Amos 4
Butler3. And ye shall go out. The prophet here recurs to his first image, the kine of Bashan. The walls of Samaria would be broken down by the besieger. Those who had oppressed the needy and crushed the poor would not have the courage to stand in the breach and risk their lives there. Like the cattle to which they are compared, driven through a gap, they would go out, each straight before her, hurrying away ignominiously into exile
4,5. The prophet speaks in irony; not in mercy, but in judgment. He bids them go on in the path that they have deliberately chosen, “This liketh you, O ye children of Israel” (verse 5); or, as in margin, So ye love; at the same time warning them that to persist was to multiply transgression, as the word has been explained before (3:14); it was to multiply acts of treason and rebellion against God. B. C.—These verses continue and even intensify the strain of irony. “Come to Bethel, and sin on, since so you like; try it, if you will!” Bethel and Gilgal were places noted for idol worship. H. C.
The lessons of this burst of sarcasm are plain. The subtle influence of self creeps in even in worship, and makes it hollow, unreal and powerless to bless the worshipper. Obedience is better than costly gifts. The beginning and end of all worship, which is not at the same time transgression, is the submission of tastes, will and the whole self. Again, men will lavish gifts far more freely in apparent religious service, which is but the worship of their reflected selves, than in true service of God. Again, the purity of willing offerings is marred when they are given in response to a loud call, or, when given, are proclaimed with acclamations. Let us not suppose that all the brunt of Amos’s indignation fell only on these old devotees. The principles involved in it have a sharp edge, turned to a great deal which is allowed and fostered among ourselves. A. M.
Intense devotion to religious service don’t offset unrighteousness. You can’t do evil all the week and balance up the ledger by a devout service on Sabbath. You can’t do wickedness and then cover up the wickedness by intense churchism. The attempt has been made in every age. Some men seem to have a fancy for that kind of double-entry book-keeping, and they think they can balance the one with the other, that they can work up so much enthusiasm in church work as to cover all their sins, and so exactly keep the new moons and the fast days that it will conceal the wickedness they are guilty of. Amos is very clear-headed on that. He says, “Go multiply your sacrifices if you will, come up to Gilgal, bring your sheep and oxen and sacrifice them there; go clear down to Beersheba if you wish to, but understand distinctly that does not take the place of righteousness.” Church is good when it produces righteousness. Church, religious service, religious exercises, religious enthusiasm—all that belongs to the external service of the Church, all that is excellent so long as it produces religious life, genuine integrity of character, charitable and sympathetic feeling toward mankind, and a devout service and loyalty to God. Jeffers.
6. After declaring the presumptuous idolatry of the Israelites, the prophet describes their obstinate continuance in it, which was such that they could not be withdrawn from it by any afflictions or punishments, and be turned to worship and serve the true God. In this and the following verses are enumerated the several afflictions with which they were visited, such as famine, verse 6; drought, verses 7, 8; destruction of the fruits of the earth, verse 9; pestilence, war and defeat, verse 10; and the overthrow of some of their cities, verse 11. At the end of each of these punishments it is to be observed that the prophet adds in the name of the Lord, “yet have ye not returned unto Me.” Danaus.
6-11. God complains of His people’s incorrigibleness under the judgments which He had brought upon them in order to their humiliation and reformation. He had by several tokens intimated to them His displeasure that they might by repentance make their peace with Him; but it had not that effect. It is five times repeated in these verses, as the burden of the charge, “Yet have you not returned unto Me, saith the Lord; you have been several times corrected, but in vain; you are not reclaimed, there is no sign of amendment. You have been sent for by one messenger after another, but you have not come back, you have not come home.” This intimates that that which God designed in all His providential rebukes was to influence them to return to Him. That if they had returned to their God they should have been accepted, He would have bid them welcome, and the troubles they were in should have been removed. That the reason why God sent further troubles was, because former troubles had not done the work, otherwise it is no pleasure to the Almighty that He should afflict. That God was grieved at their obstinacy, and took it unkindly that they should force Him to do that which He did so unwillingly. “You have not returned to Me from whom you have revolted, to Me with whom you are in covenant, to Me who stand ready to receive you, to Me who have so often called you.” H.
The blaze of indignation changes into wounded tenderness, as the prophet speaks in the name of God, and recounts the dreary monotony of failure attending all God’s loving attempts to arrest Israel’s departure by the mercy of judgment. Mark the sad cadence of the fivefold refrain, “Ye have not returned unto Me, saith the Lord.” That repeated complaint of the inefficacy of chastisements has in it a tone of sorrow and of wonder which do not belong only to the prophet. If we remember who it was who was “grieved at the blindness of their heart,” and who “wondered at their unbelief,” we shall not fear to recognize here the attribution of the same emotions to the heart of God. To Amos, famine, drought, blasting, locusts, pestilence and probably earthquake, were five messengers of God, and Amos was taught by God. If we looked deeper, we should see more clearly. The true view of the relation of all material things and events to God is this which the herdsman of Tekoa proclaimed. These messengers were not “miracles,” but they were God’s messengers all the same. Behind all phenomena stands a personal will, and they are nearer the secret of the universe who see God working in it all, than they who see all forces except the One which is the only true force. “I give cleanness of teeth. I have withheld the rain. I have smitten. I have sent the pestilence. I have overthrown some of you.” To the prophet’s eye the world is all aflame with a present God. In the case of the individual, he is a wise man who regards all outward evil as having a possible bearing on his bettering spiritually. “If a drought comes, learn to look to your irrigation, and don’t cut down your forests so wantonly,” say the wise men nowadays. “If pestilence breaks out, see to your drainage.” By all means. These things, too, are God’s commandments, and we have no right to interpret the consequences of infraction of physical laws as being meant to punish nations for their breach of moral and religious ones. If we were prophets, we might, but not else. But still, is God so poor that He can have but one purpose in a providence? Every sorrow, of whatever sort, is meant to produce all the good effects which it naturally tends to produce; and, since every experience of pain and loss and grief naturally tends to wean us from earth, and to drive us to find in God what earth can never yield, all our sorrows are His messengers to draw us back to Him. Amos’s lesson as to the purpose of trials is not antiquated. A. M.
Consider that God’s hand or purpose is in every providential dispensation. Consider that God has a specific moral end to accomplish in every visitation that He lays upon us. Consider that these providences are sure to accomplish their mission upon us—viz., to chasten, soften, reclaim, or else to harden, render obdurate and ripen for final destruction, as in the case of Pharaoh, ancient Israel and a multitude of others. Afflictions of every kind should humble us, awaken us to serious reflection and earnest inquiry as to their meaning. They are never sent in vain. A gracious purpose is behind them, or a fatherly rebuke is in them, or the dark cloud is ominous of coming wrath, if we haste not to repent and bring forth fruit meet for repentance. J. M. Sherwood.
10. But he has still another lesson to teach us—viz., the awful power which we have of resisting God’s efforts to draw us back. “Our wills are ours, we know not how,” but, alas! it is too often not “to make them Thine.” This is the true tragedy of the world that God calls, and we do refuse, even as it is the deepest mystery of sinful manhood that God calls and we can refuse. What infinite pathos and grieved love, thrown back upon itself, is in that refrain, “Ye have not returned unto Me!” How its recurrence speaks of the longsuffering which multiplied means as others failed, and of the Divine charity, which “suffered long, was not soon angry and hoped all things!” How vividly it gives the impression of the obstinacy that opposed insensibility to all effort, and clung the more closely and insanely to the idolatry which was its crime and its ruin! The very same temper is deep in us all. Israel holds up the mirror in which we may see ourselves. If blows do not break iron, they harden it. A wasted sorrow—that is, a sorrow which does not drive us to God—leaves us less impressible than it found us. A. M.
- “Therefore” implies that by the very necessities of His moral government, since all discipline and chastisement fail, exterminating judgments must come! The word “thus,” which here raises the question, How will God deal with them? refers to the previous verses. The answer therefore is—As I have exterminated some of your cities, root and branch, even as Sodom and Gomorrah, so will I do to the whole nation. Because I have purposed to do this, I now give thee warning—“Prepare to meet thy God!” Ye must meet Him, coming with exterminating judgments; there is no escape; therefore be in readiness! The spirit of this announcement seems to be that the decree of judgment had gone forth, and its execution was fixed in the counsels of Heaven; and yet this fact is declared, not with the expectation that the masses will hear and repent, but rather in the hope that some individuals might; and that it might stand as a warning to all other guilty nations in later times. It will be noticed that the primary sense of the passage relates to Israel as a nation, and had its fulfilment in the final desolation and captivity effected by the Assyrian power as stated 2 K. 17. But in principle it applies with even augmented force to all the incorrigibly wicked, summoned to meet God in the final judgment day. It warns them to be ready to meet Him then and there, by turning at once to become His friends and people. Oh, might the wicked only be wise in time, and make the Great Judge their friend while they may, so freely and with such welcome! H. C.
There is something awfully significant in the silence as to what this is which Jehovah will do to Israel. Like the thrilling pause before the crashing thunder-storm, comes this pause before the awful cry, Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. Yet still He is their God; their case is not yet desperate; it is not yet too late for a true repentance, and a return quite to Jehovah. No one is yet lost to whom God calls, Prepare! Houghton.—The certainty of judgment is the basis of a call to repentance, which may avert it. The meeting for which Israel is besought to prepare was, of course, not judgment after death, but the impending destruction of the northern kingdom. But Amos’s prophetic call is not misapplied when directed to that final day of the Lord. Common sense teaches preparation for a certain future, and Amos’s trumpet-note is deepened and re-echoed by Jesus: “Be ye ready also, for . . . the Son of Man cometh.” Note, too, that Israel’s peculiar relation to God is the very ground of the certainty of its punishment, and of the appeal for repentance. Just because He is “thy God,” will He assuredly come to judge, and may you assuredly prepare, by repentance, to meet Him. The conditions of meeting the Judge, and being “found of Him in peace,” are that we should be “without spot, and blameless;” and the conditions of being so spotless and uncensurable are, what they were in Amos’s day, repentance and trust. Only we have Jesus as the brightness of the Father’s glory to trust in, and His all-sufficient work to trust to, for pardon and purifying. A. M.
This day, this hour, you live but once—and this setting sun will have taken one irrecoverably from the allotted days of your probation. The earth is our place of probation—and it is all—literally, absolutely all. In that probation, if ever, you and I are to be prepared for that vast eternity on which we enter in a few days. If not prepared then, we are never to be prepared. Point to the slightest proof whatever, or to the slightest presumption that another season of probation is to be granted beyond the judgment of the great day. But there is none. Barnes.
13. For, lo, He that formeth. The force and beauty of this description are increased in the original by its brevity. In the Hebrew there are not half as many words as are found in the translation. And, besides this, each of the five verbs, form, create, declare, make, tread, is in the participle. This makes the prophet’s words more vivid. There is a similar description in 5: 8, 9. He that formeth, that moulds and fashions the mountains as easily as the potter shapes the clay. The word is the same in Hebrew.
Treadeth upon the high places of the earth. He treads down, tramples on and has in subjection whatever is loftiest or most unruly. His power is absolute, and His name is the Lord, Jehovah, the Self-existent, the Unchangeable, the God of Hosts, the Maker, Upholder and Sovereign of all beings and things that exist. B. C.
To give his readers some just sense of the majesty of that Being whom sinners of that and of every age must meet in judgment, he names a few of His mighty acts. The passage has scarcely a parallel for its beauty and sublimity. The Creator must be indefinitely greater than His works; but look at them—the mountains and the winds; note how He can tell man all his thoughts: how He can change the glory of the morning into darkness; and with the majestic march of a God, tread upon the high places of the earth—Jehovah, God of the armies of heaven, His name; then say, Is it well for thee to rouse His wrath to flame and then to fall before it? H. C.
The magnificent proclamation of the name of the Lord which closes the chapter, is meant as at once a guarantee of His judgment and an enforcement of the call to be ready to meet Him. He in creation forms the solid, changeless mountains and the viewless, passing wind. The most stable and the most mobile are His work. He reads men’s hearts, and can tell them their thoughts afar off. He is the Author of all changes, both in the physical and the moral world, bringing the daily wonder of sunrise and the nightly shroud of darkness, and with like alternation blending joy and sorrow in men’s lives. He treads “on the high places of the earth,” making all created elevations the path of His feet, and crushing down whatever exalts itself. Thus, in creation almighty, in knowledge omniscient, in providence changing all things and Himself the same, subjugating all, and levelling a path for His purposes across every opposition, He manifests His name, as the living, eternal Jehovah, the God of the covenant, and therefore of judgment on its breakers, and as the commander and God of the embattled forces of the universe. Is this a God whose coming to judge is to be lightly dealt with? Is not this a God whom it becomes us to be ready to meet? A. M.
It is remarkable that though it is chapter begins with caustic irony, yet it ends with the most tender, solemn warnings. Hence the irony is not malign, but is benevolent—used only for the better moral effect—not for any satisfaction to be found in inflicting a keen and cutting castigation. H. C.