Bible Commentaries

In this chapter we have, I. God contending with Israel, by the judgments, but are reprieved, and the judgments turned away at the prayer of Amos, Am 7:1-6. 2. God's patience is at length worn out by their obstinacy, and they are rejected, and sentenced to utter ruin, Am 7:7-9. II. Israel contending with God, by the opposition given to his prophet. 1. Amaziah informs against Amos (Am 7:10,11) and does what he can to rid the country of him as a public nuisance, Am 7:12,13. 2. Amos justifies himself in what he did as a prophet (Am 7:14,15) and denounces the judgments of God against Amaziah his prosecutor (Am 7:16,17); for, when the contest is between God and man, it is easy to foresee, it is very easy to foretel, who will come off with the worst of it.

The visions of this chapter Amos 7 continue the direct prophecy of the last. That closed in the prophecy of the affliction of Israel through the Assyrian: this foretells three gradations, in which it took place. That spoke of a recovery of Israel after its extreme depression under Hazael; the first of these visions exhibit it as a field shorn to the ground, shooting out anew, but threatened with a fresh destruction. The chastisements are three-fold. Two, at the intercession of Amos, stop short of utter destruction; the third was final. Each also increased in severity. Such were the three invasions of the Assyrians. Pul, invited by Menahem, amid civil war, to establish him on his throne, exacted only a heavy fine. Tiglath-pileser, called in by Ahaz against Pekah, carried off the inhabitants of the east and north of Israel; the invasion of Shalmaneser ended the empire and its idolatry.

In this chapter God represents to Amos, by three several visions, the judgments he is about to bring on Israel. The first is a plague of locusts, threatening to cut of the hopes of the harvest by attacking it in the time of the second growth; the first luxuriances of the crop being probably mowed for the king's horses, Amos 7:1-3. The next vision threatens a judgment by fire, which would consume a great part, Amos 7:4-6; and the third a total overthrow of Israel, levelling it as it were by a line, Amos 7:7-9. The rest of the chapter is a denunciation of heavy judgments against Amaziah, priest of Beth-el, who had brought an accusation to the king against the prophet, Amos 7:10-17.

INTRODUCTION TO Amos 7

In this and the two following chapters are the visions of Amos, in number five; three of which are contained in this chapter, and with which it begins. The first is of the grasshoppers or locusts eating up the later grass of the land, which are stopped at the intercession of the prophet, Amos 7:1; the second is of fire the Lord called for to contend by, whose devouring flames are made to cease by the same interposition, Amos 7:4; and the other is of the plumbline, signifying the utter destruction of the people of Israel, according to the righteous judgment of God, Amos 7:7; upon the delivery of which prophecies and visions, the priest of Bethel forms a charge against the prophet to the king; and advises Amos to flee into Judea, and prophesy there, and not at Bethel, being willing to be rid of him at any rate, Amos 7:10; next follows the prophet's vindication of himself showing his divine call to the prophetic office, and his mission and express order he had from the Lord to prophesy unto Israel, Amos 7:14; and concludes with a denunciation of divine judgments on the priest's family, and upon the whole land of Israel, Amos 7:16.

VII.

Here commences the third portion of the prophecy. It is of a different class from that which has preceded, and may have formed the main heads of public discourses, the parabolic ministry of the prophet in the earlier stages of his career. These fiats of destruction, contained in the visions and dreams of coming doom, had been arrested by the intercession of the prophet himself. But the time was approaching when prayer would be of no avail, and the desolation of the kingdom would be complete.

PART III. CHAPTERS 7–9

-1Amos 7:1 to Amos 9:10. A series of visions, interrupted in Amos 7:10-17 by an historical episode, and followed in each case by longer or shorter explanatory comments, intended to reinforce, under an effective symbolism, the lesson, which Amos found so hard to impress, that the judgement, viz., which he had announced as impending upon Israel could now no longer be averted, and that though Jehovah once and again (Amos 7:3; Amos 7:6) had “repented” of His purpose, He could do so no more: the time for mercy had now passed by.

-2Amos 9:11-15. An epilogue, containing the promise of a brighter future which is to begin for Israel, when the present troubles are passed away.

The vision, as remarked in the note on ch. Amos 1:1, was a frequent mode of prophetic intuition (comp. Hosea 12:10). The vision is a projection or creation of the mind, analogous to the dream: the subject falls into a state of trance, or ecstasy[181], in which the channels connecting the brain with external objects are closed; the conscious operation of the senses is consequently in abeyance; the power of the will to guide thought is relaxed[182]: on the other hand the imagination, or faculty of combining images and ideas, which have been previously apprehended, into new forms, is abnormally active; and the pictures created by it stand out the more vividly, not being contrasted with the sharper impressions produced in a waking state by the senses. In other words, the vision may be described as a combination into new forms, under the influence of a determining impulse, of the images and impressions with which the mind, through its waking experience, is stored. In a prophetic vision, the determining impulse will have been due to the operation of the revealing Spirit; in the case of Amos, as we may suppose, the thought of an impending judgement, which, borne in upon him at the time when Jehovah’s ‘hand’ seized him, determined the direction taken by his imagination, and took shape accordingly in the concrete forms presented in these visions. It is in agreement with the character of the vision, as thus explained, that its imagery is generally supplied by the surroundings, amid which the prophet who experiences it lived himself; the basis of Isaiah’s vision (ch. 6) is thus the Temple of Jerusalem (though what he sees is not of course an exact copy of it); the forms described by Ezekiel (ch. 1) are modelled upon the sculptured figures of Babylonia; and the material imagery in Amos’ visions is suggested similarly by objects, or scenes, with which the prophet would himself be familiar. The vision is thus the forcible symbolic presentation of a prophetic truth. Comp. W. R. Smith, Prophets, p. 219 ff.

[181] The prophets, feeling themselves, when they fell into this state, to be under the influence of an uncontrollable power, speak of “Jehovah’s hand coming (or being strong) upon” them, Ezekiel 1:3; Ezekiel 3:14; Ezekiel 3:22; Ezekiel 8:1; Ezekiel 37:1; Ezekiel 40:1 (notice how each time the phrase is followed by the description of a vision); cf. 2 Kings 3:15.

[182] But, in the case of the prophets, the reason was not, as in the Greek μάντις, uncreated; see Oehler, Theol. of the O. T., §§ 207, 209.

Am. 7:1-9.

The seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters contain VISIONS, WITH THEIR EXPLANATIONS. The seventh chapter consists of two parts. First

(Am 7:1-9):

PROPHECIES ILLUSTRATED BY THREE SYMBOLS: (1) A vision of grasshoppers or young locusts, which devour the grass, but are removed at Amos' entreaty; (2) Fire drying up even the deep, and withering part of the land, but removed at Amos' entreaty; (3) A plumb-line to mark the buildings for destruction. Secondly

(Am 7:10-17):

NARRATIVE OF AMAZIAH'S INTERRUPTION OF AMOS IN CONSEQUENCE OF THE FOREGOING PROPHECIES, AND PREDICTION OF HIS DOOM.

1. showed . . . me; and, behold--The same formula prefaces the three visions in this chapter, and the fourth in

Am 8:1.

grasshoppers--rather, "locusts" in the caterpillar state, from a Hebrew root, "to creep forth." In the autumn the eggs are deposited in the earth; in the spring the young come forth [MAURER].

the latter growth--namely, of grass, which comes up after the mowing. They do not in the East mow their grass and make hay of it, but cut it off the ground as they require it.

the king's mowings--the first-fruits of the mown grass, tyrannically exacted by the king from the people. The literal locusts, as in Joel, are probably symbols of human foes: thus the "growth" of grass "after the king's mowings" will mean the political revival of Israel under Jeroboam II

(2Ki 14:25),

after it had been mown down, as it were, by Hazael and Ben-hadad of Syria

(2Ki 13:3),

[GROTIUS].

And behold He formed - (that is, He was forming.) The very least things then are as much in His infinite Mind, as what we count the greatest. He has not simply made "laws of nature," as people speak, to do His work, and continue the generations of the world. He Himself was still framing them, giving them being, as our Lord saith, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" John 5:17. The same power of God is seen in creating the locust, as the universe. The creature could as little do the one as the other. But further, God was "framing" them for a special end, not of nature, but of His moral government, in the correction of man. He was "framimg the locust," that it might, at His appointed time, lay waste just those tracts which He had appointed to them. God, in this vision, opens our eyes, and lets us see Himself, framing the punishment for the deserts of the sinners, that so when hail, mildew, blight, caterpillars, or some other hitherto unknown disease, (which, because we know it not, we call by the name of the crop which it annihilates), waste our crops, we may think, not of secondary causes, but of our Judge. Lap.: "Fire and hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind, fulfill His word, Psalm 148:8, in striking sinners as He wills. To be indignant with these, were like a dog who bit the stone wherewith it was hit, instead of the man who threw it." Gregory on Job L. xxxii. c. 4. L.: "He who denies that he was stricken for his own fault, what does he but accuse the justice of Him who smiteth?"

Grasshoppers - that is, locusts. The name may very possibly be derived from their "creeping" simultaneously, in vast multitudes, from the ground, which is the more observable in these creatures, which, when the warmth of spring hatches the eggs, creep forth at once in myriads. This first meaning of their name must, however, have been obliterated by use (as mostly happens), since the word is also used by Nahum of a flying locust .

The king's mowings - must have been some regalia, to meet the state-expenses. The like custom still lingers on, here and there, among us, the "first mowth" or "first vesture," that with which the fields are first clad, belonging to one person; the pasturage afterward, or "after-grass," to others. The hay-harvest probably took place some time before the grain-harvest, and the "latter grass," "after-grass," (לקשׁ leqesh) probably began to spring up at the time of the "latter rain" (מלקושׁ malqôsh). Had the grass been mourn after this rain, it would not, under the burning sun of their rainless summer, have sprung up at all. At this time, then, upon which the hope of the year depended, "in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter grass," Amos saw, in a vision, God form the locust, and "the green herb of the land" (the word includes all, that which is "for the service of man" as well as for beasts,) destroyed. Striking emblem of a state, recovering after it had been mown down, and anew overrun by a numerous enemy! Yet this need but be a passing desolation. Would they abide, or would they carry their ravages elsewhere? Amos intercedes with God, in words of that first intercession of Moses, "forgive now" Numbers 14:19. "By whom," he adds, "shall Jacob arise?" literally, "Who shall Jacob arise?" that is, who is he that he should arise, so weakened, so half-destroyed? Plainly, the destruction is more than one invasion of locusts in one year. The locusts are a symbol (as in Joel) in like way as the following visions are symbols.