聖書注解書

Verse 1-ch. 6:14. - § 8. Third address: the prophet utters a lamentation over the fall of Israel. (Vers. 1-3.) He calls her to repentance, while he shows wherein she has declined from the right way. To make this plain, he contrasts God's power and majesty with the people's iniquity, instances of which he gives (vers. 4-12). The only condition of safety is amendment (vers. 13-15); and as they refuse to reform, they shall have cause to lament (vers. 16, 17). This threat is enforced by the two emphatic "woes" that follow, the first of which demonstrates the baselessness of their trust in their covenant relation to God (vers. 18-27); the second denounces the careless lives of the chiefs, who, revelling in luxury, believed not in the coming judgment (Amos 6:1-6). Therefore they shall go into captivity, and the kingdom shall be utterly overthrown (vers. 7-11), because they act iniquitously and are self-confident (vers. 12-14). Verse 1. - Hear ye this word. To show the certainty of the judgment and his own feeling about it, the prophet utters his prophecy in the form of a dirge (kinah, 2 Samuel 1:17; 2 Chronicles 35:25). Which I take up against you; or, which I raise over you, as if the end had come. O house of Israel; in the vocative. The Vulgate has, Domus Israel cecidit; so the LXX. But the present Hebrew text is most suitable, making the dirge begin at ver. 2. The ten tribes are addressed as in ver. 6.

Verse 2. - The virgin of Israel; i.e. the virgin Israel; so called, not as having been pure and faithful to God, but as tenderly treated and guarded from enemies (comp. Isaiah 23:12; Isaiah 47:1; Jeremiah 14:17). Is fallen (comp. 2 Samuel 1:19); she shall no more rise. This is apparently a contradiction to the promise of restoration elsewhere expressed, but is to be explained either as referring exclusively to the ten tribes, very few of whom returned from exile, and to the kingdom of Israel which was never reestablished; or, as Pseudo-Rufinus says, "Ita debemus accipere quod lugentis affectu cumulatius aetimavit illata discrimina sicque funditus appellasse deletos, quos ex majore videret parte contritos." Forsaken upon her land; better, she shall be dashed upon her own land; her own soil shall witness her ruin - that soil which was "virgin," unconquered, and her own possession.

Verse 3. - The vindication of the prophet's lament. The city that went out by a thousand. Septuagint and Vulgate, "from which went forth thousands," or, "a thousand;" i.e. which could send out a thousand warriors to the fight, in such a city only a tenth of the inhabitants shall remain; and this shall happen to small cities as well as great.

Verse 4. - The more formal proof that Israel has merited her punishment here begins. In calling her to repentance the prophet contrasts God's requirements with her actual conduct. Seek ye me, and ye shall live. Two imperatives: "Seek me, and (so) live;" duty and its reward. "Seek me in the appointed way, and ye shall be saved from destruction" (comp. Genesis 42:18).

Verse 5. - Bethel... Gilgal. The scenes of idolatrous worship, where was no true seeking of God (see note on Amos 4:4). Beersheba. A spot about fifty miles southsouthwest of Jerusalem, the site of which has never been lost, and is marked to this day by seven much-frequented wells. As being one of the holy places celebrated in the history of the patriarchs (Genesis 21:31, 33; Genesis 26:23, etc.; Genesis 46:1), it had become a shrine of idolatrous worship, to which the Israelites resorted, though it lay far out of their territory (comp. Amos 8:14). Gilgal shall surely go into captivity. There is in the Hebrew a play on the words here and in the following clause (Hag-gilgal galoh yigleh), which commentators have paralleled with such expressions as, Capua capietur, Cremona cremabitur, Paris perira, "London is undone." Or, taking Joshua's explanation of the name, we may say, "Roll-town shall be rolled away." Bethel shall some to nought. As Bethel, "House of God," had become Bethaven, "House of vanity" (see Hosea 4:15), as being the temple of an idol (comp. 1 Corinthians 8:4), so the prophet, with allusion to this, says that "Bethel shall become aven" - vanity, nothingness, itself. No mention is made of the fate of Beersheba, because Amos has in view only the ten tribes, and the destiny of places beyond their territory is not here the object of his prediction; and indeed, when Israel was ruined, Beersheba escaped unharmed.

Verse 6. - Break out like fire. God is called "a consuming fire" (Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29; comp. Jeremiah 4:4). And devour it; Septuagint, Ὅπως μὴ ἀναλάμψη ὡς πῦρ ὁ οϊκος Ἰωσὴφ καὶ καταφάγῃ αὐτόν, "Lest the house of Joseph blaze as fire, and he devour him;" Vulgate, Ne forte comburatur ut ignis domus Joseph, et devorabit. But it is best to take the last member of the sentence thus: "and it (the fire) devour." The house of Joseph. Ephraim, i.e. the kingdom of Israel, of which Ephraim was the distinguishing tribe. In Bethel; or, for Bethel. The LXX., paraphrasing, has, τῷ οἴκῳ Ἰσραήλ, "for the house of Israel."

Verse 7. - The prophet brings out the con-trust between Israel's moral corruption and God's omnipotence. Ye who turn judgment to wormwood. As Jerome puts it," Converterunt dulcedinem judicii in absinthii amaritudinem," "They turned the sweetness of judgment into the bitterness of absinth" (comp. Amos 6:12). Who make judgment the occasion of the bitterest injustice. There is no syntactical connection between this verse and the last, but virtually we may append it to "seek the Lord." It would sound in people's ears as a reminiscence of Deuteronomy 29:18, 20. The LXX. reads, ὁ ποιῶν εἰς ὕψος κρίμα. "that executeth judgment in the height," referring the sentence to the Lord, or else taking laanah, "wormwood," in a metaphorical sense, as elsewhere they translate it by ἀνάγκη πικρία, ὀδύνη (Deuteronomy 29:18; Proverbs 5:4; Jeremiah 9:15; Jeremiah 23:15). The name "wormwood" is applied to all the plants of the genus that grow in Palestine the taste of which was proverbially bitter. And leave off righteousness in the earth; rather, cast down righteousness to the earth (as Isaiah 28:2), despise it and trample it underfoot (comp. Daniel 8:12). This is Israel's practice; and yet God, as the next verse shows, is almighty, and has power to punish. Righteousness includes all transactions between man and man. The LXX. (still referring the subject to the Lord), καὶ δικαιοσύνην εἰς γῆν ἔθηκεν, "and he established righteousness on earth."

Verse 8. - Striking instances are given of God's creative power and omnipotence. Seek him that maketh the seven stars. "Seek him" is not in the Hebrew. "He that maketh," etc., is in direct antithesis to "ye who turn," etc. (ver. 7). The seven stars; Hebrew, kimah, "the heap," the constellation of the Pleiades (Job 9:9; Job 38:31). The Septuagint here has, ὁ ποιῶν πάντα, but in Job has πλειάς. The Vulgate gives, facientem Arcturum. Symmachus and Theodotion give πλειάδα in the present passage. The identification of this term is discussed in the 'Dictionary of the Bible,' 2:891. The observation of this most remarkable cluster among the heavenly bodies would be natural to the pastoral life of Amos. And Orion; Hebrew, kesil, "foolish," a rebel, the name being applied to Nimrod, whose representation was found by the Easterns in this constellation. Some render kesil, "gate;" others connect it with the Arabia sohail, equivalent to Sirius, or Canopus. The Septuagint here has, καὶ μετασκευάζων, "and changing," which looks as if the translator was not familiar with the Hebrew word, and substituted something in its place. It reads Ὠρίωνος in Job 38:31. Turneth the shadow of death into the morning. "The shadow of death," the depth of darkness. This and the following clause do not simply state that the regular interchange of day and night is in God's hands, but rather notify that God is a moral Governor of the world. He saves men from the utmost dangers, from the darkness of sin and from the night of ignorance; and, on the other hand, he sends calamity on those that offend his Law (comp. Amos 4:13). Maketh the day dark with night; literally, as the Septuagint ἡμέραν εἰς νύκτα συσκοτάζων, "darkeneth day into night." That calleth for the waters of the sea, etc. As judgments are the prophet's theme, this expression cannot be an intimation of the working of the natural law by which the moisture taken up from the sea as cloud returns upon the earth as rain (comp. Amos 9:6). Rather it is an allusion to the Flood and similar catastrophes, which are proofs of God's judicial government of the universe, when "he maketh the creature his weapon for the revenge of his enemies" (Wisd. 5:17). The Lord is his Name. Jehovah, the self-existent God, doeth all these marvellous things, and men presume to scout his Law and think to be unpunished (Amos 4:13).