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Expositor's Bible Commentary Amos 3:1 Hear this word that the LORD hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, CIVILIZATION AND JUDGMENT Amos 3:1-15 - Amos 4:3 WE now enter the Second Section of the Book of Amos: chapters 3-6. It is a collection of various oracles of denunciation, grouped partly by the recurrence of the formula "Hear this word," which stands at the head of our present chapters 3, 4, and 5, which are therefore probably due to it; partly by two cries of "Woe" at Amos 5:18 and Amos 6:1 ; and also by the fact that each of the groups thus started leads up to an emphatic, though not at first detailed, prediction of the nation’s doom. { Amos 3:13-15 ; Amos 4:3 ; Amos 4:12 ; Amos 5:16-17 ; Amos 5:26-27 ; Amos 6:14 } Within these divisions lie a number of short indictments, sentences of judgment, and the like, which have no further logical connection than is supplied by their general sameness of subject, and a perceptible increase of articulateness from beginning to end of the Section. The sins of Israel are more detailed, and the judgment of war, coming from the North, advances gradually till we discern the unmistakable ranks of Assyria. But there are various parentheses and interruptions, which cause the student of the text no little difficulty. Some of these, however, may be only apparent: it will always be a question whether their want of immediate connection with what precedes them is not due to the loss of several words from the text rather than to their own intrusion into it. Of others it is true that they are obviously out of place as they lie; their removal brings together verses which evidently belong to each other. Even such parentheses, however, may be from Amos himself. It is only where a verse, besides interrupting the argument, seems to reflect a historical situation later than the prophet’s day, that we can be sure it is not his own. And in all this textual criticism we must keep in mind that the obscurity of the present text of a verse, so far from being an adequate proof of its subsequent insertion, may be the very token of its antiquity, scribes or translators of later date having been unable to understand it. To reject a verse, only because we do not see the connection, would surely be as arbitrary as the opposite habit of those who, missing a connection, invent one, and then exhibit their artificial joint as evidence of the integrity of the whole passage. In fact we must avoid all headstrong surgery, for to a great extent we work in the dark. The general subject of the Section may be indicated by the title: Religion and Civilization. A vigorous community, wealthy, cultured, and honestly religious, are, at a time of settled peace and growing power, threatened, in the name of the God of justice, with their complete political overthrow. Their civilization is counted for nothing; their religion, on which they base their confidence, is denounced as false and unavailing. These two subjects are not, and could not have been, separated by the prophet in any one of his oracles. But in the first, the briefest, and most summary of these, chapters 3-4:3, it is mainly with the doom of the civil structure of Israel’s life that Amos deals; ‘and it will be more convenient for us to take them first, with all due reference to the echoes of them in later parts of the Section. From Amos 4:4-6 . it is the Religion and its false peace which he assaults; and we shall take that in the next chapter. First, then, Civilization and Judgment ( Amos 3:1-15 ; Amos 4:1-3 ); second, The False Peace of Ritual ( Amos 4:4-6 ). These few brief oracles open upon the same note as that in which the previous Section closed-that the crimes of Israel are greater than those of the heathen; and that the people’s peculiar relation to God means, not their security, but their greater judgment. It is then affirmed that Israel’s wealth and social life are so sapped by luxury and injustice that the nation must perish. And, as in every luxurious community the women deserve especial blame, the last of the group of oracles is reserved for them. { Amos 4:1-3 } "Hear this word, which Jehovah hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt" - Judah as well as North Israel, so that we see the vanity of a criticism which would cast out of the Book of Amos as unauthentic every reference to Judah. "Only you have I known of all the families of the ground"-not world, but "ground," purposely chosen to stamp the meanness and mortality of them all-"therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." This famous text has been called by various writers "the keynote," "the license," and "the charter" of prophecy. But the names are too petty for what is not less than the fulmination of an element. It is a peal of thunder we hear. It is, in a moment, the explosion and discharge of the full storm of prophecy. As when from a burst cloud the streams immediately below rise suddenly and all their banks are overflowed, so the prophecies that follow surge and rise clear of the old limits of Israel’s faith by the unconfined, unmeasured flood of heaven’s justice that breaks forth by this single verse. Now, once for all, are submerged the lines of custom and tradition within which the course of religion has hitherto flowed; and, as it were, the surface of the world is altered. It is a crisis which has happened more than once again in history: when helpless man has felt the absolute relentlessness of the moral issues of life; their renunciation of the past, however much they have helped to form it; their sacrifice of every development however costly, and of every hope however pure; their deafness to prayer, their indifference to penitence; when no faith saves a Church, no courage a people, no culture or prestige even the most exalted order of men; but at the bare hands of a judgment, uncouth of voice and often unconscious of a Divine mission, the results of a great civilization are for its sins swept remorselessly away. Before the storm bursts, we learn by its lightnings some truths from the old life that is to be destroyed. "You only have I known of all the families of the ground: therefore will I visit your iniquities upon you." Religion is no insurance against judgment, no mere atonement and escape from consequences. Escape! Religion is only opportunity-the greatest moral opportunity which men have, and which if they violate nothing remains for them but a certain fearful looking forward unto judgment. You only have I known; and because you did not take the moral advantage of My intercourse, because you felt it only as privilege and pride, pardon for the past and security for the future, therefore doom the more inexorable awaits you. Then as if the people had interrupted him with the question, What sign do you give us that this judgment is near?-Amos goes aside into that noble digression ( Amos 3:3-8 ) on the harmony between the prophet’s word and the imminent events of the time, which we have already studied. From this apologia, Amos 3:9 returns to the note of Amos 3:1-2 and develops it. Not only is Israel’s responsibility greater than that of other people’s. Her crimes themselves are more heinous. "Make proclamation over the palaces in Ashdod"-if we are not to read Assyria here, then the name of Ashdod has perhaps been selected from all other heathen names because of its similarity to the Hebrew word for that "violence" with which Amos is charging the people-"and over the palaces of the land of Egypt, and say, Gather upon the Mount of Samaria and see! Confusions manifold in the midst of her; violence to her very core! Yea, they know not how to do uprightness, saith Jehovah, who store up wrong and violence in their palaces." "To their crimes," said the satirist of the Romans, "they owe their gardens, palaces, stables, and fine old plate." And William Langland declared of the rich English of his day:-" For toke thei on trewly they tymbred not so height Ne boughte non burgages be ye full certayne. " "Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Siege and Blockade of the Land. And they shall bring down from off thee thy fortresses, and plundered shall be thy palaces." Yet this shall be no ordinary, tide of Eastern war, to ebb like the Syrian as it flowed, and leave the nation to rally on their land again. For Assyria devours the peoples. "Thus saith Jehovah: As the shepherd saveth from the mouth of the lion a pair of shinbones or a bit of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be saved-they who sit in Samaria in the corner of the diwan and on a couch." The description, as will be seen from the note below, is obscure. Some think it is intended to satirize a novel and affected fashion of sitting adopted by the rich. Much more probably it means that carnal security in the luxuries of civilization which Amos threatens more than once in similar phrases. The corner of the diwan is in Eastern houses the seat of honor. To this desert shepherd, with only the hard ground to rest on, the couches and ivory-mounted diwans of the rich must have seemed the very symbols of extravagance. But the pampered bodies that loll their lazy lengths upon them shall be left like the crumbs of a lion’s meal-"two shin-bones and the bit of an ear!" Their whole civilization shall perish with them. "Hearken and testify against the house of Israel-oracle of the Lord Jehovah, God of Hosts"-those addressed are still the heathen summoned in Amos 3:14-15 . "For on the day when I visit the crimes of Israel upon him, I shall then make visitation upon the altars of Bethel, and the horns of the altar," which men grasp in their last despair, "shall be smitten and fall to the earth. And I will strike the winter-house upon the summer-house, and the ivory houses Shall perish, yea, swept away shall be houses many-oracle of Jehovah." But the luxury of no civilization can be measured without its women, and to the women of Samaria Amos now turns with the most scornful of all his words. "Hear this word"-this for you-"kine of Bashan that are in the mount of Samaria, that oppress the poor, that crush the needy, that say to their lords, Bring, and let us drink. Sworn hath the Lord Jehovah by His holiness, lo, days are coming when there shall be a taking away of you with hooks, and of the last of you with fish-hooks." They put hooks in the nostrils of unruly cattle, and the figure is often applied to human captives; but so many should these cattle of Samaria be that for the "last of them fish-hooks" must be used. "Yea, by the breaches" in the wall of the stormed city "shall ye go out, every one headlong, and ye shall be cast oracle of Jehovah." It is a cowherd’s rough picture of women: a troop of kine-heavy, heedless animals, trampling in their anxiety for food upon every frail and lowly object in the way. But there is a prophet’s insight into character. Not of Jezebels, or Messalinas, or Lady Macbeths is it spoken, but of the ordinary matrons of Samaria. Thoughtlessness and luxury are able to make brutes out of women of gentle nurture, with homes and a religion. Such are these three or four short oracles of Amos. They are probably among his earliest-the first peremptory challenges of prophecy to, that great stronghold which before forty years she is to see thrown down in obedience to her word. As yet, however, there seems to be nothing to justify the menaces of Amos. Fair and stable rises the structure of Israel’s life. A nation, who know themselves elect; who in politics are prosperous and in religion proof to every doubt, build high their palaces, see the skies above them unclouded, and bask in their pride, heaven’s favorites without an ear. This man, solitary and sudden from his desert, springs upon them in the name of God and their poor. Straighter word never came from Deity: "Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" The insight of it, the justice of it, are alike convincing. Yet at first it appears as if it were sped on the personal and very human passion of its herald. For Amos not only uses the desert’s cruelties-the lion’s to the sheep-to figure God’s impending judgment upon His people, but he enforces the latter with all a desert-bred man’s horror of cities and civilization. It is their costly furniture, their lavish and complex building, on which he sees the storm break. We seem to hear again that frequent phrase of the previous section: "the fire shall devour the palaces thereof." The palaces, he says, are simply storehouses of oppression; the palaces will be plundered. Here, as throughout his book, couches and diwans draw forth the scorn of a man accustomed to the simple furniture of the tent. But observe his especial hatred of houses. Four times in one verse he smites them: "winter-house on summer-house and the ivory houses shall perish-yea, houses manifold, saith the Lord." So in another oracle of the same section: "Houses of ashlar ye have built, and ye shall not inhabit them; vineyards of delight have ye planted, and ye shall not drink of their wine." { Amos 5:11 } And in another: "I loathe the pride of Jacob, and his palaces I hate; and I will give up a city and all that is in it For, lo, the Lord is about to command, and He will smite the great house into ruins and the small house into splinters." { Amos 6:8 ; Amos 6:11 } No wonder that such a prophet found war with its breached walls insufficient, and welcomed, as the full ally of his word, the earthquake itself. Yet all this is no mere desert razzia in the name of the Lord, a nomad’s hatred of cities and the culture of settled men. It is not a temper; it is a vision of history. In the only argument which these early oracles contain, Amos claims to have events on the side of his word. "Shall the lion roar and not be catching" something? Neither does the prophet speak till he knows that God is ready to act. History accepted this claim. Amos spoke about 755. In 734 Tiglath-Pileser swept Gilead and Galilee; in 724 Shalmaneser overran the rest of Northern Israel: "siege and blockade of the whole land!" For three years the Mount of Samaria was invested, and then taken; the houses overthrown, the rich and the delicate led away captive. It happened as Amos foretold; for it was not the shepherd’s rage within him that spoke. He had "seen the Lord standing, and He said, Smite." But this assault of a desert nomad upon the structure of a nation’s life raises many echoes in history and some questions in our own minds today. Again and again have civilizations far more powerful than Israel’s been threatened by the desert in the name of God, and in good faith it has been proclaimed by the prophets of Christianity and other religions that God’s kingdom cannot come on earth till the wealth, the culture, the civil order, which men have taken centuries to build, have been swept away by some great political convulsion. Today Christianity herself suffers the same assaults, and is told by many, the high life and honest intention of whom cannot be doubted, that till the civilization which she has so much helped to create is destroyed, there is no hope for the purity or the progress of the race. And Christianity, too, has doubts within herself. What is the world which our Master refused in the Mount of Temptation, and so often and so sternly told us that it must perish?-how much of our wealth, of our culture, of our politics, of the whole fabric of our society? No thoughtful and religious man, when confronted with civilization, not in its ideal, but in one of those forms which give it its very name, the life of a large city, can fail to ask, How much of this deserves the judgment of God? How much must be overthrown, before His will is done on earth? All these questions rise in the ears and the heart of a generation, which more than any other has been brought face to face with the ruins of empires and civilizations, which have endured longer, and in their day seemed more stable, than her own. In face of the confused thinking and fanatic speech which have risen on all such topics, it seems to me that the Hebrew prophets supply us with four cardinal rules. First, of course, they insist that it is the moral question upon which the fate of a civilization is, decided. By what means has the system grown? Is justice observed in essence as well as form? Is there freedom, or is the prophet silenced? Does luxury or self-denial prevail? Do the rich make life hard for the poor? Is childhood sheltered and is innocence respected? By these, claim the prophets, a nation stands or falls; and history has proved the claim on wider worlds than they dreamt of. But by themselves moral reasons are never enough to justify a prediction of speedy doom upon any system or society. None of the prophets began to foretell the fall of Israel till they read, with keener eyes than their contemporaries, the signs of it in current history. And this, I take it, was the point which made a notable difference between them, and one who like them scourged the social wrongs of his civilization, yet never spoke a word of its fall. Juvenal nowhere calls down judgments, except upon individuals. In his time there were no signs of the decline of the empire, even though, as he marks, there was a flight from the capital of the virtue which was to keep the empire alive. But the prophets had political proof of the nearness of God’s judgment, and they spoke in the power of its coincidence with the moral corruption of their people. Again, if conscience and history (both of them, to the prophets, being witnesses of God) thus combine to announce the early doom of a civilization, neither the religion that may-have helped to build it, nor any remnant virtue in it, nor its ancient value to God, can avail to save. We are tempted to judge that the long and costly development of ages is cruelly thrown away by the convulsion and collapse of an empire; it feels impious to think that the patience, the providence, the millennial discipline of the Almighty are to be in a moment abandoned to some rude and savage force. But we are wrong. "You only have I known of all the families of the ground," yet I must "visit upon you your iniquities." Nothing is too costly for justice. And God finds some other way of conserving the real results of the past. Again, it is a corollary of all this, that the sentence upon civilization must often seem to come by voices that are insane, and its execution by means that are criminal. Of course, when civilization is arraigned as a whole, and its overthrow demanded, there may be nothing behind the attack but jealousy or greed, the fanaticism of ignorant men or the madness of disordered lives. But this is not necessarily the case. For God has often in history chosen the outsider as the herald of doom, and sent the barbarian as its instrument. By the statesmen and patriots of Israel, Amos must have been regarded as a mere savage, with a savage’s hate of civilization. But we know what he answered when Amaziah called him rebel. And it was not only for its suddenness that the apostles said the "day of the Lord should come as a thief," but also because of its methods. For over and over again has doom been pronounced, and pronounced truly, by men who in the eyes of civilization were criminals and monsters. Now apply these four principles to the question of ourselves. It will scarcely be denied that our civilization tolerates, and in part lives by, the existence of vices which, as we all admit, ruined the ancient empires. Are the political possibilities of overthrow also present? That there exist among us means of new historic convulsions is a thing hard for us to admit. But the signs cannot be hid. When we see the jealousies of the Christian peoples, and their enormous preparations for battle; the arsenals of Europe which a few sparks, may blow up; the millions of soldiers one man’s word may mobilize; when we imagine the opportunities which a general war would furnish to the discontented masses of the European proletariat-we must surely acknowledge the existence of forces capable of inflicting calamities, so severe as to affect not merely this nationality or that type of culture, but the very vigor and progress of civilization herself; and all this without our looking beyond Christendom, or taking into account the rise of the yellow races to a consciousness of their approach to equality with ourselves. If, then, in the eyes of the Divine justice Christendom merits judgment, -if life continue to be left so hard to the poor; if innocence be still an impossibility for so much of the childhood of the Christian nations; if with so many of the leaders of civilization prurience be lifted to the level of an art, and licentiousness followed as a cult; if we continue to pour the evils of our civilization upon the barbarian, and "the vices of our young nobles," to paraphrase Juvenal, "are aped in" Hindustan, -then let us know that the means of a judgment more awful than any which has yet scourged a delinquent civilization are extant and actual among us. And if one should reply, that our Christianity makes all the difference, that God cannot undo the development of nineteen centuries, or cannot overthrow the peoples of His Son, -let us remember that God does justice at whatever cost; that as He did not spare Israel at the hands of Assyria, so He did not spare Christianity in the East when the barbarians of the desert found her careless and corrupt. "You only have I known of all the families of the ground, therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." THE PROBLEM THAT AMOS LEFT AMOS was a preacher of righteousness almost wholly in its judicial and punitive offices. Exposing the moral conditions of society in his day, emphasizing on the one hand its obduracy and on the other the intolerableness of it, he asserted that nothing could avert the inevitable doom-neither Israel’s devotion to Jehovah nor Jehovah’s interest in Israel. "You alone have I known of all the families of the ground: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." The visitation was to take place in war and in the captivity of the people. This is practically the whole message of the prophet Amos. That he added to it the promise of restoration which now closes his book, we have seen to be extremely improbable. Yet even if that promise is his own, Amos does not tell us how the restoration is to be brought about. With Wonderful insight and patience he has traced the captivity of Israel to moral causes. But he does not show what moral change in the exiles is to justify their restoration, or by what means such a moral change is to be effected. We are left to infer the conditions and the means of redemption from the principles which Amos enforced while there yet seemed time to pray for the doomed people: "Seek the Lord and ye shall live." ( Amos 5:4 ) According to this, the moral renewal of Israel must precede their restoration; but the prophet seems to make no great effort to effect the renewal. In short Amos illustrates the easily-forgotten truth that a preacher to the conscience is not necessarily a preacher of repentance. Of the great antitheses between which religion moves, Law and Love, Amos had therefore been the prophet of Law. But we must not imagine that the association of Love with the Deity was strange to him. This could not be to any Israelite who remembered the past of his people-the romance of their origins and early struggles for freedom. Israel had always felt the grace of their God; and unless we be wrong about the date of the great poem in the end of Deuteronomy, they had lately celebrated that grace in lines of exquisite beauty and tenderness:- "He found him in a desert land, In a waste and a howling wilderness. He compassed him about, cared for him, Kept him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirreth up his nest, Fluttereth over his young, Spreadeth his wings, taketh them, Beareth them up on his pinions-So Jehovah alone led him." The patience of the Lord with their waywardness and their stubbornness had been the ethical influence on Israel’s life at a time when they had probably neither code of law nor system of doctrine. "Thy gentleness," as an early Psalmist says for his people, "Thy gentleness hath made me great." { Psalm 18:1-50 } Amos is not unaware of this ancient grace of Jehovah. But he speaks of it in a fashion which shows that he feels it to be exhausted and without hope for his generation "I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorites. And I raised up of your sons for prophets and of your young men for Nazarites." { Amos 2:10 } But this can now only fill the cup of the nation’s sin. "You alone have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." { Amos 3:2 } Jehovah’s ancient Love but strengthens now the justice and the impetus of His Law. We perceive, then, the problem which Amos left to prophecy. It was not to discover Love in the Deity whom he had so absolutely identified with Law. The Love of God needed no discovery among a people with the Deliverance, the Exodus, the Wilderness, and the Gift of the Land in their memories. But the problem was to prove in God so great and new a mercy as was capable of matching that Law, which the abuse of His millennial gentleness now only the more fully justified. There was needed a prophet to arise with as keen a conscience of Law as Amos himself, and yet affirm that Love was greater still; to admit that Israel were doomed, and yet promise their redemption by processes as reasonable and as ethical as those by which the doom had been rendered inevitable. The prophet of Conscience had to be followed by the prophet of Repentance. Such a one was found in Hosea, the son of Be’eri, a citizen and probably a priest of Northern Israel, whose very name, Salvation, the synonym of Joshua and of Jesus, breathed the larger hope, which it was his glory to bear to his people. Before we see how for this task Hosea was equipped with the love and sympathy which Amos lacked, let us do two things. Let us appreciate the magnitude of the task itself, set to him first of prophets; and let us remind ourselves that, greatly as he achieved it, the task was not one which could be achieved even by him once for all, but that it presents itself to religion again and again in the course of her development. For the first of these duties, it is enough to recall how much all subsequent prophecy derives from Hosea. We shall not exaggerate if we say that there is no truth uttered by later prophets about the Divine Grace, which we do not find in germ in him. Isaiah of Jerusalem was a greater statesman and a more powerful writer, but he had not Hosea’s tenderness and insight into motive and character. Hosea’s marvelous sympathy both with the people and with God is sufficient to foreshadow every grief, every hope, every gospel, which make the Books of Jeremiah and the great Prophet of the Exile exhaustless in their spiritual value for mankind. These others explored the kingdom of God: it was Hosea who took it by storm. { Matthew 11:12 } He is the first prophet of Grace, Israel’s earliest Evangelist; yet with as keen a sense of law, and of the inevitableness of ethical discipline, as Amos himself. But the task which Hosea accomplished was not one that could be accomplished once for all. The interest of his book is not merely historical. For so often as a generation is shocked out of its old religious ideals, as Amos shocked Israel, by a realism and a discovery of law, which have no respect for ideals, however ancient and however dear to the human heart, but work their own pitiless way to doom inevitable; so often must the Book of Hosea have a practical value for living men. At such a crisis we stand today. The older Evangelical assurance, the older Evangelical ideals have to some extent been rendered impossible by the realism to which the sciences, both physical and historical, have most healthily recalled us, and by their wonderful revelation of Law working through nature and society without respect to our creeds and pious hopes. The question presses: Is it still possible to believe in repentance and conversion, still possible to preach the power of God to save, whether the individual or society, from the forces of heredity and of habit? We can at least learn how Hosea mastered the very similar problem which Amos left to him, and how, with a moral realism no less stern than his predecessor and a moral standard every whit as high, he proclaimed Love to be the ultimate element in religion; not only because it moves man to a repentance and God to a redemption more sovereign than any law; but because if neglected or abused, whether as love of man or love of God, it enforces a doom still more inexorable than that required by violated truth or by outraged justice. Love our Savior, Love our almighty and unfailing Father, but, just because of this, Love our most awful Judge-we turn to the life and the message in which this eternal theme was first unfolded. Amos 3:3 Can two walk together, except they be agreed? , 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 precipic

You only have I known of all the families of the earth. Amos 3:1-8 Sin in the highly-favoured Vincent W. Ryan, M. A. This is shameful ingratitude. The honour and blessing conferred on the Israelites gave the stain of ingratitude to every act of transgression of which they were guilty. It is direct rebellion. "You only have I known," so as to reveal to you My will. Iniquity in you is disobedience to express commands, revolt against My authority. It is a dishonour offered to God. The privilege of being called after the name of God brings with it the danger of profaning that name by transgression. The nearer in privilege, the nearer we are to judgment. Distinguished blessings are leading to distinguished reward, or to distinguished punishment. 1. We are taught here that the providence of God prepares good and evil for man. View what are called common mercies in their origin, and "understand the loving-kindness of the Lord." Evil is also prepared for the sinner, in the sense of calamity, judgment. 2. We are taught by the prophet's vindication of the doctrine of a special providence to be very earnest when affliction comes in, working together with God, that it may do us good. Remember that God intended that sorrow to come as it did come, and when it did come. 3. When the trumpet of God's Word is sounded by His ministers, let us give heed to the note of warning or exhortation. 4. When there is evil in the land, let us with reverence acknowledge the hand of God. 5. The Lord revealeth His secret to His servants the prophets.(1) He does this by giving them spiritual apprehension of the truths of His Holy Word, causes them to see terror in the threatenings thereof, sweetness in its promises, duty in its precepts.(2) Nothing is coming upon man that has not been revealed.(3) The Holy Spirit directs the thoughts and words of His ministering servants, so as best to suit the particular need of those whom they address. At all times the sincere preaching of the Word may be expected to give offence. See how dangerous is the conduct of those who despise, oppose, revile, and persecute men of God for telling them plain truth with faithfulness and honesty. See where the true strength of a faithful dispenser of God's Word lies. The strength of the servant lies in his conviction that he is doing his Master's will. ( Vincent W. Ryan, M. A. ) Elected for what? J. H. Jowett, M. A. Here was this desert prophet, with keen, prayer-washed eyes, piercing through the shows of things to the unclean realities behind. He disinterred the moral corruption that lurked behind their whited professions. What answer did the people make to this rude child of the desert? He stood there, rude in speech and in dress, despised by the official priest, a mere field-preacher, proclaiming to the grandees of the metropolis that the moral corruption of the people was eating away the vital elements of the national strength and that in galloping consumption they were hastening on to a terrible and fatal retribution. What answer did they make? They fell back upon their belief in God. Their reply to the herdman was found in their doctrine of providence. What was that doctrine? It was this: Their nation was the favourite of the Lord. They were hedged about with peculiar sanctities. "We only are known unto the Lord. Only between us and the Lord is there the intercourse which implies security. Thy threats, O Amos, are as noisy nothings. They are meaningless and terrorless." Such was the refuge in which the people found their security. "We are the children of privilege. Privilege implies favour. Favour guarantees security." Such was their doctrine of election, and I am not altogether sure that their doctrine is banished from the minds of all men to-day. Now let us mark the answer of the Lord through the mouth of His prophet. We have heard the false doctrine of election; now let us hear the true doctrine which is enshrined in the words of our text. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore" — note the swift, piercing logic — "therefore I will punish you." The false doctrine ran thus — "You only have I known: therefore I will indulge you." The true doctrine culminates in fire — "You only have I known: therefore I will punish you." "You only have I known" — I marked you out for special office. I appointed you to discharge a special function. I elected you to special service. But the office has been prostituted. The function has been ignored. The service has been despised. "Therefore I will punish you." I singled you out from among men, that all men through you might be blessed. But ye have defiled your mission, and, instead of being a centre of saving health, ye have become a noisome pestilence. That is the expression of a Divine method of government which prevails in all time. Election does not mean security. Security is dependent upon the discharge of the duty which election creates. There is an aristocracy of the election, a chosen few, and these are they who have fulfilled the obligations of their election, and are therefore qualified to enter into the peace and joy of their Lord. Election therefore does not, in the first place, create security. It creates responsibility, and my security or insecurity depends upon the manner in which that responsibility is regarded. There is nothing which can ensure the protecting presence of the Most High God except moral agreement. "Can two walk together...?" cries the prophet in the verse which follows my text. "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" If there is to be helpful and intimate companionship between two people, there must be profound agreement, and if I am to enjoy the companionship of the great God, with all that that companionship means of consoling and sheltering grace, if God and I are to walk together, we must be agreed, and my part of the agreement must be faithful and unconditional obedience to all His revealed will. Election; the prophet declared that it could only be found in the fact of obedience. They had been elected to duty; not in the election, but in the duty would they find the defences which are as invulnerable ramparts against their foes. Election means selection to service. The Lord's specialities are for the sake of generalities. An individual is elected that he may serve a nation. A nation is elected that she may serve a race. A call is not a self-securing privilege; it is the entrustment of an office. To evade my responsibility is to destroy my defences, and to bring down swift retribution from God. " You only have I known: therefore I will punish you." Election, then, means selection for special service. This doctrine of election is here applied to nations. Certain nations are specially known by God. He whispers to them peculiar secrets, that they may proclaim them upon the house-tops to the nations of the world. Greece was specially known by God. The warm breath of the Lord came upon her people, and endowed her with that exquisite sense of the beautiful which has made her distinguished among all the nations of time. She revelled in the joy of perception, and exulted in the creation of lovely forms. God opened her eyes to the holiness of beauty, and gave her a mission to the race. And "the Gentiles have come to her light." All the nations go to Greece to school. We go to the treasury of her graces for our own adornments. The Lord God elected her by special endowment, that by her election she might serve a race. Rome was specially known by God. She was His own handiwork. He fashioned her into special aptitude, giving her the endowment of a peculiar passion for order, a genius for polity, government, and empire. He breathed into her life the instinct of law, and by the speciality of her election He determined the speciality of her mission. "And the Gentiles have come to her light." The foundations of modern jurisprudence are laid in ancient Rome. She has been the schoolmistress to all the nations. Israel was specially known by God. He breathed into her life a special genius for religion, a rare instinct for the Unseen and Eternal. To her He whispered the sublime truth of the unity of God and the august verities of the moral law. "And the Gentiles have come to her light." Just as beauty is of the Greeks, and law of the Romans, so salvation is of the Jews! Israel was exalted, as a city set upon a hill, that the light of revelation might shine out upon the nation, yea, even upon them that were afar off. May it not be that the Lord has held secret communion with every nation, and whispered to her some peculiar message which makes her life distinctive and unique? It is along this line that I can travel with the least trembling when I contemplate the appalling divisions which distract the race. I gain some assurance from a broad application of this doctrine of election. Each nation has been specially elected. All nations are dependent upon each; each is dependent upon all. Because of the Divine distribution of gifts absolute severance is impossible. "The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee: nor, again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you." Each nation is specially known of God, specially elected to unique and individual service. In this doctrine of the election of nations, which is an election to mutual service, and which entails mutual dependence, I base my hope of the ultimate practical comity of nations, and the realised brotherhood of the race. But now let us apply the prophet's doctrine to the life of the individual, as we have applied it to the life of the nation. The prophet's doctrine is this — election is not election to security, except through the discharge of obligation. Election is election to the service of o hers. How many of us, then, have been elected? Are there any exempt from the election? We are all known, all elected, all called — for the election is a call to individual faithfulness, and our response will determine whether the election shall issue in sunshine or in fire. Each life has its own peculiar mission. God appoints for each a special and individual task. My mission is my election. I may not know what my mission is. That matters not. God knows. My part is to discharge the duty that lies nearest, and then the next, and the next, and the next, and God will guide and control the connected purpose and mission. How can I turn the election into a glad consciousness of protecting providence and eternal security? By a spirit of obedience. By faithfulness in that which is least. ( J. H. Jowett, M. A. ) Humiliation under God's chastisement Henry Raikes, M. A. We enjoy great and peculiar privileges as a people. Religious light; civil liberty; public credit; individual exertions; private wealth; national power; commercial prosperity. Let us not forget that privilege involves responsibility. The very adoption of sons carries with it the certainty of fatherly correction; for what son is there whom the father chasteneth not? We must be prepared to expect that, as there are occasions where a father's love is manifested in the correction of his child, and the affection that he feels is expressed by the chastisement he applies, so there are times when the same necessity may compel God to adopt a different mode of treatment from that which He generally employs, and to prove the love that He feels for His children by the judgments that He brings upon them. Nothing seems more natural, nothing more probable, than that a period of great scientific advancement, and of great commercial prosperity, should be a season of great forgetfulness of God. There are multitudes who habitually forget their dependence on God; who form their plans, pursue their inquiries, calculate their gains, without reference to Him. If punishment is to begin, where can it begin so appropriately as in noticing that forgetfulness of God which seems to be the sin that doth most, easily beset us; and in teaching us the humbling but unwelcome truth of our entire dependence on God? In time of national distress, let us pray, as Elijah prayed; and as his prayers prevailed for the people, when the people had avowed their allegiance to God, so let us hope that the prayer of faith shall still maintain its character, and that to an humbled, penitent, and believing people the blessing will never be refused. ( Henry Raikes, M. A. ) God's alarm to Great Britain J. Guyse, D. D. In this chapter we have a denunciation of judgments against Israel, together with the grounds and reasons of it. Notice — 1. The special regard God had to His people. It is as if He should say, "My heart has been set upon you, My thoughts of kindness have been peculiarly towards and concerning you. 2. The awful visitation which even God's regard to them engaged Him to bring upon them. "Therefore I will punish you." As to Israelites indeed, though God visits their iniquities with temporal judgments, it is with a design of love and of advantage to their souls. 3: The ground and reason of this, and that was their iniquities. "I will punish you for all your iniquities." I. WHAT HAVE BEEN GREAT BRITAIN'S EMINENT MERCIES? 1. Our temporal mercies, which purely relate to the things of this life. 2. Our mercies with regard to religious concerns, and to spiritual and eternal blessings. II. WHAT HAVE BEEN OUR ABUSES OF THESE EMINENT MERCIES? How have we rioted upon the bounties of providence! Has not our plenty been turned into means and occasions of feeding our pride and ambition, our intemperance, luxury, and debauchery? How unfruitful have we been under the means of grace. Has not the Holy Spirit, been grieved and provoked to withdraw from our solemn assemblies? And when we speak of religion, have we much more than the name? III. WHAT REASON WE HAVE TO FEAR THAT GOD WILL VISIT US WITH JUDGMENTS FOR ALL THESE INIQUITIES AND ABUSES OF HIS MERCIES. 1. Our provocations are exceeding great. 2. The honour of God, as the great Governor of the world, is concerned to show His righteous resentment against a professing people that are guilty of such exceeding high provocations. 3. The threatenings of God's Word give us reason to fear His bringing judgments upon us. 4. The examples God has made of other communities, and particularly of His professing people, for their iniquities, may justly raise our fears of His doing the same by us. 5. God has already taken up a controversy with us. IV. WHAT COURSE IS TO BE TAKEN FOR PREVENTING SUCH AWFUL VISITATIONS? Public national sins must be followed with public national breaking them off by repentance and returning to the Lord. When dangers lie at the door of kingdoms and nations, the only method of preventing them, according to God's ordinary rule of procedure in His government of this world, is national humiliation, fasting, and repentance for and departure from the provoking evils that have incensed His wrath against us, with earnest supplication and prayer for national forgiveness of national sins. ( J. Guyse, D. D. ) National privileges R. W. Forrest, M. A. A nation's guilt and punishment are graduated according to the scale of its privileges. I. OUR PRIVILEGES. Knowledge, as it relates to God, signifies approval, love. Israel had been unto the Lord a peculiar treasure above all people. Is there not a remarkable parallel between our own position and that of ancient Israel? When we pass in review our own national history we may well stand amazed at God's marvellous dealings with us. To us, pre eminently and emphatically, beyond all nations of the earth, has the kingdom of God, taken from the Jews for their unworthiness, been given. Truly our privileges are as incomparable as they are priceless. II. OUR PENALTIES. Whether as a Church or a nation, we should be on our guard against unfaithfulness. We have the Word of the living God in our keeping. But are we as faithful to this trust as we ought to be? Do we not sometimes give a very halting and restricted testimony to the truth? ( R. W. Forrest, M. A. ) Privilege and punishment J. Telford, B. A. I. THE PRIVILEGE. So surpassing had been the tenderness of God, so intimate the relationship in which He had stood to them, that it appeared as if He had ignored all other nations to magnify His mercy to them. They alone had had the presence of God in their midst, with a Divinely appointed priesthood, and a law given by the mouth of God. Other nations were as worthy as they. It was only the mercy of God which had chosen them. God exalts His people now to the highest privilege. He reveals His truth and makes known His character to them. II. THE PUNISHMENT. This was a necessary result of their trangression. 1. Because theirs was no common sin. The clearest light, the richest mercy, the strongest warnings, the most awful threatenings failed to deter them from wandering into forbidden paths. Punishment is proportioned to privilege. Can we wonder, then, that Divine indignation should be kindled against those who multiplied trangressions? 2. It was necessary that God should vindicate His own character. He had taught them by warning and example how deeply He hated sin. The story of Achan, the history of the spies, the fate of the whole congregation of Israel showed that the wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all ungodliness of men. 3. To a certain extent the punishment was remedial. God hoped to awaken the people from the stupor into which sin had thrown them. ( J. Telford, B. A. ) A specially blest people Homilist. : — Now it is a fact that some men are far more highly favoured by heaven than others. Some have more health, some more riches, some more intellect, some more friendships, some more means of spiritual improve ment. I. They are OFTENTIMES THE GREATEST SINNERS. Who of all the people on the face of the earth were greater sinners than the Israelites? Yet they were specially favoured of heaven. England is a specially favoured land, but where is there more moral corruption? It is true that civilisation has so decorated it that its loathsomeness is to some extent concealed; but here it is. The corpse is painted, but it is still a putrid mass. II. They are EXPOSED TO SPECIAL PUNISHMENT. "Therefore will I punish you for all your iniquities." It will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, etc. Therefore "I will punish you." I who know all your sins, I who abhor all your sins, I who have power to punish you. III. They should, LIKE ALL PEOPLE, PLACE THEM SELVES IN HARMONY WITH GOD. "Can two walk together, except they be agreed? " 1. Agreement with God is essential to the well-being of all intelligent existences. No spirit in the universe can be happy without thorough harmony with the will and mind of God. 2. The condition of all sinners is that of hostility to the will of God. ( Homilist. ) Can two walk together, except they be agreed? Amos 3:3 Agreement with God E. N. Kirk, A. M. Order is the first law of heaven's empire. In the material world God has secured it by absolute power. In the world of mind His authority has enjoined it. And in the next state of human existence His omnipotent justice will enforce it. In the present world God has simply enjoined order; and if we obey not the great laws of moral harmony, we make our own happiness impossible. If two are not agreed, they cannot walk together. The enjoyments of friendship demand a harmony of sentiment; the classifications of political parties, and all efficient party movements, whether good or bad, demand it. What efficiency can there be in that commercial house whose partners are agreed about no one of the great principles of trade? The text is part of a solemn reproof addressed to the Israelites. They thought that because they had been taken into covenant with God, and had been careful in observing the ceremonials of the Jewish ritual, God walked with them, approved of them, and blessed them. But the prophet here presents this great principle: "You must agree with Me, and then I will walk with you; the union between us must be a moral union." MAN, AS UNCONVERTED, HAS NO MORAL UNION WITH GOD. Between God and these His creatures there is no common taste, there are no common principles, no common ends nor plans. Observe God and man in the exercise of love in its two branches, complacency and benevolence. God loves all excellence. Humility, faith, penitence, the spirit of prayer, — these are the features of character of greatest price in God s sight. But it is not so with the world. The selection of our companions, and the ground of that selection, if we would examine it closely, would perfectly expose to us our character as it is in the eyes of God. If we choose the pious, we have, so far, an evidence of our reconciliation to God. In the exercise of their benevolence men do not choose as God chooses. It is often said that no man can love his enemies. Then no man can dwell with God, no man can wear God's moral image. We may test the condition of our affections by another object — the law of God. If its" requirements please us not, if its threatenings seem too severe, then with us God is not agreed. Another object tests the heart; the Son of God manifested in human nature. Does your heart exalt Him? If your heart, in all these points, has no sympathy with God, how can He delight in you? Communion of soul, to be intimate and delightful, must be intelligent and cordial on those points which both parties deem of the highest moment. If you have no such fellowship with God here, what will you do in heaven? ( E. N. Kirk, A. M. ) The conditions of intercourse and union with God R. P. Buddicom, M. A. The terms on which man can have converse with God, inter. course with His love, and experience of His mercy, are unchangeably the same in every age of the world. Without coincidence in sentiment, judgment, and disposition, there can be no cordial union or harmony between the Creator and the creature. "He that is joined to the Lord, is one spirit." 1. In order that God and man should walk together in all the endearments of the Christian covenant, there must be a harmony of judgment concerning the Scripture plan of salvation. Man must acquiesce in what God has so solemnly declared and imposed. 2. There must be a correspondence of sentiment upon the rule by which redeemed creatures are to be governed, and the duties they must fulfil towards God and towards man. The moral law is still authoritative as a rule of life. 3. Man and God cannot walk together, unless the mind of both have reference to the same end. That which the Most High contemplated, when He redeemed you on the Cross of His Son, was the advancing of His own honour, and the salvation of your souls. What then is your aim? ( R. P. Buddicom, M. A. ) A pair of friends A. Maclaren, D. D. They do not need to be agreed about everything. The two whom the prophet would fain see walking together are God and Israel. Two may walk together, but they have to be .agreed thus far, at any rate, that both shall wish to be together, and both be going the same road. I. THAT BLESSED COMPANIONSHIP THAT MAY CHEER A LIFE. "Walking with God" means ordering the daily life under the continual sense that we are ever in the great Taskmaster's eye. "Walking after God" means conforming the will and active efforts to the rule that He has laid down. High above these conceptions of a devout life is the idea of "walking with God." For to walk before Him may have in it some tremor, and may be undertaken in the spirit of a slave. And walking after Him may be a painful effort to keep His distant figure in sight. But to walk with Him implies a constant quiet sense of the Divine presence, which forbids that we should ever feel lonely. As the companions pace along side by side, words may be spoken by either, or blessed silence may be eloquent of perfect trust and rest. Such a life of friendship with God is possible for every one of us. If we are so walking, it is no piece of fanaticism to say that there will be mutual communications. The two may walk together. That is the end of all religion. All culminates in this true, constant fellowship between men and God. Get side by side with God. Fellowship with Him is the climax of all religion. It is also the secret of all blessedness, the only thing that will make a life absolutely sovereign over sorrow, and fixedly imperturbed by all tempests, and invulnerable to all "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." Hold fast by God, and you have an amulet against every evil, and a shield against every foe, and a mighty power that will calm and satisfy your whole being. II. THE SADLY INCOMPLETE REALITY, IN MUCH CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE, WHICH CONTRASTS WITH THIS POSSIBILITY. Perhaps few so-called Christians habitually feel, as they might do, the depth and blessedness of this communion. And only a very small percentage of us have anything like the continuity of companionship which the text suggests as possible. There may be, and therefore there should be, running unbroken through a Christian life, one long bright line of communion with God, and happy inspiration from the sense of His presence with us. Is it a line in my life, or is there but a dot here and a dot there, and long breaks between? III. AN EXPLANATION OF THE FAILURE TO REALISE THIS CONTINUAL PRESENCE. The explanation is that the two are not agreed. That is why they are not walking together. The consciousness of God's presence with us is a very delicate thing. At bottom, there is only one thing that separates a soul from God, and that is sin of some sort. Remember that very little divergence will, if the two paths are prolonged far enough, part their other ends by a world. There may be scarcely any conscious ness of parting company at the beginning. Take care of little divergencies that are habitual. ( A. Maclaren, D. D. ) "Can two walk together, except they be agreed? W. Hay Aitken, M. A. This points to an essential condition of union between the Lord Jesus Christ, and those who really are His. Fellowship with the Lord is obviously the highest privilege of the creature. In every age this has been regarded as the highest favour that could possibly be given to man. All the most distinguished worthies of ancient Scripture history have this, above everything else, as their distinguishing glory and their privilege — to live in the society of the invisible God. And it is the privilege of every true Christian to receive the Lord Jesus Christ into his heart, and to live in constant fellowship, through Him, with the unseen God. They that live most in the society of the everlasting God must, more or less, be partakers of His own Divine attributes. And what joy belongs to such a life as this! Before we can really know Him there must be a substantial agreement between ourselves and Him. There are only too many Christians who are living out of fellowship with God. And it is only too possible to fail from fellowship with Him. Then the highest privilege in our life is gone. We must have permitted some cause of disagreement to arise between ourselves and Him. The relationship in which we stand is of such a character that the superior Being must be supreme. God's way being the way of absolute perfection, any attempt on our part to assert our own desire, as in opposition to the Divine will, must be an offence against our own nature and our own interest, just as surely as it is an offence against His Divine pleasure. There must be a complete and continual yielding up, a concession of our natural inclinations to His Divine will, if we are to rise to that which He desires we should attain to, and possess the blessedness which we may, even here, experience. This is our life-work — to bring our human wills into conformity with Him; to watch every little cause of disagreement, and to eliminate it as fast as it makes its appearance. Our blessed Lord is our example in this respect. Our Lord had a human will, though it was not a Sinful will. Contemplate Adam unfallen, and put beside him the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will find that they both have the same tastes and proclivities, naturally, because they are both specimens of genuine humanity. What was our Lord's course of conduct, starting from this point? He lays it down as the first law of His human life, that He has come into the world, not to do His own will, but the will of Him who had sent Him." Having accepted this as the great taw of His conduct, lower considerations, considerations connected with pleasure and pain, take a completely subordinate position. There was the complete devotion of the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ to the Divine will. The result was that God and He were walking together in holy union. No doubt at times our Lord felt strangely solitary. But there was one thing that stayed Him in the midst of all His trials, and cheered Him in the midst of all His sorrows, — "He that hath sent Me is with Me." The life of Jesus was a constant rendering up of pleasure to God. It was lived out, not as under an iron law, but with a feeling of filial delight in doing what pleased the Father; and the result of this was an unbroken harmony between the two wills, and the continuous presence within His own nature of the Father, for whom, and by whom He lived. The will of man, yielding to the will of God, became the will of God. That will always be the effect of the surrender of our will to Him. The more our human will is yielded over to Him, the more complete does the fellowship of our nature with His become, and the two are able so closely to "walk together" that they become united in an indissoluble union. It is our highest privilege, and our deepest and truest wisdom, to follow the example of our blessed Lord and Master in the maintenance of the continuous attitude of agreement towards God, who claims the lordship of our nature. Agree with Him in little things. Anything like a life of fellowship with God is altogether impossible until the first act of agreement has taken place. There are many who are always trying to rise into a life of fellowship with God without taking the primary step towards it. If you have not come into fellowship with God, you are disagreed with respect to your nature. There is a property quarrel between you. He lays His hand upon that nature of yours, and says, "It is Mine." God is a Sovereign, He has laid down certain laws. Where is the man or woman who has kept them? Moreover, God and the unrenewed sinner are in a state of disagreement with respect to the position which the sinner has to take. It is one of helplessness. Let me come closer. The disagreement is a personal one. There is something that has slipped in between thee and thy God. And the disagreement has arisen with thee, rebellious sinner. ( W. Hay Aitken, M. A. ) The condition essential to a walk with God Henry Melvill, B. D. Unless there be congeniality of character, there may be outward alliance, but there cannot be that intimate communion which the alliance itself is supposed to imply. And a sameness of tendency or pursuit appears evidently to form an immediate link between parties who would otherwise have had little in common. Men of science seem attracted towards each other, though they may be strangers by birth and even by country. Our text, though it may with great justice be applied to human associations, furnishing a rule which ought to guide us in forming them, was originally intended, and originally delivered, to refer to intercourse between man and God. The Israelites flattered themselves that they should still enjoy the favour of God, that the relation which made Him specially their guardian might still be maintained, while they lived in wickedness. "Not so," says God, "the thing is impossible; two cannot walk together, except they be agree. I. WHAT IS IT FOR MAN TO WALK WITH GOD? Two walking together denotes their having the same object, or pursuing the same end. In scriptural phrase it not only marks a man out as pious, but as eminently pious. A man who habitually "walked with God" would be one who had a constant sense of the Divine presence, and a thorough fixing of the affections on things above. 1. A man who walks with God must have a constant sense of the Divine presence. He lives in the full consciousness that the eye of his Maker is ever upon him, so that he cannot take a single unobserved step, or do the least thing which escapes Divine notice. 2. The expression indicates a thorough fixing of the affections on things above. It is the description of a man who, whilst yet in the flesh, may be said to have both his head and his heart in heaven. To "walk with God" implies a state of concord and co-operation: a state in fact, on man's part,

3:1-8 The distinguishing favours of God to us, if they do not restrain from sin, shall not exempt from punishment. They could not expect communion with God, unless they first sought peace with him. Where there is not friendship, there can be no fellowship. God and man cannot walk together, except they are agreed. Unless we seek his glory, we cannot walk with him. Let us not presume on outward privileges, without special, sanctifying grace. The threatenings of the word and providence of God against the sin of man are certain, and certainly show that the judgments of God are at hand. Nor will God remove the affliction he has sent, till it has done its work. The evil of sin is from ourselves, it is our own doing; but the evil of trouble is from God, and is his doing, whoever are the instruments. This should engage us patiently to bear public troubles, and to study to answer God's meaning in them. The whole of the passage shows that natural evil, or troubles, and not moral evil, or sin, is here meant. The warning given to a careless world will increase its condemnation another day. Oh the amazing stupidity of an unbelieving world, that will not be wrought upon by the terrors of the Lord, and that despise his mercies! 3:9-15 That power which is an instrument of unrighteousness, will justly be brought down and broken. What is got and kept wrongfully, will not be kept long. Some are at ease, but there will come a day of visitation, and in that day, all they are proud of, and put confidence in, shall fail them. God will inquire into the sins of which they have been guilty in their houses, the robbery they have stored up, and the luxury in which they lived. The pomp and pleasantness of men's houses, do not fortify against God's judgments, but make sufferings the more grievous and vexatious. Yet a remnant, according to the election of grace, will be secured by our great and good Shepherd, as from the jaws of destruction, in the worst times.