Amos 2:13

Behold, I are pressed under you,.... With the weight of their sins, with which they had made him to serve, and had wearied him; his patience was quite wore out, he could bear them no longer: as a

Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves. I am pressed under you - so Calvin (cf. Isaiah 1:14).

Hitherto the Lord by the prophet had declared the sins of the kingdom of the ten tribes, now he is about to pronounce judgment against them; he calls for their attention, and diligent weighing what he is about to speak. I, the Lord, who have so multiplied mercies to this people, am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves: some read this passage actively, and make this the sense, I will lead you with these judgments as a cart is loaded, and you shall cry and groan under these judgments, as a cart heavy loaded makes a noise in its motion under such pressures. Perhaps sheaves, the loading of a harvest season, are mentioned, to intimate the ripeness of their sins, and God’ s reaping them or cutting them down by his judgments, and carrying them together to be thrashed by further judgments.

Amos 2:13 Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed [that is] full of sheaves.Ver. 13. Behold I am pressed under you, &c.] A country comparison (such as this prophet is full of), plain, but pithy; to show how God is pressed and oppressed with people’ s sins, wearied as it were, Isaiah 43:24, and his patience even worn out; so that he can forbear them no longer, Isaiah 42:14, but like a travailing woman, that bites in her pain as long as she is able, at length cries out: so here, God hath much ado to forbear killing men in their sins; as he was ready to have a blow at Moses, when he met him in the inn, and could hardly hold his hands; he even groans under the pressure as a cart seems to do under an extraordinary load laid on it, till it creak and crack again; he seems to screech out to sinners, as Jeremiah 44:4, "Oh, do not this abominable thing!" And (when he cannot be heard) to sigh out, "Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity," &c., Isaiah 1:4, as Fasciculus temporum, A.D. 884, bitterly bewailing the iniquities of those times, cries out, Heu heu, Domino Deus, &c. That ninth age is much complained of by many writers. God hath as much, nay, more, cause to complain of ours, considering his pains with us, and patience towards us, to so little purpose and profit. Many interpreters make these words not a complaint, but a communication; rendering it thus, I will press or straiten your place as a cart full of sheaves presseth, &c.; either the ground whereon it goeth, or the corn which it thresheth out of the husk, Isaiah 28:27-28; or as the creature that lieth under the wheels of it is crushed in pieces. It was a memorable saying of Mr Bradford, martyr, He that will not tremble in threatening shall be crushed in pieces in feeling. These perverse Israelites would not be warned by any threatening, therefore they were pressed to some purpose in that sore famine and strait siege of Samaria. Obsidione vos premam, Press hard your seige, saith the Chaldee here; I will so beleaguer your city that there shall be no escaping. Look how a laden cart, onustum sibi, so laden that another sheaf can hardly be laid on, so gets stuck in narrow places, that it can neither go forward nor backward; so will I bring you into those distresses, that you shall not know how to avoid or abide them, στενοχωρουμενοι. I will distress my distressers, and press with such piercing afflictions as shall make you sigh and screech out another while, Oh it is an evil thing and a bitter to forsake the Lord, &c., Jeremiah 2:19. Oh, he is worse than mad that would buy the sweetest sin at so dear a rate.

(13) I am pressed.—Baur, Pusey, and Speaker’s Commentary support this rendering of the Heb. mç‘îq, the corresponding form in the next clause also being taken in the intransitive (i.e., passive sense). But it is unlikely that God, in this passage, should declare Himself “crushed” under the weight of Israel’s sin, for in the context it is Israel, and not God, who is described as the victim, Moreover, grammatical usage is against the rendering of mç‘îq as passive; nor does it favour Ewald’s, as well as Keil’s, interpretation “press you down” Translate (see margin) Behold, I am pressing down beneath you (literally, your place), just as the waggon, filled up with sheaves, presses down. Jehovah, in the awful judgment which He inflicts, is symbolised by the heavily-laden waggon. The expression “beneath you” suggests that the evil is not confined to the present. Israel, the nation weighted with the doom of past iniquities, bequeathes a yet more crushing load to future generations. If the text is sound, this appears the only satisfactory rendering of a difficult passage.

Verse 13. Behold, I am pressed under you] The marginal reading is better: "Behold, I will press your place, as a cart full of sheaves presseth." I will bring over you the wheel of destruction; and it shall grind your place - your city and temple, as the wheel of a cart laden with sheaves presses down the ground, gravel, and stones over which it rolls.

Amos 2:6-16. The sin of Israel, and its punishment 6–16. At last Amos comes to Israel. The Israelites might listen with equanimity, or even with satisfaction, whilst their neighbours’ faults were being exposed: but they now find that precisely the same standard is to be applied to themselves. The stereotyped form is not preserved after the first verse; both the indictment and the punishment being developed at much greater length than in the case of any of the previous nations. The indictment (Amos 2:6-8) consists of four counts: 1. maladministration of justice; 2. oppression of the poor; 3. immorality; 4. inordinate self-indulgence, practised in the name of religion—all, in view of the signal favours conferred by Jehovah upon Israel in the past, aggravated by ingratitude (Amos 2:9-12). The judgement, viz. defeat and flight before the foe, follows in Amos 2:13-16.

Behold, I am pressed under you - God bore His people, as the wain bears the sheaves. “Ye yourselves have seen,” He said to them by Moses, “how I bare you on eagle’s wings, and brought you unto Myself” Exodus 19:4.

13-16. The punishment. Righteous retribution will overtake the sinful nation.