basket of summer fruit, the ingathering of the fields and the vintages. How stands it with us this audit day? How runs the story? Have we been malevolent or benevolent? Shall the year be remembered for its nobleness of purpose and its industry of execution? Or shall it be a year that we would gladly forget? Remember there is a gathering of fruits, a crop time, a day on which men say, The year has been good, or, The year has been bad; the fields have disappointed us, and the trees have blighted our hope; we thought in the springtime that their blossoms would have ended in fruitfulness, and they have ended in nothing but disappointment and loss and aggravation. Or shall it be otherwise? The answer lies in part within the compass and action of our own will. Shall we be a little better? Shall we distinctly indicate an upward tendency, in thought, in aspiration, in desire? It lies within our will to be fools or to be wise men.
“Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more” ( Amo 8:2 ).
And yet that is a word which the Lord cannot keep blessed be his name, infinite eternal praise be to the Cross. The Lord in denouncing these judgments means what ought to be the case, what burning hell should hold those who have trampled under foot every sign of his love and judgment and mercy. Hear him; make a way for his wrath; let us hear the sounding of his judgment: “And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God.” What was begun in songs shall end, literally, in shriekings. That is the meaning of the passage. No one can tell how his song will end. Many men are jovial at a certain period of excitement, but exhilaration ends in stupefaction and everlasting loss. “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” My son, join not the singing party, simply because it is a party of singing people; listen to the words, hear the moral tone, understand the purpose of the songs; write this upon thy heart, That every song that is not sent to heaven ends in a chorus of woe That is the writing. Nothing else is written in the covenant am in the decree but that declaration. The song shall end in shriek ing; they who began the festival with a merry heart shall poison themselves in the course of their very festivity, and their dead bodies shall be taken out, the men who carry them saying, Hush! For this is the literal meaning of the expression “There shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence” with utterances of Hush! let us get this over as soon as we can. Priest, say no good words over these bodies. O thou man, whose shoulders are clothed with white, get thee away hush! silent burials: let these bodies which are mere carcases be thrust into the soil shrouded with quicklime; and, ye priests of the living God, take your prayers home they are for the bodies of the saints, not for the carcases of the suicide and the polluted and the lost. For a time there seems to be joy in sin. He is not a true reader of the philosophy and practice of life who denies a certain measure of so-called happiness to the libertine. Let us be just to the devil. He has for his followers an early laugh; let us put that down to his credit. There is a chuckle at the first which looks like merriment; set it down, but do not add up the account until all the lines are filled. The question is not what are some individual items, but what is the sum-total of the account; and every song that is not sanctified ends in howling, and every man that drank himself into a bloated condition shall be buried in silence, as with the burial of an ass.
The detail which follows is a chapter illustrative of the political economy and the social condition of the prophet’s day:
“Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy [Literally: that pant after the needy. You have seen a hound panting after his prey; so in the day of the prophet the rich men panted for those who were poor], even to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?” (Amo 8:4-6 .)
That was the condition of affairs. There was a religion of the body, but not of the soul. The men acknowledged the limitations of the time; they said, It is new moon; we must wait. It is the Sabbath; we must restrain ourselves; but, oh, when will that moon go? When will the Sabbath vanish that we may again pant after the needy, and swallow up those that have no ephod. These were religious men. Nothing is so corrupt as irreligious religion. Nothing so offends the spirit of the universe by its pestilential odour as an impious piety. Where are the dealers we saw yesterday? It is new moon. Where are the men who were buying a few days ago? Hush! this is the Sabbath, and they are not doing any business to-day. Are they not? They cannot help it. The bad man has no Sabbath. He has closed his windows, but his heart is still a busy mart and exchange and place of barter. The selfish man cannot have a sanctuary; the bad man can have no Bible, no Sabbath day, no altar, no minister; yea, when he is looking his minister in the face he is measuring some poor soul for sale, he is reducing the wages of the hireling, he is regretting that he overpaid some man who toiled in his fields. We cannot keep the Sabbath except in the soul. This is the great and true doctrine of the case. When all the places of commerce are closed, and every principal and clerk has gone home, the place is still open, unless the soul shut it up. Let us give these people credit; they kept the new moon, and they kept the Sabbath day, but they were calculating that they would make the ephah small. How can we make this measure less? We must take off something by the rim; that would save so much on such a number in the course of the year: we must increase the shekel, add a farthing to the price. Ten thousand farthings will amount to something; fifty times ten thousand farthings will make all the difference in our balance-sheet at the end of the year. When will the new moon be gone? How goes that waning light? Has the Sabbath closed yet? Is it not quite six in the evening? Can we not now begin? I pant to devour the poor. And what shall become of “the refuse of the wheat” the portion that used to go through the sieve, the chaff, the little pieces of worthless wheat that the wind has blown away? Stop: we can sell that; it used to be blown away, and anybody that could catch it caught it, but now we can make a profit of that, I pant for profit. When will the new moon be gone? Surely we might begin almost directly: the poor are outside the destruction of the poor man is his poverty; a pair of shoes will buy him, and he may be sold for silver. To this pass have things come.
What wonder that Amos lived just then? The times make the men. The times made Amos as they made Elijah, as they made Cromwell, as they made Luther. The action of the times develops the quality of men. Amos roared throughout the land. It was indeed but a roaring to those who heard only the sound; it was music in heaven, because it carried with it the breath and the tone and the justice of truest judgment. The Lord has always raised up friends for the poor, and for downtrodden righteousness and virtue. How have such men been treated? As conspirators “Amaziah the priest of Beth-el sent to Jeroboam the king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel.” How have such men been treated? As fanatics: they have been beside themselves; they have been imprisoned; they have been befouled by every means; they have been called vulgar, sensational, democratic, unreasonable, and undesirable: yea, stronger names have been applied to them, and epithets which cannot be pronounced in public service. Let such men know the testimony of history, and abide by the fate and the fortune which have marked the evolution of character and the development of destiny. If you will not accept ill names and opprobrious epithets, you are not of the true quality of the sons of God; if you say, Let us be quiet, let us make no excitement, let us whisper our way into a nameless grave, then the Spirit of Christ is not in you; your piety is a lie, your prayers are offences to the heaven which they never reach.
How will the Lord speak about this political economy and this oppression and suffering of the poor?
“The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob [which is by himself, for he has already declared himself to be the excellency of Jacob], Surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day: And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day” ( Amo 8:7-10 ).
Amend that judgment if you can. Say what wants it in dignity. The very utterance of such a voice is a sign of hope for the land. Judge not by the momentary festival and triumph of the wicked: the triumphing of the wicked is short, the candle of the hypocrite shall be blown out. Nothing lasts but truth and love and beneficence. This is the divine view of evildoing. The whole land shall tremble, the light of the festival shall be put out, and men shall be choked by the luxury that is in their mouths, and they who have tuned their voices for song shall find they have prepared their voices for lamentation. Blessed be God for his judgments; thanks be to God for his thunder and his lightning! We need the tempest of his wrath to disinfect the social air, and make men think that they themselves are not divine. Nor does the judgment end here:
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” ( Amo 8:11-12 ).
They shall have nothing to eat but what their mouths can devour; they shall be made to feel what it is to be severed from the supernatural, the spiritual, the divine; they shall be taught what it is to have nothing but flesh; they shall be overweighted with their own bodies; they shall have plenty to eat, and their plentifulness shall be an aggravation of their distress; the spiritual cut off, the vision departed, the holy man no longer in his place teaching the people the way of the Lord; men wholly thrown back upon the material, and made to feel what it is to live upon dust. Thus the Lord teaches mankind. They cannot wholly be taught by spiritual monition and moral exhortation; they must be shut up to eat the dust for a long time till it breaks out all over them, and they feel that plentifulness for the body is the outward and visible sign of famine for the soul. We have too many churches now, we have too many privileges and enjoyments; we have now so many of them that we can find fault with them and criticise them and pronounce opinions upon them. The hungry man pronounces no opinion upon the bread, but that it is good. It is the epicure that finds fault with his supplies; if he could be hungry for a time he would be a thankful man. The time will come when there will be no Church, no altar, no open vision, no spread volume out of which men may read shortly or at length as they please; there shall be only a retired God, a withdrawn vision, a day all cloud, a night all storm.
O God of mercy, take the wings from every little bird that seeks the sun, but do not take from our souls the desires that would fly towards thee! O do thou blight every little flower, and let it no more see the light of day; but do not withdraw thy sunshine from our souls, or they will twice die they will die the second death. Reverse all the laws of nature, plague the universe, vex and tease the procession of the worlds and the outflowings of all the floods that make the life and spring of creation; but spare them that call on thee Take not thy Holy Spirit from us. We have despised our pastors, we have mocked them; we have written bitter things about them; we have made profit by our shame; we have laughed at the altar, and called the sanctuary an abandoned vacancy; but now that there is no word from heaven, no message from the skies, no music in the air, O Lord God Almighty, in the pitifulness of thy great mercy help us and save us, we humbly beseech thee!
Where is the Lord God of Elijah? O ye sermon-bibbers and gospel epicures, fed to a pitch of bloated awfulness of character, critics of the sanctuary, men whose heads are so cool because so empty that they can pronounce opinion upon prayer and song and sermon, and like it and not like it the days come when you shall be taught by famine what you never could be taught by wisdom! My soul, live not until that day, but pray God to release thee, and take thee into the land of heavenly plentifulness before this poor little earth be given over to spiritual famine. Amen, Amen.
VI
THE BOOK OF AMOS PART 2
Amo 3:1-9:15
Helps commended: (1) “Bible Commentary,” (2) “Pulpit Commentary,” (3) Pusey’s Minor Prophets, (4) “Benson’s Commentary.”
The section, Amo 3:1-6:14 , consists of three parts, or three distinct addresses, each commencing with the words, “Hear this word.”
The first address consists, in particular, of the verdict and sentence of Jehovah against all Israel, and is divided as follows: (1) a principle stated (Amo 3:1-8 ); (2) a reason assigned (Amo 3:9-12 ); (3) a sentence announced (Amo 3:13-15 ).
The principle stated in Amo 3:1-8 is that an effect proves a cause. This principle is enforced by seven illustrative questions, viz: (1) communion proves agreement; (2) the lion’s roar proves the prey; (3) the cry of the young lion proves the prey possessed; (4) the fall of the bird proves the bait; (5) the springing of the snare proves the bird to be taken; (6) the sounding of the trumpet proves the alarm; (7) calamity in the city proves Jehovah. The application of all this is made by the prophet) bringing in his text, as follows: “The lion [Jehovah] hath roared; therefore I fear. The Lord hath spoken, therefore I prophesy.”
In Amo 3:9-12 we hear the prophet giving a special invitation to the Philistines and Egyptians, Israel’s inveterate enemies, to assemble in Samaria to witness the great wickedness and destruction of Israel because they did not do right, storing up violence and robbery in their palaces, and whose tumults and oppressions abounded toward the people. The judgment to follow was to be like the work of the lion devouring his prey.
The sentence announced (Amo 3:13-15 ) is the complete destruction of Israel, and the thoroughness of its execution is indicated by the sentence of destruction against its objects and places of worship and the smiting of the habitations of the rulers, showing the complete desolation of their city, Samaria.
The second address consists, in particular, of an indictment and a summons of Jehovah, and its parts are as follows: (1) the king of Bashan threatened (Amo 4:1-3 ); (2) a sarcastic command (Amo 4:4-5 ) ; (3) a list of providences (Amo 4:6-11 ); (4) a summons to an account (Amo 4:12-13 ).
In Amo 4:1-3 we have Jehovah’s threat against the carousing and oppressive women. Bashan was famous for its flocks and herds. The proud and luxurious matrons of Israel are here described as like the cattle of Bashan, because the cattle of the pastures of Bashan were uncommonly large, wanton, and headstrong by reason of their full feeding. These women because of their luxuries were oppressing the poor and crushing the needy. How perverted their natures must have been from the true instincts of womanhood! But such is the effect of luxury without grace. How depraved and animal-like to say, “Bring and let us drink,” but such are the marks of a well-developed animal nature. No wonder that just here we should hear Jehovah’s oath and threat announced: “they shall take you away with hooks,” indicating their humiliation in contrast with their present luxury and pride. How true the proverb: “Pride goeth before a fall.”
In Amo 4:4-5 we have a sample of the prophet’s sarcasm, commanding the people to multiply their offerings in their transgression at Gilgal and Bethel, the two most prominent places of worship in Israel. At these places they worshiped the calf after the pattern of Jeroboam 1.
In Amo 4:6-11 there are mentioned five distinct providences of the Lord as follows: (2) a scarcity of food, or a famine, per- haps the famine of 2Ki 8:1 ; (2) a severe drought; (3) a blasting with mildew; (4) a pestilence; (5) a destruction of cities. The express purpose of all these was to turn the people unto Jehovah. This is an everlasting refutation of the contention that God’s providences do not come into the realm of the temporal. He sent the famine, he sent the drought, he sent the blasting and mildew, he sent the pestilence, and he overthrew the cities, and why not believe that he “is the same yesterday and today, yea and for ever” (Heb 13:8 )? A great text is found in Amo 4:11 , and also in Amo 4:12 .
In Amo 4:12-13 we have the summons to get ready to meet a powerful and angry God. He had exhausted his mercy and chastisements to bring them back but all these things had failed, after which he calls them to meet him in judgment. So we may say that God is now in Christ exhausting his mercy and visiting the world with chastisements and when all has failed, he says to the one who has rejected his mercy and treated lightly his visitation, “Prepare to meet thy God,” and it is appropriate to say that we may prepare to meet God in Christ, or we must meet him in judgment out of Christ, and out of Christ, “God is a consuming fire.”
The third address consists of repeated announcements of judgments, with appeals to turn and do good, and its parts are as follows: (1) a lamentation, an exhortation, and a hope for the remnant (Amo 5:1-15 ) ; (2) another lamentation, a woe, a disgust, and a judgment (Amo 5:16-27 ); (3) another woe, an abhorrence, and a certain judgment (Amo 8:1-14 ).
In Amo 5:1-15 we have a lamentation, an exhortation, and a hope expressed. The lamentation is that of the prophet himself, over the condition of Israel and the judgment already decreed. The exhortation is to repentance and to seek the true God. The hope is, that through repentance, a remnant of Israel may be saved. In Amo 5:16-27 we have another lamentation, a woe, a disgust, and a judgment. The lamentation in this instance is that of the people when Jehovah comes in judgment upon the land; the woe is pronounced upon the hypocrite who wishes for the day of Jehovah, for it will be to him an awful day; the disgust here is that of Jehovah at their feasts, offerings, and music, because of their sins, and the judgment denounced is their captivity, beyond Damascus, or their captivity by the Assyrians. In Amo 6:1-14 we have another woe, an abhorrence and a certain judgment. The woe in this passage is to the rich, luxurious oppressors who feel secure; the abhorrence is that of Jehovah for the excellency, or pride, of Jacob. As a result of it all there is denounced against Israel again her certain doom and the extent of it particularly noted.
Amo 7:1-9:10 consists of revelations for all Israel, conveyed by means of visions. The several parts of this section are as follows: (1) the locusts, (2) the fire, (3) the plumb line, (4) the basket of fruit, (5) Jehovah himself. In Amo 7:1-3 we have the prophet’s vision of the locusts which are represented as eating the grass of the land, the latter growth after the king’s mowing. This signified a threatened judgment, which is the threatened invasion of Pul (Tiglathpileser II) (2Ki 15:1-17 ff.), but it was restrained by the intercession of the prophet, at which Jehovah repented and judgment was arrested.
In Amo 7:4-6 we have the prophet’s vision of fire which is represented as devouring the deep and was making for the land. This signified a threatened judgment more severe than the other, which is the second invasion of Tiglath-pileser II, who conquered Gilead and the northern part of the kingdom and carried some of the people captive to Assyria (2Ki 15:29 ). This, too, was restrained by the intercession of the prophet, at which God repented and arrested the judgment.
In Amo 7:7-9 we have the prophet’s vision of the plumb line in the hand of Jehovah by which he signified that justice was to be meted out to Israel and that judgment was determined. So the prophet holds his peace and makes no more intercession. This judgment was irremediable and typified the final conquest by Shalmaneser.
Just after the vision of the plumb line there follows the incident of the interference of Amaziah, the priest of Bethel. This Amaziah was an imposter, and yet held the position of priest. He reported to Jeroboam what Amos was saying, advising his exile. He, moreover, attempted to appeal to the fear of Amos, and advised him to flee to Judah. The answer of Amos was full of dignity, born of the consciousness of the divine authority of his mission. He declared that he was no prophet, but that Jehovah had taken him and spoken to him; thus he had become a prophet in very deed. Then he prophesied against Amaziah declaring that God’s judgment would overtake him and Israel.
In Amo 8:1-14 we have the vision of a basket of ripe, summer fruit which indicates that the people were ripe for judgment and that judgment was imminent. Jehovah declared that the end had come; that he would not pass by them any more. This announcement was followed, on the part of the prophet, by an impassioned address to the money-makers, in which he declared the effect of their lust for gain, viz: they swallowed the needy and caused the poor to fail. He described the intensity of that lust, thus: the new moon and sabbath were irksome. Then follows a figurative description of judgment, which declared Jehovah’s perpetual consciousness of these things and his consequent retribution. The final issue of judgment the prophet declared to be a famine of the words of the Lord, as a result of which there would come eager and fruitless search, followed by the fainting of youth because of their thirst for a knowledge of God. All this finds fulfilment in the events which followed in the history of Israel. They were deprived of prophets and revelations after Amos and Hosea, and the captivity came according to this prophecy, during which they had no prophets in the strange land of their captivity. This is a foreshadowing of Israel’s condition today. She rejected the Messiah and for these two thousand years she has been without a prophet, priest or Urim and Thummim, no revelation from God to cheer their dark and gloomy hearts.
In Amo 9:1-10 we have the vision of God himself standing beside the altar which symbolizes judgment executed, though there was no symbol, or sign. We hear the manifesto of Jehovah himself. It is one of the most awe-inspiring visions of the whole Bible. The message proceeded in two phases: First, an announcement of judgment irrevocable and irresistible; secondly, a declaration of the procedure so reasonable and discriminative. Jehovah is seen standing by the altar, declaring the stroke of destruction to be inevitable, and all attempts at escape futile, because he has proceeded to action. While the judgment is to be reasonable and discriminative, the claims in which Israel had trusted were nothing. They became as the children of the Ethiopians. The Philistines and the Syrians had also been led by God. The eyes of Jehovah were on the sinful kingdom and the sifting process must go forward but no grain of wheat should perish.
In Amo 9:11-15 , we have a most consoling conclusion of this prophecy in sundry evangelical promises, after so many very severe and sharp menaces.
The phrase, “In that day,” refers to the time after the events previously mentioned had been fulfilled and extends into the messianic age. See Act 15:16 . But what does the prophet mean by raising up the tabernacle of David? The promise, doubtless, at least in the first place, was intended of the return of the Jews from the land of their captivity, their resettlement in Judea, rebuilding Jerusalem, and attaining to the height of power and glory which they enjoyed under the Maccabees. This restoration was an event so extraordinary, and the hope of it so necessary to be maintained in the minds of the Jewish people, in order to their support under the calamity of their seventy years of captivity, that God was pleased to foretell it by the mouth of all his prophets. This prophecy however must be extended to the days of the Messiah, and to the calling of the Gentiles to the knowledge of the true God, according to Act 15:16 . They did not possess the remnant of Edom until after their restoration in the days of Hyrcanus, when they made an entire conquest of Edom, but the statement which follows, viz: “and all the nations that are called by my name,” goes farther into the future and, at least, intimates the salvation of the Gentiles.
In Amo 9:13 we have the promise of the blessings of grace to come in the messianic age in which the reaping shall be so great that the reapers cannot get out of the way of the sowers. This we see fulfilled now sometimes in a small way but these times of harvest are but the firstfruits of the harvest which is to follow, especially, the harvest that is to follow in the millennium. The promise of Amo 9:14-15 will find its complete fulfilment at the return of the Jews to their own land and their conversion which will usher in the millennium and extend the glorious kingdom of our Lord.
QUESTIONS
1. Of what in general, does the section, Amo 3:1-6:14 consist and how does each part commence?
2. Of what, in particular, does the first address consist and what its parts?
3. What is the principle stated in Amo 3:13 , how illustrated and what the application?
4. In Amo 3:9-12 who were invited to witness Israel’s doom, what the reason assigned and what was to be the character of the judgment to come upon Israel?
5. What the sentence announced in Amo 3:13-15 , and how is the thoroughness of its execution indicated?
6. Of what, in particular, does the second address consist and what its parts?
7. What the force and application of “ye kine of Bashan” and what the threat against them?
8. What of the sarcastic command of Amo 4:4-5 ?
9. What the items of providence cited and what their purpose as expressed by the prophet in Amo 4:6-11 ?
10. What the summons of Amo 4:12-13 , and what application may be made of such texts in preaching?
11. Of what, in particular, does the third address consist, and what its
12. What the lamentation, what the exhortation and what the hope, of Amo 5:1-15 ?
13. What the lamentation, what the woe, what the disgust, and what. The judgment of Amo 5:16-27 ?
14. What the woe, what the abhorrence and what the certain judgment of Amo 6:1-14 ?
15. Of what, in general, does the section, Amo 7:1-9:10 , consist, and what are its several parts?
16. What is the vision of locusts and what its interpretation?
17. What the vision of fire and what its interpretation?
18. What the vision of the plumb line and what its interpretation?
19. What historical incident follows the vision of the plumb line and what the several points of the story in detail?
20. What the vision of the basket of fruit, what its interpretation and what the prophet’s explanation following?
21. What the vision of God himself and what its interpretation?
22. What, in general, the prophecy of Amo 9:11-15 ?
23. What the meaning of the phrase, “In that day”?
24. What does the prophet mean by raising up the tabernacle of David?
25. When did they possess the remnant of Edom?
26. What the meaning of Amo 9:13 ?
27. What the fulfilment of Amo 9:14-15 ?
Amo 8:1 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit.
Ver. 1. Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me ] viz. in this fourth vision, whereby (for better assurance, and to shake them out of their desperate security) Israel’s utter ruin is again foretold by a lively type, which is here, 1. propounded; 2. expounded, Amo 8:3 ; Amo 8:5 , that he may run that readeth it, and none may fall, but with open eyes, Hab 2:2 .
And behold a basket
Of summer fruit Amos
RIPE FOR GATHERING
Amo 8:1 – Amo 8:14 There are three visions in the former chapter, each beginning as Amo 8:1 . This one is therefore intended to be taken as the continuation of these, and it is in substance a repetition of the third, only with more detail and emphasis. An insolent attempt, by the priest of Beth-el, to silence the Prophet, and the fiery answer which he got for his pains, come between. The stream of Amos’s prophecy flows on, uninterrupted by the boulder which had tried to dam it up. Some courage was needed to treat Amaziah and his blasphemous bluster as a mere parenthesis.
We have first to note the vision and its interpretation. It is such as a countryman, ‘a dresser of sycamore trees’ would naturally have. Experience supplies forms and material for the imagination, and moulds into which God-given revelations run. The point of the vision is rather obscured by the rendering ‘summer fruit.’ ‘Ripe fruit’ would be better, since the emblem represents the Northern Kingdom as ripe for the dreadful ingathering of judgment. The word for this qayits and that for ‘the end’ qets are alike in sound, but the play of words cannot be reproduced, except by some clumsy device, such as ‘the end ripens’ or ‘the time of ripeness comes.’ The figure is frequent in other prophecies of judgment, as, for instance, in Rev 14:14 – Rev 14:20 .
Observe the repetition, from the preceding vision, of ‘I will not pass by them any more.’ The first two visions had threatened judgments, which had been averted by the Prophet’s intercession; but the third, and now the fourth, declare that the time for prolonged impunity is passed. Just as the mellow ripeness of the fruit fixes the time of gathering it, so there comes a stage in national and individual corruption, when there is nothing to be done but to smite. That period is not reached because God changes, but because men get deeper in sin. Because ‘the harvest is ripe,’ the long-delayed command, ‘Put in thy sickle’ is given to the angel of judgment, and the clusters of those black grapes, whose juice in the wine-press of the wrath of God is blood, are cut down and cast in. It is a solemn lesson, applying to each soul as well as to communities. By neglect of God’s voice, and persistence in our own evil ways, we can make ourselves such that we are ripe for judgment, and can compel long-suffering to strike. Which are we ripening for-the harvest when the wheat shall be gathered into Christ’s barns, or that when the tares shall be bound in bundles for burning?
The tragedy of that fruit-gathering is described with extraordinary grimness and force in the abrupt language of Amo 8:3 . The merry songs sung in the palace this rendering seems more appropriate here than ‘temple’ will be broken off, and the singers’ voices will quaver into shrill shrieks, so suddenly will the judgment be. Then comes a picture as abrupt in its condensed terribleness as anything in Tacitus-’Many the corpses; everywhere they fling them; hush!’ We see the ghastly masses of dead ‘corpse’ is in the singular, as if a collective noun, so numerous that no burial-places could hold them; and no ceremonial attended them, but they were rudely flung anywhere by anybody no nominative is given, with no accustomed voice of mourning, but in gloomy silence. It is like Defoe’s picture of the dead-cart in the plague of London. Such is ever the end of departing from God-songs palsied into silence or turned into wailing when the judgment bursts; death stalking supreme, and silence brooding over all.
The crimes that ripened men for this terrible harvest are next set forth, in part, in Amo 8:4 – Amo 8:6 . These verses partly coincide verbally with the previous indictment in Amo 2:6 , etc., which, however, is more comprehensive. Here only one form of sin is dealt with. And what was the sin that deserved the bad eminence of being thus selected as the chief sign that Israel was ripe and rotten? Precisely the one which gets most indulgence in the Christian Church; namely, eagerness to be rich, and sharp, unkindly dealing. These men, who were only fit to be swept out of the land, were most punctual in their religious duties. They would not on any account do business either on a festival or on Sabbath, but they were very impatient till-shall we say? Monday morning came-that they might get to their beloved work again.
Their lineal descendants are no strangers on the exchanges, or in the churches of London or New York. They were not only outwardly scrupulous and inwardly weary of religious observances, but when they did get to ‘business,’ they gave short measure and took a long price, and knew how to turn the scales always in their own favour. It was the expedient of rude beginners in the sacred art of getting the best of a bargain, to put a false bottom in the ephah , and to stick a piece of lead below the shekel weight, which the purchaser had to make go up in the scale with his silver. There are much neater ways of doing the same thing now; and no doubt some very estimable gentlemen in high repute as Christians, who give respectability to any church or denomination, could have taught these early practitioners a lesson or two.
They were as cruel as they were greedy. They bought their brethren as slaves, and if a poor man had run into their debt for even a pair of shoes, they would sell him up in a very literal sense. Avarice, unbridled by the fear of God, leads by a short cut to harshness and disregard of the claims of others. There are more ways of buying the needy for a pair of shoes than these people practised.
The last touch in the picture is meanness, which turned everything into money. Even what fell through the sieve when wheat was winnowed, which ought to have been given to anybody, was carefully scraped up, and, dirty as it was, sold. Is not ‘nothing for nothing’ an approved maxim to-day? Are not people held up as shining lights of commerce, who have the faculty of turning everything into saleable articles? Some serious reflections ought to be driven home to us who live in great commercial communities, and are in manifold ways tempted to ‘learn their ways, and so get a snare unto our souls,’ by this gibbeting of tempers and customs, very common among ourselves, as the very head and front of the sin of Israel, which determined its ripeness for destruction.
The catalogue of sins is left incomplete compare with Amo 2:1 – Amo 2:16, as if holy indignation turned for relief to the thought of the certain judgment. That certainly is strongly affirmed by the representation of the oath of Jehovah. ‘He can swear by no other,’ therefore He ‘swears by Himself’; and the ‘excellency of Jacob’ cannot with propriety mean anything else than Him who is, or ought to be, the sole ground of confidence and occasion of ‘boasting’ to the nation Hos 5:5. He gives His own being as the guarantee that judgment shall fall. As surely as God is God, injustice and avarice will ruin a nation. We talk now about necessary consequences and natural laws rendering penalties inevitable. The Bible suggests a deeper foundation for their certain incidence-even the very nature of God Himself. As long as He is what He is, covetousness and its child, harshness to the needy, will be sin against Him, and be avenged sooner or later. God has a long and a wide memory, and the sins which He ‘remembers’ are those which He has not forgiven, and will punish.
Amos heaps image on image to deepen the impression of terror and confusion. Everything is turned to its opposite. The solid land reels, rises, and falls, like the Nile in flood see Revised Version. The sun sets at midday, and noon is darkness. Feasts change to mourning, songs to lamentations. Rich garments are put aside for sackcloth, and flowing locks drop off and leave bald heads. These are evidently all figures vividly piled together to express the same thought. The crash that destroyed their national prosperity and existence would shake the most solid things and darken the brightest. It would come suddenly, as if the sun plunged from the zenith to the west. It would make joy a stranger, and bring grief as bitter as when a father or a mother mourns the death of an only son. Besides all this, something darker beyond is dimly hinted in that awful, vague, final threat, ‘The end thereof as a bitter day.’
Now all these threats were fulfilled in the fall of the kingdom of Israel; but that ‘day of the Lord’ was in principle a miniature foreshadowing of the great final judgment. Some of the very features of the description here are repeated with reference to it in the New Testament. We cannot treat such prophecies as this as if they were exhausted by their historical fulfilment. They disclose the eternal course of divine judgment, which is to culminate in a future day of judgment. The oath of God is not yet completely fulfilled. Assuredly as He lives and is God, so surely will modern sinners have to stand their trial; and, as of old, the chase after riches will bring down crashing ruin. We need that vision of judgment as much as Samaria did when Amos saw the basket of ripe fruit, craving, as it were, to be plucked. So do obstinate sinners invite destruction.
The last section specifies one feature of judgment, the deprivation of the despised word of the Lord Amo 8:11 – Amo 8:14. Like Saul, whose piteous wail in the witch’s hovel was, ‘God . . . answereth me no more,’ they who paid no heed to the word of the Lord shall one day seek far and wearily for a prophet, and seek in vain. The word rendered ‘wander,’ which is used in the other description of people seeking for water in a literal drought Amo 4:8, means ‘reel,’ and gives the picture of men faint and dizzy with thirst, yet staggering on in vain quest for a spring. They seek everywhere, from the Dead Sea on the east to the Mediterranean on the west, and then up to the north, and so round again to the starting-point. Is it because Judah was south that that quarter is not visited? Perhaps, if they had gone where the Temple was, they would have found the stream from under its threshold, which a later prophet saw going forth to heal the marshes and dry places. Why was the search vain? Has not God promised to be found of those that seek, however far they have gone away? The last verse tells why. They still were idolaters, swearing by the ‘sin of Samaria,’ which is the calf of Beth-el, and by the other at Dan, and going on idolatrous pilgrimages to Beer-sheba, far away in the south, across the whole kingdom of Judah Amo 5:5. It was vain to seek for the word of the Lord with such doings and worship.
The truth implied is universal in its application. God’s message neglected is withdrawn. Conscience stops if continually unheeded. The Gospel may still sound in a man’s ears, but have long ceased to reach farther. There comes a time when men shall wish wasted opportunities back, and find that they can no more return than last summer’s heat. There may be a wish for the prophet in time of distress, which means no real desire for God’s word, but only for relief from calamity. There may be a sort of seeking for the word, which seeks in the wrong places and in the wrong ways, and without abandoning sins. Such quest is vain. But if, driven by need and sorrow, a poor soul, feeling the thirst after the living God, cries from ever so distant a land of bondage, the cry will be answered. But let us not forget that our Lord has told us to take heed how we hear, on the very ground that ‘to him that hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away.’
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Amo 8:1-3
1Thus the Lord GOD showed me, and behold, there was a basket of summer fruit. 2He said, What do you see, Amos? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then the LORD said to me, The end has come for My people Israel. I will spare them no longer. 3The songs of the palace will turn to wailing in that day, declares the Lord GOD. Many will be the corpses; in every place they will cast them forth in silence.
Amo 8:1 Thus the Lord GOD showed me, and behold This phrase was used to introduce the first three visions in chapter 7. Because of its recurrent use it shows that the visions are related (cf. Amo 7:1; Amo 7:4; Amo 7:7; Amo 8:1).
a basket of summer fruit There is a word play in the Hebrew text between the word for fruit (BDB 884) and the word for end (BDB 893, cf. Dan 8:17; Dan 8:19; Dan 11:40; Dan 12:4; Dan 12:6) in Amo 8:2. These two words would have been pronounced the same way (cf. NIDOTTE, vol. 3, p. 920). Summer fruit (BDB 884) is the last fruit of the season, which over ripens very quickly in the heat and was an appropriate metaphor for the spiritual rottenness of the Israeli nation. They were over-ripe for judgment!
Amo 8:2 The end has come for My people Israel’ The VERB (BDB 97, KB 112, Qal PERFECT) denotes that the covenant between YHWH and Abraham’s descendants will be abrogated with the northern tribes.
The pain of YHWH can be sensed in the covenant phrase, My people Israel( cf. Hos 11:1-4; Hos 11:8), but it will not be completely abrogated. There is hope (cf. Amo 9:7-15; Hos 11:9-11).
To allow the appearance of the covenant to continue would be cruel. YHWH’s judgment, as painful as it was, was an act of love with a real potential of restoration!
will spare them no longer This phrase is very emphatic. Literally, it is I will never (BDB 414, KB 418, Hiphil IMPERFECT) again pass by them (BDB 716, KB 778, Qal INFINITIVE CONSTRUCT).
The Covenant is broken (cf. Amo 7:8)! His people have rejected Him by the amalgamation with Canaanite fertility worship for the last time. In Gen 15:16 the Amorites of the Promised Land were rejected because of their godless lifestyle. Now God’s own people are being turned out because of their similar godless lifestyle. God’s patience coming to an end is also seen in Jer 15:5-9 and Eze 7:2-9.
Amo 8:3 The songs of the palace The term songs (BDB 1010) is FEMININE PLURAL, which may denote the irony that the female singers at court would become the professional mourners. But, there were so many bodies that the only sound was silence! (For a brief discussion of mourning rites see Roland deVaux, Ancient Israel, vol. 1, pp. 56-61.)
There is a possibility of two translations: (1) palace (TEV, NJB, cf. Amo 6:5) or (2) shrine or temple (NKJV, NRSV, NET, NIV, cf. Amo 5:23). Because of Amo 8:10 (cf. Amo 5:23) option #2 seems best.
will turn to wailing The VERB (BDB 410, KB 413, Hiphil PERFECT) occurs several times in the section of Jeremiah dealing with judgment on the surrounding nations (cf. Jer 47:2; Jer 48:20; Jer 48:31; Jer 48:39; Jer 49:3; Jer 51:8). He seems to follow Isaiah’s usage (cf. Isa 13:6; Isa 14:31; Isa 15:2-3; Isa 16:7[twice]; Isa 23:1; Isa 23:6; Isa 23:14). A good translation of this outcry over death and destruction could be wail, howl, shriek.
The eighth century minor prophets used it several times in relation to YHWH’s coming judgment.
1. Hos 7:14
2. Joe 1:5; Joe 1:11; Joe 1:13
3. Amo 8:3
4. Mic 1:8
in that day This was a standardized metaphor of judgment used so often in the eighth century prophets. YHWH will visit His people for blessing (cf. Amo 9:11; Amo 9:13) or cursing (cf. Amo 1:14; Amo 2:16; Amo 3:14; Amo 4:2; Amo 5:8; Amo 5:18; Amo 5:20; Amo 6:3; Amo 8:3; Amo 8:9-11; Amo 8:13). See full note at Amo 2:16.
they will cast them forth in silence This refers to abnormal burial practices (i.e., no professional wailing nor any wailing at all) because of war and siege. This phrase is related to Amo 6:10 (the same INTERJECTION is used, BDB 245, hush).
the Lord GOD. Heb, Adonai Jehovah. See note on Amo 1:8
summer fruit. Hebrew kayitz = ripe, “summer” being put by Figure of speech Metonymy (of Adjunct), App-6, for ripe fruits characterizing the summer. Compare 2Sa 16:2. Jer 40:12.
Chapter 8
Now in chapter 8:
Thus hath the Lord GOD showed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit ( Amo 8:1 ).
So now another vision, and in this vision he sees this summer fruit, apricots and peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries.
He said, Amos what do you see? He said, I see a basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people Israel; I will not pass by them again any more. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord GOD: and there shall be many dead bodies in every place; and they shall cast them forth with silence ( Amo 8:2-3 ).
So the devastation that’s going to come. The songs of mirth within the temple are going to turn into howlings. Dead carcasses everywhere buried in silence.
Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy ( Amo 8:4 ),
And here again God makes the indictment as He speaks against the oppression of the poor by the wealthy people at that time, “Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy,”
even to make the poor of the land to fail ( Amo 8:4 ),
Taking advantage of the poor people.
Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat ( Amo 8:5 ),
The new moon was a Sabbath day. They were not allowed to work on the Sabbath day. So they detested the new moon. They really didn’t like to see the new moon. “When will it be gone? I want to sell. Got to close shop today. Don’t want to close shop; want to make a profit here.” And they got to where they detested those ordained Sabbath days when they had to close shop. So greedy were they for gain that they became upset that they would have to close on the Sabbath day. You mean people could be so greedy for gain that they’d want to be open seven days a week? Terrible. No wonder God brought His judgment. “When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? The Sabbath that we may set forth the wheat.”
and then they made the ephah small ( Amo 8:5 ),
Now the ephah was a bushel basket, but they started making the basket smaller. Still charging you for a bushel, but you weren’t getting a full measure. So they were taking and keep cutting down on the size of the bushel basket.
they made the shekel great [that was the weight], and they falsified the balances by deceit ( Amo 8:5 ).
Now it came to the place where they would have two sets of weights; one by which they would buy, and the other by which they would sell. Without a national bureau of standards of weights and measures, things became very chaotic. Because they were taking advantage of people. They were cheating people. They would have the light weights by which they would buy your grain, and then in turning around to sell it, they had the heavy weights. Or vice a versa. False balances. In the Proverbs it says that they’re an abomination unto the Lord.
That we may buy the poor for silver, the needy for a pair of shoes; and they were selling the refuse of the wheat? ( Amo 8:6 )
I mean, they were just really ripping people off, taking advantage of people, making people sell themselves for their food. These kind of things are an abomination unto God. Taking advantage of the needy and of the poor is something that God just does not abide.
The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwells therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day: And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day ( Amo 8:7-10 ).
Now, when God here prophesied that the sun would go down at noon and darken the earth in a clear day, there are those who say that is only a figure of speech. That because of the desolation and devastation of their enemies, that it’s like you say, “Oh, the sun really set on me yesterday.” You’re talking about the gloom and the sorrow that overcame you. There are others who believe that Amos was actually predicting certain eclipses that did take place in Israel there within the next twenty years or so. Bishop Usher speaks about three eclipses that took place in succeeding years. Each of them on the feast days: one on the Feast of Pentecost, another at the Feast of Trumpets at the following year, and then, and the following year again on the Feast of Pentecost. Thus, making the sun to go down at noon and darkening the earth on a clear day, and turning their feasts into mourning.
In 763 there was an eclipse of the sun which was about twenty-four years after this prophecy. However, the total eclipse was over Africa and it would not have been a total eclipse there in Samaria. However, we do read of one day which was a feast day, the Feast of Passover, in which it turned dark at noon on a clear day. It could not have been an eclipse, because Passover takes place at full moon, and it’s impossible to have an eclipse on a full moon. That was the day that Jesus was crucified. You remember how it declares that darkness covered the land from the ninth hour onward, sixth hour there was darkness over the land? This could be a prophecy of that darkness of that time of the crucifixion of Christ. The sun to go down at noon and darken the earth on a clear day and turn the feast into mourning, the songs into lamentations, to bring up the sackcloth and all the loins. Baldness, which was a shaving of the head in grief over the dead.
And behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor thirst for water, but of hearing of the words of the LORD ( Amo 8:11 ):
I believe that we are living in those days where there is a famine for the Word of God. The paradox is that there probably never more Bibles in print in any time in the history of the world than there is now, and more versions, and in more languages. The famine for the Word of God is that people would no longer be hearing the Word of God. It isn’t that God isn’t any longer speaking. It doesn’t mean that the Word of God isn’t there. It means that people are no longer hearing the Word of God.
You remember how Jesus over and over again said, “He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying”? As He addressed Himself to the seven churches in the book of Revelation, to each church there was that repeated exhortation as He gave His message, then He would say, “He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says.” But the truth is, there are many who do not have an ear to hear what God is saying. They just don’t hear the Word of God. It isn’t that God isn’t speaking; it’s just that they can’t hear the Word of God. It’s just a jumble of words; it just doesn’t make sense. They don’t have an ear to hear. “God’s hand is not short that He cannot save, neither is His ear heavy that He cannot hear, but your sins have separated between you and God” ( Isa 59:1-2 ). You see, the problem is never on God’s side. It isn’t that God isn’t’ speaking, it’s that we’re not listening. It really isn’t that God can’t hear. Our lifestyles have made it inconsistent for God to respond.
Now because they weren’t hearing the Word of God, because there was this famine for the Word of God, notice what the result was.
And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from north even to the east, and they shall run to and fro and seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it ( Amo 8:12 ).
This restlessness would ensue as they were searching trying to find that which would satisfy them. Look at the restlessness in the world today. How that people are wandering all over the world from sea to sea, from north to the east, wandering around the world, looking for something that will satisfy. If you don’t hear the Word of God, if your heart isn’t satisfied in God’s Word, you’re gonna find yourself just blindly searching here and there trying to find something that will fill that void within your life. This restlessness is always the consequence of no longer hearing the voice of God, or the Word of God in your hearts. That void causes the restlessness, and as a result,
The fair virgins and the young men shall faint for thirst ( Amo 8:13 ).
It doesn’t say the old people who are over the hill, and the elderly and decrepit are gonna faint, but the young virgins, the young men, those who are in the prime of strength will find that thirst, and faint as the result of that thirst. Because they don’t have anything that will really sustain them and help them. The prime, those that are in their prime cannot really exist apart from the living Word of God. How much we need to hear and to heed the Word of God.
They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan ( Amo 8:14 ),
Dan was the religious center for the northern part of the kingdom of Israel. There is where Jeroboam made an altar and put a calf and said, “This is the god that delivered you out of Egypt. This is the god that you worship.” And the people of Samaria, swearing by that god of Dan, “Thy god, O Dan,”
lives; and, The manner of Beersheba lives; even they shall fall, and never rise again ( Amo 8:14 ). “
Amo 8:1-6
CAUSES OF JUDGMENT PROPHESIED-
GODS LONGSUFFERING HAS EXPIRED
TEXT: Amo 8:1-6
Israel is ripe for destruction. Why? Because of her rebellion against Jehovah and His Law and all that is righteous and just. Gods judgment will terrify!
Amo 8:1-2 . . . BEHOLD, A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT . . . THE END IS COME UPON MY PEOPLE . . . The prophet is given another vision, What he sees is symbolic of Israels future. He sees a basket filled with summer fruit, There can be no doubt as to what it symbolizes for God Himself has given the interpretation. Just as a basket of summer fruit indicates the reaper has gone through the vineyard and that the time for growing and developing has ended so God the reaper has passed through Israel and her time has ended (cf. Isa 18:5; Jeremiah 24; Hos 9:10; Joe 3:13; Mic 7:1; Nah 3:12; Rev 14:15; Rev 14:18). The harvest is past, the summer is ended and we are not saved (Jer 8:20), could be written over the palaces and homes of Israel! Their last opportunity has come and gone according to the vision given to Amos. Most certainly there comes a time (known only to God, of course) when Gods longsuffering runs out. His Spirit will not always strive with man (Gen 6:3). It was revealed to Amos that this terrible moment was about to come to Israel.
Zerr: Amo 8:1. Summer fruit is used figuratively to indicate the end of the season. The original is a word that means the product of any kind that has come to full growth, and in its application to the predictions of the nation it means that the season is over. Amo 8:2. In answer to the Lord’s question Amos acknowledged the vision of the basket of fruit. The meaning of it was then stated, that the end is come upon my people of Israel. The season” that was ended was the period of God’s leniency toward the unfaithful nation. Not pass by means the Lord would not overlook their iniquity any more, hut would bring an enemy force against them.
Amo 8:3 . . . THE SONGS OF THE TEMPLE SHALL BE WAILINGS IN THAT DAY . . . DEAD BODIES SHALL BE MANY . . . THEY CAST THEM FORTH WITH SILENCE. When that terrible day of the Lord shall come the songs of frivolous joy and merriment sung in their temples (plural in Israel) will be turned into howling shrieks of mourning; they will be weeping and wailing instead of laughing and singing. There will be cries of terror, fear; tears of mourning for the multitudes of dead bodies cast out in many places. Then after the first expressions of mourning there will come the awed silence born of the overwhelming severity of the judgment of God they experience (cf. Zep 1:7; Hab 2:20; Zec 2:1-7). There will be the furtive whispers and glances as they literally feel the omnipotent wrath of God in their very presence.
Zerr: Amo 8:3. Songs of the temple refers to the religious performances that the people of Israel bad so inconsistently carried out, even while their minds were polluted with the belief in false gods. But instead of those songs, the people were to be made to howl by the attack of the foes. Cast forth with silence denotes that these hypocritical songsters would be silenced by their death, caused by the might of a hostile army that the Lord would suffer to come against His people.
Amo 8:4-6 HEAR THIS . . . YE . . . THAT . . . SWALLOW UP THE NEEDY . . . SAYING, WHEN WILL THE NEW MOON BE GONE, THAT WE MAY SELL GRAIN . . . MAKING THE EPHAH SMALL . . . AND SELL THE REFUSE OF THE WHEAT? Israel is a nation of greedy profiteers, Swallowing up the poor. The original text pictures the rich panting after the poor man and his possessions like a wild beast pants for its victim. The greedy rich harassed the poor and literally stalked them. The rich merchants and officials could barely wait while they punctiliously performed religious holidays until they could get back to cheating the poor and powerless. As far as the rich were concerned they only went through the motions of observing religious holidays for the sake of expediency. It helped them maintain control in governmental affairs and gave them a show of being religious. That was as far as religion went in their lives. When they got to their houses of merchandise or judgment seats it was do the other man before he has a chance to do you.
Zerr: Amo 8:4. The main complaint all along has been against the head men of the nation, who imposed upon the poor and common people to advance their own interests. This is the meaning of the expression swallow up the needy. Amo 8:5. The days of new moons were holy days with the Jews (1Sa 20:24-27; 1Ch 23:31), and on such days they were not to work or transact any secular business. These covetous men could not dismiss from their minds the worldly subject in order to give “undivided attention” to their religious duties, but even while the holy day was being (outwardly) observed, they were thinking of the deals they intended to perform. Their worldly-minded interests were made worse by the unjust means they intended to take for profit. Ephah small, shekel great. They tampered with the scales by causing the balancing weights to show more than they actually contained, then cheated their customers in another way which was to increase the price unjustly. Amo 8:6. Poor for silver, needy for shoes. See the comments on Amo 2:6 for this subject. Sell the refuse of wheat means they sold the worthless part of their grain as if it had full value.
The Chodesh (the new moon) was a holiday on which all trade was suspended just as it was on the Sabbath (cf. 2Ki 4:23; Isa 1:13; Hos 2:13). (For regulations concerning the Sabbath day see Exo 20:9-10).
The ephah (in dry measure) is about 3/5 of a bushel. The shekel, in Amos day, was probably a hunk of crude, shapeless precious metal, heavy enough so as to approximate the value of the item purchased in actual weight. The buyer usually weighed his money to the seller. The Jewish shekel was such a weight (shekel literally means weight). Among the Jews the shekel was used for the temple tax, poll tax, and for redemption from the priesthood (Exo 30:11-16; Exo 13:13; Num 3:44-51). Most historians believe that the earliest money pieces, as such, were struck about 700 B.C. in the small kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor. So in Amos day they were probably still using shekels as weights. In Jesus day, of course, the shekel was struck in coin form and the value of a shekel then was worth about a days wages. Now we can begin to see that if the greedy merchants made the ephah basket smaller than usual and increased the weight of the shekel over what it usually was then they were robbing the poor unmercifully. Not only that but they were using scales upon which to weigh grain that were rigged. Furthermore, they were selling the chaff for wheat. The poor were being robbed so thoroughly that they did not even have enough to pay the very smallest debt (a pair of shoes). The poor debtor would either have to sell himself to his creditor (Lev 25:39) or wait for the courts (which were also unjust) to hand him over to his creditor for enslavement.
Honeycutt says, One of the most frighteningly disturbing events upon which an individual can contemplate is the end. Whether it be the end of human existence as known in this life, the end of the cosmos as often stressed in some eschatological forecasts, or the end of an era of vitality for an institution; the end is never a pleasant topic of conversation. Consideration of its reality is intensified in its sense of dread, however, when one comes to understand that the end is not just a future event . . . Amos anticipated this when he spoke of the end as having already come upon Israel. The end of the nation had been so firmly fixed that he viewed it as already achieved. The nature of her character and her reaction to God had been such that Amos could speak of the end of Israel as a present reality.
When current political and religious structures and behaviours are examined, one often has this same feeling concerning the present reality of the end. The seeds of dissolution and destruction have been sown in both political and religious life and the end seems to be upon us now! It seems as though the end has already come!
In the case of Israel social injustice as a principle of life and conduct was cited as characteristic of a nation of whom it could be said the end has come. We firmly believe that whether it be ancient Israel embroiled in the problems of the eighth century B.C. or contemporary America, the principle is the same. Social injustice as an accepted fact of life will bring about the destruction of any society, ancient or modern, The same is true of the manifestations of superficiality in religion.
Questions
1. How are we to interpret the figure of the basket of summer fruit? Why?
2. How severe will be the judgment of God upon Israel?
3. How were the rich cheating the poor?
4. Could Israels destiny be a lesson for contemporary society? Why?
The next vision, that of the basket of summer fruit, indicated the im minence of the judgment. Jehovah declared that the end was come, that He would not pass by them any more.
This announcement was followed by the prophet’s impassioned address to the moneymakers, in which he first declared the effect of their lust for gain. They swallowed the needy, and caused the poor to fail. He described the intensity of that lust; the new moon and sabbath were irksome.
Then followed a figurative description of judgment which declared Jehovah’s perpetual consciousness of these things, and His consequent retribution. The final judgment would be a famine of hearing the words of the Lord, as a result of which there would be eager and fruitless search for substitutes, followed by the fainting of the youth for lack.
the Worst Famine of All
Amo 8:1-14
What is more fragile than summer fruit! So beautiful, so refreshing, yet so readily corrupted and diseased. To Amos it was an emblem of the rapidity with which dissolution would overtake his rebellious nation. The end had arrived. The Great Husbandman could do no more. When the harvest has come, separation between good and bad is inevitable. See Isa 5:4; Mat 13:30.
The crimes of the ruling class were enormous. Eager to increase their stores, they wearied of time given to religion. They grudged passing a day without opening their salesrooms. They did not scruple to make their measures (ephah) small, and to demand a greater weight of money (shekel) from their clients. These were crimes that could not be passed over. It is an awful sentence when God says, I will never forget, Amo 8:7. Invasion would sweep the land like an inundation. Since the people would not heed the God-sent messengers, they would be withdrawn. There would be a famine of the Word of God, and those who had most despised it, because enamored with the fascinations of youth, would be smitten with an insatiable appetite for it.
Chapter 8
A Famine Of The Word
The opening verses (1-3) contain the fourth vision, and its application. It will be noticed that, with the exception of the last of these object-lessons, all are of such a character as would readily come before the mind of a young man who had been reared in a rural district, and was familiar with agricultural life. Locusts are the dreaded plague of the Eastern farmer. Often too Amos may have helped combat a brush or forest fire, threatening destruction to crops and herds alike. The use of the plumb-line would be quite familiar to him, as stone walls were used almost exclusively both in dwellings and enclosures under special cultivation. And the subject of this fourth vision would be as familiar as the rest.
The Lord showed him a basket of summer-fruit; that is, overripe fruit, which could no longer be preserved. In reply to His inquiry, Amos, what seest thou? the prophet answers, A basket of summer-fruit. Then comes the explanation of the simple symbol. Israel had become like a decaying fruit. The end was near- the time of being cast away. No longer would grace be extended to those who had rejected it so repeatedly. The temple songs would be changed to woeful cries of anguish and despair, while the dead bodies of the despisers of Gods message would fill the cities, and be cast out in silence.
Accompanying this declaration that the end had come, we have a solemn summing-up of the sin of the people. They swallowed up the needy in their covetousness, making the poor of the land to fail, as in the last days of Jam 5:1-6, where the word is, Ye have heaped treasure together in (not for) the last days!
This same covetous spirit made the appointed feasts and the sabbaths a burden. Outwardly they observed them, but they longed for the close of the day to come, that they might buy and sell, and get gain.
For this the Lord sware, saying, Surely I will never forget any of their works. All were under His holy eye. All were noted in His book. All should be faced at His judgment-seat! If the eye of an unsaved sinner rests on this page, oh, let me press upon you this statement in all its solemnity. You may forget your own works, so great may be the number of your sins; but God has declared He will ever remember them. And if He thus remembers, you must be banished from His presence forever. But of all who now judge themselves and own their guilt, trusting the One who died to save, Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more (Jer 31:34; Heb 10:17). Are your sins then, remembered or forgotten, dear reader?
For Israels sins the land had to tremble, and its people were to be carried away as by the overflowing river of Egypt, when the sun should go down at noon, and the earth be darkened in the clear day. It is a poetic figure for utter desolation; the result of their grasping selfishness, their heartless misconduct toward the poor, and Gods displeasure upon their ways. Bitter would be the mourning in that day, when, alas, repentance would come too late to avert the threatened calamity, which was to be as the mourning for an only son, and the end be a day of woe (vers. 4-10).
But more: a famine was to come upon them-who would swallow up the needy, and buy the poor for a pair of shoes. It would not be a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord, which they had rejected. From sea to sea, as a people forsaken, they should wander, seeking on all sides for the once-despised word of the Lord; but too late now -they shall not find it! (vers. 11, 12).
Undoubtedly this prophecy had its fulfilment in measure when the people of Israel were carried into Assyria. But a larger fulfilment awaits them in the days of Antichrist. Nor shall Israel and Judah alone pass through that famine. Guiltier Christendom, so richly blessed with the Holy Scriptures, will have utterly turned from the truth, and will be turned unto fables. The day will come when the grieved Spirit of God will have left the earth, and when the very Scriptures of truth shall, as it were, be taken from those who have esteemed them so lightly.
Then shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst, because the water of life, which they refused, shall be withdrawn, when they are left to die in despair, and given up to strong delusion, that they might believe a lie, and will all be judged who obeyed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. The famine will result, not in their turning to God, but they shall swear by their idols still, only to find, as in Elijahs day, that there shall be none to hear, nor any to regard. So shall they fall, never to rise again (vers. 13, 14).
CHAPTER 8
The Fourth Vision: The Basket With Summer Fruit
1. The vision (Amo 8:1-3)
2. Israel ripe for judgment (Amo 8:4-10)
3. The coming days of famine (Amo 8:11-14)
Amo 8:1-3. In his fourth vision the prophet beholds a basket of summer fruit. The Hebrew shows that it was a basket filled with ripe fruit. The ripe fruit is a symbol that Israel was ripe for the harvest of judgment. The message of the Lord to the prophet is, The end is come upon My people Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. The songs would be changed into howling lamentations and many should be slain.
Amo 8:4-10. Once more the wealthy and prosperous portion of the nation is addressed, their sinful practices are exposed and it is shown that they were ripe for judgment. The rich oppressed the poor; they took away from the poor what belonged rightfully to them. They cheated by making the measure small and increased the price. They were the profiteers of that time. They also used false balances. Then they sold the refuse of the wheat. All may be compared with Jam 5:1-6 where the same conditions are pictured, prevailing in Christendom, before the Lord comes. For all this they did the land would have to tremble and every one mourn.
And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day. Much nonsense has been written on this verse especially from the side of the Adventists, as if there has been a certain time a dark day in fulfillment of this prophecy. Some expositors have made of it a mere eclipse of the sun. The verse, while it has a certain application to that generation, whose glory should end like the sun going down at noon, has its final meaning in the coming day of the Lord, which all the prophets announced. It is the same our Lord predicts in Mat 24:29-30. For Israel the bitter day of mounting, lamentation and woe would come.
Amo 8:11-14. A great famine is announced. It is not to be a famine for bread, or thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. His Word and the light of His revelation is to be completely withdrawn from them. The Word of the Lord which they despised they would then desire to seek in vain. They will wander hither and thither from sea to sea, from the north to the east; they shall run to and fro to seek the Word of the Lord and shall not find it. Such was the case with them when the cruel Assyrian power took hold on them and carried them away. Such a judgment too is fast approaching for Christendom which in its apostasy rejects the Word of the Lord, turns to fables, till the day comes when the Spirit will leave and as a result there will be a famine of the Word, no comfort and no help for those who are ripe for judgment.
Amo 7:1, Amo 7:4, Amo 7:7
Reciprocal: 2Sa 16:1 – summer 2Ki 8:10 – the Lord Jer 24:1 – Lord
Amo 8:1. Summer fruit is used figuratively to indicate the end of the season. The original is a word that means the product of any kind that has come to full growth, and in its application to the predictions of the nation it means that the season is over.
Amo 8:1-2. Behold a basket of summer fruit This symbolically denoted that Israels sins were now ripe for judgment, and that as the fruit, when it is ripe, is taken from the trees, so, their iniquity being now ripe, they should be taken off the land in which they dwelt. The two Hebrew words, , kaits, summer fruit, and , kets, an end, have an affinity in their sound. Such paronomasias occur in other passages of Scripture: see Isa 24:17; Jer 1:11. Instead of summer fruit, Houbigant reads, autumnal fruit, or, fruit of the last season of the year; and so in the next verse, where, instead of the end, he reads the last end, in order to keep up the allusion, and the play of the words in the original: whereby is signified, that as after the autumnal fruits, no others are produced from the earth, or gathered from the tree, so should it come to pass, that the kingdom of Israel should no more produce any fruit, nor reflourish in the following years. After Jeroboam II. all things became worse and worse, till the kingdom of Israel was totally destroyed: see Jeremiah 24.
Amo 8:1. A basket of summer fruit. The Lord would not wait till the vintage; he would cause their sun, as a nation, to set at noon, and rise no more.
Amo 8:5. That we may sell cornmaking the ephah small, and the shekel great. In the east they weighed money; for stamped silver passed as coin. The jews would suffer no image to appear on their money. Therefore our Saviour asked, as is noted by three evangelists, Whose image and superscription is this?
Rabbi Ramban died about the year 1260. In his Commentary on the Pentateuch he says that being at Ancona in Italy, he found in the hand of some aged people a shekel of silver, weighing about half an ounce. On the front was a branch of the almond tree, and on the obverse side an urn, inscribed with Samaritan characters, shekel of shekels; the other side had on it, holy Jerusalem. Other shekels have been found like that at Ancona, all of which have the same inscriptions, with the golden pot of manna on the one side, and the almond rod of Aaron on the other. The shekel was thus coined since the return of the people from Babylon.Finding this ancient shekel neatly engraved in the Latin work of a Jesuit, I have introduced it into the map of Jerusalem. See maps. This is perhaps the only one of the kind in England.
Amo 8:14. Thy god, oh Dan, liveth. This is spoken in derision of the calf in Dan, where the invading army entered, and it could not save. The Assyrians overran the whole land to Beersheba, the last town leading to Egypt.
REFLECTIONS.
This man of God, moving through the land to execute his mission, reproves the whole series of crimes, from the singers in the temple to the dishonest tradesman in his dwelling, a sort of covert robbers, and oppressors of the poor. But they at the same time rob themselves, a false balance being an abomination to the Lord. No marvel that they should watch opportunities to rob the Lord of his sabbaths, and hasten destruction on themselves, and desolations on their country. We are not allowed by the laws of nature and of nations to take advantage either of the ignorance, or of the necessity of our neighbour. The golden rule of mutual equity must not be violated.
The horrors of famine are great, as we have just seen in the destruction of the army of Cambyses. Joe 3:2. But how dreadful to see a whole land full of corruption, and no prophet to stand in the gap; no manna rained from heaven, and no Horeb to give their dying souls streams of water. What is the state of such a people but that of fat cattle, shut up in hunger, till the time of slaughter. Their feasts are turned to mourning, and when they cry for help the golden gods cannot hear.
Amo 8:1-3. The Vision of the Basket of Summer Fruit.The account of the visions is now resumed. This time the prophet sees a basket of summer fruit (Amo 8:1), and Yahweh explains (Amo 8:2) that the summer fruit (kayi) symbolises the end (k) of the people of Israel. Thus we have a play upon words (as in Jer 1:11 f.). In that day (Amo 8:3) the songs in the palace (not temple) shall be turned into wailing. There shall be dead bodies everywhere, and these shall be cast away in silence without burial. This scene of the dead demands dead silence.
3. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings: lit. and the songs of the palace shall wail. Read with Hoffmann and others, shrth for shrth, and the singing women of the palace shall wail. Translate, A multitude of carcases.
The vision proper 8:1-3
The sovereign Lord showed Amos a basket of summer fruit. Amos saw what God enabled him to see. The Lord asked him what he saw (cf. Amo 7:8), and the prophet replied that he saw a basket of ripe summer fruit (Heb. qayis). Normally this would have been a pleasant sight associated with the joys and provisions of harvest. Then Yahweh told him that Israel was also ripe (Heb. qes), but ripe for judgment. The Lord would spare the Israelites no longer. Like the fruit in the basket, Israel also needed to be consumed soon.
"Just as the final fruit of the summer signaled the end of the harvest season, so God’s ’end’ for Israel was now at hand. God would judge the religious hypocrisy and greed of the people." [Note: Charles H. Dyer, in The Old Testament Explorer, p. 760.]
"The Lord takes into his confidence those whom he desires to understand his words and his works (cf. Amo 3:7; Gen 18:17-19)." [Note: Niehaus, p. 467.]
7
5. THE PROPHET AND HIS MINISTRY
Amo 7:1-17 – Amo 8:1-4
We have seen the preparation of the Man for the Word; we have sought to trace to its source the Word which came to the Man. It now remains for us to follow the Prophet, Man and Word combined, upon his Ministry to the people.
For reasons given in a previous chapter, there must always be some doubt as to the actual course of the ministry of Amos before his appearance at Bethel. Most authorities, however, agree that the visions recounted in the beginning of the seventh chapter form the substance of his address at Bethel, which was interrupted by the priest Amaziah. These visions furnish a probable summary of the prophets experience up to that point. While they follow the same course, which we trace in the two series of oracles that now precede them in the book, the ideas in them are less elaborate. At the same time it is evident that Amos must have already spoken upon other points than those which he puts into the first three visions. For instance, Amaziah reports to the king that Amos had explicitly predicted the exile of the whole people {Amo 7:11} -a conviction which, as we have seen, the prophet reached only after some length of experience. It is equally certain that Amos must have already exposed the sins of the people in the light of the Divine righteousness. Some of the sections of the book which deal with this subject appear to have been originally spoken; and it is unnatural to suppose that the prophet announced the chastisements of God without having previously justified these to the consciences of men.
If this view be correct, Amos, having preached for some time to Israel concerning the evil state of society, appeared at a great religious festival in Bethel, determined to bring matters to a crisis, and to announce the doom which his preaching threatened and the peoples continued impenitence made inevitable Mark his choice of place and of audience. It was no mere king he aimed at. Nathan had dealt with David, Gad with Solomon, Elijah with Ahab and Jezebel. But Amos sought the people, them with whom resided the real forces and responsibilities of life: the wealth, the social fashions, the treatment of the poor, the spirit of worship, the ideals of religion. And Amos sought the people upon what was not only a great popular occasion, but one on which was arrayed, in all pomp and lavishness, the very system he essayed to overthrow The religion of his time-religion as mere ritual and sacrifice-was what God had sent him to beat down, and he faced it at its headquarters, and upon one of its high days, in the royal and popular sanctuary where it enjoyed at once the patronage of the crown, the lavish gifts of the rich, and the thronged devotion of the multitude. As Savonarola at the Duomo in Florence, as Luther at the Diet of Worms, as our Lord Himself at the feast in Jerusalem, so was Amos at the feast in Bethel. Perhaps he was still more lonely. He speaks nowhere of having made a disciple, and in the sea of faces which turned on him when he spoke, it is probable that he could not welcome a single ally. They were officials, or interested traders, or devotees; he was a foreigner and a wild man, with a word that spared the popular dogma as little as the royal prerogative. Well for him was it that over all those serried ranks of authority, those fanatic crowds, that lavish splendor, another vision commanded his eyes. “I saw the Lord standing over the altar, and He said, Smite.”
Amos told the pilgrims at Bethel that the first events of his time in which he felt a purpose of God in harmony with his convictions about Israels need of punishment were certain calamities of a physical kind. Of these, which in chapter 4 he describes as successively drought, blasting, locusts, pestilence, and earthquake, he selected at Bethel only two-locusts and drought-and he began with the locusts. It may have been either the same visitation as he specifies in chapter 4, or a previous one; for of all the plagues of Palestine locusts have been the most frequent, occurring every six or seven years. “Thus the Lord Jehovah caused me to see: and, behold, a brood of locusts at the beginning of the coming up of the spring crops.” In the Syrian year there are practically two tides of verdure: one which starts after the early rains of October and continues through the winter, checked by the cold; and one which comes away with greater force under the influence of the latter rains and more genial airs of spring. Of these it was the later and richer which the locusts had attacked. “And, behold, it was after the kings mowings.” These seem to have been a tribute which the kings of Israel levied on the spring herbage, and which the Roman governors of Syria used annually to impose in the month Nisan. “After the kings mowings” would be a phrase to mark the time when everybody else might turn to reap their green stuff. It was thus the very crisis of the year when the locusts appeared; the April crops devoured, there was no hope of further fodder till December. Still, the calamity had happened before, and had been survived; a nation so vigorous and wealthy as Israel was under Jeroboam II need not have been frightened to death. But Amos felt it with a conscience. To him it was the beginning of that destruction of his people which the spirit within him knew that their sin had earned. So “it came to pass when” the locusts “had made an end of devouring the verdure of the earth, that I said, Remit, I pray Thee,” or “pardon”-a proof that there already weighed on the prophets spirit something more awful than loss of grass-“how shall Jacob rise again? for he is little.” The prayer was heard. “Jehovah repented for this: It shall not be, said Jehovah.” The unnameable “it” must be the same as in the frequent phrase of the first chapter: “I will not turn it back” namely, the final execution of doom on the peoples sin. The reserve with which this is mentioned, both while there is still chance for the people to repent and after it has become irrevocable, is very impressive.
The next example which Amos gave at Bethel of his permitted insight into Gods purpose was a great drought. “Thus the Lord Jehovah made. me to see: and, behold, the Lord Jehovah was calling fire irate the quarrel.” There was, then, already a quarrel between Jehovah and His people-another sign that the prophets moral conviction of Israels sin preceded the rise of the events in which he recognized its punishment. “And” the fire “devoureth the Great Deep, yea, it was about to devour the land.” Severe drought in Palestine might well be described as fire, even when it was not accompanied by the flame and smoke of those forest and prairie fires which Joel describes as its consequences. {Amo 1:1-15} But to have the full fear of such a drought, we should need to feel beneath us the curious world which the men of those days felt. To them the earth rested in a great deep, from whose stores all her springs and fountains burst. When these failed it meant that the unfathomed floods below were burnt up. But how fierce the flame that could effect this! And how certainly able to devour next the solid land which rested above the deep-the very “Portion” assigned by God to His people. Again Amos interceded: “Lord Jehovah, I pray Thee forbear: how shall Jacob rise? for he is little.” And for the second time Jacob was reprieved. “Jehovah repented for this: It also shall not come to pass, said the Lord Jehovah.”
We have treated these visions, not as the imagination or prospect of possible disasters, but as insight into the meaning of actual plagues. Such a treatment is justified, not only by the invariable habit of Amos to deal with real facts, but also by the occurrence of these same plagues among the series by which, as we are told, God had already sought to move the people to repentance. The general question of sympathy between such purely physical disasters and the moral evil of a people we may postpone to another chapter, confining ourselves here to the part played in the events by the prophet himself.
Surely there is something wonderful in the attitude of this shepherd to the fires and plagues that Nature sweeps upon his land. He is ready for them. And he is ready not only by the general feeling of his time that such things happen of the wrath of God. His sovereign and predictive conscience recognizes them as her ministers. They are sent to punish a people whom she has already condemned. Yet, unlike Elijah, Amos does not summon the drought, nor even welcome its arrival. How far has prophecy traveled since the violent Tishbite! With all his conscience of Israels sin, Amos yet prays that their doom may be turned. We have here some evidence of the struggle through which these later prophets passed, before they accepted their awful messages to men. Even Amos, desert-bred and living aloof from Israel, shrank from the judgment which it was his call to publish. For two moments-they would appear to be the only two in his ministry-his heart contended with his conscience, and twice he entreated God to forgive. At Bethel he told the people all this, in order to show how unwillingly he took up his duty against them, and how inevitable he found that duty to be. But still more shall we learn from his tale, if we feel in his words about the smallness of Jacob, not pity only, but sympathy. We shall learn that prophets are never made solely by the bare word of God, but that even the most objective and judicial of them has to earn his title to proclaim judgment by suffering with men the agony of the judgment he proclaims. Never to a people came there a true prophet who had not first prayed for them. To have entreated for men, to have represented them in the highest courts of Being, is to have deserved also supreme judicial rights upon them. And thus it is that our Judge at the Last Day shall be none other than our great Advocate who continually maketh intercession for us. It is prayer, let us repeat, which, while it gives us all power with God, endows us at the same time with moral rights over men. Upon his mission of judgment we shall follow Amos with the greater sympathy that he thus comes forth to it from the mercy-seat and the ministry of intercession.
The first two visions which Amos told at Bethel were of disasters in the sphere of nature, but his third lay in the sphere of politics. The two former were, in their completeness at least, averted; and the language Amos used of them seems to imply that he had not even then faced the possibility of a final overthrow. He took for granted Jacob was to rise again: he only feared as to how this should be. But the third vision is so final that the prophet does not even try to intercede. Israel is measured, found wanting, and doomed. Assyria is not named, but is obviously intended; and the fact-that the prophet arrives at certainty with regard to the doom of Israel, just when he thus comes within sight of Assyria, is instructive as to the influence exerted on prophecy by the rise of that empire.
“Thus He gave me to see: and, behold, the Lord had taken His station”-tis a more solemn word than the “stood” of our versions-“upon a city wall” built to “the plummet, and in His hand a plummet. And Jehovah said unto me, What art thou seeing, Amos?” The question surely betrays some astonishment shown by the prophet at the vision or some difficulty he felt in making it out. He evidently does not feel it at once, as the natural result of his own thinking: it is objective and strange to him; he needs time to see into it. “And I said, A plummet. And the Lord said, Behold, I am setting a plummet in the midst of My people Israel. I will not again pass them over.” To set a measuring line or a line with weights attached to any building means to devote it to destruction; but here it is uncertain whether the plummet threatens destruction, or means that Jehovah will at last clearly prove to the prophet the insufferable obliquity of the fabric of the nations life, originally set straight by Himself-originally “a wall of a plummet.” For Gods judgments are never arbitrary: by a standard we men can read He shows us their necessity. Conscience itself is no mere voice of authority: it is a convincing plummet, and plainly lets us see why we should be punished. But whichever interpretation we choose, the result is the same. “The high places of Israel shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Isaac laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” A declaration of war! Israel is to be invaded, her dynasty overthrown. Everyone who heard the prophet would know, though he named them not, that the Assyrians were meant.
It was apparently at this point that Amos was interrupted by Amaziah. The priest, who was conscious of no spiritual power with which to oppose the prophet, gladly grasped the opportunity afforded him by the mention of the king, and fell back on the invariable resource of a barren and envious sacerdotalism: “He speaketh against Caesar.” {Joh 19:12} There follows one of the great scenes of history-the scene which, however fast the ages and the languages, the ideals and the deities may change, repeats itself with the same two actors. Priest and Man face each other-Priest with King behind, Man with God-and wage that debate in which the whole warfare and progress of religion consist. But the story is only typical by being real. Many subtle traits of human nature prove that we have here an exact narrative of fact. Take Amaziahs report to Jeroboam. He gives to the words of the prophet just that exaggeration and innuendo which betray the wily courtier, who knows how to accentuate a general denunciation till it feels like a personal attack. And yet, like every Caiaphas of his tribe, the priest in his exaggerations expresses a deeper meaning than he is conscious of. “Amos”-note how the mere mention of the name without description proves that the prophet was already known in Israel, perhaps was one on whom the authorities had long kept their eye-“Amos hath conspired against thee”-yet God was his only fellow-conspirator!-“in the midst of the house of Israel”-this royal temple at Bethel. “The land is not able to hold his words”-it must burst; yes, but in another sense than thou meanest, O Caiaphas-Amaziah! “For thus hath Amos said, By the sword shall Jeroboam die”-Amos had spoken only of the dynasty, but the twist which Amaziah lends to the words is calculated-“and Israel going shall go into captivity from off his own land.” This was the one unvarnished spot in the report.
Having fortified himself, as little men will do, by his duty to the powers that be, Amaziah dares to turn upon the prophet; and he does so, it is amusing to observe, with that tone of intellectual and moral superiority which it is extraordinary to see some men derive from a merely official station or touch with royalty. “Visionary, begone! Get thee off to the land of Judah; and earn thy bread there, and there play the prophet. But at Bethel”-mark the rising accent of the voice-“thou shalt not again prophesy. The Kings Sanctuary it is, and the House of the Kingdom.” With the official mind this is more conclusive than that it is the House of God! In fact the speech of Amaziah justifies the hardest terms which Amos uses of the religion of his day. In all this priest says there is no trace of the spiritual-only fear, pride, and privilege. Divine truth is challenged by human law, and the Word of God silenced in the name of the king.
We have here a conception of religion, which is not merely due to the unspiritual character of the priest who utters it, but has its roots in the far back origins of Israels religion. The Pagan Semite identified absolutely State and Church; and on that identification was based the religious practice of early Israel. It had many healthy results: it kept religion in touch with public life; order, justice, patriotism, self-sacrifice for the common weal, were devoutly held to be matters of religion. So long, therefore, as the system was inspired by truly spiritual ideals, nothing for those times could be better. But we see in it an almost inevitable tendency to harden to the sheerest officialism. That it was more apt to do so in Israel than in Judah, is intelligible from the origin of the Northern Schism, and the erection of the national sanctuaries from motives of mere statecraft. {1Ki 12:26-27} Erastianism could hardly be more flagrant or more ludicrous in its opposition to true religion than at Bethel. And yet how often have the ludicrousness and the flagrancy been repeated, with far less temptation! Ever since Christianity became a state religion, she that needed least to use the weapons of this world has done so again and again in a thoroughly Pagan fashion. The attempts of Churches by law established, to stamp out by law all religious dissent; or where such attempts were no longer possible, the charges now of fanaticism and now of sordidness and religious shop keeping, which have been so frequently made against dissent by little men who fancied their state connection, or their higher social position to mean an intellectual and moral superiority: the absurd claims which many a minister of religion makes upon the homes and the souls of a parish, by virtue not of his calling in Christ, but of his position as official priest of the parish, -all these are the sins of Amaziah, priest of Bethel. But they are not confined to an established Church. The Amaziahs of dissent are also very many. Wherever the official masters the spiritual; wherever mere dogma or tradition is made the standard of preaching; wherever new doctrine is silenced, or programs of reform condemned, as of late years in Free Churches they have sometimes been, not by spiritual argument, but by the ipse dixit of the dogmatist, or by ecclesiastical rule or expediency, -there you have the same spirit. The dissenter who checks the Word of God in the name of some denominational law or dogma is as Erastian as the churchman who would crush it, like Amaziah, by invoking the state. These things in all the Churches are the beggarly rudiments of Paganism; and religious reform is achieved, as it was that day at Bethel, by the adjuring of officialism.
“But Amos answered and said unto Amaziah, No prophet I, nor prophets son. But a herdsman I, and a dresser of sycamores; and Jehovah took me from behind the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My people Israel.”
On such words we do not comment; we give them homage. The answer of this shepherd to this priest is no mere claim of personal disinterestedness. It is the protest of a new order of prophecy, the charter of a spiritual religion. As we have seen, the “sons of the prophets” were guilds of men who had taken to prophesying because of certain gifts of temper and natural disposition, and they earned their bread by the exercise of these. Among such abstract craftsmen Amos will not be reckoned. He is a prophet, but not of the kind with which his generation was familiar. An ordinary member of society, he has been suddenly called by Jehovah from his civil occupation for a special purpose and by a call which has not necessarily to do with either gifts or a profession. This was something new, not only in itself, but in its consequences upon the general relations of God to men. What we see in this dialogue at Bethel is, therefore, not merely the triumph of a character, however heroic, but rather a step forward and that one of the greatest and most indispensable-in the history of religion.
There follows a denunciation of the man who sought to silence this fresh voice of God. “Now therefore hearken to the word of Jehovah thou that sayest, Prophesy not against Israel, nor let drop thy words against the house of Israel; therefore thus saith Jehovah “Thou hast presumed to say; Hear what God will say.” Thou hast dared to set thine office and system against His word and purpose. See how they must be swept away. In defiance of its own rules the grammar flings forward to the beginnings of its clauses, each detail of the priests estate along with the scene of its desecration. “Thy wife in the city-shall play the harlot; and thy sons and thy daughters by the sword-shall fall; and thy land by the measuring rope-shall be divided; and thou in an unclean land-shalt die. Do not let us blame the prophet for a coarse cruelty in the first of these details. He did not invent it. With all the rest it formed an ordinary consequence of defeat in the warfare of the times-an inevitable item of that general overthrow which, with bitter emphasis, the prophet describes in Amaziahs own words: “Israel going shall go into captivity from off his own land.”
There is added a vision in line with the three which preceded the priests interruption. We are therefore justified in supposing that Amos spoke it also on this occasion, and in taking it as the close of his address at Bethel. “Then the Lord Jehovah gave me to see: and, behold, a basket of Kaits,” that is, “summer fruit. And He said, What art thou seeing, Amos? And I said, A basket of Kaits. And Jehovah said unto me, The Kets-the End – has come upon My people Israel. I will not again pass them over.” This does not carry the prospect beyond the third vision, but it stamps its finality, and there is therefore added a vivid realization of the result. By four disjointed lamentations, “howls” the prophet calls them, we are made to feel the last shocks of the final collapse, and in the utter end an awful silence. “And the songs of the temple shall be changed into howls in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah. Multitude of corpses! In every place! He hath cast out! Hush!”
These then were probably the last words which Amos spoke to Israel. If so, they form a curious echo of what was enforced upon himself, and he may have meant them as such. He was “cast out”; he was “silenced.” They might almost be the verbal repetition of the priests orders. In any case the silence is appropriate. But Amaziah little knew what power he had given to prophecy the day he forbade it to speak. The gagged prophet began to write; and those accents which, humanly speaking, might have died out with the songs of the temple of Bethel were clothed upon with the immortality of literature. Amos silenced wrote a book-first of prophets to do so-and this is the book we have now to study.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Higher than the heights above;
Deeper than the depths beneath;
Free and faithful, strong as death.”
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Then said Jehovah to me,
The end2 is come to my people, Israel;
Corpses in multitude; everywhere has he4 cast them forth; Hush!5
And the Sabbath, that we may open wheat?
Making the ephah small and the shekel great,
And falsifying the scales of deceit;
And the refuse of the wheat will we sell.
And it shall rise up, all of it, like the Nile,8
And make it dark to the earth in clear day;
And will bring sackcloth upon all loins,
And baldness upon every head;
And will make it10 like the mourning for an only son,
Not a hunger for bread nor a thirst for water,
But to hear the words of Jehovah.
And, By the life of the way of Beersheba!
They shall fall and rise no more.
2. The frightful severity of Gods judgments, so far from being opposed to the compassion which cares for the poor and feeble, is rather in full harmony with it. The modern polemical spirit against the Old Testament descriptions of this severity, betrays its origin too plainly; it knows nothing in truth of sin, and therefore nothing of the divine judgment upon sin. It fails to see that the love which it claims for its God, really becomes the greatest harshness, since it denies the possibility of the punishment of sinners and therefore any efficacious opposition to the unrighteousness wrought by them. Only a God who is truly terror malorum can truly be amor bonorum. Moreover we do as a matter of fact continually meet with occurrences, in detail and in gross, which undeniably are judgments upon the sins of men, and that in these there is an execution of a law of moral government, can just as little be denied. So much the more foolish then is the opposition to the so-called ferocious God of the Jews, to the retaliatory spirit of the Old Testament. Now because men do not believe that there is and must be in God, along with, or rather for the sake of, the love which He is, strictness in judgment, He is obliged to show to a race which has lost its faith in the God of the Scriptures, by actual facts, as violent as those of the year 1870, that the storms of divine wrath are not merely outgrowths of a crude, undisciplined view of life, and tokens of a low state of culture, but a reality, planted in the midst of a century claiming to itself the highest culture. When the measure is full, these storms break forth, and a hundred times over put to flight culture, love, and all similar watchwords of the modern spirit. Then there often comes suddenly a shaking of the earth, or gloom falls upon an entire nation so that it becomes dark in bright daylight, or the festivals are turned into mourning and songs into lamentations, or all loins are clothed in sackcloth,just when men in their blind security held such things to be impossible. Yes, times of war furnish only too striking illustrations of those words of Scripture which a race, strong in the conviction of its own leadership, coolly dismisses as a coarse and antiquated rhetoric, while it passes to the order of the day. Such fearful periods compel even an unbelieving race to forebode that the final judgment may prove a reality compared with which all preceding judgments are trifles. But faith sees in these latter a divine finger-mark pointing to the former, for which reason men of God, like the prophets, continually unite with their descriptions of intermediate judgments a reference to the last great judgment; and this the more when they describe judgments which are at least relatively decisive, inasmuch as they make an end of an entire kingdom.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary