Amos 2:10

Also I brought you up from the land of Egypt,.... Where they were bond slaves, and in great affliction and distress, and unable to help themselves; but the Lord wrought deliverance for them, and

Also I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and led you forty years through the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite.

You did not rescue yourselves out of the hands of your enemies, I did in mere mercy with a mighty arm save and rescue you, and brought you up from the land of Egypt, where you were oppressed servants, and exposed to ruin. Led you, as a shepherd leads his flock: nay, miraculously conducting by the pillar of a cloud and fire, and feeding with manna from heaven. Forty years, reckoning from their coming out of Egypt. Through the wilderness: they passed through many wildernesses, named in Scripture according as they were then called, but all these lay so contiguous to each other, that they all made up one great wilderness, as the many names given to parts of the sea make us know what particular part is spoken of, but all make one sea. To possess, as an heir possesseth that he hath a hereditary right to, the land of the Amorite, including all the rest of the accursed and dispossessed nations.

Amos 2:10 Also I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and led you forty years through the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite.Ver. 10. Also I brought you up from the land of Egypt] Which lies lower than Judea; as doth also mystical Egypt than Jerusalem, which is above, which is the mother of us all. To what great preferments and privileges God’ s people are now brought up by Christ. See Hebrews 12:22-24, and cry out, with that noble Athenian, εξ, οιωνειςοια, from how great miseries to what great mercies are we advanced! Even from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God: that we may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among the saints, Acts 26:18. And shall we then again break God’ s commandments? Ezra 9:14, or say, "We are delivered to do all these abominations," Jeremiah 7:10. Would not the heaven sweat over us, and the earth cleave under us, yea, hell gape for us upon such an entertainment of Divine bounty? And led you forty years through the wilderness] Led you all along in my hand "as a horse in the wilderness," that ye "should not stumble," Isaiah 63:13. Led you, and fed you daily and daintily, sending you in angel’ s food, and then setting the flint abroach that you might not pine and perish in that vast howling wilderness, Deuteronomy 32:10. Besides that, I there bore with your evil manners (ετροποφορησεν), Acts 13:18, as a mother bears with her child’ s frowardness; or as a husband bears with his wife’ s crossness, which he knows he must either tollere or tolerare, cure or cover. To possess the land of the Amorite] To fit you for such a mercy, to humble you, to prove you, and to do you good at the latter end, Deuteronomy 8:16. God knows the height of our spirits and the naughtiness of our natures, &c.; how ill able men’ s brains are to bear a cup of prosperity; and how soon their hearts are lifted up with their estates, as a boat that riseth with the rising of the water. God, therefore, usually brings his people into the wilderness, and there "speaketh to their hearts," Hosea 2:14; he holds them first to hard meat, and then puts them into full possession.

(10) Forty years.—The forty years’ wandering was a punishment for fickleness and cowardice, but during the incidence of this judgment, of which we have only one or two events recorded in the Book of Numbers, God was disciplining and organising a tribe of restless wanderers into a nation. (Deuteronomy 32:9-13.)

10. Also I brought you up, &c.] as before, “And I (emph.)” &c. The providential guidance in the wilderness is instanced as a further motive to obedience, the appeal to it being made the more forcible and direct, by the change from the 1st to the 2nd person. Comp. the same motive, Deuteronomy 6:12, Hosea 13:4 (R.V. marg.), and elsewhere. forty years] Deuteronomy 2:7; Deuteronomy 8:2; Deuteronomy 29:5 (in nearly the same phrase) &c.

Also I - (Literally, “And I,” I, emphatic; thus and thus did ye to Me; and thus and thus, with all the mercy from the first, did I to you,) I brought you up from the land of Egypt It is this language

9-12. What contrast between the actual conduct of the people and the conduct that might be expected of them in view of Jehovah’s loving care for them throughout their entire history!