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Expositor's Bible Commentary Amos 1:1 The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. , Amos 3:3-8 , Amos 7:14-15 THE MAN AND THE PROPHET THE Book of Amos opens one of the greatest stages in the religious development of mankind. Its originality is due to a few simple ideas, which it propels into religion with an almost unrelieved abruptness. But, like all ideas which ever broke upon the world, these also have flesh and blood behind them. Like every other Reformation this one in Israel began with the conscience and the protest of an individual. Our review of the book has made this plain. We have found in it, not only a personal adventure of a heroic kind, but a progressive series of visions, with some other proofs of a development both of facts and ideas. In short, behind the book there beats a life, and our first duty is to attempt to trace its spiritual history. The attempt is worth the greatest care. "Amos," says a very critical writer, "is one of the most wonderful appearances in the history of the human spirit." 1. THE MAN AND HIS DISCIPLINE Amos 1:1 , Amos 3:3-8 , Amos 7:14-15 When charged at the crisis of his career with being but a hireling-prophet, Amos disclaimed the official name and took his stand upon his work as a man: "No prophet I, nor prophet’s son; but a herdsman and a dresser of sycamores. Jehovah took me from behind the flock." We shall enhance our appreciation of this manhood, and of the new order of prophecy which it asserted, if we look for a little at the soil on which it was so bravely nourished. Six miles south from Bethlehem, as Bethlehem is six from Jerusalem, there rises on the edge of the Judaean plateau, towards the desert, a commanding hill, the ruins on which are still known by the name of Tekoa. In the time of Amos Tekoa was a place without sanctity and almost without tradition. The name suggests that the site may at first have been that of a camp. Its fortification by Rehoboam, and the mission of its wise woman to David, are its only previous appearances in history. Nor had nature been less grudging to it than fame. The men of Tekoa looked out upon a desolate and haggard world. South, west, and north the view is barred by a range of limestone hills, on one of which directly north the grey towers of Jerusalem are hardly to be discerned from the grey mountain lines. Eastward the prospect is still more desolate, but it-is open; the land slopes away for nearly eighteen miles to a depth of four thousand feet. Of this long descent the first step, lying immediately below the hill of Tekoa, is a shelf of stony moorland with the ruins of vineyards. It is the lowest ledge of the settled life of Judaea. The eastern edge drops suddenly by broken rocks to-slopes spotted with bushes of "retem," the broom of the desert, and with patches of poor wheat. From the foot of the slopes the land rolls away in a maze of low hills and shallow dales that flush green in spring, but for the rest of the year are brown with withered grass and, scrub. This is the "Wilderness" or "Pasture-land of Tekoa," { 2 Chronicles 20:20 } across which by night the wild beasts howl, and by day the blackened sites of deserted camps, with the loose cairns that mark the nomads’ graves, reveal a human life almost as vagabond and nameless as that of the beasts. Beyond the rolling land is Jeshimon, or Devastation-a chaos of hills, none of whose ragged crests are tossed as high as the shelf of Tekoa, while their flanks shudder down some further thousands of feet, by crumbling precipices and corries choked with debris, to the coast of the Dead Sea. The northern half of this is visible, bright blue against the red wall of Moab, and. the level top of the wall, broken only by the valley of the Arnon, constitutes the horizon. Except for the blue water-which shines in its gap between the torn hills like a bit of sky through rifted clouds-it is a very dreary world. Yet the sun breaks over it, perhaps all the more gloriously; mists, rising from the sea simmering in its great vat, drape the nakedness of the desert noon; and through the dry desert night the planets ride with a majesty they cannot assume in our more troubled atmospheres. It is also a very empty and a very silent world, yet every stir of life upon it excites, therefore, the greater vigilance, and man’s faculties, relieved from the rush and confusion of events, form the instinct of marking, and reflecting upon, every single phenomenon. And it is a very savage world. Across it all the towers of Jerusalem give the only signal of the spirit, the one token that man has a history. Upon this unmitigated wilderness, where life is reduced to poverty and danger; where nature starves the imagination, but excites the faculties. of perception and curiosity; with the mountain tops and the sunrise in his face, but above all with Jerusalem so near, -Amos did the work which made him a man, heard the voice of God calling him to be a prophet, and gathered those symbols and figures in which his prophet’s message still reaches us with so fresh and so austere an air. Amos was "among the shepherds of Tekoa." The word for "shepherd" is unusual, and means the herdsman of a peculiar breed of desert sheep, still under the same name prized in Arabia for the excellence of their wool. And he was "a dresser of sycamores." The tree, which is not our sycamore, is very easily grown in sandy soil with a little water. It reaches a great height and mass of foliage. The fruit is like a small fig, with a sweet but watery taste, and is eaten only by the poor. Born not of the fresh twigs, but of the trunk and older branches, the sluggish lumps are provoked to ripen by pinching or bruising, which seems to be the literal meaning of the term that Amos uses of himself-"a pincher of sycamores." The sycamore does not grow at so high a level as Tekoa; and this fact, taken along with the limitation of the ministry of Amos to the Northern Kingdom, has been held to prove that he was originally an Ephraimite, a sycamore-dresser, who had migrated and settled down, as the peculiar phrase of the title says, "among the shepherds of Tekoa." We shall presently see, however, that his familiarity with life in Northern Israel may easily have been won in other ways than through citizenship in that kingdom; while the very general nature of the definition, "among the shepherds of Tekoa," does not oblige us to place either him or his sycamores so high as the village itself. The most easterly township of Judea, Tekoa commanded the w, hole of the wilderness beyond, to which indeed it gave its name, "the wilderness of Tekoa." The shepherds of Tekoa were therefore, in all probability, scattered across the whole region down to the oases on the coast of the Dead Sea, which have generally been owned by one or other of the settled communities in the hill-country above, and may at that time have belonged to Tekoa, just as in Crusading times they belonged to the monks of Hebron, or are today cultivated by the Rushaideh Arabs, who pitch their camps not far from Tekoa itself. As you will still find everywhere on the borders of the Syrian desert shepherds nourishing a few fruit-trees round the chief well of their pasture, in order to vary their milk diet, so in some low oasis in the wilderness of Judea Amos cultivated the poorest, but the most easily grown of fruits, the sycamore. All this pushes Amos and his dwarf sheep deeper into the desert, and emphasizes what has been said above, and still remains to be illustrated, of the desert’s influence on his discipline as a men and on his speech as a prophet. We ought to remember that in the same desert another prophet was bred, who was also the pioneer of a new dispensation, and whose ministry, both in its strength and its limitations, is much recalled by the ministry of Amos. John the son of Zacharias "grew and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel." { Luke 1:80 } Here, too, our Lord was "with the wild beasts." { Mark 1:18 } How much Amos had been with them may be seen from many of his metaphors. "The lion roareth, who shall not fear? As when the shepherd rescueth from the mouth of the lion two shinbones or a bit of an ear It shall be as when one is fleeing from a lion and a bear cometh upon him; and he entereth a house, and leaneth ‘his hand on the wall, and a serpent biteth him." As a wool-grower, however, Amos must have had his yearly journeys among the markets of the land; and to such were probably due his opportunities of familiarity with Northern Israel, the originals of his vivid pictures of her town-life, her commerce, and the worship at her great sanctuaries. One hour westward from Tekoa would bring him to the highroad between Hebron and the North, with its troops of pilgrims passing to Beersheba. { Amos 5:5 ; Amos 8:14 } It was but half-an-hour more to the watershed and an open view of the Philistine plain. Bethlehem was only six, Jerusalem twelve, miles from Tekoa. Ten miles farther, across the border of Israel, lay Bethel with its temple, seven miles farther Gilgal, and twenty miles farther still Samaria the capital, in all but two days’ journey from Tekoa. These had markets as well as shrines; their annual festivals would be also great fairs. It is certain that Amos visited them; it is even possible that he went to Damascus, in which the Israelites had at the time their own quarters for trading. By road and market he would meet with men of other lands. Phoenician peddlers, or Canaanites as they were called, came up to buy the homespun for which the housewives of Israel were famed { Proverbs 31:24 }-hard-faced men who were also willing to purchase slaves, and haunted even the battle-fields of their neighbors for this sinister purpose. Men of Moab, at the time subject to Israel; Aramean hostages; Philistines who held the export trade to Egypt, -these Amos must have met and may have talked with; their dialects scarcely differed from his own. It is no distant, desert echo of life which we hear in his pages, but the thick and noisy rumor of caravan and market-place: how the plague was marching up from Egypt; { Amos 6:10 } ugly stories of the Phoenician slave-trade; { Amos 1:9 } rumors of the advance of the awful Power, which men were hardly yet accustomed to name, but which had already twice broken from the North upon Damascus. Or it was the progress of some national mourning-how lamentation sprang up in the capital, rolled along the highways, and was re-echoed from the husbandmen and vinedressers on the hillsides. { Amos 5:16 } Or, at closer quarters, we see and hear the bustle of the great festivals and fairs-the "solemn assemblies," the reeking holocausts, the "noise of songs and viols": { Amos 5:21 ff.} the brutish religious zeal kindling into drunkenness and lust on the very steps of the altar, { Amos 2:7-8 } "the embezzlement of pledges by the priests, the covetous restlessness of the traders, their false measures, their entanglement of the poor in debt { Amos 8:4 ff.} the careless luxury of the rich, their "banquets, buckets of wine, ivory couches," pretentious, preposterous music. { Amos 6:1 ; Amos 6:4-7 } These things are described as by an eyewitness. Amos was not a citizen of the Northern Kingdom, to which he almost exclusively refers; but it was because he went up and down in it, using those eyes which the desert air had sharpened, that he so thoroughly learned the wickedness of its people, the corruption of Israel’s life in every rank and class of society. But the convictions which he applied to this life Amos learned at home. They came to him over the desert, and without further material signal than was flashed to Tekoa from the towers of Jerusalem. This is placed beyond doubt by the figures in which he describes his call from Jehovah. Contrast his story, so far as he reveals it, with that of another. Some twenty years later, Isaiah of Jerusalem saw the Lord in the Temple, high and lifted up, and all the inaugural vision of this greatest of the prophets was conceived in the figures of the Temple-the altar, the smoke, the burning coals. But to his predecessor "among the shepherds of Tekoa," although revelation also starts from Jerusalem, it reaches him, not in the sacraments of her sanctuary, but across the bare pastures, and as it were in the roar of a lion. "Jehovah from Zion roareth, and uttereth His voice from Jerusalem." { Amos 1:2 } We read of no formal process of consecration for this first of the prophets. Through his clear desert air the word of God breaks upon him without medium or sacrament. And the native vigilance of the man is startled, is convinced by it, beyond all argument or question. "The lion hath roared, who shall not fear? Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" These words are taken from a passage in which Amos illustrates prophecy from other instances of his shepherd life. We have seen what a school of vigilance the desert is. Upon the bare surface all that stirs is ominous. Every shadow, every noise-the shepherd must know what is behind and be warned. Such a vigilance Amos would have Israel apply to his own message, and to the events of their history. Both of these he compares to certain facts of desert life, behind which his shepherdly instincts have taught him to feel an ominous cause. "Do two men walk together except they have trysted?"-except they have made an appointment. Hardly in the desert; for there men meet and take the same road by chance as seldom as ships at sea. "Doth a lion roar in the jungle and have no prey, or a young lion let out his voice in his den except he be taking something?" The hunting lion is silent till his quarry be in sight; when the lonely shepherd hears the roar across the desert he knows the lion leaps upon his prey, and he shudders as Israel ought to do when they hear God’s voice by the prophet, for this also is never loosened but for some grim fact, some leap of doom. Or "doth a little bird fall on the snare earthwards and there be no noose upon her?" The reading may be doubtful, but the meaning is obvious: no one ever saw a bird pulled roughly down to earth when it tried to fly away without knowing there was the loop of a snare about her. Or "does the snare itself rise up from the ground, except indeed it be capturing something?"-except there be in the trap or net something to flutter, struggle, and so lift it up. Traps do not move without life in them. Or "is the alarm trumpet "blown in a city"-for instance, in high Tekoa up there, when some Arab raid sweeps from the desert on to the fields-"and do the people not tremble?" Or "shall calamity happen in a city and Jehovah not have done it? Yea, the Lord Jehovah doeth nothing but He has revealed His purpose to His servants the prophets." My voice of warning and these events of evil in your midst have the same cause-Jehovah-behind them. "The lion hath roared, who shall not fear? Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" We cannot miss the personal note which rings through this triumph in the reality of things unseen. Not only does it proclaim a man of sincerity and conviction: it is resonant with the discipline by which that conviction was won-were won, too, the freedom from illusion and the power of looking at facts in the face, which Amos alone of his contemporaries possessed. St. Bernard has described the first stage of the Vision of God as the Vision Distributive, in which the eager mind distributes her attention upon common things and common duties in themselves. It was in this elementary school that the earliest of the new prophets passed his apprenticeship and received his gifts. Others excel Amos in the powers of the imagination and the intellect. But by the incorrupt habits of his shepherd’s life, by daily wakefulness to its alarms and daily faithfulness to its opportunities, he was trained in that simple power of appreciating facts and causes, which, applied to the great phenomena of the spirit and of history, forms his distinction among his peers. In this we find perhaps the reason why he records of himself no solemn hour of cleansing and initiation. "Jehovah took me from following the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My people Israel." Amos was of them of whom it is written, "Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching." Through all his hard life this shepherd had kept his mind open and his conscience quick, so that when the word of God came to him he knew it, as fast as he knew the roar of the lion across the moor. Certainly there is no habit which, so much as this of watching facts with a single eye and a responsible mind, is indispensable alike in the ‘humblest duties and in the highest speculations of life. When Amos gives those naive illustrations of how real the voice of God is to him, we receive them as the tokens of a man, honest and awake. Little wonder that he refuges to be reckoned among the professional prophets of his day who found their inspiration in excitement and trance. Upon him the impulses of the Deity come in no artificial and morbid ecstasy, removed as far as possible from real life. They come upon him, as it were, in the open air. They appeal to the senses of his healthy and expert manhood. They convince him of their reality with the same force as do the most startling events of his lonely shepherd watches. "The lion hath roared, who shall not fear? Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" The influence of the same discipline is still visible when Amos passes from the facts of his own consciousness to the facts of his people’s life. His day in Israel sweltered with optimism. The glare of wealth, the fulsome love of country, the rank incense of a religion that was without morality-these thickened all the air, and neither the people nor their rulers had any vision. But Amos carried with him his clear desert atmosphere and his desert eyes. He saw the raw facts: the poverty, the cruel negligence of the rich, the injustice of the rulers, the immorality of the priests. The meaning of these things he questioned with as much persistence as he questioned every suspicious sound or sight upon those pastures of Tekoa. He had no illusions: he knew a mirage when he saw one. Neither the military pride of the people, fostered by recent successes over Syria, nor the dogmas of their religion, which asserted Jehovah’s swift triumph upon the heathen, could prevent him from knowing that the immorality of Israel meant Israel’s political downfall. He was one of those recruits from common life, by whom religion and the state have at all times been reformed. Springing from the laity and very often from among the working classes, their freedom from dogmas and routine, as well as from the compromising interests of wealth, rank, and party, renders them experts in life to a degree that almost no professional priest, statesman, or journalist, however honest or sympathetic, can hope to rival. Into politics they bring facts, but into religion they bring vision. It is of the utmost significance that this reformer, this founder of the highest order of prophecy in Israel, should not only thus begin with facts, but to the very end be occupied with almost nothing else than the vision and record of them. In Amos there is but one prospect of the Ideal. It does not break till the close of his book, and then in such contrast to the plain and final indictments, which constitute nearly all the rest of his prophesying, that many have not unnaturally denied to him the verses which contain it. Throughout the other chapters we have but the exposure of present facts, material and moral, nor the sight of any future more distant than tomorrow and the immediate consequences of today’s deeds. Let us mark this. The new prophecy which Amos started in Israel reached Divine heights of hope, unfolded infinite powers of moral and political regeneration-dared to blot out all the past, dared to believe all things possible in the future. But it started from the truth about the moral situation of the present. Its first prophet not only denied every popular dogma and ideal, but-appears not to have substituted for them any others. He spent his gifts of vision on the discovery and appreciation of facts. Now this is necessary, not only in great reformations of religion, but at almost every stage in her development. We are constantly disposed to abuse even the most just and necessary of religious ideals as substitutes for experience or as escapes from duty, and to boast about the future before we have understood or mastered the present. Hence the need of realists like Amos. Though they are destitute of dogma, of comfort, of hope, of the ideal, let us not doubt that they also stand in the succession of the prophets of the Lord. Nay, this is a stage of prophecy on which may be fulfilled the prayer of Moses: "Would to God that all the Lord’s people were prophets!" To see the truth and tell it, to be accurate and brave about the moral facts of our day-to this extent the Vision and the Voice are possible for every one of us. Never for us may the doors of heaven open, as they did for him who stood on the threshold of the earthly temple, and he saw the Lord enthroned, while the Seraphim of the Presence sang the glory. Never for us may the skies fill with that tempest of life which Ezekiel beheld from Shinar, and above it the sapphire throne, and on the throne the likeness of a man, the likeness of the glory of the Lord. Yet let us remember that to see facts as they are and to tell the truth about them-this also is prophecy. We may inhabit a sphere which does not prompt the imagination, but is as destitute of the historic and traditional as was the wilderness of Tekoa. All the more may our unglamoured eyes be true to the facts about us. Every common day leads forth her duties as shining as every night leads forth her stars. The deeds and the fortunes of men are in our sight, and spell, to all who will honestly read the very Word of the Lord. If only we be loyal, then by him who made the rude sounds and sights of the desert his sacraments, and whose vigilance of things seen and temporal became the vision of things unseen and eternal, we also shall see God, and be sure of His ways with men. Before we pass from the desert discipline of the prophet we must notice one of its effects, which, while it greatly enhanced the clearness of his vision, undoubtedly disabled Amos for the highest prophetic rank. He who lives in the desert lives without patriotism-detached and aloof. He may see the throng of men more clearly than those who move among it. He cannot possibly so much feel for them. Unlike Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Amos was not a citizen of the kingdom against which he prophesied, and indeed no proper citizen of any kingdom, but a nomad herdsman, hovering on the desert borders of Judaea. He saw Israel from the outside. His message to her is achieved with scarcely one sob in his voice. For the sake of the poor and the oppressed among the people he is indignant. But with the erring, staggering nation as a whole he has no real sympathy. His pity for her is exhausted in one elegy and two brief intercessions; hardly more than once does he even call her to repentance. His sense of justice, in fact, had almost never to contend with his love. This made Amos the better witness, but the worse prophet. He did not rise so high as his great successors, because he did not so feel himself one with the people whom he was forced to condemn, because he did not bear their fate as his own nor travail for their new birth. "Ihm fehlt die Liebe." Love is the element lacking in his prophecy; and therefore the words are true of him which were uttered of his great follower across this same wilderness of Judea, that mighty as were his voice and his message to prepare the way of the Lord, yet "the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he." 2. THE WORD AND ITS ORIGINS Amos 1:2 , Amos 3:3-8 and PASSIM We have seen the preparation of the Man for the Word. We are now to ask, Whence came the Word to the Man?-the Word that made him a prophet. What were its sources and sanctions outside himself? These involve other questions. How much of his message did Amos inherit from the previous religion of his people? And how much did he teach for the first time in Israel? And again, how much of this new element did he owe to the great events of his day? And how much demands some other source of inspiration? To all these inquiries, outlines of the answers ought by this time to have become visible. We have seen that the contents of the Book of Amos consist almost entirely of two kinds: facts, actual or imminent, in the history of his people; and certain moral principles of the most elementary order. Amos appeals to no dogma nor form of law, nor to any religious or national institution. Still more remarkably, he does not rely upon miracle nor any so-called "supernatural sign." To employ the terms of Mazzini’s famous formula, Amos draws his materials solely from "conscience and history." Within himself he hears certain moral principles speak in the voice of God, and certain events of his day he recognizes as the judicial acts of God. The principles condemn the living generation of Israel as morally corrupt; the events threaten the people with political extinction. From this agreement between inward conviction and outward event Amos draws his full confidence as a prophet, and enforces on the people his message of doom as God’s own word. The passage in which Amos most explicitly illustrates this harmony between event and conviction is one whose metaphors we have already quoted in proof of the desert’s influence upon the prophet’s life. When Amos asks, "Can two walk together except they have made an appointment?" his figure is drawn, as we have seen, from the wilderness in which two men will hardly meet except they have arranged to do so; but the truth he would illustrate by the figure is that two sets of phenomena which coincide must have sprung from a common purpose. Their conjunction forbids mere chance. What kind of phenomena he means, he lets us see in his next instance: "Doth a lion roar in the jungle and have no prey? Doth a young lion let forth his voice from his den except he be catching something?" That is, those ominous sounds never happen without some fell and terrible deed happening along with them. Amos thus plainly hints that the two phenomena on whose coincidence he insists are an utterance on one side, and on the other side a deed fraught with destruction. The reading of the next metaphor about the bird and the snare is uncertain; at most what it means is that you never see signs of distress or a vain struggle to escape without there being, though out of sight, some real cause for them. But from so general a principle he returns in his fourth metaphor to the special coincidence between utterance and deed. "Is the alarum-trumpet blown in a city and do the people not tremble?" Of course they do; they know such sound is never made without the approach of calamity. But who is the author of every calamity? God Himself: "Shall there be evil in a city and Jehovah not have done it?" Very well then; we have seen that common life has many instances in which, when an ominous sound is heard, it is because it is closely linked with a fatal deed. These happen together, not by mere chance, but because the one is the expression, the warning, or the explanation of the other. And we also know that fatal deeds which happen to any community in Israel are from Jehovah. He is behind them. But they, too, are accompanied by a warning voice from the same source as themselves. This is the voice which the prophet hears in his heart-the moral conviction which he feels as the Word of God. "The Lord Jehovah doeth nothing but He hath revealed His counsel to His servants the prophets." Mark the grammar: the revelation comes first to the prophet’s heart; then he sees and recognizes the event, and is confident to give his message about it. So Amos, repeating his metaphor, sums up his argument. "The Lion hath roared, who shall not fear?"-certain that there is more than sound to happen. "The Lord Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?"-certain that what Jehovah has spoken to him inwardly is likewise no mere sound, but that deeds of judgment are about to happen, as the ominous voice requires they should. The prophet then is made sure of his message by the agreement between the inward convictions of his soul and the outward events of the day. When these walk together, it proves that they have come of a common purpose. He who causes the events-it is Jehovah Himself, "for shall there be evil in a city and Jehovah not have done it?"-must be author also of the inner voice or conviction which agrees with them. "Who" then "can but prophesy?" Observe again that no support is here derived from miracle; nor is any claim made for the prophet on the ground of his ability to foretell the event. It is the agreement of the idea with the fact, their evident common origin in the purpose of Jehovah, which makes a man sure that he has in him the Word of God. Both are necessary, and together are enough. Are we then to leave the origin of the Word in this coincidence of fact and thought-as it were an electric flash produced by the contact of conviction with event? Hardly; there are questions behind this coincidence. For instance, as to how the two react on each other-the event provoking the conviction, the conviction interpreting the event? The argument of Amos seems to imply that the ethical principles are experienced by the prophet prior to the events which justify them. Is this so, or was the shock of the events required to awaken the principles? And if the principles were prior, whence did Amos derive them? These are some questions that will lead us to the very origins of revelation. The greatest of the events with which Amos and his contemporaries dealt was the Assyrian invasion. In a previous chapter we have tried to estimate the intellectual effects of Assyria on prophecy. Assyria widened the horizon of Israel, put the world to Hebrew eyes into a new perspective, vastly increased the possibilities of history, and set to religion a novel order of problems. We can trace the effects upon Israel’s conceptions of God, of man, and even of nature. Now it might be plausibly argued that the new prophecy in Israel was first stirred and quickened by all this mental shock and strain, and that even the loftier ethics of the prophets were thus due to the advance of Assyria. For, as the most vigilant watchmen of their day, the prophets observed the rise of that empire, and felt its fatality for Israel. Turning then to inquire the Divine reasons for such a destruction, they found these in Israel’s sinfulness, to the full extent of which their hearts were at last awakened. According to such a theory the prophets were politicians first and moralists afterwards: alarmists to begin with, and preachers of repentance only second. Or-to recur to the language employed above-the prophets’ experience of the historical event preceded their conviction of the moral principle which agreed with it. In support of such a theory it is pointed out that after all the most original element in the prophecy of the eighth century was the announcement of Israel’s fall and exile. The Righteousness of Jehovah had often previously been enforced in Israel, but never had any voice drawn from it this awful conclusion that the nation must perish. The first in Israel to dare this was Amos, and surely what enabled him to do so was the imminence of Assyria upon his people. Again, such a theory might plausibly point to the opening verse of the Book of Amos, with its unprefaced, unexplained pronouncement of doom upon Israel:- "The Lord roareth from Zion, And giveth voice from Jerusalem; And the pastures of the shepherds mourn, And the summit of Carmel is withered!" Here, it might be averred, is the earliest prophet’s earliest utterance. Is it not audibly the voice of a man in a panic-such a panic as, ever on the eve of historic convulsions, seizes the more sensitive minds of a doomed people? The distant Assyrian thunder has reached Amos, on his pastures, unprepared-unable to articulate its exact meaning, and with only faith enough to hear in it the voice of his God. He needs reflection to unfold its contents; and the process of this reflection we find through the rest of his book. Ther

The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa. Amos 1:1 Amos Robert Smith, M. A. Though a native of the kingdom of Judah, Amos was sent with a message to the ten tribes. The unity of the two kingdoms was not the less real that their histories were divergent. In its origin, idea, and ultimate aim, the theocracy was one. The division which took place after the death of Solomon was a departure from the original conception, and the fruit of human sin. Yet, like many other events in which the Divine purpose seems to fail, it was so overruled as to promote the very end which it apparently frustrated. Not only were the two kingdoms a source of moral discipline — a mutual check to each other — but a richer, fuller illustration of God's dealings with His people was rendered possible than would .otherwise have been attainable. This unity in diversity, and diversity in unity, this double development, which is yet one, must not be overlooked if we would understand aright the history of God's covenant people. Whatever the two kingdoms were to their own thoughts, they were one in the eyes of God. During the vigorous reign of Jeroboam II., the kingdom of the ten tribes attained to a high pitch of prosperity and power. As this resulted from energy in the administration, rather than in any deeper moral principle, it only hastened the progress of inward decay. Luxury, oppression of the poor, lewdness, and profligacy in its many varied forms, followed in the train. It was thus to a people at the crisis of their destiny, in the height of apparent, but delusive prosperity, that Amos, the humble herdman of Tekoa, and gatherer of sycamore fruit, was sent. The circumstances of his mission gave occasion to a new step being taken in advance in the development of the prophetic testimony. Joel, Amos's immediate predecessor, prophesied to those who were chargeable, indeed, with much formality and shallowness of profession, and were therefore justly liable to severe chastisement, but who were yet free from gross and open vice. Hence, in unveiling the great movements of the future, he still identifies generally the covenant people with the friends of God and the objects of Divine deliverance; and "the nations" generally with the enemies of God, and the objects of His righteous vengeance. In reading the Book of Amos, we find ourselves breathing another atmosphere. The prophet no doubt first proclaims exterminating judgment against the surrounding nations, but this is only the prelude to the announcement of a similar doom on the chosen people themselves, who were eagerly following in the footsteps of the heathen. The prospect is held out, indeed, of blessing in the end, but not in a form that could convey the slightest comfort or hope to that ungodly generation. To them at least it was made abundantly plain that, like their rebellious fathers of old, they should spend their days in a wilderness of tribulation, and should not be permitted to see the promised rest. The book consists of a somewhat lengthened introduction, chaps, 1. 2. — followed by two chief divisions. The first, chaps. 3.-6., in the simple form of prophetic addresses. The second, chaps, 7.-9., in a series of visions. The whole being concluded with a promise of future deliverance and blessing. ( Robert Smith, M. A. ) Amos Ernest Elliot. This was the earliest of four prophets, who all appeared during the time when Assyria was the .greatest world power, the other three being Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah. It was probably during the latter half of Jeroboam's reign that the prophet Amos appeared. It was the age of Israel's greatest splendour; but prosperity, as is so often the case, brought the saddest evils in its train. Although the Book of Kings passes quickly over the reign of Jeroboam, and gives the briefest details, yet the pages of Amos and Hosea abound with descriptions of the fearful evils which had crept in along with the renewed prosperity of the nation. The simplicity which had once characterised the national life had completely gone. In defiance of the Mosaic law, a class of nobles had arisen, who possessed large estates, into which they swept the smaller holdings, and "misused their power to oppress the masses, who had sunk into a condition of poverty, and in some cases even actual slavery." Notwithstanding the terrible social evils, a show of worship was kept up. The people sedulously attended the sanctuaries, and brought in abundance their sacrifices and burnt-offerings. It would have seemed most unlikely that the luxurious Israelite nobles and this humble man, Amos, would ever have anything to do with each other. Yet this was the man whose voice was to ring throughout the nation in unsparing condemnation of its many vices. Amos may be pictured as a lonely man, whose spirit was deeply stirred within him by the blow-ledge of the sins which were being committed by the people: a man with a heart completely given to God, his whole being consecrated to Jehovah's service. In the silence of his native fields Amos was spoken to by Jehovah, and received the commission to be His prophet. He responded to the call. Like so many others, he forsook all to obey the Divine summons. He journeyed into the territory of Israel, and made Bethel, Samaria, and other places his headquarters. The average observer would have seen in the northern kingdom a nation at the zenith of its prosperity, and would not have thought of its fall. But the keen eye of the prophet pierced through the glittering cover which wealth had thrown over the foulest corruption... There are two truths of vast importance on which Amos especially insists. He "starts from the thought of the universal sovereignty of God." That is the one truth. The other is the need for righteousness. If the words which, more than any others, describe the nature of his prophecies had to be given, we could find none more appropriate than these: "Let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty (or overflowing) stream" ( Amos 7:7-17 ). The prophet taught persistently that God is ever closely watching the doings of nations and of men, and that He will reward or punish them in accordance with the eternal law of righteousness. The great lesson he has emphasised is, that every sinful nation, no matter how great and prosperous it may seem, will assuredly perish; that the real strength of a people consists in righteousness. ( Ernest Elliot. ) The herdman of Tekoa W. G. Elmslie, D. D. The prophet was by birth and residence a citizen of Judea. He belonged to the district of Tekoa, a small town some twelve miles south of Jerusalem, perched on a high hill, looking away eastwards across a waste of barren hills to the Dead Sea peeping through their interstices, and the lofty tableland of Moab bounding the horizon beyond. It stands on the edge of the desert, where the fringes of agriculture thin away into a wilderness of rock and sand, broken only by scattered patches of scanty pasturage. The town can never have been much more than a prosperous village; but the adjacent soil is fruitful and kindly, and its oil and honey became celebrated for their excellence. For strategic purposes, it was fortified by Rehoboam, and it had the advantage of lying in a region intersected by some of the busiest highways of commerce. Its inhabitants might see much and hear more, and, in connection with trading caravans, be drawn into travel and become acquainted with the world and its doings. The place was thus, in several ways, not unsuitable for the training of a prophet; and it is arbitrary to argue, as two or three scholars have recently done, because there is now no sycamore culture in the district, and because Amos possesses an intimate knowledge of the north, that therefore we must look for another Tekoa somewhere in Samaria Spite of a floating tradition to the contrary, which still survives in popular circles, the literary merits of the Book of Amos must be rated very high. The general information of the writer is comprehensive and minute. He can paint in detail the religious customs, the social conditions, the local circumstances and vicissitudes of every part of the northern kingdom. With the geography and history, the alliances and feuds, trade relations, national institutions, and aspirations of the neighbouring nations, he is thoroughly familiar. He is possessed of profound ideas about nature, providence, the movements of races, and their place and function in the ,world's government. For breadth of survey, for strength and massiveness of conception, alike in morals and in religion, he is not surpassed by any of the prophets. He is a poet, orator, philosopher, statesman. But in those days and in his social environment, he might be all this without being a man of books and cities. Native genius, interest in the traditions of his people, intercourse with passing caravans, personal visits to distant parts, and a spirit awake to the presence and working of God in human history, past, present, and future, — these were influences potent enough to educate the man, and admirably adapted to prepare the way for the prophet. And this school was equally open to him, whether he was a poor man, living by his labour, now in one service, now in another, or a prosperous sheep-master and wealthy owner of fig orchards. remarks that Amos was "rude in speech, but not in knowledge"; and Jewish tradition has been pleased to credit him with a stutter or impediment of speech. This is probably the origin of a mistaken idea that his book is badly written, or at least betrays the rusticity of its author. On the contrary; the Hebrew of Amos ranks among the purest and most powerful compositions of the Old Testament. His language is choice and melodious, possibly in a few peculiar spellings recording a provincial pronunciation, or more likely the slips of the copyists' pens. His style is terse, dramatic, and simple, but very pointed and forcible. He loves brief uninvolved sentences, though occasionally carried away into passionate appeal or lyrical outbursts of poetic delineation. He indulges much in question, apostrophe, and exclamation. He is an orator more than an artist, or a bard. With all his simplicity we find traces of paranomasia, rhythmic arrangement, and rhetorical construction. His exposition abounds in rich and varied imagery derived from nature, and striking illustrations taken from everyday life. The ordered arrangement, compact style, and general literary finish of his book suggest slow, careful, and leisurely construction, while the fire of its invective, the impetus of its appeals, and the terrible directness of its denunciation prove it the record and embodiment of speech originally orally delivered On the surface Amos may seem to make too much of mere morality, but it is only an appearance. With him, to do right is to serve God, and the motive must be the love of God and of our neighbour. ( W. G. Elmslie, D. D. ) A sketch of Amos Homilist. I. THE SPHERE OF LIFE HE OCCUPIED. He was a "herdman." God has often selected the chief messengers of His truth from men in the humbler walks of life. Elisha, David, etc. Our Lord Himself came from a peasant cottage in Nazareth. In this fact we have two things. 1. Worldly pride divinely rebuked, 2. Human nature divinely honoured. II. THE AGE IN WHICH AMOS LIVED. Two events are specified. 1. The political event of this period. "In the days of Uzziah, King of Judah." A comparatively peaceful and prosperous period. 2. The physical event of this period. Two years before the earthquake. Why is the period of his life thus described?(1) Because you cannot rightly judge a man's character unless you understand the circumstances under which he lived.(2) You cannot estimate the value of a man's mission unless you correctly judge of the moral character of his times. III. THE MISSION TO WHICH HE WAS CALLED. What was it to pronounce Divine judgment? He announced it — 1. As coming according to his vision. 2. As coming in a terrible form. 3. As issuing from a scene of mercy. 4. As fraught with calamitous results.What an argument for repentance! ( Homilist. ) Amos the herdman Joseph Parker, D. D. Amos was not ashamed of his descent. He was not a farmer, but a farm-labourer. Who cares to be on very close intimacy with a field-hand, or a cow-herd? To a little outdoor work Amos added the process of cleaning and preparing the fruit, either for preservation or for sale. Whilst he was doing his farm-work and attending to his fruit, a blast from heaven struck his deeper consciousness, and he stood up a prophet. The Lord will bring His prophets just as He pleases, and from what place He chooses. Amos was a field-hand, and yet he was fearless; he was all the more fearless because he was a field-hand. A farmer could not have been so fearless. Amos was a farm-labourer, yet he was equal to the occasion. Education is never equal to anything that is supremely great. There are times in human history when inspiration must go to the front — talent must go behind, genius must go into the first place. When we are inspired we forget our rags. When God calls. let not man despise. God's elections are startling. Amos begins where all rude, energetic minds begin; they begin in denunciation. Judgment seems to be a natural work for them to conduct. Amos issues his judgment against Damascus, Gaza, Tyrus, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Judah, Israel, — all round the circle that judgment-fire sparkles and blazes. It seems so much easier to denounce than to discriminate. Even young prophets began with thunder and lightning. Amos again and again says, "I will send a fire." And the nobles were lying on divans of ivory, having corrupted themselves to the point of rottenness. There are times in human history when only the disinfectant that can work the real miracle is fire. Fire never fails. We need voices of this kind; they help to keep the average of human history well up to the mark. ( Joseph Parker, D. D. ) Lessons from the prophecy of Amos R. W. Forrest, M. A. It is well to notice — 1. The importance of prophecy in an evidential point of view, as one of the supernatural elements of the Bible. To the honest, earnest, impartial inquirer, no more convincing or impressive proof of the truth of this revealed Word can be offered than its propHetic element affords. The age of miracles is past. The testimony of the "more sure (confirmed) word of prophecy," as it has been fulfilled, and as it is daily being fulfilled before our eyes, is all the more important. 2. The importance of the Old Testament Scriptures. The prophet Amos alleges his own inspiration. Much has been made by hostile critics of the supposed discrepancies and contradictions of Scripture; but how little has been said about its marvellous unity! What is it which imparts this unity? 3. In the Book of Amos is illustrated a principle of the Divine dealing. Amos was one of the people, and not in the order of the prophets. The Lord had suddenly and unexpectedly called and commissioned him to be a prophet of Israel. And so, in working for God, the question is not so much whether it is Amos the rude, or Isaiah the polished; the question is, are we verily and indeed called of Him? Are we qualified by His grace, and anointed by His Spirit? 4. The doctrine of a special providence is here strikingly set forth. Judgments were appointed to descend on several nations in succession. Than this there can be nothing more certain, that national sins draw down national judgments and punishments. Men are apt to think they may escape in a crowd. We have each our share in public misfortune and in national guilt, and in God's sight are held liable accordingly. But it is also true, that a special providence works in and with each of God's true children. ( R. W. Forrest, M. A. ) The refining power of religion E. Monro. One point of interest in the Book of Amos is its testimony to the power of inspiration and religion on the untaught and uncultivated mind. It shows how such a mind may strike out bold, simple pathways, and forcible expressions, which arrest us with a greater force than even those of the more refined and cultivated. Imagery borrowed from natural scenery and its circumstances, will be among the most forcible modes of expression which such men will use. We may often gather important lessons from this influence of nature on the mind. She teaches us to dive more into her own calm and profound depth, to read the will of God. In Amos we have a mind accustomed to see duties or acts of religion through images borrowed from the external world. But not only does the form of nature influence the ruder mind of the peasant; he is influenced by the customs and conventionalities of the society in which he lives. Amos makes use of these frequently in connection with his religious mission. One practical question opens out to us, it is the real condition and value of the uneducated mind under the influences of religion. There is often an inclination alike to overrate as to underrate this; and serious injury is done by both tendencies. ( E. Monro. ) An unscholarly messenger Sunday Companion. Do you remember what was the immediate agent in Bishop Hannington's conversion? Someone sent him a little book. Hannington determined to read every word of it, so he began with the preface. He became impressed with the notion that the book was unscholarly. "I therefore threw the book away, and refused to read it." Some time after he was leaving Exeter for St. Petherwyn, and he spied the old book. He knew his friend would ask him if he had read it. "I suppose I must read through it, and so I stuffed it into my portmanteau. At Petherwyn I took the book out, and read the first chapter. I disliked it so much that I determined never to touch it again. I rather think I flung the book across the room. So back into my portmanteau it went, and remained until my visit to Hurst, when I again saw it, and thought I might as well read it, so as to be able to tell the sender about it. So once more I took the old thing, and read straight on for three chapters or so, until at last I came upon that called, 'Do you feel your sins forgiven?' And by means of this my eyes were opened. I was in bed at the time, reading. I sprang out of bed, and leaped about the room rejoicing and praising God that Jesus died for me. From that day to this I have lived under the shadow of His wings in the assurance of faith that I am His and He is mine." The Lord used that which was apparently contemptible to be a minister of salvation! What appeared to James Hannington to be despicable turned out to be the instrument of his redemption. Now God loves to use the apparently base and ignoble, and the despised! He loves to send His power along commonplace wires! He calls into His service some uncultured speaker, whose words tumble out in disorder, and whose thoughts are wanting in logical succession, and He fills the ungainly speech with power, and through the rough utterance there come spiritual stabs that pierce to the very hearts of the hearers. He loves to use some letter which is devoid of literary grace, and written with no grammatical accuracy, and He fills it with the dynamic of the Holy Ghost, and it is mighty to the bringing down of strongholds. ( Sunday Companion. ) Distinguished workers of humble origin J. L. Nye. Many of God's most distinguished workmen have been called from scenes of the humblest labour. It was when toiling over a shoemaker's bench that Carey's soul was filled with a zeal for missionary labour. Morrison was once a maker of shoe-lasts. John Williams, of Erromanga, was called from the blacksmith's shop. Dr. Livingstone from working in a cotton mill. Our Saviour also called His disciples from among the fishermen. ( J. L. Nye. ) Which he saw concerning Israel. The sphere of the prophet's labours The prophet was specifically appointed for the Israelites, though born elsewhere. But how, and on what occasion, he migrated into the kingdom of Israel, we know not. It is probable that this was designedly arranged, that God might check the insolence of the people, who flattered themselves so much in their prosperity. Since the Israelites had hitherto rejected God's servants, they were now con. strained to hear a foreigner and a shepherd condemning them for their sins, and exercising the office of a judge: he who proclaims an impending destruction is a celestial herald. This being the case, we hence see that God had not in vain employed the ministry of this prophet; for He is wont to choose the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and He takes prophets and teachers from the lowest grade to humble the dignity of the world, and puts the invaluable treasure of His doctrine in earthen vessels, that His power, as Paul teaches us, may be made more evident. But there was a special reason as to the prophet Amos; for he was sent on purpose severely to reprove the ten tribes; and he handled them with great asperity. For he was not polite, but proved that he had to do with those who were not to be treated as men, but as brute beasts; yea, worse in obstinacy than brute beasts; for there is some docility in oxen and cows, and especially in sheep, for they hear the voice of their shepherd, and follow where he leads them. The Israelites were all stubbornness, and wholly untameable. It was then necessary to set over them a teacher who would not treat them courteously, but exercise towards them his native rusticity. ( John Calvin . ) Two years before the earthquake Earthquakes in Palestine Dean Plumptre. Palestine lies almost in the centre of one great volcanic region of the earth's surface, that, namely, which includes the basin of the Mediterranean, and the provinces of Western or Central Asia. Traces of that volcanic action are found in every direction. The black basaltic rocks of the Hauran, the hot springs of Tiberias, and Emmaus, and Gadara, the naphtha fountains near the Dead Sea, the dykes of porphyry, and other volcanic rocks that force their way through thy limestone, the many caves in the limestone rock themselves, — all these show that we are treading on ground where the forces of the hidden fires of the earth have been, in times past, in active operation. We are, that is, in a zone of earthquakes. On some of these earthquakes, tremendous in their phenomena, and in the extent of the desolation caused by them, we have full details, in earlier and even in contemporary history. The Jewish writer, Josephus , speaks of one which occurred in B.C. 31 , as having destroyed many villages, and countless flocks, and herds, and human lives, which he estimates (with somewhat, perhaps, of Oriental vagueness as to statistics) now at ten, and now at thirty thousand. Herod and his army, who were then carrying on war against the Arabs, were only saved by their being encamped in tents, and so free from the peril of falling houses. As it was, he had to combat the panic and depression which it spread through his troops, and with something of a sceptical epicureanism, to assure them that these natural phenomena were not signs of greater evils to come, but were calamities by themselves, having no connection with any others that followed or preceded them. Within the last thirty years again the shocks of an earthquake were felt over the whole of Syria, in Beirdt, Damascus, Cyprus; Safed was almost utterly destroyed; Tiberias was left little better than a heap of ruins, and one-third of the population perished, to the number of a thousand. Rivers forsook their beds, and left them dry for hours. The hot springs that flow into the Sea of Tiberias were largely swollen in volume, and the level of the lake was raised. One such convulsion has left its impress on the history of the kingdom of Judah. It seems to have been the first great earthquake in the history of Israel. It occurred in the time of Uzziah ( Amos 1:1 ; Zechariah 14:5 ). There is no trace of anything of the kind in the Book of Judges, or in the earlier history of the Kings. ( Dean Plumptre. ) The Lord will roar from Zion. Amos 1:2 The stern voice of God The prophet not only shows here, that God was the Author of his doctrine, but at the same time he distinguishes between the true God, and the idols, which the first Jeroboam made, when by this artifice he intended to withdraw the ten tribes from the house of David, and wholly to alienate them from the tribe of Judah: it was then that he set up the calves in Dan and Bethel. The prophet now shows that all these superstitions are condemned by the true God. "Jehovah then will roar from Zion, He will utter His voice from Jerusalem." He, no doubt, wished here to terrify the Israelites, who thought they had peace with God. Since, then, they abused His long-suffering, Amos now says that they would find at length that He was not asleep. "When God, then, shall long bear with your iniquities, He will at last rise up for judgment." By "roaring" is signified the terrible voice of God; but the prophet here speaks of God's voice, rather than of what are called actual judgments really executed, that the Israelites might learn that the examples of punishments which God executes in the world happen not by chance or at random, but proceed from His threatenings; in short, the prophet intimates that all punishments which God inflicts on the ungodly and the despisers of His Word. are only the executions of what the prophets proclaimed, in order that men, should there be any hope of their repentance, might anticipate the destruction which they hear to be nigh. The prophet commends very highly the truth of what God teaches, by saying that it is not what vanishes, but what is accomplished; for when He destroys nations and kingdoms, it comes to pass according to prophecies. ( John Calvin . ) The penalty of sin J. Telford, B. A. I. THE CHANGE WHICH SIN WORKS IN THE RELATIONS BETWEEN EARTH AND HEAVEN. "The Lord will roar from Zion." The figure is that of a lion ready for its prey. Can this be He of whose tenderness Moses spoke? ( Deuteronomy 32:9-14 .) What had wrought such a change between God and His people? Years of wandering, and rebellion, and sin can alone explain this change. Contrast between the friendship and the enmity of God a fruitful means to awaken the sinner and save His own people from wandering ( Isaiah 40:11 ). II. THE PLACE FROM WHICH DANGER SHOULD COME — Zion and Jerusalem. These were the centres of the old national worship — places that God had chosen to put His name there. In the palaces of Zion God had been known for a refuge. Sin turned the sources of peace and prosperity into the seat of their mightiest enemy. III. THE TIME OF THE PROPHECY OF WOE. An era of hope. Prosperity had returned ( 2 Kings 14:25 ). The prophecy burst upon them like thunder out of a blue sky, or as if one, in full tide of health, should see his own funeral procession pass. However dazzling the prosperity to which sin may have raised men, its time of most luxuriant growth is often the hour of its blasting. "The Judge standeth at the door." IV. THE VISITATION WAS TO TOUCH THEM ON THE SIDE WHERE THEY WOULD MOST FEEL IT — temporal prosperity. "The habitations of the shepherds shall mourn" — poetic personification of the ruin that should come to that class of which Amos had so recently been a member. "Carmel" — the place of surpassing fertility — abounding in rich pastures, olives, and vines. God takes what men prize most if haply their heart may be softened by His visitation. Application(1) The concurrence of testimony among all Divine messengers to the certainty of vengeance due for wrong. Only false prophets can utter the "smooth things" which sinners would fain hear.(2) The change in God's dealings with men wrought by sin. ( J. Telford, B. A. ) I will not turn away the punishment thereof. Amos 1:3 The purpose of Divine threatenings E. B. Pusey, D. D. The order of God's threatenings seems to have been addressed to gain the hearing of the people. The punishment is first denounced upon their enemies, and that, for their sins, directly or indirectly against themselves, and God in them. Then, as to those enemies themselves, the order is not of place or time, but of their relations to God's people. It begins with their most oppressive enemy, Syria; then Philistia, the old and ceaseless, although less powerful enemy; then Tyre, not an oppressor, as these, yet violating a relation which they had not, the bonds of a form or friendship and covenant; malicious also and hard hearted through covetousness. Then followed Edom, Ammon, Moab, who burst the bonds of blood also. Lastly, and nearest of all, it falls on Judah, who had the true worship of the true God among them, but despised it. Every infliction on those like ourselves finds an echo in our own consciences. Israel heard and readily believed God's judgments upon others. It was not tempted to set itself against believing them. How then could it refuse to believe of itself what it believed of others like itself? "Change but the name, the tale is told of thee," Horace says. The course of the prophecy convicted them, as the things written in Holy Scripture for our ensamples convict Christians. If they who sinned without law, perished without law, how much more should they who have sinned in the law be judged by the law? God's judgments rolled, round like a thunder-cloud, passing from land to land, giving warning of their approach, at last to gather and centre on Israel itself, except it repent. In the visitations of others it was to read its own; and that the more, the nearer God was to them. Israel is placed last, because on it the destruction was to fall to the uttermost, and rest there. ( E. B. Pusey, D. D. ) God's dealings with other nations The prophet shows that God, as a Judge, would call all the neighbouring nations Co account. Had the prophet threatened the Israelites only, they might have thought that what they suffered was by chance, when they saw the like things happening to their neighbours. Thus all the authority of the prophet must have lost its power, except the Israelites were made to know that God is the Judge of all nations. Amos puts the Israelites in the same bundle with the Moabites, the Idumaeans, and other heathen nations; as though he had said, "God will not spare your neighbours; but think not that ye shall be exempt from His vengeance, when they shall be led to punishment: I now declare to you that God will be the Judge of you all together." The design of Amos was — 1. To set before the eyes of the Israelites the punishment of others to awaken them, and also to induce them to examine themselves. He designed to lead them into a teachable frame of mind: for he knew them to be torpid in their indulgences, and also blinded by presumption, so that they could not be easily brought under the yoke. 2. He had this also in view, that God would punish the Syrians, because they cruelly raged against the Israelites, especially against Gilead and its inhabitants. As God, then. would inflict so grievous a punishment on the Syrians, because they so cruelly treated the inhabitants of Gilead, what was to be expected by the Israelites themselves, who had been insolent towards God, who had isolated His worship, who had robbed Him of His honour, who had in their turn destroyed one another? For there was among them no equity, no humanity; they had forgotten all reason. ( John Calvin . ) Divine cognisance of human sins Homilist. 1. That the sins of all the peoples on the earth, whatever the peculiarities of their character or country, are under the cognisance of God. Seven countries are named here. Heaven's omniscient eye detected the sill of each man of all the various men and nations. God's knowledge of men's sins should —(1) Lead men to great circumspection in their daily life. They should sedulously avoid evil. They should devoutly pursue good;(2) impress men with the wonderful patience of God. This patience implies the greatest power; and the greatest compassion;(3) impress men with the certainty of a future retribution. ( Homilist. ) Because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments Signs of cruelty Sebastian Benefield, D. D. We be many ways guilty of cruelty. 1. If we exercise tyrannous cruelty, in inflicting punishments. 2. If we fight with or beat our neighbour, or maim his body. This is a breach of the sixth commandment. 3. If we procure any way the death of our neighbour, whether it be by sword, famine, poison, false accusation, or otherwise. 4. If we use any of God's creatures hardly. 5. If because of our neighbours' infirmities, we use him discourteously, and make him our laughingstock

1:18-21 There shall be abundant Divine influences, and the gospel will spread speedily into the remotest corners of the earth. These events are predicted under significant emblems; there is a day coming, when every thing amiss shall be amended. The fountain of this plenty is in the house of God, whence the streams take rise. Christ is this Fountain; his sufferings, merit, and grace, cleanse, refresh, and make fruitful. Gospel grace, flowing from Christ, shall reach to the Gentile world, to the most remote regions, and make them abound in fruits of righteousness; and from the house of the Lord above, from his heavenly temple, flows all the good we daily taste, and hope to enjoy eternally.