Amos 4:11

I have overthrown [some] of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,.... Either their houses were burnt, or their bodies consumed by fire from heaven, with lightning; not whole cities, but the

And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. I also have given you.

Overthrown; utterly consumed and destroyed your houses and goods. Some of you; though it was a total consumption to those it fell on, yet it was but on some, who might be wantings to others, and by which others might see how easy it was for God to destroy them all. As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah: we no where else read of such fire from heaven, yet it is possible some such judgment might fall on some of their cities, and not be recorded; but I do rather understand it proverbially spoken, denoting most grievous and desolating fires, or judgments. Ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning; such of you as escaped were yet in very great danger, and as firebrands in midst of the fire, where you were with others burning till infinite mercy saved a remnant, and plucked you out.

Amos 4:11 I have overthrown [some] of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.Ver. 11. I have overthrown some of you] Some and not all: thus, in the midst of judgment he remembered mercy, he did not stir up all his wrath, Psalms 78:38, he let fall some drops, but would not shed the whole shower of it; for he remembered that they were but flesh. Some he hanged up in gibbets, as it were, for example to the rest: as St Jude saith he dealt by Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them, thrown forth for an instance of Divine vengeance to all succeeding ages, Judges 1:7 (προκεινται); and as Herodotus telleth us, that the sparks and ashes of burnt Troy served for a lasting monument of God’ s great displeaure against great sinners. See the like threatened to Babylon, Isaiah 13:19-20. As God overthrew Sodem] As Jehovah from Jehovah rained hell out of heaven upon them, Genesis 19:24, that is, God the Son from God the Father: and so Eusebius observeth that the Father here saith of the Son, that he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah (De Praepar. Evang. 1. 5, c. 23. Vide Socrat. Hist. Eccles. l. 2. c. 30.): "he condemned them with an overthrow," 2 Peter 2:6, he overthrew them and repented not, Jeremiah 20:16, he overthrew them in a moment, and no hand stayed on them, Lamentations 4:6. And yet worse shall be the condition of those that despise the grace of the gospel, which is the great sin of these last times, Matthew 11:24; yea, the devils will keep holy-day, as it were, in hell, in respect of such sinners against their own souls. And ye were as a firebrand] Ambustus et fumigans titio, smutchy and smoky, and scarcely escaping with the skin of your teeth, Job 19:20, as Lot out of Sodom, as the man of Benjamin out of the army, 1 Samuel 2:12, as the young man that fled naked away at Christ’ s attachment, Mark 14:52, or as Hunniades narrowly escaping with his life from the battle of Varna; where he had like to have fallen with that perjured Popish king, as good Jehoshaphat had for joining with Ahab. It is as if God should say: There are not many of you that are left, and have your lives for a prey; howbeit they are ill bestowed upon you, for any good use you have made of my forbearance. "Let favour be shown to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness," Isaiah 26:10; and if thou deliver him once, yet thou must do it again, and when all is done that can be done. "A man of great wrath shall suffer punishment," Proverbs 19:19; and so (to be sure of it) shall a man of great stomach and stubbornness, that refuseth to return, as these of whom the fifth time it is here complained.

(11) Overthrown.—Another awful calamity, an earthquake, is referred to, and perhaps a volcanic eruption. Dr. Pusey enumerates a long series of earthquakes, which distressed Palestine, though not the central parts of the country, from the time of Julian to the twelfth century. The allusion to Sodom and Gomorrah gives a hint of the fierce licence and vice which had prevailed in some parts of the Northern kingdom, and called for chastisement. Some of you.—More accurately among you.Brand plucked . . .—Men would cast such a brand back into the fire. “Behold the goodness and severity of God.”

Verse 11. I have overthrown some of you] In the destruction of your cities I have shown my judgments as signally as I did in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; and those of you that did escape were as "brands plucked out of the fire;" if not consumed, yet much scorched. And as the judgment was evidently from my hand, so was the deliverance; "and yet ye have not returned unto me, saith the Lord."

11. The earthquake. This, the most terrible visitation, is reserved for the last. The earthquake is not only the most unfamiliar and the most mysterious of all the judgements enumerated; it is also the most sudden and startling, as well as the most formidable: it is as instantaneous in its operation as it is irresistible: the destruction which it works can never be guarded against, and seldom escaped. as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah] See Genesis 19:24-25; Genesis 19:28. The same stereotyped expression recurs Deuteronomy 29:23, Isaiah 13:19, Jeremiah 49:18; Jeremiah 50:40, to describe a disaster ending in a state of ruin and barren desolation. The word mahpηkhβh, ‘overturning,’ ‘overthrowing,’ is always used with reference to the Cities of the Plain, either directly, as here and in the passages quoted, or allusively (Isaiah 1:7): cf. hγphηkhβh, Genesis 19:29. The verb rendered ‘overthrow’ (hβphakh) is cognate: see Genesis 19:21; Genesis 19:25; Genesis 19:29; and cf. Jeremiah 20:16, Lamentations 4:6. The ‘overthrow’ of the Cities of the Plain was due, there is good reason to believe (see Tristram, Land of Israel, pp. 348 ff.; Dawson, Egypt and Syria, pp. 124 ff.), to an eruption of bitumen (which is abundant in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea); but this may well have been accompanied by an earthquake; and in any case the comparison here relates to the destructive effects of the calamity rather than to the particular agency by which it was brought about. and ye—i.e. those of you who escaped—were as a firebrand pluckt out of the burning] i.e. as something scorched, charred, and almost consumed: so near were you to complete destruction. For the figure, comp. Zechariah 3:2; for the thought, Isaiah 1:9. The only earthquake in Palestine, mentioned in the O.T. (1 Kings 19:11 hardly coming into account), is the one in the reign of Uzziah, two years after Amos prophesied (Amos 1:1), which, to judge from the terms in which it is referred to long afterwards in Zechariah 14:5, must have been one of exceptional severity. Dr Pusey, in his Commentary, has collected, with great learning, from Ritter’s Erdkunde (chiefly vol. xvii.) and other sources, notices of the principal earthquakes affecting Palestine on record. On the whole, the borders of Palestine, rather than central Palestine, appear to have been the regions mostly affected. “The line chiefly visited by earthquakes was along the coast of the Mediterranean, or parallel to it, chiefly from Tyre to Antioch and Aleppo. Here were the great historical earthquakes, which were the scourges of Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, Botrys, Tripolis, Laodicea on the sea; which scattered Litho-prosopon, prostrated Baalbek and Hamath, and so often afflicted Antioch and Aleppo, while Damascus was mostly spared. Eastward it may have reached to Safed, Tiberias, and the Hauran,”—all, especially the Hauran, volcanic regions. Josephus (Ant. xv. 5, 2) mentions an earthquake occurring b.c. 31 in Judaea, in which some 30,000 persons perished under the ruined houses. Ar-Moab was destroyed by an earthquake in the childhood of St Jerome. The terrible earthquake of Jan.

I have overthrown some of you - The earthquake is probably reserved to the last, as being the rarest, and so the most special, visitation.

11. Earthquake. Some consider Amos 4:11 a summary of all preceding judgments, not a description of a new calamity; others, a figure of devastating wars (2 Kings 13:4; 2 Kings 13:7); but it is more