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Expositor's Bible Commentary Amos 5:1 Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel. 2. FOR WORSHIP, JUSTICE Amos 5:1-27 In the next of these groups of oracles Amos continues his attack on the national ritual, and now contrasts it with the service of God in public life-the relief of the poor, the discharge of justice. But he does not begin with this. The group opens with an elegy, which bewails the nation as already fallen. It is always difficult to mark where the style of a prophet passes from rhythmical prose into what we may justly call a metrical form. But in this short wail, we catch the well-known measure of the Hebrew dirge; not so artistic as in later poems, yet with at least the characteristic couplet of a long and a short line. "Hear this word which I lift up against you-a Dirge, O house of Israel":- "Fallen, no more shall she rise, Virgin of Israel! Flung down on her own ground, No one to raise her!" The "Virgin," which with Isaiah is a standing title for Jerusalem and occasionally used of other cities, is here probably the whole nation of Northern Israel. The explanation follows. It is War. "For thus saith the Lord Jehovah: The city that goeth forth a thousand shall have a hundred left; and she that goeth forth a hundred shall have left ten for the house of Israel." But judgment is not yet irrevocable. There break forthwith the only two promises which lighten the lowering darkness of the book. Let the people turn to Jehovah Himself-and that means let them turn from the ritual, and instead of it purge their civic life, restore justice in their courts, and help the poor. For God and moral good are one. It is "seek Me and ye shall live," and "seek good and ye shall live." Omitting for the present all argument as to whether the interruption of praise to the power of Jehovah be from Amos or another, we read the whole oracle as follows. "Thus saith Jehovah to the house of Israel: Seek Me and live. But seek not Bethel, and come not to Gilgal, and to Beersheba pass not over"-to come to Beersheba one had to cross all Judah. "For Gilgal shall taste the gall of exile"-it is not possible except in this clumsy way to echo the prophet’s play upon words, " Ha-Gilgal galoh yigleh "-"and Bethel," God’s house, "shall become an idolatry." This rendering, however, scarcely gives the rude force of the original; for the word rendered idolatry, Aven , means also falsehood and perdition, so that we should not exaggerate the antithesis if we employed a phrase which once was not vulgar: "And Bethel, house of God, shall go to the devil!" The epigram was the more natural that near Bethel, on a site now uncertain, but close to the edge of the desert to which it gave its name, there lay from ancient times a village actually called Beth-Aven, however the form may have risen. And we shall find Hosea stereotyping this epigram of Amos, and calling the sanctuary Beth-Aven oftener than he calls it Beth-el. "Seek ye Jehovah and live," he begins again, "lest He break forth like fire, O house of Joseph, and it consume and there be none to quench at Bethel. He that made the Seven Stars and Orion, that turneth the murk, into morning, and day He darkeneth to night, that calleth for the waters of the sea and poureth them out on the face of the earth-Jehovah His Name. He it is that flasheth out ruin on strength, and bringeth down destruction on the fortified." This rendering of the last verse is uncertain, and rightly suspected, but there is no alternative so probable, and it returns to the keynote from which the passage started, that God should break forth like fire. Ah, "they that turn justice to wormwood, and abase righteousness to the earth! They hate him that reproveth in the gate"-in an Eastern city both the law-court and place of the popular council-"and him that speaketh sincerely they abhor." So in the English mystic’s Vision Peace complains of Wrong:- " I dar noughte for fere of hym fyghte ne ehyde. " "Wherefore, because ye trample on the weak and take from him a present of corn, ye have built houses of ashlar, but ye shall not dwell in them; vineyards for pleasure have ye planted, but ye shall not drink of their wine. For I know how many are your crimes, and how forceful your sins-ye that browbeat the righteous, take bribes, and bring down the poor in the gate. Therefore the prudent in such a time is dumb, for an evil time is it" indeed. "Seek good and not evil, that ye may live, and Jehovah God of Hosts be with you, as ye say" He is. "Hate evil and love good; and in the gate set justice on her feet again-peradventure Jehovah God of Hosts may have pity on the remnant of Joseph." If in the Book of Amos there be any passages, which, to say the least, do not now lie in their proper places, this is one of them. For, firstly, while it regards the nation as still responsible for the duties of government, it recognizes them as reduced to a remnant. To find such a state of affairs we have to come down to the years subsequent to 734, when Tiglath-Pileser swept into captivity all Gilead and Galilee-that is, two-thirds, in bulk, of the territory of Northern Israel-but left Ephraim untouched. In answer to this, it may of course, be pointed out that in thus calling the people to repentance, so that a remnant might be saved, Amos may have been contemplating a disaster still future, from which, though it was inevitable, God might be moved to spare a remnant. That is very true. But it does not meet this further difficulty, that the verses ( Amos 5:14-15 ) plainly make interruption between the end of Amos 5:13 and the beginning of Amos 5:16 ; and that the initial "therefore" of the latter verse, while it has no meaning in its present sequence, becomes natural and appropriate when made to follow immediately on Amos 5:13 . For all these reasons, then, I take Amos 5:14-15 as a parenthesis, whether from Amos himself or from a later writer who can tell? But it ought to be kept in mind that in other prophetic writings where judgment is very severe, we have some proof of the later insertion of calls to repentance, by way of mitigation. Amos 5:13 had said the time was so evil that the prudent man kept silence. All the more must the Lord Himself speak, as Amos 5:16 now proclaims. "Therefore thus saith Jehovah, God of Hosts, Lord: On all open ways. lamentation, and in all streets they shall be saying, Ah woe! Ah woe! And in all vineyards lamentation, and they shall call the ploughman to wailing and to lamentation them that are skillful in dirges"-town and country, rustic and artist alike-"for I shall pass through thy midst, saith Jehovah." It is the solemn formula of the Great Passover, when Egypt was filled with wailing and there were dead in every house. The next verse starts another, but a kindred, theme. As blind as was Israel’s confidence in ritual, so blind was their confidence in dogma, and the popular dogma was that of the "Day of Jehovah." All popular hopes expect their victory to come in a single sharp crisis-a day. And again, the day of any one means either the day he has appointed, or the day of his display and triumph. So Jehovah’s day meant to the people the day of His judgment, or of His triumph: His triumph in war over their enemies, His judgment upon the heathen. But Amos, whose keynote has been that judgment begins at home, cries woe upon such hopes, and tells his people that for them the day of Jehovah is not victory, but rather insidious, importunate, inevitable death. And this he describes as a man who has lived, alone with wild beasts, from the jungles of the Jordan, where the lions lurk, to the huts of the desert infested by snakes. "Woe unto them that long for the day of Jehovah! What have you to do with the day of Jehovah? It is darkness, and not light. As when a man fleeth from the face of a lion, and a bear falls upon him; and he comes into his home, and, breathless, leans his hand upon the wall, and a serpent bites him. And then, as if appealing to Heaven for confirmation: Is it not so? Is it not darkness, the day of Jehovah, and not light? storm darkness, and not a ray of light Upon it?" Then Amos returns to the worship, that nurse of their vain hopes, that false prophet of peace, and he hears God speak more strongly than ever of its futility and hatefulness. "I hate, I loathe your feasts, and I will not smell the savor of your gatherings to sacrifice." For with pagan folly they still believed that the smoke of their burnt-offerings went up to heaven and flattered the nostrils of Deity. How ingrained was this belief may be judged by us from the fact that the terms of it had to be adopted by the apostles of a spiritual religion, if they would make themselves understood, and are now the metaphors of the sacrifices of the Christian heart. { Ephesians 5:2 etc.} "Though ye bring to Me burnt-offerings and your meal-offerings I will not be pleased, or your thank-offerings of fatted calves, I will not look at them. Let cease from Me the noise of thy songs; to the playing of thy viols I will not listen. But let justice roll on like water, and righteousness like an unfailing stream." Then follows the remarkable appeal from the habits of this age to those of the times of Israel’s simplicity. "Was it flesh or meat offerings that ye brought Me in the wilderness, forty years, O house of Israel. That is to say, at the very time when God made Israel His people, and led them safely to the promised land-the time When of all others He did most for them-He was not moved to such love and deliverance by the propitiatory bribes, which this generation imagine to be so availing and indispensable. Nay, those still shall not avail, for exile from the land shall now as surely come in spite of them, as the possession of the land in old times came without them. This at least seems to be the drift of the very obscure verse which follows, and is the unmistakable statement of the close of the oracle. But ye shall lift up your king and your god, images which you have made for yourselves; and I will carry you away into exile far beyond Damascus, saith Jehovah-God of Hosts is His Name!" So this chapter closes like the previous, with the marshaling of God’s armies. But as there His hosts were the movements of Nature and the Great Stars, so here they are the nations of the world. By His rule of both He is the God of Hosts. Amos 5:8 Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name: COMMON SENSE AND THE REIGN OF LAW Amos 3:3-8 ; Amos 4:6-13 ; Amos 5:8-9 ; Amos 6:12 ; Amos 8:8 ; Amos 9:5 ; Amos 8:4-6 FOOLS, when they face facts, which is seldom, face them one by one, and, as a consequence, either in ignorant contempt or in panic. With this inordinate folly Amos charged the religion of his day. The superstitious people, careful of every point of ritual and very greedy of omens, would not ponder real facts nor set cause-to effect. Amos recalled them to common life. "Does a bird fall upon a snare, except there be a loop on her? Does the trap itself rise from the ground, except it be catching something"-something alive in it that struggles, and so lifts the trap? "Shall the alarum be blown in a city, and the people not tremble?" Daily life is impossible without putting two and two together. But this is just what Israel will not do with the sacred events of their time. To religion they will not add common-sense. For Amos himself, all things which happen are in sequence and in sympathy. He has seen this in the simple life of the desert; he is sure of it throughout the tangle and hubbub of history. One thing explains another; one makes another inevitable. When he has illustrated the truth in common life, Amos claims it for especially four of the great facts of the time. The sins of society, of which society is careless; the physical calamities, which they survive and forget; the approach of Assyria, which they ignore; the word of the prophet, which they silence, -all these belong to each other. Drought, Pestilence, Earthquake, Invasion conspire-and the Prophet holds their secret. Now it is true that for the most part Amos describes this sequence of events as the personal action of Jehovah. "Shall evil befall, and Jehovah not have done it? I have smitten you. I will raise up against you a Nation Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel!" { Amos 3:6 ; Amos 4:9 ; Amos 6:14 ; Amos 4:12 } Yet even where the personal impulse of the Deity is thus emphasized, we feel equal stress laid upon the order and the inevitable certainty of the process Amos nowhere uses Isaiah’s great phrase: "a God of Mishpat," a "God of Order" or "Law." But he means almost the same thing: God works by methods which irresistibly fulfill themselves. Nay more. Sometimes this sequence sweeps upon the prophet’s mind with such force as to overwhelm all his sense of the Personal within it. The Will and the Word of the God who causes the thing are crushed out by the "Must Be" of the thing itself. Take even the descriptions of those historical crises, which the prophet most explicitly proclaims as the visitations of the Almighty. In some of the verses all thought of God Himself is lost in the roar and foam with which that tide of necessity bursts up through Chem. The fountains of the great deep break loose, and while the universe trembles to the shock, it seems that even the voice of the Deity is overwhelmed. In one passage, immediately after describing Israel’s ruin as due to Jehovah’s word, Amos asks how could it "have happened otherwise":- "Shall horses run up a cliff, or oxen plough the sea? that ye turn justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood." { Amos 6:12 } A moral order exists, which it is as impossible to break without disaster as it would be to break the natural order by driving horses upon a precipice. There is an inherent necessity in the sinners’ doom. Again, he says of Israel’s sin: "Shall not the Land tremble for this? Yea, it shall rise up together like the Nile, and heave and sink like the Nile of Egypt." { Amos 8:8 } The crimes of Israel are so intolerable, that in its own might the natural frame of things revolts against them. In these great crises, therefore, as in the simple instances adduced from everyday life, Amos had a sense of what we call law, distinct from, and for moments even overwhelming, that sense of the personal purpose of God, admission to the secrets of which had marked his call to be a prophet. These instincts we must not exaggerate into a system. There is no philosophy in Amos, nor need we wish there were. Far more instructive is what we do find-a virgin sense of the sympathy of all things, the thrill rather than the theory of a universe. And this faith, which is not a philosophy, is especially instructive on these two points: that it springs from the moral sense; and that it embraces, not history only, but nature. It springs from the moral sense. Other races have arrived at a conception of the universe along other lines: some by the observation of physical laws valid to the recesses of space; some by logic and the unity of Reason. But Israel found the universe through the conscience. It is a historical fact that the Unity of God, the Unity of History, and the Unity of the World, did, in this order, break upon Israel, through conviction and experience of the universal sovereignty of righteousness. We see the beginnings of the process in Amos. To him the sequences which work themselves out through history and across nature are moral. Righteousness is the hinge on which the world hangs; loosen it, and history and nature feel the shock. History punishes the sinful nation. But nature, too, groans beneath the guilt of man; and in the Drought, the Pestilence, and the Earthquake provides his scourges. It is a belief which has stamped itself upon the language of mankind. What else is "plague" than "blow" or "Scourge?" This brings us to the second point-our prophet’s treatment of Nature. Apart from the disputed passages (which we shall take afterwards by themselves) we have in the Book of Amos few glimpses of nature, and these always under a moral light. There is not in any chapter a landscape visible in its own beauty. Like all desert-dwellers, who when they would praise the works of God lift their eyes to the heavens, Amos gives us but the outlines of the earth-a mountain range, { Amos 1:2 ; Amos 3:9 ; Amos 9:3 } or the crest of a forest, { Amos 2:9 } or the bare back of the land, bent from sea to sea. { Amos 8:12 } Nearly all, his figures are drawn from the desert-the torrent, the wild beasts, the wormwood ( Amos 5:24 ; Amos 5:19-20 ; etc.; Amos 7:12 ). If he visits the meadows of the shepherds, it is with the terror of the people’s doom; { Amos 1:2 } if the vineyards or orchards, it is with the mildew and the locust; { Amos 4:9 ff.} if the towns, it is with drought, eclipse, and earthquake. { Amos 4:6-11 ; Amos 6:11 ; Amos 8:8 ff.} To him, unlike his fellows, unlike especially Hosea, the whole land is one theatre of judgment; but it is a theatre trembling to its foundations with the drama enacted upon it. Nay, land and nature are themselves actors in the drama. Physical forces are inspired with moral purpose, and become the ministers of righteousness. This is the converse of Elijah’s vision. To the older prophet the message came that God was not in the fire nor in the earthquake nor in the tempest, but only in the still small voice. But to Amos the fire, the earthquake, and the tempest are all in alliance with the Voice, and execute the doom which it utters. The difference will be appreciated by us, if we remember the respective problems set to prophecy in those two periods. To Elijah, prophet of the elements, wild worker by fire and water, by life and death, the spiritual had to be asserted and enforced by itself. Ecstatic as he was, Elijah had to learn that the Word is more Divine than all physical violence and terror. But Amos understood that for his age the question was very different. Not only was the God of Israel dissociated from the powers of nature, which were assigned by the popular mind to the various Ba’alim of the land, so that there was a divorce between His government of the people and the influences that fed the people’s life; but morality itself was conceived as provincial. It was narrowed to the national interests; it was summed up in mere rules of police, and these were looked upon as not so important as the observances of the ritual. Therefore Amos was driven to show that nature and morality are one. Morality is not a set of conventions. "Morality is the order of things." Righteousness is on the scale of the universe. All things tremble to the shock of sin; all things work together for good to them that fear God. With this sense of law, of moral necessity, in Amos we must not fail to connect that absence of all appeal to miracle, which is also conspicuous in his book. We come now to the three disputed passages:- Amos 4:13 :-"For, lo! He Who formed the hills, and createth the wind, and declareth to man what His mind is; Who maketh the dawn into darkness, and marcheth on the heights of the land-Jehovah, God of Hosts, is His Name." Amos 5:8-9 :-"Maker of the Pleiades and Orion, turning to morning the murk, and day into night He darkeneth; Who calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them forth on the face of the earth-Jehovah His Name; Who flasheth ruin on the strong, and destruction cometh down on the fortress." Amos 9:5-6 :-"And the Lord Jehovah of the Hosts, Who toucheth the earth and it rocketh, and all mourn that dwell on it, and it riseth like the Nile together, and sinketh like the Nile of Egypt; Who hath builded in the heavens His ascents, and founded His vault upon the earth; Who calleth to the waters of the sea, and poureth them on the face of the earth-Jehovah His Name." These sublime passages it is natural to take as the triple climax of the doctrine we have traced through the Book of Amos. Are they not the natural leap of the soul to the stars? The same shepherd’s eye which has marked sequence and effect unfailing on the desert soil, does it not now sweep the clear heavens above the desert, and find there also all things ordered and arrayed? The same mind which traced the Divine processes down history, which foresaw the hosts of Assyria marshaled for Israel’s punishment, which felt the overthrow of justice shock the nation to their ruin, and read the disasters of the husbandman’s year as the vindication of a law higher than the physical-does it not now naturally rise beyond such instances of the Divine order, round which the dust of history rolls, to the lofty, undimmed outlines of the Universe as a Whole, and, in consummation of its message, declare that "all is Law," and Law intelligible to man? But in the way of so attractive a conclusion the literary criticism of the book has interposed. It is maintained that, while none of these sublime verses are indispensable to the argument of Amos, some of them actually interrupt it, so that when they are removed it becomes consistent; that such ejaculations in praise of Jehovah’s creative power are not elsewhere met with in Hebrew prophecy before the time of the Exile; that they sound very like echoes of the Book of Job; and that in the Septuagint version of Hosea we actually find a similar doxology, wedged into the middle of an authentic verse of the prophet. { Hosea 13:4 } To these arguments against the genuineness of the three famous passages, other critics, not less able and not less free, like Robertson Smith and Kuenen, have replied that such ejaculations at critical points of the prophet’s discourse "are not surprising under the general conditions of prophetic oratory"; and that, while one of the doxologies does appear to break the argument { Amos 5:8-9 } of the context, they are all of them thoroughly in the spirit and the style of Amos. To this point the discussion has been carried; it seems to need a closer examination. We may at once dismiss the argument which has been drawn from that obvious intrusion into the Greek of Hosea 13:4 . Not only is this verse not so suited to the doctrine of Hosea as the doxologies are to the doctrine of Amos; but while they are definite and sublime, it is formal and flat-"Who made firm the heavens and founded the earth, Whose hands founded all the host of heaven, and He did not display them that thou shouldest walk after them." The passages in Amos are vision; this is a piece of catechism crumbling into homily. Again-an argument in favor of the authenticity, of these passages may be drawn from the character of their subjects. We have seen the part which the desert played in shaping the temper and the style of Amos. But the works of the Creator, to which these passages lift their praise, are just those most fondly dwelt upon by all the poetry, of the desert. The Arabian nomad, when he magnifies the power of God, finds his subjects not on the bare earth about him, but in the brilliant heavens and the heavenly processes. Again, the critic who affirms that the passages in Amos "in every case sensibly disturb the connection," exaggerates. In the case of the first of Amos 4:13 , the disturbance is not at all "sensible": though it must be admitted that the oracle closes impressively enough without it. The last of them, Amos 9:5-6 -which repeats a clause already found in the book {Cf. Amos 8:8 } -is as much in sympathy with its context as most of the oracles in the somewhat scattered discourse of that last section of the book. The real difficulty is the second doxology, Amos 5:8-9 , which does break the connection, and in a sudden and violent way. Remove it, and the argument is consistent. We cannot read chapter 5 without feeling that, whether Amos wrote these verses or not, they did not originally stand where they stand at present. Now, taken with this dispensableness of two of the passages and this obvious intrusion of one of them, the following additional fact becomes ominous. "Jehovah is His Name" (which occurs in two of the passages), or "Jehovah of Hosts is His Name" (Which occurs at least in one), is a construction which does not happen elsewhere in the book, except in a verse where it is awkward and where we have already seen reason to doubt its genuineness. But still more, the phrase does not occur in any other prophet, till we come down to the oracles which compose Isaiah 40:1-31 ; Isaiah 41:1-29 ; Isaiah 42:1-25 ; Isaiah 43:1-28 ; Isaiah 44:1-28 ; Isaiah 45:1-25 ; Isaiah 46:1-13 ; Isaiah 47:1-15 ; Isaiah 48:1-22 ; Isaiah 49:1-26 ; Isaiah 50:1-11 ; Isaiah 51:1-23 ; Isaiah 52:1-15 ; Isaiah 53:1-12 ; Isaiah 54:1-17 ; Isaiah 55:1-13 ; Isaiah 56:1-12 . Here it happens thrice-twice in passages dating from the Exile, { Isaiah 47:4 and Isaiah 54:5 } and once in a passage suspected by some to be of still later date. In the Book of Jeremiah the phrase is found eight times; but either in passages already on other grounds judged by many critics to be later than Jeremiah, or where by itself it is probably an intrusion into the text. Now is it a mere coincidence that a phrase, which, outside the Book of Amos, occurs only in writing of the time of the Exile and in passages considered for other reasons to be post-exilic insertions-is it a mere coincidence that within the Book of Amos it should again be found only in suspected verses? There appears to be in this more than a coincidence; and the present writer cannot but feel a very strong case against the traditional belief that these doxologies are original and integral portions of the Book of Amos. At the same time a case which has failed to convince critics like Robertson Smith and Kuenen cannot be considered conclusive, and we are so ignorant of many of the conditions of prophetic oratory at this period that dogmatism is impossible. For instance, the use by Amos of the Divine titles is a matter over which uncertainty still lingers; and any further argument on the subject must include a fuller discussion than space here allows of the remarkable distribution of those titles throughout the various sections of the book. But if it be not given to us to prove this kind of authenticity-a question whose data are so obscure, yet whose answer frequently is of so little significance-let us gladly welcome that greater Authenticity whose undeniable proofs these verses so splendidly exhibit. No one questions their right to the place which some great spirit gave them in this book-their suitableness to its grand and ordered theme, their pure vision and their eternal truth. That common-sense, and that conscience, which, moving among the events of earth and all the tangled processes of history, find everywhere reason and righteousness at work, in these verses claim the Universe for the same powers, and see in stars and clouds and the procession of day and night the One Eternal God Who "declareth to man what His mind is." The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Hear ye this word which I take up against you. Amos 5:1-3 The end of carnal security J. Telford, B. A. Such words as these must have fallen like a thunderbolt into the midst of the corrupt and careless inhabitants of Samaria and the other cities of Israel among whom Amos prophesied. It is a dirge or lamentation, uttered by one who sees beyond the present prosperity of the land the future ruin of its proud idolaters. I. CARNAL SECURITY. Nothing about sin is more wonderful to the awakened soul than that blindness which hides from the ungodly the awful future. Noah's generation, on the eve of that signal punishment of the deluge, saw no sign of peril ( Matthew 24:39 ). The same spirit marked the society of Amos's time. The sinners forgot all fear. They lived in careless ease in their winter houses and summer houses, enjoying all manner of luxury, and no fear of God or man disturbed their rest, or made them pause either in oppression or idolatry. Such is the prevailing spirit of sin. It hills the soul to sleep till suspicion of danger scarcely ever comes to darken the spirit; like the little sailor lads who fell asleep on deck during the roar of the cannon in the great battle of the Nile, none of the dangers rouse them to seek safety ( Philippians 3:19 ). II. GOD'S WAY OF BREAKING THIS SECURITY IS BY REVEALING ITS END. At every turn of this prophecy our wonder at the tact and resource of the prophet seems to grow. His Master took him aside to show him the future, and then, with those awful sights before his eyes, sent him forth to utter his solemn dirge over the vanished glories of the nation. What an effect such revelations must have had on all who were willing to understand their meaning. "The virgin of Israel is fallen" — she who was now adorned with tabrets and joined in the dances of those that made merry ( Jeremiah 31:4 ), should soon lie prostrate, not to rise again, forsaken of all her friends, and without any to lift her up or comfort her — none of her sons left to guide her, or take her by the hand in this day of calamity ( Isaiah 51:18 ). Her glory gone, her pride humbled, her resources cut off. This is the picture of the end of that false security. It is accompanied by God's message (ver. 3), which give added terror to this revelation. A general decay similar to that mentioned in chap. Amos 2:14-16 should fall upon the cities of the land. Application. Remember that sin blinds men's eyes. The god of this world has no hope of retaining his power save by blinding the eyes of them that believe not. Remember that warning voices are God's messengers. ( J. Telford, B. A. ) Seek ye Me, and ye shall live... But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal. Amos 5:4, 5 The search which ends in life, and the search which ends in ruin J. Telford, B. A. I. THE SEARCH WHICH ENDS IN LIFE. The end of such search is life. "Ye shall live." Doubtless that form was given to the promise because of the calamities which were impending over the State. But there is something more than preservation from the scourge of sin. Life of the soul — full exercise of its powers, full pleasure in its blessings, with that "life for evermore" which God gives to those who seek Him. II. THE SEARCH WHICH ENDS IN RUIN. Bethel, Gilgal, and Beersheba were the centres of idol worship in Israel ( Amos 4:4 ; Amos 8:14 ). They could not keep themselves from ruin, what then must be the fate of their worshippers? The deluded people brought their sacrifices; but when trouble came it was in vain to turn to Bethel and Gilgal — even their deities perished. Application. Verse 6 shows that God would punish the nation, and none would be able to stay His hand. From Bethel in the days of vengeance there should be no deliverance. The sinner must meet his Judge, whom he had despised and refused to seek, and meet Him alone. ( J. Telford, B. A. ) Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion. Amos 5:8 Creation, and the Creator's name J. Marrat. The text brings the works of God and the name of God into one focus, and makes use of both as an argument with man to raise himself from the low and unworthy pretences of religion, such as are represented by the calf-worship of Bethel, to Him who sits high above the magnificence of all material forms, yet deigns to listen to the whisper of a kneeling child. I. Seek Him because He is IMMUTABLE. This is declared by "the seven stars and Orion," and by all the constellations among which the Pleiades are set. It is a wonderful thought, that when we look up to the mighty heavens, we see precisly what Adam and Eve saw. They beheld the Pleiades, that group of stars so beautifully likened to "a knot of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid." They beheld those shining orbs in which we detect the appearance of an armed warrior, and call Orion. Through all the changes of human history, those celestial bodies have shone with like brilliancy, and moved with like pomp in the great spaces overhead. The Chaldeans from their astronomical towers, the Phoenicians from their bold sea-tracks, the Egyptian sages from their mystic temples, the Idumean shepherds from their broad pastures, the Jewish kings from their palace roofs, beheld those august revelations of Almighty power and wisdom; and they are as superb, as radiant, now as then. "And the heavens are the works of Thine hands. They shall perish;... and they all shall wax old, as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shad be changed." "But Thou art the same, and Thy years shad have no end." And now look at man. "As for man, his days arc as grass: as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more." Thus frail, and in the midst of frailty, what is to become of us? Where is the arm on which we can lean? What is the hope to which we can cling? The reply to these inquiries comes not from the oracles of human wisdom, but from Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa. "Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion." Let us seek Him as He bids us in His Word; and when the Pleiades are bereft of their sweet influence, and when the bands of Orion are loosed, his zone of mighty worlds unclasped, and his flaming sword sheathed in eternal darkness, we shall shine with light which can never fade, and be glad with a gladness which can never die. II. Seek Him because He is ALL-POWERFUL. This also is declared by "the seven stars and Orion." Many have looked on the Pleiades as but an insignificant group in the heavens; but that constellation has depths of glory which the unaided eye cannot reach. We count seven stars, but the telescope announces fourteen magnificent sun-like bodies clustered comparatively near to one of the seven. This, however, is not the special peculiarity of the Pleiades. For some time it was suspected that there is one great central sun, round which our planetary system, and many, if not all, other suns and systems are revolving in measured and majestic movement; and at length an eminent continental astronomer decided that a bright star in the Pleiades is the sublime centre of this sublime march. Here, then, is a thought of almost appalling grandeur. Myriads of orbs keeping their own relative position, and sweeping round and round in the path of their own revolutions; yet the vast host — suns compared with which ours is but a speck of fire — worlds of such magnitude as to dwarf ours into a mere grain of sand — all rolling through space as if doing homage to the influence of what to us is but a point of light in the blue immensity. According to this theory, those thousands of bodies are speeding along with amazing velocity; yet such is the long curve on which they travel, that it will take more than eighteen millions of years for even some of the less remote to complete one circuit round that great luminary. Now glance at Orion, as he gleams aloft in more than imperial pomp and blazonry. We may well look on this constellation with awe and wonder when we take into account the following statement in reference to it. In what is Called the sword of Orion there is a hazy glimmer, which has been thought by some to be only a kind of nebulous fluid; but Lord Rosse, having scanned it with his powerful telescope, ascertained that it is another gorgeous universe, so far away, that to an ordinary glass it only appears as a dim streak, yet having heights, and depths, and lengths, and breadths, of creative power and diversity surpassing all that we behold in the whole canopy of the starry heavens. But even if this daring assertion should be proved to be incorrect, and all those worlds to be no more than a conjecture, we should scarcely be conscious that aught had been subtracted from our idea of the magnitude and multiplicity of Jehovah's works; for there are other streaks and misty appearances on the sky which are known by indubitable evidence to be gatherings of stars, huge in bulk and veiled in dazzling splendour. And here is another great motive to seek the Lord. The power evinced in "the seven stars and Orion," and the other orbs they represent, is power wielded for the advantage of those who respond to the Divine command, "Seek ye My face." And when terrors shake our souls, when our heart and flesh fail, what consolation we shall have in the thought that the Hand which measured out the heavens is over us, and around us, to keep us from ill. "Will He plead against me with His great power? No; but He would, put strength in me." III. Seek Him because of His BENEFICENT ACTIVITIES. And turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waves of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth." How beautiful is morning, as it comes with golden sandals and rosy veil through the gates of the east! Beautiful on the silent peaks of the Himalayan mountains, beautiful on the green heights of Ceylon, beautiful on the icy pinnacles of the Alps, beautiful on the broad mass of the Grampians, beautiful on the isles of the Caribbean Sea. How it is welcomed as the apparition of a smiling friend; welcomed by the Arab as it gleams on his tent; by the mariner as it turns his sails to cloth of gold; by the sentinel as it gleams on the steel of his weapons. How beautiful is night! How soft and soothing the shadows with which it enwraps the earth! What images of peace it suggests to the mind! The bird spreading its wings over its nestlings, the sheep gathered in the fold, the child in its cot, and wearied labour calmly renewing its energies for another day. That calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the earth." How beautiful the silent processes by which the rain is distilled on the thirsty ground! Think of the oceans — those mighty reservoirs of the Most High. Think of the clouds drawn from them — now white as the snows which crown a mountain's forehead; now gorgeous, as if woven of a thousand rainbows; now black as a funeral pall. Think of the rain, how it falls; not in a sudden and overpowering splash; not in a flood, tearing the leaves from the trees and the young shoots from the soil, but in a succession" of gentle drops. Is not. this,, gracious. Being, whose hand is in the pleasing changes of day and night, and in ram from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness," One with whom it is desirable to live in filial relationship? IV. Seek Him because of His NAME. "The Lord is His name." Now we come to the teachings of the written Word in reference to the Supreme Being. Glance at some of those ideas which the ancient saints attached to the Divine name. Jehovah-jireh — the Lord will provide. Jehovah-nissi — Jehovah my banner. This was the name which Moses gave to the altar he built as a memorial of Israel's victory over Amalek. What a banner! A Divine perfection for every fold, radiant with the heraldry of eternal truth, and bearing a name bright as if every syllable had been wrought out in a constellation of suns. This banner is for us if we seek the Lord. Jehovah shalom — the Lord is my peace. The angel said to awestricken, affrighted Gideon, "Peace be unto thee." Jehovah-Tsidkenu — the Lord our righteousness. This title is specially connected with the manifestation of God in Christ Jesus. "And be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." In one part of the heavens there is a constellation known as the Southern Cross; and when Humboldt was in South America, he often heard the guides who con ducted him over the savannahs of Venezuela cry out, as they looked up to that constellation, "Midnight is past — the cross begins to bend." Thank God the cross bends over us, and our midnight is past — the midnight of our fear, the mid-night of our bondage. ( J. Marrat. ) The Pleiades and Orion T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. There are some things which make me think that it may not have been all superstition which connected the movements and appearance of the heavenly bodies with great moral events on earth. Astrology may have been something more than a brilliant heathenism. 1. Amos saw that the God who made the Pleiades and Orion must be the God of order. It was not so much a star here and there that impressed the inspired herdsman, but seven in one group and seven in the other group. For ages they have observed the order established for their coming and going. If God can take care of the seven worlds of the Pleiades, He can probably take care of the one world we inhabit. 2. The God who made these two groups of the text was the God of light. 3. That the God who made these two archipelagos of stars must be an unchanging God. 4. That the God who made these two beacons of the Oriental night-sky must be a God of love and kindly warning. The Pleiades, rising in midsky, said to all the herdsmen and shepherds and husbandmen, "Come out and enjoy the mild weather, and cultivate your gardens and fields." And Orion, coming in winter, warned them to prepare for tempest. The sermon that I now preach believes in a God of loving, kindly warning, the God of spring and winter, the God of the Pleiades and Orion. ( T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. ) God and nature W. L. Watkinson. The prophet first draws the attention of Israel to the living God who stands behind nature, determining all its movements. The atheist is rebuked by this view of things. The thought of the prophet is full of God; nature does not deny God — it demonstrates Him. God is. Those who identify God with nature until they confound the personal God with the laws and forces of the world, are also rebuked by the text. Nature is not God. "He maketh the seven stars and Orion." And the view that nature is independent of God is equally repudiated. On the contrary, the teaching of Amos is that God acts through nature. The people of Israel are summoned to look up and to behold the supreme, self-existent God, standing before and above the world, acting upon it, acting through it, with sovereign sway. He maketh the seven stars and Orion, etc. But the argument of Amos goes farther than this; he argues that God rules in the midst of the nations just as He rules in the midst of nature, and we must see His hand in human affairs as we see it in the rising and setting of stars, in the ebbing and flowing of seas. He setteth up kings and captains, and casteth them down; He smites the splendour of nations into desolation; and again He restores their greatness and joy. The argument of the prophet proceeds on the assumption that a Divine purpose, a vast design, runs through all the evolutions of nature and all the movements of history. And in this point of view, let us say, these primitive thinkers have been confirmed by the vast majority of the philosophers who succeeded them. A few erratic philosophers have failed to discern any direction or tendency in the career of the universe; they could not detect any coherency among events, or admit that such events were working together toward any assignable result whatever. From their point of view, things and events drifted and eddied about in an utterly blind and irrational manner; temporary combinations might accidentally assume a rational appearance, but it was only accidental. Worlds, they concluded, have no definite beginning, no connection or sequence, no dramatic consistency, no definite end; all is unrelated, arbitrary, accidental, purposeless. But this interpretation has found little acceptance. , who lived some centuries later than Amos, wrote: "In the unity of nature there is nothing unconnected or out of place, as in a bad tragedy." And nearly all philosophy since then has in different ways confirmed this view of the universe set forth by the prophet of Israel and the philosopher of Greece. But the prophets of Israel not only recognised a distinct design running through nature and history; they saw, and this was the special merit of their mission and message, they saw that that design was spiritual and moral. Many thinkers see design and orderly progress in the world who recognise design and progress as purely intellectual. They see in nature and history nothing more than a play dramatically conducted; a story artistically developed; a picture exquisitely balanced and harmonious; an organism complete in all its parts and functions; but they miss the real heart of the thing, that the universe is the intellectual working out of the purpose of the holy God. This was the point of view of the prophets. The design they discovered in the universe did not merely satisfy their logical sense, their aesthetic sense, or their scientific sense, but their moral sense. They wished to teach that God rules the universe with a view to reveal His righteous character; His government is wholly moral; and the end of all His rule in heaven and earth is to instruct His children in righteousness, and to discipline them into holiness until they are perfect, even as their Father who is in heaven is perfect. The religious and moral idea is subtly interwoven with the universal fabric, but it is only spiritually discerned, only the devout soul follows the golden thread that runs through nature and the long, mysterious story of the race. "We are nothing but the playthings of Fate," says the pagan mind; but we refuse the verdict of dismal atheism. He "that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night"; He who kindles the stars, and who darkens them in eclipse; He who causes His sun to rise upon the earth, and to set in night; He who makes the firmament a magnificent theatre of majestic and unfailing order, will not permit caprice and chaos in the far higher world of human history — souls are more than stars, and when a great nation is lifted up and cast down, great reasons and great ends must be assumed. If you look through this prophecy of Amos you must be struck by its intense and persistent moral tone. The fifth chapter is full of it. "Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth, seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion." "Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right." "Seek good, and not, evil, that ye may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken." "Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate." And it is thus throughout the whole prophecy — the destiny of the nation turns on righteousness, on matters of definite, practical honesty, clemency, humanity, justice, chastity, and temperance. The shepherd Amos, like David, like Job, was familiar with the constellations, and he felt how offensive the unjust and the unclean must be to Him whose faultless government is declared in the inviolable laws which govern the chaste and solemn stars. And God is still of Coo pure eyes to behold iniquity, and, according to their works does He deal with the mightiest nations. He calls us back to Himself, to His moral government and righteous laws. God has often "made the day dark" to us, and again He has "turned the shadow of death into the morning." We live with the consciousness of these impending possibilities. Any day, any hour may witness the mighty change. These changes, so extreme and searching, are to remind us that life does not exist either for pleasure or pain, but for the perfecting of the soul in love and nobleness. He who makes the seven stars and Orion, who turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night for the education of a nation in righteousness, does the same with and for the individual. And every change is good that unsettles us in the world to settle us in God, every variation of fortune is blessed that drives us to the central reality, and makes us richer in spiritual feeling and moral fruit. In some parts of South America all seasons are singularly blended within a year; in the same locality there are many returns of spring and winter, temporary calms and temporary snows rapidly and unceasingly succeed each other, but in such places plants bloom with the greatest vigour, and are remarkable for their beauty. So, if we seek Him who maketh the seven stars and Orion, and who orders so strangely the days and nights, the summers and winters of human life, these bewildering changes shall only discipline us into more perfect strength, and make us rich in the fruits of righteousness and peace. ( W. L. Watkinson. ) The glory of religion Homilist. I. THE CONNECTION GOD HAS WITH HIS UNIVERSE. 1. That of a Creator. 2. That of a Governor. 3. That of a Redeemer. II. THE CONNECTION WHICH MAN SHOULD HAVE WITH GOD. "Seek Him." The pursuit implies — 1. Faith in God's personal existence. 2. A consciousness of moral distance from God. 3. A felt necessity of friendly connection with God. 4. An assurance that such a connection can be obtained.What a grand thing is religion! It is not a thing of mere doctrine, or ritual, or sect, or party. It is a moral pursuit of "Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion," etc. ( Homilist. ) The true object of worship Joseph Jenkins. I. As THE CREATING GOD. "Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion." This suggests — 1. His unlimited power. "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and the host of them by the breath of HIS mouth." 2. His manifold wisdom. "The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath He established the heavens." 3. His boundless benevolence. The sun rules the day, the moon and stars the night. God's bounty is lavished on the world night and day. II. As THE PROVIDING GOD. "That calleth the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the earth." This implies — 1. God's government over the world. At His bidding the waters of the sea hasten to the clouds, and again fall in rain upon the face of the earth. 2. Man's dependence upon God. Rain is a universal blessing, and is essential for growth, fertility, and happiness. The earth must be irrigated, and none can command the clouds to pour out their contents but God. III. As THE REDEEMING GOD. "And turneth the shadow of death into the morning," This indicates — 1. God's dominion over death. 2. His gracious presence with His people in the greatest emergency. His smiling countenance turns the shadow and darkness of death into a happy and refreshing day. They hope in death. They die in faith. 3. His faithfulness to His word unto the last. He will realise His promises to them in life, in death, and in eternity. Seek the Lord, the Creator, the Preserver, and the only Saviour. Seek Him who is mighty to save. ( Joseph Jenkins. ) And turneth the shadow of death into the morning... the Lord is His name The shadow of death S. Reynolds Hole. I. THE SHADOW OF DEATH FALLS UPON THE PATHWAY OF LIFE. It is the shadow of God's wrath, which fell upon the sunshine of His love, when man, a free agent, marred His work. No man knows when or how he will die. II. IT IS BEST THAT WE DO NOT KNOW THE TIME OR MANNER OF OUR DEATH. If we knew the time was near we might be overcome by terror or despair. If we knew the time was distant, we might presume. As it is uncertain, we need to be "always ready." III. WE MAKE THAT WHICH WAS INTENDED FOR OUR SOUL'S HEALTH ONLY AN OCCASION OF FALLING. The uncertainty of life is a subject commonly on our lips, very seldom in our serious thoughts. All men think all men mortal but themselves. IV. YOU ADMIT THE ARGUMENT, DO YOU APPLY IT PERSONALLY? There can be no greater ignorance than to ignore the inevitable. Yet says, We will not know that which we cannot but know. V. WHAT IS DEATH? To the generality of the Gentiles death was dreadful, and they spoke of it as terrible, cruel, black, and blind. One of the great Italian painters, Luino, the favourite pupil of Leonardo de Vinci, has represented these departures into the unseen world by a design which, though it is but an imagination, appeals forcibly to our hopes and fears. In a grand picture of the Crucifixion, which is in the Church at Lugarno he has represented the soul of the forgiven thief coming from his lips at the moment of his death in a miniature figure of himself, robed in white, in an attitude of prayer, and welcomed by a smiling angel sent to escort him to paradise. From the mouth of the reprobate who died reviling Christ, there issues a figure struggling in agony with a cruel demon. VI. HOW SHALL WE PREPARE FOR DEATH? We must learn to overcome our natural reluctance to think, earnestly and constantly, about our own death. The way to overcome our fear is not to evade it, but to meet and master it. VII. OUR MEDITATIONS ON DEATH SHOULD BE INSEPARABLY UNITED WITH PRAYER. Of this we have scriptural examples, as in Psalm 39 , and 90. VIII. ALL THAT WE THINK, OR SAY, OR DO, HAS THIS ONE GREAT PURPOSE, THAT WE MAY SEEK AND FIND HIM, WHO TURNETH THE SHADOW OF DEATH INTO THE MORNING. 1. He manifests Himself to the faith which worketh by love. 2. He blesses especially with His assured presence. 3. At the altar, most nearly, dearly, we realise His presence. ( S. Reynolds Hole. ) Turneth the shadow of death into the morni ng: — The Romans had thirty epithets for death; and all of them were full of the deepest dejection. "The iron slumber," "the eternal night," "the mower with his scythe," "the hunter with his snares," "the demon bearing a cup of poison," "the merciless destroying angel," "the inexorable jailor with keys," "the king of terrors treading down empires" — some of them were these, the bitterness of which is indescribable. The revelation which the New Testament furnishes breaks like beautiful sunshine through the unutterable gloom. Our Lord Jesus came to bring life and immortality to light in the Gospel. The immortal life George Bainton. In the last days of a good man's life the fear of death is usually destroyed. I am not about to assert that death has no solemnity, nor would I in any way lessen your sense of its importance. But many of our common conceptions concerning death are false and unreal. We have mistaken figures of speech for facts represented by them. Of death as a physical evil little need be said. Not seldom it appears sadly painful. Death is viewed as essentially evil, because it is assumed to be the direct result of sin. It is a penal infliction — the shame and curse of life, the outcome of our guilty rebellion. Thinking thus concerning it, many Christians are as much in fear of death as the heathen. But this theory cannot be true. It is contrary to the laws of reason and the conclusions of science, and it is opposed to the very spirit of our religion. Scripture, rightly interpreted, gives it no support. Death, instead of beings retribution, is a relenting; instead of a curse, a blessing. Whatever of death Adam by his wrong-doing introduced, Christ by His work has thrust out. The physical change called death is not the result of sin. Instead of being a dread shadow hanging over life, it is a beneficent arrangement in the constitution of nature by the infinite mercy of God. It is recorded that, among the half pagan legends which floated about Ireland during the Middle Ages, there was one in which two islands were mentioned, and named respectively Life and Death. Upon the one its inhabitants could never die. Yet all the ills of human life came to its people. At length these did their work. The cruel immortality became a curse which consumed the joy and love of life, and the people learned to regard the opposite island as a haven of repose. Then soon, with all eagerness, their launched their boats upon the gloomy waters of the lake; they reached the isle of death, leaped upon its shore, and were at rest. Death is a change from a known to an unknown state of existence. It is simply one of those changes ordained in the constitution of things through which we must pass. The eternal life is ours now, and in this world. We are within the sweep of the eternal. There is no break in the continuity of a life. Present and future are but sections of the one immortal state. This earth-side is but a small part of life. From the lower to the higher is the law of growth. Life and progress never cease. Death will check neither. Is there not sublimity in the thought that death will but free the spirit from the clogs of flesh, and usher it into a world that gives play to all its powers? Then the death of the body is nothing to be feared. It is but the laying down present powers to take up others. By it the soul becomes conscious of its relations with a new world and a new order of beings. To every Christian heart this happy revelation should come with regenerating power. He alone need fear death who is abusing life. What we are now determines what we shall be then. ( George Bainton. ) The shadow of death turned into morning W. Williams. I. TO THOSE WHO HAVE TRULY SOUGHT GOD GRIM DEATH IS BUT A SHADOW. To the Christian death is but the semblance of a foe. II. THE SHADOW OF DEATH USHERS IN THE ETERNAL MORNING. No sooner does the shadow of death fall than the light of heaven begins to dawn. Heaven's morning is without clouds. No cloud intercepts the intellect of the glorified. No moral mists are known there. III. THE SHADOW OF DEATH IS OFTEN THE PRECURSOR OF BRIGHTER DAYS ON EARTH. Death of one has been followed by the conversion of others. The fortitude of departing saints often dispels the fear of death from the living. ( W. Williams. ) The shadow turned W. M. Statham. I. EVERY SORROW IS A SHADOW OF DEATH. Our deepest sorrows are not always to be measured by events themselves, but by thoughts and emotions which lie at the heart of them. When we see and feel how griefs and tribulations are used by God, for softening, purifying, and elevating character, we see even here how the shadows of death are turned into the morning. II. NATIONAL OR PERSONAL JUDGMENT IS THE SHADOW OF DEATH. Perhaps this is the direct reference of these words. Israel may live again. III. DECLINING STRENGTH IS A SHADOW OF DEATH. There comes the time when irremediable and irresistible disease does its steady work. IV. UNBELIEF IS A SHADOW OF DEATH. Unbelief regarded as distrust of God as a Father and Redeemer; and distrust of ourselves as destined for the glorious immortality opened to us, and prepared for us by the death and resurrection of our blessed Lord. V. BEREAVEMENT IS THE SHADOW OF DEATH. We realise nothing till it creates vacancy with us. Some losses we can bear. After bereavement there gradually comes a morning of humble submission and rest in God. ( W. M. Statham. ) The shadow of death turned into morning Homilist. The Tekoan herdsman had often seen daybreak. 1. How mightily, 2. How silently, 3. How mysteriously, 4. How mercifully God brought in the brightness of day after the gloom of night.Is not this an illustration of what God is always doing? I. He turneth WINTER to SPRING. How, when the wild flowers perfume the glen, and the foliage buds in the hedgerows, and birds carol under brightening skies, the shadow of death, that winter so often seems to be, is turned into morning. II. He turneth ADVERSITY into PROSPERITY. Thus was it with Job. Thus need it be with many in this season of commercial depression. III. He turneth SICKNESS to HEALTH. As with Hezekiah, "He healeth our diseases." IV. He t

5:1-6 The convincing, awakening word must be heard and heeded, as well as words of comfort and peace; for whether we hear or forbear, the word of God shall take effect. The Lord still proclaims mercy to men, but they often expect deliverance from such self-invented forms as make their condemnation sure. While they refuse to come to Christ and to seek mercy in and by him, that they may live, the fire of Divine wrath breaks forth upon them. Men may make an idol of the world, but will find it cannot protect. 5:7-17 The same almighty power can, for repenting sinners, easily turn affliction and sorrow into prosperity and joy, and as easily turn the prosperity of daring sinners into utter darkness. Evil times will not bear plain dealing; that is, evil men will not. And these men were evil men indeed, when wise and good men thought it in vain even to speak to them. Those who will seek and love that which is good, may help to save the land from ruin. It behoves us to plead God's spiritual promises, to beseech him to create in us a clean heart, and to renew a right spirit within us. The Lord is ever ready to be gracious to the souls that seek him; and then piety and every duty will be attended to. But as for sinful Israel, God's judgments had often passed by them, now they shall pass through them. 5:18-27 Woe unto those that desire the day of the Lord's judgments, that wish for times of war and confusion; as some who long for changes, hoping to rise upon the ruins of their country! but this should be so great a desolation, that nobody could gain by it. The day of the Lord will be a dark, dismal, gloomy day to all impenitent sinners. When God makes a day dark, all the world cannot make it light. Those who are not reformed by the judgments of God, will be pursued by them; if they escape one, another stands ready to seize them. A pretence of piety is double iniquity, and so it will be found. The people of Israel copied the crimes of their forefathers. The law of worshipping the Lord our God, is, Him only we must serve. Professors thrive so little, because they have little or no communion with God in their duties. They were led captive by Satan into idolatry, therefore God caused them to go into captivity among idolaters.