Barnes' Notes on the Bible · Amos Capítulo 1

Introduction to Amos

Theodoret: "He who made, one by one, the hearts of men, and understands all their works, knowing the hardness and contrariousness of the heart of Israel, reasons with them not through one prophet only, but, employing as His ministers many prophets and wondrous men, admonishes them and foretells the things to come, evidencing through the harmony of many the truthfulness of their predictions."

As the contradiction of false teachers gave occasion to Paul to speak of himself, so the persecution of the priest of Bethel has brought out such knowledge as we have of the life of Amos, before God called him to be a prophet. "I," he says, "was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son" Amos 7:14. He had not received any of the training in those schools of the prophets which had been founded by Samuel, and through which, amid the general apostasy and corruption, both religious knowledge and religious life were maintained in the remnant of Israel. He was a "herdsman," whether (as this word, בקר bâqâr, would naturally mean being used always of the "ox" or "herd" in contrast with the "flocks" of sheep or goats, and the name being derived from "plowing") "a cowherd" or (less obviously) "a shepherd." He was "among the herdsmen of Tekoah"; among them, and, outwardly, as they, in nothing distinguished from them.

The sheep which he tended (because he also kept sheep) may have been his own. There is nothing to prove or to disprove it. Anyhow, he was not like the king of Moab, "a sheep-master" , as the Jews, following out their principle, that "prophecy was only bestowed by God upon the rich and noble" (see the note at Joel 2:29), wish to make him. Like David, he was following the sheep , as their shepherd. But his employment as "a gatherer" (or, more probably, "a cultivator") "of sycamore fruit" designates him instead as one living by a rural employment for hire. Probably, the word designates the artificial means by which the sycamore fruit was ripened, irritating, scraping, puncturing, wounding it .

Amos does not say that these were his food, but that one of his jobs was to perform a gardener's function in maturing the figs. So he was something of a gardener and a shepherd among other shepherds. The sheep which he fed were also probably a matter of trade. The breed of sheep and goats, נקד naqad in keeping with his special name of shepherd נקד nôqêd, was derived, is still known by the same name in Arabia; a race, small, thin, short-legged, ugly, and stunted. It furnished a proverb, "viler than a naqad"; yet the wool of the sheep was accounted the very best. The goats were found especially in Bahrein. Among the Arabs also, the shepherd of these sheep was known by a name derived from them. They were called "naqad;" and their shepherd was called a "noqad" .

The prophet's birthplace, Tekoah, was a town which, in the time of Josephus and of Jerome, had dwindled into a "village" , "a little village" , on a high hill, twelve miles from Jerusalem, "which," Jerome adds, "we see daily." "It lay" Jerome says , "six miles southward from holy Bethlehem where the Saviour of the world was born, and beyond it is no village except some rude huts and movable tents. Such is the wide waste of the desert which stretches to the Red Sea, and the bounds of the Persians, Ethiopians, and Indians. And no grain whatever being grown upon this dry and sandy soil, it is all full of shepherds, in order, by the multitude of the flocks, to make amends for the barrenness of the land." From Tekoah Joab brought the "wise woman" 1 Samuel 14:2 to intercede for Absalom; Rehoboam built it 2 Chronicles 11:6; i. e., whereas it had been before (what it afterward again became) a village, and so was not mentioned in the Book of Joshua, he made it a fortified town toward his southeastern border.

The neighboring wilderness was called after it (2 Chronicles 20:20; 1 Macc. 9:33). Besides its sycamores, its oil was the best in Judah . War and desolation have extirpated both from this as well as from other parts of Palestine . Its present remains are Christian , "ruins of 4 or 5 acres." It, as well as so many other places near the Dead Sea, is identified by the old name, slightly varied in pronunciation, Theku'a, as also by its distance from Jerusalem . In the sixth century a.d. we hear of a chapel in memory of the holy Amos at Tekoa , where the separated monks of the lesser laura of Saba communicated on the Lord's day. The wide prospect from Tekoa embraced both the dead and the living - God's mercies and His judgments.

To the Southeast "the view is bounded only by the level mountains of Moab, with frequent bursts of the Dead Sea, seen through openings among the rugged and desolate mountains which intervene." On the North, the Mount of Olives is visible, at that time dear to sight, as overhanging the place, which God had "chosen to place His Name there." Tekoah, however, although the birthplace, was not the home of the prophet. He was "among the herdsmen from Tekoah" (מתקוע mı̂teqôa‛) their employment, as shepherds, leading them away "from Tekoah." In the wilds of the desert while he was following his sheep, God saw him and revealed Himself to him, as he had to Jacob and to Moses, and said to him, "Go prophesy unto My people Israel." And, just as the apostles left their nets and their father, and Matthew abandoned the receipt of custom, and followed Jesus, so Amos left his sheep and his cultivation of sycamores, and appeared suddenly in his shepherd's dress at the royal but idolatrous Amos 7:13 sanctuary, the temple of the state, to denounce the idolatry sanctioned by the state, to foretell the extinction of the Royal family, and the captivity of the people. This, like Hosea, he had to do in the reign of the mightiest of the sovereigns of Israel, in the midst of her unclouded prosperity. Bethel was only twelve miles north of Jerusalem , since Tekoah was twelve miles toward the southeast. Six or seven hours would suffice to transport the shepherd from his sheep and the wilderness to that fountain of Israel's corruption, the high places of Bethel, and for the inspired peasant to confront the priests and the prophets of the state-idolatry.

There doubtless he said, "the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste" Amos 7:9; and there, like the former "man of God," while standing opposite "the altar," he renewed the prophecy against it, and prophesied that in its destruction it should involve its idolatrous worshipers Amos 9:1. Yet although he did deliver a part of his prophecy at Bethel, still, like his great predecessors Elijah and Elisha, doubtless he did not confine his ministry there. His summons to the luxurious ladies of Samaria, whose expenses were supported by the oppressions of the poor Amos 4:1, was without question delivered in Samaria itself. The call to the pagan to look down into Samaria from the heights which girt in the valley out of which it rose (see the notes at Amos 3:9), thence to behold its din and its oppressions, to listen to the sound of its revelries and the wailings of its oppressed, and so to judge between God and His people, would also be most effectively given within Samaria. The consciences of the guilty inhabitants to whom he preached would populate the heights around them, their wall of safety, as they deemed, between them and the world, with pagan witnesses of their sins, and pagan avengers.

The prophet could only know the coming destruction of the house of Jeroboam and the captivity of Israel by inspiration. The sins which he rebuked, he probably knew from being among them. As Paul's "spirit was stirred in him" at Athens, "when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry" Acts 17:16, so the spirit of Amos must have been stirred to its depths by that grievous contrast of luxury and penury side by side, which he describes in such vividness of detail. The sins which he rebukes are those of the outward prosperity especially of a capital, the extreme luxury Amos 3:12, Amos 3:15; Amos 4:1; Amos 5:11; Amos 6:4-6, revelries Amos 2:8; Amos 3:9, debauchery Amos 2:7, of the rich, who supported their own reckless expenditure by oppression of the poor Amos 2:7-8; Amos 3:9; Amos 4:1; Amos 5:11; Amos 6:3; Amos 8:4-6, extortion Amos 3:10, hard bargains with their necessities Amos 2:8, perversion of justice Amos 2:7; Amos 5:7, Amos 5:12, with bribing, Amos 2:6; Amos 5:12, false measures Amos 8:5, a griping, hard-fisted, and probably usurious sale of grain Amos 8:5-6. In grappling with sin, Amos deals more with the details and circumstances of it than Hosea. Hosea touches the center of the offence; Amos shows the hideousness of it in the details into which it branches out. As he is everywhere graphic, so here he points out the events of daily life in which the sin showed itself, as the vile price or, it may be, the article of luxury, "the pair of sandals" Amos 2:6; Amos 8:6, for which the poor was sold, or the "refuse of wheat" (he coins the term) which they sold, at high prices and with short measure to the poor Amos 8:6.

According to the title which Amos prefixes to his prophecy, his office fell within the 25 years, during which Uzziah and Jeroboam II were contemporaries (809-784 B. C). This falls in with the opinion already expressed that the bloodshed mentioned by Hosea in the list of their sins, was instead political bloodshed in their revolutions after the death of Jeroboam II, than individual murder. For Amos, while upbraiding Israel for the sins incidental to political prosperity and wealth (such as was the time of Jeroboam II) does not mention bloodshed.

It has been thought that the mention of the earthquake, two years before which Amos began his prophecy, furnishes us with a more definite date. That earthquake must have been a terrible visitation, since it was remembered after the captivity, two and a half centuries afterward. "Ye shall flee," says Zechariah Zechariah 14:5, as of a thing which his hearers well knew by report, "as ye fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah." Josephus connects the earthquake with Uzziah's act of pride in offering the incense, for which God struck him with leprosy. He relates it as a fact (Antiquities ix. 10): "Meanwhile a great earthquake shook the ground, and, the temple parting, a bright ray of the sun shone forth, and fell upon the king's face, so that immediately the leprosy came over him. And before the city, at the place called Eroge, the Western half of the hill was broken off and rolled half a mile to the mountain Eastward, and there stayed, blocking up the ways and the king's gardens." This account of Josephus, however, is altogether unhistorical. Not to argue from the improbability, that such an event as the rending of the temple itself should not have been mentioned, Josephus has confused Zechariah's description of an event yet future with the past earthquake under Uzziah. Nor can the date be reconciled with the history. For when Uzziah was stricken with leprosy, "Jotham, his son, was over the king's house, judging the people of the land" 2 Chronicles 26:21. But Jotham was only 25 years old at his father's death, "when he himself began to reign" 2 Chronicles 27:1. And, Uzziah survived Jeroboam by 26 years. So Jotham, who judged for his father after his leprosy, was not born when Jeroboam died. Uzziah then must have been stricken with leprosy some years after Jeroboam's death; and consequently, after the earthquake also, since Amos, who prophesied in the days of Jeroboam, prophesied "two years before the earthquake."

An ancient Hebrew interpretation of the prophecy of Isaiah, "within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken that it is no more a people" Isaiah 7:8, assumed that Isaiah was foretelling the commencement of the captivity under Tiglath-Pileser or Sargon, and since the period of Isaiah's own prophecy to that captivity was not 65 years, supposed that Isaiah counted from a prophecy of Amos, "Israel shall surely be led captive out of his own land" Amos 7:11, Amos 7:17. They placed this prophecy of Amosin the 25th year of Uzziah. Then his remaining 27 years, Jotham's 16 years, Ahaz' 16 years, and the first 6 years of Hezekiah would have made up the 65 years. This calculation was not necessarily connected with the error as to the supposed connection of the earthquake and the leprosy of Uzziah. However, it is plain from the words of Isaiah, "in yet threescore and five years," that he is dating from the time when he uttered the prophecy; and so the prophecy relates, not to the imperfect captivity which ended the "kingdom" of Israel, but to that more complete deportation under Esarhaddon Ezra 4:2; 2 Chronicles 33:11; 2 Kings 17:24, when the ten tribes ceased to be "anymore a people" (Ahaz-14 years + Hezekiah-29 years + Manasseh-22 years equals 65 years total). Neither then does this fix the date of Amos.

Nor does the comparison, which Amos bids Israel make between his own borders, and those of Calneh, Hamath and Gath, determine the date of the prophecy. Since Uzziah broke down the walls of Gath 2 Chronicles 26:6, and Hamath was recovered by Jeroboam II to Israel 2 Kings 14:28, it is probable that the point of comparison lay between the present disasters of these nations, and those with which Amos threatened Israel, and which the rich men of Israel practically did not believe. For it follows, "ye that put far away the evil day" Amos 6:3. It is probable then that Calneh (the very ancient city Genesis 10:10 which subsequently became Ctesiphon,) on the other side of the Euphrates, had lately suffered from Assyria, as Gath and Hamath from Judah and Israel. But we know none of these dates. Isaiah speaks of the Assyrian as boasting that "Calno" was "as Carchemish Isaiah 10:9, Hamath as Arpad, Samaria as Damascus." But this relates to times long subsequent, when Hamath, Damascus, and Samaria, had fallen into the hands of Assyria. Our present knowledge of Assyrian history gives us no clue to the event, which was well known to those to whom Amos spoke.

Although, however, the precise time of the prophetic office of Amos cannot thus be fixed, it must have fallen within the reign of Jeroboam, to whom Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, accused him Amos 7:10-11. For this whole prophecy implies that Israel was in a state of prosperity, ease, and security, whereas it fell to a state of anarchy immediately upon Jeroboam's death. "The mention of the entering in of Hamath" Amos 6:14 as belonging to Israel implies that this prophecy was after Jeroboam had recovered it to Israel 2 Kings 14:25; and the ease, pride, luxury, which he upbraids, evince that the foreign oppressions 2 Kings 14:26 had ceased for some time. This agrees with the title of the prophecy, but does not limit it further. Since he prophesied while Uzziah and Jeroboam II reigned together, Amos' prophetic office must have fallen between 809 b.c. and 784 b.c. - in the last 25 years of the reign of Jeroboam II. His office, then, began probably after that of Hosea, and closed long before its close. He is, in a manner then, both later and earlier than Hosea, later than the earliest period of Hosea's prophetic office, and far earlier than the latest.

Within this period, there is nothing to limit the activity of Amos to a very short time. The message of Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, implies that Amos' words of woe had shaken Israel through and through. "Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words" Amos 7:10. It may be that God sent him to the midst of some great festival at Bethel, as, at Jeroboam's dedication-feast, He sent the prophet who afterward disobeyed Him, to foretell the desecration of the altar, which Jeroboam was consecrating, in God's Name, against God. In this case, Amos might, at once, like Elijah, have been confronted with a great. concourse of the idol-worshipers. Yet the words of Amaziah seem, in their obvious meaning, to imply that Amos had had a more pervading influence than would be produced by the delivery of God's messsage in one place. He says of "the land," that is, of all the ten tribes generally, it "is not able to bear all his words." The accusation also of a "conspiracy" probably implies, that some had not been only shaken, but they had been converted by the words of Amos, and were known by their adherence to him and his belief.

Amos seems also to speak of the prohibition to God's prophets to prophesy, as something habitual, beyond the one opposition of Amaziah, which he rebuked on the spot. "I raised up of your sons for prophets; but ye commanded the prophets, saying, Prophesy not" Amos 2:11-12. Nor, strictly speaking, was Amos a son of Ephraim. The series of images in Amos 4:1-13 seem to be an answer to the objection as to why he prophesied among them. People, he would say, were not, in the things of nature, surprised that the effect followed the cause. God's command was the cause; Amos' prophesying was the effect Amos 3:3-8. "Then they put away from them the evil day" Amos 6:3, forgetting future evil in present luxury; or they professed that God was with them; "the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken" Amos 5:14; or trusting in their half-service of God and His imagined presence among them, they jeered at Amos' prophecies of ill, and professed to desire the Day of the Lord, with which he threatened them; they said that evil would not reach them; "Woe unto you that desire the Day of the Lord! To what end is it to you?" Amos 5:18. "All the sinners of My people shall die by the sword, which say, the evil shall not overtake nor prevent us" Amos 9:10. They showed also in deed that they hated those who publicly reproved them Amos 5:10; and Amos, like Hosea, declares that they are hardened, so that wisdom itself must leave them to themselves Amos 5:13. All this implies a continued contact between the prophet and the people, so that his function was not discharged in a few sermons, so to say, or inspired declarations of God's purpose, but must have been that of a pastor among them over the course of several years. His present book (like Hosea's book) is a summary of his prophecies.

That book (since Amos himself subsequently gathered his prophetic teaching into a whole) is one well-ordered whole. He himself (in the title) states that it had been spoken before it was written. For in that he says, these are "the words" which in prophetic vision he "saw, two years before the earthquake," this portion of his prophecies must have preceded his writings by those two years at least. That terrible earthquake was probably the occasion of his collecting those prophecies. But that earthquake doubtless was no mere note of time. If he had intended only a date, he would probably have named (as other prophets do) the year of the king of Judah. He himself mentions earthquakes Amos 4:11, as one of the warnings of God's displeasure. This more destructive earthquake was probably the first great token of God's displeasure during the prosperous reign of Jeroboam II, the first herald of those heavier judgments which Amos had predicted, and which broke upon Israel, wave after wave, until the last, carried him away captive. For two years, Israel had been forewarned; now "the beginning of sorrows" Matthew 24:8 had set in.

Amos, at the beginning of his book (as has been already noticed) joins on his book with the book of the prophet Joel. Joel had foretold, as instances of God's judgments on sin, how He would recompense the wrong, which Tyre, Zidon, Philistia and Edom had done to Judah, and that He would make Egypt desolate. Amos, omitting Egypt, adds Damascus, Amman and Moab, and Judah itself. It may be, that he selects seven nations in all, as a sort of whole (since that number is so often used), or that he includes all the special enemies of the theocracy, the nations who hated Israel and Judah, because they were the people of God, and God's people itself, as far as it too was alienated from its God. Certainly, the sins denounced are sins against the theocracy or government of God. It may be, that Amos would exhibit to them the truth, that "God is no respecter of persons;" that He, the Judge of the whole earth, punishes every sinful nation; and that he would, by this declaration of God's judgments, prepare them for the truth, from which sinful man so shrinks; - that God punishes most, where He had most shown His light and love Amos 3:2. The thunder-cloud of God's judgments, having passed over all the nations round about, Syria and Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and even discharged the fire from heaven on Judah and Jerusalem, settles finally upon Israel. The summary which closes this circle of judgments on Israel, is fuller in regard to their sins, since they were the chief objects of his mission. In that summary Amos gathers into one the sins with which he elsewhere upbraids them, and sets before them their ingratitude and their endeavors to extinguish the light which God gave them.

Our chapters follow a natural division, in that each (like those of Hosea) ends in woe. Amos 3:1-15, Amos 4:1-13, and Amos 5 are distinguished by the threefold summons - "Hear ye this word!" In each, he sets before them some of their sins, and in each he pronounces God's sentence upon them. "Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel; Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus" (Amos 3:11; Amos 4:12; Amos 5:16, as before, Amos 2:14). On this follows a twofold woe, "Woe unto you that desire" Amos 5:18; "Woe to them that are at ease" Amos 6:1; both which sections alike end in renewed sentences of God's judgment; the first, of the final captivity of Israel "beyond Damascus;" the second, of their nearer afflictions through the first invasion of Tiglath-pileser (see the note at Amos 6:14). In Amos 7 he begins a series of visions. In the first two visions, God forgives, at the intercession of the prophet Amos 7:3, Amos 7:6.

In the third vision God interprets that He would no longer forgive Amos 7:8. Upon this followed the prohibition from Amaziah to prophesy, and God's sentence against him. In Amos 8:1-14, Amos resumes (as though nothing had intervened), the series of visions, upon which Amaziah had broken in. He resumes them exactly where he had been stopped. Amaziah interrupted when Amos declared that God would not "pass by" the house of Israel "anymore," but would desolate the idol-sanctuaries of israel and bring a sword against the house of Jeroboam. The vision (in which Amos resumes) renews the words, "I will not again pass by them anymore" Amos 8:2, and foretells that the songs of the idol-temple should be turned into howlings. Amos heads the last chapter with a vision, that not only should the idol-altar and temple be destroyed, but that it should be the destruction of its worshipers Amos 9:1. Amos makes each of these visions a theme which he expands, both ending in woe; the first, with the utter destruction of the idolaters of Israel Amos 8:14; the second, with that of the sinful "kingdom" of Israel Amos 9:8. With this he unites the promise to the "house" of Israel, that, "sifted" as they would be "among the nations, not one grain would fall to the earth" Amos 9:9. To this he, like Hosea, adds a closing promise (the first in his whole book) that God would raise the fallen tabernacle of David, convert the pagan, and therewith restore the captivity of Israel, amid promises, which had already (in Joel) symbolized spiritual blessings Amos 9:13.

Amos, like Hosea, was a prophet for Israel. After the second chapter in which he includes Judah in the circle of God's visitations, because he had "despised the law of the Lord" Amos 2:4-5, Amos only notices him incidentally. He there foretells that Jerusalem should (as it was) be burned with fire. Judah also must be included in the words, "against the whole family which God brought up out of the land of Egypt" Amos 3:1, and "woe" is pronounced against those who are "at ease in Zion Amos 6:1. Elsewhere, "Israel," "the house of Israel," "the virgin of Israel," "the sanctuaries of Israel," "Jacob," "the house of Jacob," and (in the same sense) "the high places of Isaac," "the house of Isaac"; "the house of Joseph," "the remnant of Joseph," "the affliction of Joseph," "the mountain," or "the mountains of Samaria," "Samaria" itself, "Bethel" Amos 3:9, Amos 3:12-14; Amos 4:1, Amos 4:4-5, Amos 4:12; Amos 5:1, Amos 5:4, Amos 5:6, Amos 5:15, Amos 5:25; Amos 6:1, Amos 6:6, Amos 6:8, Amos 6:14; Amos 7:2, Amos 7:5, Amos 7:8-9, Amos 7:16-17; Amos 8:2, Amos 8:14; Amos 9:7-8, occur interchangeably as the object of his prophecy. Amaziah's taunt, that his words, as being directed against Israel and Bethel, would be acceptable in the kingdom of Judah, implies the same; and Amos himself declares that this was his commission, "go, prophesy unto My people Israel." In speaking of the idolatry of Beersheba, Amos uses the word, "pass not over to Beersheba" Amos 5:5, adding the idolatries of Judah to their own. The word, "pass not over," could only be used by one prophesying in Israel. Therefore, it must have been the more impressive to the faithful in Israel, that Amos closed his prophecy by the promise, not to them primarily, but to the house of David, and to Israel through its restoration. Amos, like Hosea, foretells the utter destruction of "the kingdom of Israel," even while pronouncing that God would not utterly destroy "the house of Jacob" Amos 9:8-10, but would save the elect within it.

The opposition of Amaziah stands out, as one signal instance of the manifold cry, "Prophesy not," with which people to drown the Voice of God. Jeroboam left the complaint unheeded. His great victories had been foretold to him by the prophet Jonah; and he would not interfere with the prophet of God, although he predicted, not as Amaziah distorted his words, that "Jeroboam" should "die by the sword," but that "the house of Jeroboam" Amos 7:9 would so perish. But his book is all comprised within the reign of Jeroboam and the kingdom of Israel. He was called by God to be a prophet there; nor is there even the slightest trace of his having exercised his function in Judah, or having retired there in life.

A somewhat late tradition places Amos among the many prophets whom our Lord says His people killed. The tradition bore, "that after he (Amos) had been beaten often (the writer uses the same word which occurs in Hebrews 11:35) by Amaziah the priest of Bethel, the son of that priest, Osee, pierced his temples with a stake. He was carried half-dead to his own land, and, after some days, died of the wound, and was buried with his fathers." But the anonymous Greek writer who relates it, (although it is in itself probable) has not, in other cases, trustworthy information, and Jerome and Cyril of Alexandria knew nothing of it. Jerome relates only that the tomb of Amos was still shown at Tekoa, his birthplace.

The influence of the shepherd-life of Amos appears most in the sublimest part of his prophecy, his descriptions of the mighty workings of Almighty God Amos 4:13; Amos 5:8; Amos 9:5-6. With those awful and sudden changes in nature, whereby what to the idolaters was an object of worship, was suddenly overcast, and "the day made dark with night," his shepherd-life had made him familiar. The starry heavens had often witnessed the silent conversation of his soul with God. In the calf, the idolaters of Ephraim worshiped "nature." Amos then delights in exhibiting to them His God, whom they too believed that they worshiped, as the Creator of "nature," wielding and changing it at His Will. All nature too should be obedient to its Maker in the punishment of the ungodly Amos 8:8, nor should anything hide from Him Amos 9:2-3, Amos 9:5. The shepherd-life would also make the prophet familiar with the perils from wild beasts which we know of as facts in David's youth. The images drawn from them were probably reminiscences of what he had seen or encountered Amos 3:4-5, Amos 3:12; Amos 5:19. But Amos, a shepherd in a barren and for the most part treeless wild, lived not as a farmer. His was not a country of grain, nor of cedars and oaks; so that images from stately trees Amos 2:9, a heavy-laden wain Amos 2:13, or the sifting of corn Amos 9:9, were not the direct results of his life amid sights of nature. The diseases of grain, locusts, drought, which, the prophet says, God had sent among them, were inflictions which would be felt in the grain-countries of Israel, rather than in the wilderness of Tekoah. The insensibility for which he upbraids Israel was, of course, their hardness of heart amid their own sufferings Amos 4:7-9; the judgments, with which he threatens them in God's Name Amos 7:1-3, can have no bearing on his shepherd-life in his own land.

Even Jerome, while laying down a true principle, inadvertently gives as an instance of the images resulting from that shepherd-life, the opening words of his book, which are in part words of the prophet Joel. "It is natural," he says, "that all who exercise an art, should speak in terms of their art, and that each should bring likenesses from that wherein he hath spent his life. Why say this? In order to show, that Amos the prophet too, who was a shepherd among shepherds, and that, not in cultivated places, or amid vineyards, or woods, or green meadows, but in the wide waste of the desert, where were witnessed the fierceness of lions and the destruction of cattle, used the language of his art, and called the awful and terrible Voice of the Lord, the roaring of lions, and compared the overthrow of the cities of Israel to the lonely places of shepherds or the drought of mountains."

The truth may be, that the religious life of Amos, amid scenes of nature, accustomed him, as well as David, to express his thoughts in words taken from the great picture-book of nature, which, as being also written by the Hand of God, so wonderfully expresses the things of God. When his prophet's life brought him among other scenes of cultivated nature, his soul, so practiced in reading the relations of the physical to the moral world, took the language of his parables alike from what he saw, or from what he remembered. He was what we should call "a child of nature," endued with power and wisdom by his God. Still more mistaken has it been, to attribute to the prophet any inferiority even of outward style, in consequence of his shepherd-life. Even a pagan has said, "words readily follow thought;" much more, when thoughts and words are poured into the soul together by God the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, scarcely any prophet is more glowing in his style, or combines more wonderfully the natural and moral world, the Omnipotence and Omniscience of God Amos 4:13.

Visions, if related, are most effectively related in prose. Their efficacy depends, in part, on their simplicity. Their meaning might be overlaid and hidden by ornament of words. Thus, much of the Book of Amos, then, is naturally in prose. The poetry, so to speak, of the visions of Amos or of Zechariah is in the thoughts, not in the words. Amos has also chosen the form of prose for his upbraidings of the wealthy sinners of Israel. Yet, in the midst of this, what more poetic than the summons to the pagan enemies of Israel, to populate the heights around Samaria, and behold its sins Amos 3:9? What is more graphic than that picture of utter despair which did not dare to name the Name of God Amos 6:9-10? What is bolder than the summons to Israel to come, if they desired, at once to sin and to atone for their sin Amos 4:4? What is more striking in power than the sudden turn, "You only have I known. Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities" Amos 3:2? Or the sudden summons "because I will do this unto thee" Amos 4:12 (the silence (what the "this" is) is more thrilling than words) "prepare to meet thy God, O Israel?" Or what is more pathetic than the close of the picture of the luxurious rich, when, having said, how they heaped luxuries one upon another, he ends with what they did not do; "they are not grieved for the afflictions of Joseph" Amos 6:6?

Augustine selects Amos, as an instance of unadorned eloquence. Having given instances from Paul, he says , "These things, when they are taught by professors, are accounted great, bought at a great price, sold amid great boasting. I fear these discussions of mine may savor of the like boasting. But I have to do with men of a spurious learning, who think meanly of our writers, not because they have not, but because they make no show of the eloquence which these prize too highly.

"I see that I must say something of the eloquence of the prophets. And this I will do, chiefly out of the book of that prophet, who says that he was a shepherd or a cowherd, and was taken thence by God and sent to prophesy to His people.

"When then this peasant, or peasant-prophet, reproved the ungodly, proud, luxurious, and therefore most careless of brotherly love, he cries aloud, "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, etc." Would they who, as being learned and eloquent, despise our prophets as unlearned and ignorant of elocution, had they had aught of this sort to say, or had they to speak against such, would they, as many of them as would fain not be senseless, wish to speak otherwise? For what would any sober ear desire more than is there said? First, the inveighing itself, with what a crash is it hurled as it were, to awaken their stupefied senses!"

Therefore, having analyzed these verses, he says, "How beautiful this is, and how it affects those who, reading, understand, there is no use in saying to one who does not himself feel it. More illustrations of the rules of rhetoric may be found in this one place, which I have selected. But a good hearer will not be so much instructed by a diligent discussion of them, as he will be kindled by their glowing reading. For these things were not composed by human industry, but were poured forth in eloquent wisdom from the Divine Mind, wisdom not aiming at eloquence, but eloquence not departing from wisdom." "For if, as some most eloquent and acute men could see and tell, those things which are learned as by an art of rhetoric, would not be observed and noted and reduced to this system, unless they were first found in the genius of orators, what wonder if they be found in those also, whom "He" sends, who creates genius? Wherefore we may well confess that our canonical writers and teachers are not wise only but eloquent, with that eloquence which beseems their character."

Jerome, in applying to Amos words which Paul spoke of himself, "rude in speech but not in knowledge" 2 Corinthians 11:6, doubtless was thinking mostly of the latter words, for he adds, "For the same Spirit who spoke through all the prophets, spake in him." Dr. Lowth says happily (de Poesi Hebr. Prael. xxi.), "Jerome calls Amos, rude in speech but not in knowledge, implying of him what Paul modestly professed as to himself, on whose authority many have spoken of this prophet, as though he were altogether rude, ineloquent, unadorned. Far otherwise! Let any fair judge read his writings, thinking not who wrote them, but what he wrote, he will think that our shepherd was "in no wise behind the very chiefest" prophets; in the loftiness of his thoughts and the magnificence of his spirit, nearly equal to the highest, and in the splendor of his diction and the elegance of the composition scarcely inferior to any. For the same Divine Spirit moved by His inspiration Isaiah and Daniel in the court, David and Amos by the sheepfold; always choosing fitting interpreters of God's Will and sometimes perfecting praise out of the mouth of babes. Of some He uses the eloquence; others He makes eloquent."

It has indeed been noticed that in regularity of structure he has an elegance unique to himself. The strophaic form, into which he has cast the heavy prophecies of the two first chapters adds much to their solemnity; the recurring "burden" of the fourth chapter, "Yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord" Amos 4:6, Amos 4:8-11, gives it a deep pathos of its own. Indeed no other prophet has bound his prophecies into one, with so much care as to their outward form, as this inspired shepherd. Amos (to use human terms) was not so much the poet as the sacred orator. One of those energetic turns which have been already instanced, would suffice to stamp the human orator. Far more, they have shaken through and through souls steeped in sin from the prophet's time until now. It has been said of human eloquence, "he lightened, thundered, he commingled Greece." The shepherd has shaken not one country, but the world; not by a passing earthquake, but by the awe of God which, with electric force, streamed through his words.

Some variation of dialect, or some influence of his shepherd-life upon his pronunciation, has been imagined in Amos. But it relates to five words only. In three, his orthography differs by a single letter from that found elsewhere in Hebrew. In two cases, the variation consists in the use of a different sibilant; the third in the use of a weaker guttural. Besides these, he uses a softer sound of the name Isaac, which also occurs in Jeremiah and a Psalm; and in another word, he, in common with two Psalms, employs a root with a guttural, instead of that common in Hebrew which has a strong sibilant. In four of these cases, Amos uses the softer form; in the fifth, we only know that the two sibilants were pronounced differently once, but cannot guess what the distinction was. The two sibilants are interchanged in several Hebrew words, and on no rule, that we can discover. In another of the sibilants, the change made by Amos is just the reverse of that of the Ephrainmites who had only the pronunciation of "s" for "sh"; "sibboleth" for "shibboleth." But the Ephraimites could not pronounce the "sh" at all; the variation in Amos is limited to a single word. The like variations to these instances in Amos are also found in other words in the Bible. On the whole, we may suspect the existence of a softer pronunciation in the South of Judaea, where Amos 54ed; but the only safe inference is, the extreme care with which the words have been handed down to us, just as the prophet spoke and wrote them.

It has been noticed already that Amos and Hosea together show, that all the Mosaic festivals and sacrifices, priests, prophets, a temple, were retained in Israel, only distorted to calf-worship Even the third-year's tithes they had not ventured to get rid of Amos supplies some yet more minute traits of ritual; that they had the same rules in regard to leaven Amos 4:5; that their altar too had horns (as prescribed in the law), on which the blood of the sacrifices was to be sprinkled (Amos 3:14, see Exodus 27:2; Exodus 29:12; Leviticus 4:25), they had the altar-bowls Amos 6:6 from where the blood of the victim was sprinkled , such as the princes of the congregation offered in the time of Moses Numbers 7:13, and their rich men, at times at least, plundered to drink wine from.

They had also true Nazarites, raised up among them, as well as true prophets; and they felt the weight of the influence of these religious people against them, since they tried by fraud or violence to make them break their vow Amos 2:12. Amos, while upbraiding their rich men for breaking the law between man and man, presupposes that the Law of Moses was, in this respect also, acknowledged among them. For in his words, "they turn aside the way of the meek" (Amos 2:7; Amos 5:12, see Exodus 23:6; Deuteronomy 16:19; Deuteronomy 24:17; Deuteronomy 27:19) "they turn aside the poor in the gate" (Amos 2:8, see Exodus 22:26-27) "they take a ransom" Amos 5:12 (from the rich for their misdeeds), he retains the unique term of the Pentateuch; as also in that, "on clothes laid to pledge (Amos 2:8, see Exodus 22:26-27) they lie down by every altar;" "who make the Ephah small" (Amos 8:5, see Deuteronomy 25:14-15). "Balances of deceit" Amos 8:5 are the contrary of what are enjoined in the law, "balances of right" Leviticus 19:36.

In upbraiding them for a special impurity, forbidden in principle by the law Deuteronomy 23:1 he uses the sanction often repeated in the law "to profane My Holy Name" Amos 2:7; Leviticus 20:3. In the punishments which he mentions, he uses terms in which God threatens those punishments. The two remarkable words, rendered "blasting and mildew" Amos 4:9; Deuteronomy 28:22, occur only in Deuteronomy, and in Solomon's prayer founded upon it 1 Kings 8:37, and in Haggai Hag 2:17 where he is referring to Amos. In the words, "as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah" Amos 4:11; Deuteronomy 29:23, the special term and form of Deuteronomy, as well as the threat, are retained. The threat, "Ye have built houses of hewn stone, and ye shall not dwell therein; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink the wine thereof;" but blends and enlarges those in Deuteronomy Amo 5:11; Deuteronomy 28:30, Deuteronomy 28:39. The remarkable term describing their unrepentance is taken from the same (Amos 4:6, Amos 4:8-10, see Deuteronomy 4:29).

So also the image of "gall and wormwood" (Amos 6:12, from Deuteronomy 29:18), two bitter plants, into which they turned judgment and righteousness. There are other verbal reminiscences of the Pentateuch, interwoven with the words of Amos, which presuppose that it was in the memory of both the prophet and his hearers in Israel (see Amos 2:2, Amos 2:10-11; Amos 3:2; Amos 6:1; Amos 7:16; Amos 9:8, Amos 9:12). Indeed, after that long slavery of 400 years in Egypt, the traditions of the spots, hallowed by God's intercourse with the patriarchs, probably even their relations to "Edom their brother" Amos 1:11, must have been lost. The book of Genesis did not embody popular existing traditions of this sort, but must have revived them. The idolatry of Beersheba , as well as that of Gilead, alluded to by Hosea, as also Jeroboam's choice of Bethel itself for the calf-worship , imply on the part of the idolaters a knowledge and belief of the history, which they must have learned from the Pentateuch. Doubtless, it had been a part of Jeroboam's policy to set up, opposite the exclusive claim for the temple at Jerusalem, rival places of traditionary holiness from the mercies of God to their forefathers, much as Muhammed availed himself of the memory of Abraham, to found his claim for an interest in Jerusalem. But these traditions too must have been received BY the people, not derived from them. They were not brought with them from Egypt. The people, enslaved, degraded, sensualized, and idolatry-loving, had no hearts to cherish the memories of the pure religion of their great forefathers, who worshiped the unimaged Self-existing God.

As Amos employed the language of the Pentateuch and cited the Book of Joel, so it seems more probable, that in the burden of his first prophecies , "I will send a fire upon ... and it shall devour the palaces of ..." he took the well-known words of Hosea Hos 7:14, and, by their use, gave a unity to their prophecies, than that Hosea, who uses no language except that of the Pentateuch, should, in the one place where he employs this form, have limited the "burden" of Amos to the one case of Judah. Besides, in Hosea, the words, declaring the destruction of the cities and palaces of Judah, stand in immediate connection with Judah's wrong temper in building them whereas in Amos they are insulated. Beside this, the language of the two prophets does not bear upon each other, except that both have the term "balances of deceit" (Hosea 12:8 (Hosea 12:7 in English); Amos 8:5), which was originally formed in contrast with what God had enjoined in the law, "balances of right," and which stands first in the Proverbs of Solomon Proverbs 11:1; Proverbs 20:23.

Of later prophets, Jeremiah renewed against Damascus the prophecy of Amos in his own words; only, the memory of Hazael having been obliterated perhaps in the destruction under Tiglath-Pileser, Jeremiah calls it not after Hazael, but by its own name and that of Benhadad Jeremiah 49:27. The words of Amos had once been fulfilled, and its people had been transported to Kir. Probably fugitives had again repopulated it, and Jeremiah intended to point out, that the sentence pronounced through Amos was not yet exhausted. On the similar ground probably, when upbraiding Ammon for the similar sins and for that for which Amos had denounced woe upon it, its endeavor to displace Israel Amos 1:13; Jeremiah 49:1, Jeremiah used the words of Amos, "their king shall qo into captivity - and his princes together" Amos 1:15; Jeremiah 49:3. In a similar manner, Haggai upbraids the Jews of his day for their impenitence under God's chastisements, in words varied in no essential from those of Amos Amo 4:9; Haggai 2:19. The words of Amos, so repeated to the Jews upon their restoration, sounded, as it were, from the desolate heritage of Israel, "Sin no more, lest a worse thing happen unto thee."

Other reminiscences of the words of Amos are only a part of the harmony of Scripture , the prophets in this way too indicating their unity with one another, that they use the words, the one of the other.

The might of Amos' teaching at the time, the state-priest Amaziah impressed on Jeroboam. Contemptuous toward Amos himself, Amaziah admitted the truth to Jeroboam. "The land is not able to bear all his (Amos') words." Doubtless, as the Jews were mad against Stephen, "not" being "able to resist the wisdom and Spirit by which he spake" Acts 6:10, so God accompanied with power His servant's words to His people. They had already seen God's words fulfilled against the houses of Jeroboam I, of Baasha, of Ahab. That same doom was now renewed against "the house of Jeroboam," and with it the prophecy of the dispersion of the ten tribes Amos 5:27; Amos 7:8-9, Amos 7:17, which Hosea contemporaneously foretold Hosea 1:6; Hosea 9:17. The two prophets of Israel confirmed one another, but also left themselves no escape. They staked the whole reputation of their prophecy on this definite issue. We know it to have been fulfilled on the house of Jeroboam; yet the house of Jeroboam was firmer than any before or after it.

We know of the unaccustomed captivity of the ten tribes. Had they not been carried captive, prophecy would have come to shame; and such in proportion is its victory. Each step was an installment, a pledge, of what followed. The death of Zechariah, Jeroboam's son, was the first step in the fulfillment of the whole; then probably, in the invasion of Pul against Menahem 2 Kings 15:19, followed the doom of Amaziah. God is not anxious to vindicate His word. He does not, as to Shebna Isaiah 22:17-18, or Amaziah, or the false prophets Ahab, Zedekiah Jeremiah 29:20-22, or Shemaiah Jeremiah 29:32, or Pashur Jeremiah 20:6, or other false prophets Jeremiah 14:15. At times, as in the case of Hananiah Jeremiah 28:17, Scripture records the individual fulfillment of God's judgments. Mostly, it passes by unnoticed the execution of God's sentence. The sentence of the criminal, unless reprieved, in itself implies the execution . The fact impressed those who witnessed it; the record of the judgment suffices for us.

Then followed, under Tiglath-pileser, the fulfillment of the prophecy as to Damascus Amos 1:5, and Gilead Amos 6:14. Under Sargon was fulfilled the prophecy on the ten tribes Amos 5:27; Amos 7:8-9, Amos 7:17; Amos 9:8. That on Judah Amos 2:5 yet waited 133 years, and then was fulfilled by Nebuchadnezzar. A few years later, and he executed God's judgments foretold by Amos on their enemies, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Tyre Amos 1:9; Amos 2:3. Amos 1:6-8 : kings of Egypt, Assyria, and the Macedonian Alexander the Great fulfilled in succession the prophecy as to Philistia. So various were the human wills, so multitudinous the events, which were to bring about the simple words of the shepherd-prophet. Amos foretells the events; he does say, why the judgments should come. Amos does not foretell when, or through whom the judgments would come. Nevertheless, he foretells the events themselves absolutely, and they came. Like Joel, he foretells the conversion of the pagan and anticipates so far the prophecies of Isaiah, that God would work this through the restoration of the house of David, when fallen. It is a strange comment upon human greatness that the royal line was not to be employed in the salvation of the world until it was fallen! The royal palace had to become the hut of Nazareth before the Redeemer of the world could be born, whose glory and kingdom were not of this world, who came, to take nothing from us but our nature, that He might sanctify it, our misery, that He might bear it for us. Yet flesh and blood could not foresee it before it came, as flesh and blood could not believe it, after He came.

The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen - "Amos begins by setting forth his own nothingness, and withal the great grace of his Teacher and Instructor, the Holy Spirit, referring all to His glory." He, like David, Peter, Paul, Matthew, was one of "the weak things of the world, whom God chose to confound the mighty." He was himself a herdsman only "among herdsmen;" but the words which he spake were not his own. They were words which he saw, not with eyes of flesh, but "with that vision wherewith words can be seen, the seer's vision in the mind." They were "words concerning," or rather "upon Israel," heavy words coming upon the heavy transgressions of Israel. The Hebrew word "saw" is not of mere sight, but of a vision given by God. Amos only says that they were "his" words, in order immediately to add, that they came to him from God, that he himself was but the human organ through which God spake.

Two years before the earthquake - This earthquake must plainly have been one of the greatest, since it was vividly in people's memories in the time of Zechariah, and Amos speaks of it as "the earthquake." The earthquakes of the east, like that of Lisbon, destroy whole cities. In one, a little before the birth of our Lord , "some ten thousand were buried under the ruined houses." This terrific earthquake (for as such Zechariah describes it) was one of the preludes of that displeasure of God, which Amos foretold. A warning of two years, and time for repentance, were given, "before the earthquake" should come, the token and beginning of a further shaking of both kingdoms, unless they should repent. In effect, it was the first flash of the lightning which consumed them.

The Lord will roar - Amos joins on his prophecy to the end of Joel's, in order at once in its very opening to attest the oneness of their mission, and to prepare people's minds to see, that his own prophecy was an expansion of those words, declaring the nearer and coming judgments of God. Those nearer judgments, however, of which he spake, were but the preludes of the judgments of the Great Day which Joel foretold, and of that last terrible voice of Christ, "the Lion of the tribe of Judah," of whom Jacob prophesies; "He couched, He lay down as a lion, and as a young lion; who shall raise Him up?" Genesis 49:9. God is said to "utter His" awful "voice from Zion and Jerusalem," because there He had set His Name, there He was present in His Church. It was, as it were, His own place, which He had hallowed by tokens of His presence, although "the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him." In the outset of his prophecy, Amos warned Israel, that there, not among themselves in their separated state, God dwelt. Jeremiah, in using these same words toward Judah, speaks not of Jerusalem, but of heaven; "The Lord shall roar from on high, and utter His voice from His holy habitation" Jeremiah 25:30. The prophecy is to the ten tribes or to the pagan: God speaks out of the Church. He uttereth His Voice out of Jerusalem, as He saith, "Out of Zion shall go forth, the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem" Isaiah 2:3, "where was the Temple and the worship of God, to shew that God was not in the cities of Israel, that is, in Dan and Bethel, where were the golden calves, nor in the royal cities of Samaria and Jezreel, but in the true religion which was then in Zion and Jerusalem."

And the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn - Perhaps, with a feeling for the home which he had loved and left, the prophet's first thought amid the desolation which he predicts, was toward his own shepherd-haunts. The well-known Mount Carmel was far in the opposite direction in the tribe of Asher. Its name is derived from its richness and fertility, perhaps "a land of vine and olive yards." In Jerome's time, it was "thickly studded with olives, shrubs and vineyards." "Its very summit of glad pasturcs."

It is one of the most striking natural features of Palestine. It ends a line of hills, 18 miles long, by a long bold headland reaching out far into the Mediterranean, and forming the south side of the Bay of Acco or Acre. Rising 1,200 feet above the sea , it stands out "like some guardian of its native strand;" yet withal, it was rich with every variety of beauty, flower, fruit, and tree. It is almost always called "the Carmel," "the rich garden-ground." From its neighborhood to the sea, heavy dews nightly supply it with an ever-renewed freshness, so that in mid-summer it is green and flowery . Travelers describe it, as "quite green, its top covered with firs and oaks, lower down with olives and laurels, and everywhere excellently watered." "There is not a flower," says Van de Velde , "that I have seen in Galilee or on the plains along the coasts, that I do not find here again on Carmel. It is still the same fragrant lovely mountain as of old." : "Its varied world of flowers attracts such a number of the rarer vari-colored insects that a collector might for a whole year be richly employed." "It is a natural garden and repository of herbs."

Its pastures were rich, so as to equal those of Bashan. "It gives rise to a number of crystal streams, the largest of which gushes from the spring of Elijah" Jeremiah 50:19; Nahum 1:4. It had abundant supplies in itself. If it too became a desert, what else would be spared? "If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" Luke 23:31. All, high and low, shall be stricken in one common desolation; all the whole land, fromm "the pastures of the shepherds" in the south to Mount Carmel in the North. And this, as soon as God had spoken. "He spake, and it was made." So now, contrariwise, He uttercth His Voice, and Carmel hath languished. Its glory hath passed away, as in the twinkling of an eye. God hath spoken the word, and it is gone.

What depended on God's gifts, abides; what depended on man, is gone. There remains a wild beauty still; but it is the beauty of natural luxuriance. "All," says one who explored its depths , "lies waste; all is a wilderness. The utmost fertility is here lost for man, useless to man. The vineyards of Carmel, where are they now? Behold the long rows of stones on the ground, the remains of the walls; they will tell you that here, where now with difficulty you force your way through the thick entangled copse, lay, in days of old, those incomparable vineyards to which Carmel owes its name."

The order of God's threatenings seems to have been addressed to gain the hearing of the people. The punishment is first denounced upon their enemies, and that, for their sins, directly or indirectly, against themselves, and God in them. Then, as to those enemies themselves, the order is not of place or time, but of their relation to God's people. It begins with their most oppressive enemy, Syria; then Philistia, the old and ceaseless, although less powerful, enemy; then Tyre, not an oppressor, as these, yet violating a relation which they had not, the bonds of a former friendship and covenant; malicious also and hardhearted through covetousness. Then follow Edom, Ammon, Moab, who burst the bonds of blood also. Lastly and nearest of all, it falls on Judah, who had the true worship of the true God among them, but despised it. Every infliction on those like ourselves finds an echo in our own consciences. Israel heard and readily believed God's judgments upon others. It was not tempted to set itself against believing them. How then could it refuse to believe of itself, what it believed of others like itself? "Change but the name, the tale is told of thee ," was a pagan saying which has almost passed into a proverb. The course of the prophecy convicted "them," as the things written in Holy Scripture "for our ensamples" convict Christians. "If they" who "sinned without law, perished without law" Romans 2:12, how much more should they who "have sinned in the law, be judged by the law." God's judgments rolled round like a thunder-cloud, passing from land to land, giving warning of their approach, at last to gather and center on Israel itself, except it repent. In the visitations of others, it was to read its own; and that, the more, the nearer God was to them. "Israel" is placed the last, because on it the destruction was to fall to the uttermost, and rest there.

For three transgressions and for four - These words express, not four transgressions added to the three, but an additional transgression beyond the former, the last sin, whereby the measure of sin, which before was full, overflows, and God's wrath comes. So in other places, where the like form of words occurs, the added number is one beyond, and mostly relates to something greater than all the rest. So, "He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee" Job 5:19. The word, "yea," denotes, that the seventh is some heavier trouble, beyond all the rest, which would seem likely to break endurance. Again, "give a portion to seven, and also to eight" Ecclesiastes 11:2. Seven is used as a symbol of a whole, since "on the seventh day God rested from all which He had made," and therefore the number seven entered so largely into the whole Jewish ritual. All time was measured by seven.

The rule then is; "give without bounds; when that whole is fulfilled, still give." Again in that series of sayings in the book of Proverbs Prov. 30, the fourth is, in each, something greater than the three preceding. "There are three" things that "are never satisfied;" yea, "four" things "say not," it is "enough" Proverbs 30:15-16. The other things cannot be satisfied; the fourth, fire, grows fiercer by being fed. Again, "There be three" things "which go well; yea, four are comely in going" Proverbs 30:29-31. The moral majesty of a king is obviously greater than the rest. So "the handmaid which displaceth her mistress" Proverbs 30:21-23 is more intolerable and overbearing than the others. The art and concealment of man in approaching a maiden is of a subtler kind than things in nature which leave no trace of themselves, the eagle in the air, the serpent on the rock, the ship in its pathway through the waves Proverbs 30:18-19. Again, "Sowing discord among brethren" Proverbs 6:16-19, has a special hatefulness, as not only being sin, but causing widewasting sin, and destroying in others the chief grace, love. Soul-murder is worse than physical murder, and requires more devilish art.

These things - Job says, "worketh God twice and thrice with man, to bring back his soul from the pit" Job 33:29. The last grace of God, whether sealing up the former graces of those who use them, or vouchsafed to those who have wasted them, is the crowning act of His love or forbearance.

In pagan poetry also, as a trace of a mystery which they had forgotten, three is a sacred whole; from where "thrice and fourfold blessed" stands among them for something exceeding even a full and perfect blessing, a super-abundance of blessings.

The fourth transgression of these pagan nations is alone mentioned. For the prophet had no mission to "them;" he only declares to Israel the ground of the visitation which was to come upon them. The three transgressions stand for a whole sum of sin, which had not yet brought down extreme punishment; the fourth was the crowning sin, after which God would no longer spare. But although the fourth drew down His judgment, God, at the last, punishes not the last sin only, but all which went before. In that the prophet says, not, "for the fourth," but "for three transgressions and for four," he expresses at once, that God did not punish until the last sin, by which "the iniquity" of the sinful nation became "full" Genesis 15:16, and that, "then," He punished for all, for the whole mass of sin described by the three, and for the fourth also. God is longsuffering and ready to forgive; but when the sinner finally becomes a "vessel of wrath" Romans 9:22, He punishes all the earlier sins, which, for the time, He passed by.

Sin adds to sin, out of which it grows; it does not overshadow the former sins, it does not obliterate them, but increases the mass of guilt, which God punishes. When the Jews killed the Son, there, "came on" them "all the righteous bloodshed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias" Matthew 23:35-36; Luke 11:50-51. All the blood of all the prophets and servants of God under the Old Testament came upon that generation. So each individual sinner, who dies impenitent, will be punished for all which, in his whole life, he did or became, contrary to the law of God. Deeper sins bring deeper damnation at the last. So Paul speaks of those who "treasure up to" themselves "wrath against the Day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God" Romans 2:5. As good people, by the grace of God, do, through each act done by aid of that grace, gain an addition to their everlasting reward, so the wicked, by each added sin, add to their damnation.

Of Damascus - Damascus was one of the oldest cities in the world, and one of the links of its contact. It lay in the midst of its plain, a high table-land of rich cultivation, whose breadth, from Anti-libanus eastward, was about half a degree. On the west and north its plain lay sheltered under the range of Anti-libanus; on the east, it was protected by the great desert which intervened between its oasis-territory and the Euphrates. Immediately, it was bounded by the three lakes which receive the surplus of the waters which enrich it. The Barada (the "cold") having joined the Fijeh, (the traditional Pharpar" , a name which well designates its tumultuous course ), runs on the north of, and through the city, and then chiefly into the central of the three lakes, the Bahret-el-kibliyeh, (the "south" lake;) thence, it is supposed, but in part also directly, into the Bahret-esh-Shurkiyeh (the "east" lake ). The 'Awaj (the "crooked") (perhaps the old Amana, "the never-failing," in contrast with the streams which are exhausted in irrigation) runs near the old south boundary of Damascus , separating it probably from the northern possessions of Israel beyond Jordan, Bashan (in its widest sense), and Jetur or Ituraea. The area has been calculated at 236 square geographical miles .

This space rather became the center of its dominions, than measured their extent. But it supported a population far beyond what that space would maintain in Europe. Taught by the face of creation around them, where the course of every tiny rivulet, as it burst from the rocks, was marked by a rich luxuriance , the Damascenes of old availed themselves of the continual supply from the snows of Hermon or the heights of Anti-libanus, with a systematic diligence , of which, in our northern clime, as we have no need, so we have no idea. "Without the Barada," says Porter , "the city could not exist, and the plain would be a parched desert; but now aqueducts intersect every quarter, and fountains sparkle in almost every dwelling, while innumerable canals extend their ramifications over the vast plain, clothing it with verdure and beauty. Five of these canals are led off from the river at different elevations, before it enters the plain. They are carried along the precipitous banks of the ravine, being in some places tunnelled in the solid rock. The two on the northern side water Salahiyeh at the foot of the hills about a mile from the city, and then irrigate the higher portions of the plain to the distance of nearly twenty miles. Of the three on the south side, one is led to the populous village Daraya, five miles distant; the other two supply the city, its suburbs, and gardens."

The like use was made of every fountain in every larger or lesser plain. Of old it was said , "the Chrysorrhoas (the Barada) "is nearly expended in artificial channels." : "Damascus is fertile through drinking up the Chrysorrhoas by irrigation." Fourteen names of its canals are still given ; and while it has been common to select 7 or 8 chief canals, the whole have been counted up even to 70 . No art or labor was thought too great. The waters of the Fijeh were carried by a great aqueduct tunnelled through the side of the perpendicular cliff . Yet this was as nothing. Its whole plain was intersected with canals, and tunneled below. : "The waters of the river were spread over the surface of the soil in the fields and gardens; underneath, other canals were tunnelled to collect the superfluous water which percolates the soil, or from little fountains and springs below. The stream thus collected is led off to a lower level, where it comes to the surface. : "The whole plain is filled with these singular aqueducts, some of them running for 2 or 3 miles underground. Where the water of one is diffusing life and verdure over the surface, another branch is collecting a new supply." "In former days these extended over the whole plain to the lakes, thus irrigating the fields and gardens in every part of it."

Damascus then was, of old, famed for its beauty. Its white buildings, embedded in the deep green of its engirdling orchards, were like diamonds encircled by emeralds. They reach nearly to Anti-libanus westward , "and extend on both sides of the Barada some miles eastward. They cover an area at last 25 (or 30) miles in circuit, and make the environs an earthly Paradise." Whence the Arabs said , "If there is a garden of Eden on earth, it is Damascus; and if in heaven, Damascus is like it on earth." But this its beauty was also its strength. "The river," says William of Tyre , "having abundant water, supplies orchards on both banks, thick-set with fruit-trees, and flows eastward by the city wall. On the west and north the city was far and wide fenced by orchards, like thick dense woods, which stretched four or live miles toward Libanus. These orchards are a most exceeding defense; for from the density of the trees and the narrowness of the ways, it seemed difficult and almost impossible to approach the city on that side." Even to this day it is said , "The true defense of Damascus consists in its gardens, which, forming a forest of fruit-trees and a labyrinth of hedges, walls and ditches, for more than 7 leagues in circumference, would present no small impediment to a Mussulman enemy."

The advantage of its site doubtless occastoned its early choice. It lay on the best route from the interior of Asia to the Mediterranean, to Tyre, and even to Egypt. Chedorlaomer and the four kings with him, doubtless, came that way, since the first whom they smote were at Ashteroth Karnaim Genesis 14:5-6 in Jaulan or Gaulonitis, and thence they swept on southward, along the west side of Jordan, smiting, as they went, first the "Zuzim," (probably the same as the Zamzummim Deuteronomy 2:2 O) in Ammonitis; then "the Emim in the plain of Kiriathaim" in Moab Deuteronomy 9, 11, then "the Horites in Mount Seir unto Elparan" (probably Elath on the Gulf called from it.) They returned that way, since Abraham overtook them at Hobah near Damascus Genesis 14:15. Damascus was already the chief city, through its relation to which alone Hobah was known. It was on the route by which Abraham himself came at God's command from Haran (Charrae of the Greeks) whether over Tiphsaeh ("the passage," Thapsacus) or anymore northern passage over the Euphrates. The fact that his chief and confidential servant whom he entrusted to seek a wife for Isaac, and who was, at one time, his heir, was a Damascene Genesis 15:2-3, implies some intimate connection of Abraham with Damascus. At the time of our era, the name of Abraham was still held in honor in the country of Damascus ; a village was named from him "Abraham's dwelling;" and a native historian Nicolas said, that he reigned in Damascus on his way from the country beyond Babylon to Canaan. The name of his servant "Eliezer" "my God is help," implies that at this time too the servant was a worshiper of the One God. The name Damascus probably betokened the strenuous , energetic character of its founder.

Like the other names connected with Aram in the Old Testament , it is, in conformity with the common descent from Aram, Aramaic. It was no part of the territory assigned to Israel, nor was it molested by them. Judging, probably, of David's defensive conquests by its own policy, it joined the other Syrians who attacked David, was subdued, garrisoned, and became tributary 2 Samuel 8:5-6. It was at that time probably a subordinate power, whether on the ground of the personal eminence of Hadadezer king of Zobah, or any other. Certainly Hadadezer stands cut conspicuously; the Damascenes are mentioned only subordinately.

Consistently with this, the first mention of the kingdom of Damascus in Scripture is the dynasty of Rezon son of Eliada's, a fugitive servant of Hadadezer, who formed a marauding band, then settled and reigned in Damascus 1 Kings 11:23-24. Before this, Scripture speaks of the people only of Damascus, not of their kings. Its native historian admits that the Damascenes were, in the time of David, and continued to be, the aggressors, while he veils over their repeated defeats, and represents their kings, as having reigned successively from father to son, for ten generations, a thing unknown probably in any monarchy. : "A native, Adad, having gained great power, became king of Damascus and the rest of Syria, except Phoenicia. He, having carried war against David, king of Judaea, and disputed with him in many battles, and that finally at the Euaphrates where he was defeated, had the character of a most eminent king for prowess and valor. After his death, his descendants reigned for ten generations, each receiving from his father the name (Hadad) together with the kingdom, like the Ptolemies of Egypt. The third, having gained the greatest power of all, seeking to repair the defeat of his grandfather, warring against the Jews, wasted what is now callcd Samaritis." They could not brook a defeat, which they had brought upon themselves.

Rezon renewed, throughout the later part of Solomon's reign, the aggression of Hadad. On the schism of the ten tribes, the hostility of Damascus was concentrated against Israel who lay next to them. Abijam was in league with the father of Benhadad 1 Kings 15:19. Benhadad at once broke his league with Baasha at the request of Asa in his later mistrustful days 1 Chronicles 16:2-7, and turned against Baasha (1 Chronicles 16:2-7 and 1 Kings 15:20). From Omri also Benhadad I took cities and extorted "streets," probably a Damascus quarter, in Samaria itself 1 Kings 20:34. Benhadad II had "thirty-two" vassal "kings" 1 Kings 20:1, 1 Kings 20:24, (dependent kings like those of Canaan, each of his own city and little territory,) and led them against Samaria, intending to plunder it 1 Kings 20:6-7, and, on occasion of the plundering, probably to make it his own or to destroy it. By God's help they were twice defeated; the second time, when they directly challenged the power of God 1 Kings 20:22-25, 1 Kings 20:28, so signally that, had not Ahab been flattered by the appeal to his mercy 1 Kings 20:31-32, Syria would no more have been in a condition to oppress Israel. Benhadad promised to restore the cities which his father had taken from Israel, and to make an Israel-quarter in Damascus 1 Kings 20:34.

If this promise was fulfilled, Ramoth-Gilead must have been lost to Syria at an earlier period, since, three years afterward, Ahab perished in an attempt, by aid of Jehoshaphat, against the counsels of God, to recover it 1 Kings 22. Ramoth-Gilead being thus in the hands of Syria, all north of it, half of Dan and Manasseh beyond Jordan, must also have been conquered by Syria. Except the one great siege of Samaria, which brought it to extremities and which God dissipated by a panic which He infused into the Syrian army 2 Kings 7:6. Benhadad and Hazael encouraged only marauding expeditions against Israel during the 14 years of Ahaziah and Jehoram. Benhadad was, according to Assyrian inscriptions defeated thrice, Hazael twice, by Shalmanubar king of Assyria . Benhadad appears to have acted on the offensive, in alliance with the kings of the Hittites, the Hamathites and Phoenicians ; Hazael was attacked alone, driven to take refuge in Anti-libanus, and probably became tributary .

Assyrian chronicles relate only Assyrian victories. The brief notice, that through Naaman "the Lord gave deliverance to Syria" 2 Kings 5:1, probably refers to some signal check which Assyria received through him. For there was no other enemy, from whom Syria had to be "delivered." Subsequently to that retreat from Samaria, he even lost Ramoth 2 Kings 9:14-15 to Jehoram after a battle before it 2 Kings 8:29, in which Jehoram was wounded. It is a probable conjecture that Jehu, by his political submission to Assyria, drew on himself the calamities which Elisha foretold. Hazael probably became the instrument of God in chastening Israel, while he was avenging Jehu's submission to a power whom he dreaded and from whom he had suffered. Israel, having lost the help of Judah, became the easier prey. Hazael not only took from Israel all east of Jordan 2 Kings 10:32-33, but made the whole open country unsafe for the Israelites to dwell in.

Not until God "gave Israel a saviour," could they "dwell in their tents as beforetime" 2 Kings 13:5. Hazael extended his conquests to Gath 2 Kings 12:17, intending probably to open a connecting line with Egypt. "With a small company of men" he defeated a large army of Judah 2 Chronicles 24:23-24. Joash, king of Judah, bought him off, when advancing against Jerusalem, with everything of gold, consecrated or civil, in the temple or in his own treasures 2 Kings 12:18. Jehoash recovered from Benhadad III the cities this side Jordan 2 Kings 13:25; Jeroboam II, all their lost territories and even Damascus and Hamath 2 Kings 14:28. Yet after this, it was to recover its power under Rezin, to become formidable to Judah, and, through its aggressions on Judah, to bring destruction on itself. At this time, Damascus was probably, like ourselves, a rich, commercial, as well as warlike, but not as yet a manufacturing (see the note at Amos 3:12) nation. Its wealth, as a great emporium of transit-commerce, (as it is now) furnished it with sinews for war. The "white wool" Ezekiel 27:18, in which it traded with Tyre, implies the possession of a large outlying tract in the desert, where the sheep yield the whitest wool. It had then doubtless, beside the population of its plain, large nomadic hordes dependent upon it.

I will not turn away the punishment thereof - Literally, "I will not turn it back." What was this, which God would not turn back? Amos does not express it. Silence is often more emphatic than words. Not naming it, he leaves it the rather to be conceived of by the mind, as something which had been of old coming upon them to overwhelm them, which God had long stayed back, but which, since He would now stay it no longer, would burst in, with the more terrific and overwhelming might, because it had been restrained before. Sin and punishment are by a great law of God bound together. God's mercy holds back the punishment long, allowing only some slight tokens of His displeasure to show themselves, that the sinful soul or people may not be unwarned. When He no longer withholds it, the law of His moral government holds its course. "Seldom," said pagan experience , "hath punishment with lingering foot parted with the miscreant, advancing before."

Because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron - The instrument, Jerome relates here, was "a sort of wain, rolling on iron wheels beneath, set with teeth; so that it both threshed out the grain and bruised the straw and cut it in pieces, as food for the cattle, for lack of hay." A similar instrument, called by nearly the same name, is still in use in Syria and Egypt. Elisha had foretold to Hazael his cruelty to Israel; "Their strong holds thou wilt set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with child" 2 Kings 8:12. Hazael, like others gradually steeped in sin, thought it impossible, but did it. In the days of Jehu, "Hazael smote them in all the coasts of Israel from Jordan eastward; all the land of Gilead, the Gadites and the Reubenites and the Manassites, from Arorer which is by the River Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan" 2 Kings 10:32-33; in those of Jehoahaz, Jehu's son, "he oppressed them, neither did he leave of the people to Jehoahaz but fifty horsemen and ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen, for the king of Syria had destroyed them, and had made them like the dust by threshing" 2 Kings 13:7. The death here spoken of, although more ghastly, was probably not more severe than many others; not nearly so severe as some which have been used by Christian Judicatures. It is mentioned in the Proverbs, as a capital punishment Proverbs 20:26; and is alluded to as such by Isaiah Isa 28:28. David had had, for some cause unexplained by Holy Scripture, to inflict it on the Ammonites 2 Samuel 12:31; 1 Chronicles 20:3. Probably not the punishment in itself alone, but the attempt so to extirpate the people of God brought down this judgment on Damascus.

Theodoret supposes the horrible aggravation, that it was thus that the women with child were destroyed with their children, "casting the aforesaid women, as into a sort of threshing-floor, they savagely threshed them out like ears of grain with saw-armed wheels."

Gilead is here doubtless to be taken in its widest sense, including all the possessions of Israel, east of Jordan, as, in the account of Hazael's conquests, "all the land of Gilead" 2 Kings 10:32-33 is explained to mean, all which was ever given to the two tribes and a half, and to include Gilead proper, as distinct from Basan. In like way Joshua relates, that "the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the ha! f tribe of Manasseh returned to go into the country of Gilead, to the land of their possessions" Joshua 22:9. Throughout that whole beautiful tract, including 2 12 degrees of latitude, Hazael had carried on his war of extermination into every peaceful village and home, sparing neither the living nor the unborn.

And I will send a fire on the house of Hazael - The fire is probably at once material fire, whereby cities are burned in war, since he adds, "it shall devour the palaces of Benhadad," and also stands as a symbol of all other severity in war as in the ancient proverb, "a fire is gone out from Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon; it hath consumed Ar of Moab, the lords of the high places of Arnon" Numbers 21:28; and again of the displeasure of Almighty God, as when He says, "a fire is kindled in Mine anger, and it shall burn unto the lowest hell" Deuteronomy 32:22. For the fire destroys not the natural buildings only, but "the house of Hazael," that is, his whole family. In these prophecies, a sevenfold vengeance by fire is denounced against the seven people, an image of the eternal fire into which all iniquity shall be cast.

The palaces of Benhadad - Hazael, having murdered Benhadad his master and ascended his throne, called Iris son after his murdered master, probably in order to connect his own house with the ancient dynasty. Benhadad, that is, son or worshiper of the idol "Hadad," or "the sun," had been the name of two of the kings of the old dynasty. Benhadad III was at this time reigning. The prophet foretells the entire destruction of the dynasty founded in blood. The prophecy may have had a fulfillment in the destruction of the house of Hazael, with whose family Rezin, the king of Syria in the time of Ahaz, stands in no known relation. Defeats, such as those of Benhadad III by Jeroboam II who took Damascus itself, are often the close of an usurping dynasty. Having no claim to regard except success, failure vitiates its only title. The name Hazael, "whom God looked upon," implies a sort of owning of the One God, like Tab-el, "God is good," El-iada', "whom God knoweth," even amid the idolatry in the names, Tab-Rimmon, "good is Rimmon;" Hadad-ezer, "Hadad is help;" and Hadad, or Benhadad. Bad men abuse every creature, or ordinance, or appointment of God. It may be then that, as Sennacherib boasted, "am I now come up without the Lord against this land" to destroy it? the Lord said unto me, Go up against this land and destroy it" Isaiah 36:10; so Hazael made use of the prophecy of Elisha, to give himself out as the scourge of God, and thought of himself as one "on whom God looked."

Knowledge of futurity is an awful gift. As "Omniscience alone can wield Omnipotence," so superhuman knowledge needs superhuman gifts of wisdom and holiness. Hazael seemingly hardened himself in sin by aid of the knowledge which should have been his warning. Probably he came to Elisha, with the intent to murder his master already formed, in case he should not die a natural death; and Elisha read him to himself. But he very probably justified himself to himself in what he had already purposed to do, on the ground that Elisha had foretold to him that he should be king over 2 Kings 8:13, and, in his massacres of God's people, gave himself out as being, what he was, the instrument of God. "Scourges of God" have known themselves to be what they were, although they themselves were not the less sinful, in sinfully accomplishing the Will of God (see the note at Hosea 1:4). We have heard of a Christian Emperor, who has often spoken of his "mission," although his "mission" has already cost the shedding of much Christian blood.

In Isaiah 51:8, Eden is referred to as a country well known, and as distinguished for its fertility:

For Yahweh shall comfort Zion;

He will comfort all her waste places,

And he will make her wilderness like Eden,

And her desert like the garden of Yahweh.

Thus also in Ezekiel 27:23, we find Eden mentioned in connection with Haran and Canneh. Canneh was probably the same as Calneh Genesis 10:10, the Calno of Isaiah Isa 10:9, and was, doubtless, situated in Mesopotamia, since it is joined with cities that are known to have been there (compare also Ezekiel 31:9, Ezekiel 31:16, Ezekiel 31:18). All these passages demonstrate that there was such a country, and prove also that it was either in Mesopotamia, or in a country adjacent to Mesopotamia. It is not, however, possible now to designate its exact boundaries.

In Telassar - This place is nowhere else mentioned in the Scriptures. Nothing, therefore, is known of its situation. The connection demands that it should be in Mesopotamia. The names of ancient places were so often lost or changed that it is often impossible to fix their exact locality.

Amos 1:5I will also break the bar of Damascus - In the East, every city was fortified; the gates of the stronger cities were cased in iron, that they might not be set on fire by the enemy; they were fastened within with bars of brass 1 Kings 4:13 or iron (Psalm 107:16; Isaiah 45:2; compare Isaiah 48:14; Jeremiah 51:3 O). They were flanked with towers, and built over, so that what was naturally the weakest point and the readiest access to an enemy became the strongest defense. In Hauran the huge doors and gates of a single stone 9 and 10 feet high , and 1 12 foot thick , are still extant, and "the place for the ponderous bars," proportioned to such gates, "may yet be seen." The walls were loosened with the battering-ram, or scaled by mounds: the strong gate was seldom attacked; but, when a breach was made, was thrown open from within. The "breaking of the bar" laid open the city to the enemy, to go in and come out at his will. The whole strength of the kingdom of Damascus lay in the capital. It was itself the seat of the empire and was the empire itself. God says then, that He Himself would shiver all their means of resistance, whatever could hinder the inroad of the enemy.

And cut off the inhabitant from the plain of Aven - Literally, "from the vale of vanity," the "Bik'ah" being a broad vale between hills . Here it is doubtless the rich and beautiful valley, still called el-bukaa by the Arabs, La Boquea by William of Tyre , lying between Lebanon and Anti-libanus, the old Coele-Syria in its narrowest sense. It is, on high ground, the continuation of that long deep valley which, along the Jordan, the Dead sea, and the Arabah, reaches to the Red Sea. lts extreme length, from its southern close at Kal'at-esh-shakif to Hums (Emesa) has been counted at 7 days journey ; it narrows toward its southern extremity, expands at its northern, yet it cannot any how be said to lose its character of a valley until 10 miles north of Riblah .

Midway, on its ," was Baalbek, or Heliopolis, where the Egyptian worship is said to have been brought of old times from their "city of the sun ." Baalbek, as the ruins still attest, was full of the worship of the sun. But the whole of that beautiful range, "a magnificent vista" , it has been said, "carpeted with verdure and beauty" , "a gem lying deep in its valley of mountains," was a citadel of idolatry. The name Baal-Hermon connects Mount Hermon itself, the snow-capped height which so towers over its southeast extremity, with the worship of Baal or the sun, and that, from the time of the Judges Jdg 3:3. The name Baal-gad connects "the valley of Lebanon," that is, most probably the south end of the great valley, with the same worship, anterior to Joshua Jos 11:17; Joshua 12:7; Joshua 13:5.

The name Baalbek is probably an abbreviation of the old name, Baal-bik'ah , "Baal of the valley," in contrast with the neighboring Baalhermon. : "The whole of Hermon was girded with temples." : "Some eight or ten of them cluster round it," and, which is more remarkable, one is built" to catch the first beams of the sun rising over Hermon;" and temples on its opposite sides face toward it, as a sort of center .

In Jerome's time, the pagan still reverenced a celebrated temple on its summit . On the crest of its central peak, 3,000 feet above the glen below, in winter inaccessible, beholding far asunder the rising and the setting sun on the eastern desert and in the western sea, are still seen the foundations of a circular wall or ring of large stones, a rude temple, within which another of Grecian art was subsequently built . "On three other peaks of the Anti-libanus range are ruins of great antiquity" . : "The Bukaa and its borders are full of the like buildings."

"Lebanon, Anti-lebanon and the valleys between are thronged with ancient temples" . Some indeed were Grecian, but others Syro-Phoenician. The Grecian temples were probably the revival of Syro-Phoenician. The "massive substructions of Baalbek are conjectured to have been those of an earlier temple." The new name "Heliopolis" only substituted the name of the object of worship (the sun) for its title Lord. The pagan emperors would not have lavished so much and such wondrous cost and gorgeous art on a temple in Coele-Syria, had not its pagan celebrity recommended it to their superstition or their policy. On the west side of Lebanon at Afca, (Apheca) was the temple of Venus at the source of the River Adonis , a center of the most hateful Syrian idolatry , "a school of misdoing for all profligates."

At Heliopolis too, men "shamelessly gave their wives and daughters to shame." The outburst of paganism there in the reign of Julian the Apostate shows how deeply rooted was its idolatry. Probably then, Amos pronounces the sentence of the people of that whole beautiful vale, as "valley of vanity" or "iniquity" , being wholly given to that worst idolatry which degraded Syria. Here, as the seat of idolatry, the chief judgments of God were to fall. Its inhabitants were to be cut off, that is, utterly destroyed; on the rest, captivity is the only sentence pronounced. The Assyrian monarchs not unfrequently put to death those who despised their religion , and so may herein have executed blindly the sentence of God.

From the house of Eden - A Proper, but significant, name, "Beth-Eden," that is, "house of pleasure." The name, like the Eden of Assyria 2 Kings 19:12; Isaiah 37:12; Ezekiel 27:23, is, in distinction from man's first home, pronounced "EH-den," not "EE-den" . Two places near, and one in, the Bik'ah have, from similarity of name, been thought to be this "house of delight."

1. Most beautiful now for situation and climate, is what is probably mispronounced Ehden; a Maronite Village "of 4 or 500 families, on the side of a rich highly-cultivated valley" near Beshirrai on the road from Tripolis to the Cedars. Its climate is described as a ten months spring ; "the hills are terraced up to their summits;" and every place full of the richest, most beautiful, vegetation; "grain is poured out into the lap of man, and wine into his cup without measure." "The slopes of the valleys, one mass of verdure, are yet more productive than the hills; the springs of Lebanon gushing down, fresh, cool and melodious in every direction ." The wealthier families of Tripoli still resort there for summer, "the climate being tempered by the proximity of the snow-mountains, the most luxuriant vegetation favored by the soft airs from the sea . "It is still counted" the Paradise of Lebanon."

2.-Beit-el-Janne, literally, "house of Paradise," is an Arabic translation of Beth-Eden. It "lies under the root of Libanus, (Hermon) gushing forth clear water, whence," says WilIiam of Tyre , "it is called 'house of pleasure.'" It lies in a narrow valley, where it widens a little, about 34 of an hour from the plain of Damascus , and about 27 miles from that city on the way from Banias. : "Numerous rock-tombs, above and around, bear testimony to the antiquity of the site." It gives its name to the Jennani (Paradise River), one of two streams which form the second great river near Damascus, the Awadj.

3. The third, the Paradisus of the Greeks, one of the three towns of Laodicene , agrees only accidentally with the Scripture name, since their Paradisus signifies not an earthly Paradise, but a "hunting-park." For this the site is well suited; but in that country so abounding in water, and of soil so rich that the earth seems ready, on even slight pains of man, to don itself in luxuriant beauty, what probably is the site of the old Paradisus, is hopelessly barren Beth-Eden may have been the residence of one of the subordinate kings under the king of Damascus, who was to be involved in the ruin of his suzerain; or it may have been a summer-residence of the king of Damascus himself, where, in the midst of his trust in his false gods, and in a Paradise, as it were, of delight, God would cut him off altogether. Neither wealth nor any of a man's idols protect against God. As Adam, for sin, was expelled from Paradise, so the rulers of Damascus from the place of their pleasure and their sin.

And the people of Syria shall go into captivity - Syria or Aram perhaps already included, under the rule of Damascus, all the little kingdoms on this side of the Euphrates, into which it had been formerly sub-divided. At least, it is spoken of as a whole, without any of the additions which occur in the earlier history, Aram-beth-rehob, Aramzobah, Aram-Maachah. Before its captivity Damascus is spoken of as "the head of Syria" Isaiah 7:8.

Into Kir - Kir has been identified:

(1) with the part of Iberia near the River Kur which unites with the Araxes, not far from the Caspian, to the north of Armenia;

(2) a city called by the Greeks Kourena or Kourna on the River Mardus in southern Media;

(3) a city, Karine , the modern Kerend .

The first is the most likely, as the most known; the Kur is part probably of the present name Kurgistan, our "Georgia." Armenia at least which lay on the south of the River Kur, is frequently mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions, as a country where the kings of Assyria warred and conquered . The two parricide sons of Sennacherib are as likely to have fled Isaiah 37:38 to a distant portion of their father's empire, as beyond it. Their flight there may have been the ground of Esarhaddon's war against it . It has at all times afforded a shelter to those expelled from others' lands . The domestic, though late, traditions of the Armenians count as their first inhabitants some who had fled out of Mesopotamia to escape the yoke of Bel, king of Babylon . Whatever be the value of particular traditions, its mountain-valleys form a natural refuge to fugitives.

On occasion of some such oppression, as that from which Asshur fled before Nimrod , Aram may have been the first of those who took shelter in the mountains of Armenia and Georgia, and thence spread themselves, where we afterward find them, in the lowlands of Mesopotamia. The name Aram, however, is in no way connected with Armenia, which is itself no indigenous name of that country, but was probably formed by the Greeks, from a name which they heard . The name Aram, "lofty," obviously describes some quality of the son of Shem, as of others who bore the name . Contrariwise, Canaan, (whether or no anticipating his future degraded character as partaking in the sin of Ham) may signify "crouching." But neither has Aram any meaning of "highland," nor Canaan of "lowland," as has of late been imagined. .

From Kir the forefathers of the Syrians had, of their own will, been brought by the good all-disposing Providence of God; to Kir should the Syrians, against their will, be carried back. Aram of Damascus had been led to a land which, for its fertility and beauty, has been and is still praised as a sort of Paradise. Now, softened as they were by luxury, they were to be transported back to the austere though healthy climate, from where they had come. They had abused the might given to them by God, in the endeavor to uproot Israel; now they were themselves to be utterly uprooted. The captivity which Amos foretells is complete; a captivity by which (as the word means) the land should be bared of its inhabitants. Such a captivity he foretells of no other, except the ten tribes. He foretells it absolutely of these two nations alone , of the king and princes of Ammon Amos 1:15, not of Tyre, or the cities of Philistia, or Edom, or Ammon, or Moab. The punishment did not reach Syria in those days, but in those of Rezin who also oppressed Judah. The sin not being cut off; the punishment too was handed down.

Tiglath-pileser carried them away, about 50 years after this, and killed Rezin 2 Kings 16:9. In regard to these two nations, Amos foretells the captivity absolutely. Yet at this time, there was no human likelihood, no ground, except of a divine knowledge, to predict it of these two nations especially. They went into captivity too long after this for human foresight to predict it; yet long enough before the captivity of Judah for the fulfillment to have impressed Judah if they would. The transportation of whole populations, which subsequently became part of the standing policy of the Persian and of the later Assyrian Empires, was not, as far as we know, any part of Eastern policy at the time of the prophet. Sesostris, the Egyptian conqueror, some centuries before Amos, is related to have brought together "many men," "a crowd," from the nations whom he had subdued, and to have employed them on his buildings and canals.

Even this account has received no support from the Egyptian monuments, and the deeds ascribed by the Greeks to Sesostris have been supposed to be a blending of those of two monarchs of the xix. Dynasty, Sethos I and Raamses II, interwoven with those of Ousartesen III((Dynasty xii.) and Tothmosis III((Dyn. xviii). But the carrying away of tiny number of prisoners from fields of battle is something altogether different from the political removal of a nation. It had in it nothing systematic or designed. It was but the employment of those whom war had thrown into their hands, as slaves. The Egyptian monarchs availed themselves of this resource, to spare the labor of their native subjects in their great works of utility or of vanity. But the prisoners so employed were but a slave population, analogous to those who, in other nations, labored in the mines or in agriculture.

They employed in the like way the Israelites, whom they had received peacefully. Their earlier works were carried on by native labor . After Tothmosis III, in whose reign is the first representation of prisoners employed in forced labor , they could, during their greatness, spare their subjects. They imported labor, not by slave trade, but through war. Nubia was incorporated with Egypt , and Nubian prisoners were, of course, employed, not in their own country but in the north of Egypt; Asiatic prisoners in Nubia . But they were prisoners made in a campaign, not a population; a foreign element in Egyptian soil, not an interchange of subject-populations. Doubtless, "the mixed multitude" Exodus 12:38, which "went up with" Israel from Egypt, were in part these Asiatic captives, who had been subjected to the same hard bondage.

The object and extent of those forced transportations by the later Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians were altogether different. Here the intention was to remove the people from their original seat, or at most to leave those only who, from their fewness or poverty, would be in no condition to rebel. The cuneiform inscriptions have brought before us, to a great extent, the records of the Assyrian conquests, as given by their kings. But whereas the later inscriptions of Sargon, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, mention repeatedly the deportation of populations, the earlier annals of Asshurdanipal or Asshurakhbal relate the carrying off of soldiers only as prisoners, and women as captives . They mention also receiving slaves as tributes, the number of oxen and sheep, the goods and possessions and the gods of the people which they carry off .

Else the king relates, how he crucified or impaled or put to death men at arms or the people generally, but in no one of his expeditions does he mention any deportation. Often as modern writers assume, that the transportation of nations was part of the hereditary policy of the Monarchs of Asia, no instances before this period have been found. It appears to have been a later policy, first adopted by Tiglath-pileser toward Damascus and east and north Palestine, but foretold by the prophet long before it was adopted. It was the result probably of experience, that they could not keep these nations in dependence upon themselves while they left them in their old abodes. As far as our knowledge reaches, the prophet foretold the removal of these people, at a time when no instance of any such removal had occurred.

Gaza - Was the southernmost city of the Philistines, as it was indeed of Canaan Genesis 10:19 of old, the last inhabited place at the beginning of the desert, on the way from Phoenicia to Egypt . Its situation was wonderfully chosen, so that, often as a Gaza has been destroyed, a new city has, if even after long intervals, risen up again in the same immediate neighborhood . The fragments of the earlier city became materials for the later. It was first Canaanite Genesis 10:19; then Philistine; then, at least after Alexander, Edomite ; after Alexander Janneus, Greek ; conquered by Abubekr the first Khalif, it became Arabian; it was desolated in their civil wars, until the Crusaders rebuilt its fort ; then again, Muslim. In the earliest times, before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Gaza was the south angle of the border of the Canaanites, from where it turned to the south of the Dead Sea. Even then it was known by its name of strength, 'Azzah "the strong," like our "Fort."

For a time, it stood as an island-fort, while the gigantic race of the Avvim wandered, wilder probably than the modern Bedaween, up to its very gates. For since it is said, "the Avvim dwelt in open villages as far as Gaza" Deuteronomy 2:23; plainly they did not dwell in Gaza itself, a fortified town. The description assigns the bound of their habitations, up to the furthest town on the southeast, Gaza. They prowled around it, infested it doubtless, but did not conquer it, and were themselves expelled by the Caphtorim. The fortress of the prince of Gaza is mentioned in the great expedition of Tothmosis III , as the conquest of Ashkelon was counted worthy of mention in the monuments of Raamses II . It was strengthened doubtless by giving refuge to the Anakim, who, after Joshua had expelled them "from Hebron" and neighboring cities, "and the mountains of Judah and Israel, remained in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod" Joshua 11:21-23.

Its situation, as the first station for land-commerce to and from Egypt, whether toward Tyre and Sidon, or Damascus and the upper Euphrates, or toward Petra, probably aggrandized it early. Even when the tide of commerce has been diverted into other channels, its situation has been a source of great profit. A fertile spot, touching upon a track through a desert, it became a mart for caravans, even those which passed, on the pilgrim-route to Mekka, uniting traffic with their religion. Where the five cities are named together as unconquered, Gaza is mentioned first, then Ashdod Joshua 13:3. Samson, after he had betrayed his strength, was "brought down to Gaza" Judges 16:21, probably as being their strongest fortress, although the furthest from "the valley of Sorek ," where he was ensnared.

There too was the vast temple of Dagon, which became the burying-place of so many of his worshipers. In Solomon's reign it was subject to Israel 1 Kings 4:21. After the Philistine inroad in the time of Ahaz 2 Chronicles 28:18, and their capture of towns of Judah in the south and the low country, Shephelah, Hezekiah drove them back as far as Gaza 2 Kings 18:8, without apparently taking it. Its prince was defeated by Sargon , whose victory over Philistia Isaiah foretold Isaiah 14:29. Sennacherib gave to its king, together with those of Ascalon and Ekron , "fortified and other towns which" he "had spoiled," avowedly to weaken Judah; "so as to make his (Hezekiah's) country small;" probably also as a reward for hostility to Judah. Greek authors spcak of it, as "a very large city of Syria" , "a great city" . Like other cities of old, it was, for fear of pirates, built at some distance from the sea (Arrian says "2 12 miles"), but had a port called, like that of Asealea , Maiuma , which itself too in Christian times became a place of importance .

Because they carried away the whole captivity - Literally, "a complete captivity;" complete, but for evil; a captivity in which none were spared, none left behind; old or young, woman or child; but a whole population (whatever its extent) was swept away. Such an inroad of the Philistines is related in the time of Jehoram 2 Chronicles 21:16.

To deliver them up to Edom - Literally, "to shut them up to Edom," in the power of Edom, their bitter enemy, so that they should not be able to escape, nor be restored. The hands, even if not the land, of Edom were already dyed in the blood of Jacob "their brother" Joel 3:19. "Any whither but there," probably would cry the crowd of helpless captives. It was like driving the shrinking flock of sheep to the butcher's shambles, reeking with the gore of their companions. Yet therefore were they driven there to the slaughter. Open markets there were for Jewish slaves in abundance. "Sell us, only not to slaughter." "Spare the greyheaded;" "spare my child," would go up in the ears of those, who, though enemies, understood their speech. But no! Such was the compact of Tyre and Philistia and Edom against the people of God. Not one was to be spared; it was to be "a complete captivity;" and that, to Edom. The bond was fulfilled. "Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he too shall cry and shall not be heard" Proverbs 21:13. Joel mentions the like sin of the Philistines and Phoenicians, and foretold its punishment Joel 3:4-6. That in the reign of Jehoram is the last which Scripture mentions, but was not therefore, of necessity or probably, the last. Holy Scripture probably relates only the more notable of those border-raids. Unrepented sin is commonly renewed. Those strong Philistine fortresses must have given frequent, abundant opportunity for such inroads; as now too it is said in Arabia, "the harvest is to the stronger;" and while small protected patches of soil in Lebanon, Hauran, etc. are cultivated, the open fertile country often lies uncultivated , since it would be cultivated only for the marauder. Amos renews the sentence of Joel, forewarning them that, though it seemed to tarry, it would come.

But - Literally, "and." Thus had Gaza done, and thus would God do; "I will send a fire upon Gaza." The sentence on Gaza stands out, probably in that it was first in power and in sin. It was the merchant-city of the five; the caravans parted from it or passed through it; and so this sale of the Jewish captives was ultimately effected through them. First in sin, first in punishment. Gaza was strong by nature and by art. "The access to it also," Arrian notices , "lay through deep sand." We do not hear of its being taken, except in the first times of Israel under the special protection of God Judges 1:1-2, Judges 1:18, or by great conquerors. All Philistia, probably, submitted to David; we hear of no special conquest of its towns 2 Samuel 8:1. Its siege cost Alexander 2 months , with all the aid of the engines with which he had taken Tyre, and the experience which he had there gained. The Egyptian accounts state, that when besieged by Tothmosis III it capitulated . Thenceforth, it had submitted neither to Egypt nor Assyria. Yet Amos declared absolutely, that Gaza should be destroyed by fire, and it was so. Sennacherib first, then, after Jeremiah had foretold anew the destruction of Gaza, Ashkelon, and the Philistines, Pharaoh Necho "smote Gaza" Jeremiah 47:1. Yet who, with human foresight only, would undertake to pronounce the destruction of a city so strong?