AMOS - CHAPTER 1
A
Bible Study - Commentary by Jim Melough
Copyright
2002 James Melough
1:1.
“The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa, which he saw
concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of
Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.”
“... which he saw concerning
Israel” means that his message was conveyed to him from God by means of
visions.
Uzziah was a good king whose
prosperous fifty-two year reign over Judah is recorded in 2 Ch 26. Jeroboam
the son of Joash, on the other hand, during his forty-one reign over Israel
did evil in the sight of the Lord, see 2 Ki 14:23-24.
The earthquake referred to is
generally believed to have occurred in 720 B.C., the resultant widespread
devastation being viewed by some as simply a preview of the far more
catastrophic judgments that will leave today’s world in ruins as described in
the book of Revelation.
1:2.
“And he said, The Lord will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from
Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of
Carmel shall wither.”
Zion is that part of Jerusalem
which was a fortress (citadel) held by the Jebusites until the days of David,
the first mention of the name Zion being found in 2 Sa 5:6-9 which records
that David named it also “the city of David” after wresting it from Jebusite
control. The name Zion was eventually applied to Mount Moriah the site upon
which the Temple was built. It is frequently used in Scripture to designate
the whole city of Jerusalem.
The Lord’s roaring (as of a
lion leaping on its prey and making escape impossible) is associated with His
judgmental anger exercised when His patience has been exhausted and there is
no hope of mercy, and here it is followed by the withering of the lush
pastures of Mount Carmel, so that the sheep die, causing the shepherds to
mourn. Carmel, meaning fruitful field, is synonymous with fertility,
so that the message of its withered pastures is that if Carmel withers what
hope is there for the rest of the country!
Corresponding to the rich
pastures about to be withered was the affluence which Israel had enjoyed, but
which had resulted in her arrogant disregard of God, so that He was about to
take away in judgment everything that had been meant for her blessing, but
which had produced instead ungrateful rebellion.
We are reading this prophecy
with blinded eyes if we fail to see that the same conditions prevail in our
modern world, and will bring down also the judgment of the God Whose patience
we have so sorely tried, and finally exhausted. The terrible Tribulation age
judgments are about to be poured out on a world that has not just ignored God,
but that has brazenly defied Him.
1:3.
“Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I
will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have threshed Gilead
with threshing instruments of iron:”
Damascus was the capital of
Syria (Aram) which was a bitter foe of Israel (see 2 Ki 10:32-33; 13:3-7), and
had been particularly cruel in its harassment of Gilead which lay just to the
south on the eastern side of the Jordan river, and was therefore particularly
vulnerable. The threshing of Gilead with threshing instruments of iron is a
graphic figure of speech denoting the harshness of Syria’s treatment of the
people of Gilead. Some suggest that the threshing was also literal, having
reference to a cruel practice of actually sawing victims in two, or of
dragging heavy iron- or stone-toothed threshing sledges over their naked
bodies.
Keeping in mind that the
consummate sin of Israel, and of the world, was their treatment of the Lord
Jesus Christ, who can forget what was done to Him at the time of His so-called
trial and crucifixion, fulfilling what was written, “The plowers plowed upon
my back: they made long their furrows,” Ps 129:3; “... his visage was so
marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men,” Isa 52:14.
“For three transgressions ...
and for four” is a symbolic way of indicating repeated transgressions
(rebellions) for which God was about to punish them.
Some understand the term “For
three transgressions ... and for four,” to mean seven, the biblical
number of completeness, and indicating that they had exhausted God’s patience
by filling their cup of iniquity to the brim.
The word “transgressions” is
related to the idea of revolt against just authority; and some understand the
references in Amos to be to the revolt of the nations against God’s covenant
made with the human race through Noah in Ge 9:5-6, in which He emphasized the
dire consequences of taking human life, “And surely your blood of your lives
will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand
of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man.
Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image
of God made he man.”
This suggestion has much to
commend it, for throughout the book of Amos it was primarily the wanton
shedding of blood that provoked God’s judgment on the Gentile nations, while
in the case of Israel she had in addition violated the covenant made between
her and Jehovah at Sinai through Moses, the terms of which embraced much more
than forbidding bloodshed.
It is to be noted also that
while the nations were not actually included in the Mosaic covenant, Ro
2:14-15 makes it clear that their consciences make them aware of wrongdoing,
“For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things
contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves;
which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also
bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing
one another.” As Bernard Osborne has aptly commented in his book The
Prophecy of Amos, “They (the nations) were without special revelation, but
not without moral accountability.” The same writer adds the further
instructive comment that, “The first two nations are characterized by gross
cruelty, and the general relationships of life are violated. That the second
pair are brothers adds an extra dimension to their cruelty. The particular
relationships of life are being violated. In the third pair cruelty was
wreaked on the unborn babe, destroying thereby the future, and on a corpse,
thus desecrating the past. Here violation was done to the special claims of
life, the attitude of the strong to the weak.”
We can’t read this comment
relative to the unborn without remembering that here in America, under cover
of the euphemism “legalized abortion,” countless unborn infants are
slaughtered simply to cover up fornication and adultery, while the same
infanticide is practiced in China in the name of population control. It is
doubtful also whether there has ever been an age in which there has been such
desecration of the wholesome values held by past generations.
1:4.
“But I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, which shall devour the
palaces (fortifications) of Ben-hadad.”
1:5.
“I will break also the bar of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitant from the
plain of Aven, and him that holdeth the scepter from the house of Eden: and
the people of Syria shall go into captivity unto Kir, saith the Lord.”
Hazael had become king of
Syria by murdering his master, king Ben-hadad II, see 2 Ki 8:7-15, and here
God declares His intention to destroy Hazael and his son Ben-hadad III. This
judgment was executed in 732 B.C., see 2 Ki 16:5-9, God using the Assyrians
under Tiglath-Pileser III as His instrument. Aven and Eden, places in the
vicinity of Damascus, were associated particularly with the licentious worship
of Venus, and with sun worship.
Kir is believed to be the name
of the place in Mesopotamia from which the Syrians (Aramaens) had come
originally.
1:6.
“Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Gaza, and for four, I will
not turn away the punishment thereof; because they carried away captive the
whole captivity, to deliver them up to Edom.”
The Amplified translation of
the latter part of this verse reads, “... because [as slave traders] they
carried away captive the whole Jewish population [of defenseless Judean border
villages] - of which none were spared, none left behind - and delivered them
up to Edom’s slave trade.”
The mention of the other
principal Philistine cities in verse 8 makes it clear that Gaza is used here
representatively of all Philistia.
The crime which so angered God
was not the selling into slavery of captives taken in war, but deliberate
raiding for the sole purpose of capturing slaves for sale to the Edomite slave
traders - a particularly cruel fate for the captured Israelites since the
Edomites were their inveterate enemies.
“... because they carried away
captive the whole captivity, to deliver them up to Edom.” We can’t read this
without remembering what was done to the Lord, “And they that laid hold on
Jesus led him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the
elders were assembled,” Mt 26:57; “And when they had bound him, they led him
away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate,” Mt 27:2
1:7.
“But I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza, which shall devour the palaces
thereof:”
1:8.
“And I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, and him that holdeth the
scepter from Ashkelon, and I will turn mine hand against Ekron: and the
remnant of the Philistines shall perish, saith the Lord God.”
The fulfillment of this came
in 743 BC when the Assyrian Tiglath-Pileser subdued Gaza and most of Philistia,
placing them under tribute. In 711 BC their refusal to continue paying
tribute brought the destruction of Ashdod; and for the same reason, brought
the attack on Ashkelon and Ekron by Sennacherib in 701 BC. The final
destruction of the Philistines came at the hand of the Maccabees in the period
168-134 B.C.
The Bible Knowledge
Commentary makes the following comment relative to the omission here of
Gath from the list of Philistine cities, “The omission of the fifth, Gath, may
be due to its ruined condition at the time of Amos because of the batterings
of Hazael in 815 B.C. and Uzziah in 760 B.C. (cf. Kings 12:17; 2 Chron. 26:6;
Amos 6:2).”
1:9.
“Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Tyrus, and for four, I will
not turn away the punishment thereof; because they delivered up the whole
captivity to Edom, and remembered not the brotherly covenant:”
1:10.
“But I will send a fire on the wall of Tyrus, which shall devour the palaces
thereof.”
The Amplified
translation of the latter half of verse 9 reads, “... because they [as
middlemen] delivered up a whole [Jewish] population to Edom, and did not
[seriously] remember their brotherly covenant.”
Nothing is known of the
occasion when Tyre delivered up a whole Jewish population to the Edomites who
were slave traders; but the “brotherly covenant” is generally considered to
have been that made between Solomon and Hiram king of Tyre, as recorded in 1
Ki 5:12.
Tyre was the principal city of
Phoenicia, and it seems that the Phoenicians had acted as middlemen in handing
over to the Edomite slave traders all the Jews of a particular area who had
been captured in a slave-taking raid or in a general attack. The enormity of
their crime centered on the fact that they had done this with total disregard
for the covenant that had been made between Solomon and Hiram, and which
apparently had not been abrogated.
The foretold destruction of
Tyre came in stages. Nebuchadnezzar besieged it for thirteen years (587-574
BC), and Alexander the Great, after a seven-month siege, destroyed it in 332
B.C., when 6,000 Tyrians were slain, 2,000 crucified, and 30,000 sold as
slaves. It was rebuilt, however, and existed in the Lord’s day, the present
day city of Sur standing on the original site.
This rebuilding would indicate
that the ultimate fulfillment of God’s Word relative to the destruction of
some of these cities won’t occur until the Tribulation
1:11.
“Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Edom (Esau), and for four, I
will not turn away the punishment thereof; because he did pursue his brother
with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually,
and he kept his wrath for ever:”
The specific instance alluded
to here is unknown, but Edom’s enmity towards Israel is proverbial, being
mentioned in other Scriptures, e.g., Nu 20; 2 Chr 28:17; Ps 137:5; Jer
49:7-22; Ez 25:12-14; and Obadiah; and what made his sin the more heinous was
the fact that he was related to Israel by blood, for Esau and Jacob (Israel)
were brothers.
1:12.
“But I will send a fire upon Teman, which shall devour the palaces of Bozrah.”
Teman and Bozrah were the two
principal cities of Edom, and are used here to designate the whole land, which
was conquered by Assyria c. 736 BC, and had become a virtual desert by the
fifth century B.C., see Mal 1:1-4.
1:13.
“Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of the children of Ammon, and
for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have
ripped up the women with child of Gilead, that they might enlarge their
border:”
The Ammonites were descended
from Ben-ammi, Lot’s incestuously begotten younger son, and were therefore
related to Israel, who on their journey from Egypt to Canaan were forbidden by
God to interfere with the Ammonites, “And when thou comest nigh over against
the children of Ammon, distress them not, nor meddle with them: for I will not
give thee of the land of the children of Ammon any possession: because I have
given it unto the children of Lot for a possession,” Dt 2:19. It might have
been expected therefore that the Ammonites would have remembered that
kindness, but they didn’t, and in attempting to enlarge their borders, used
unbelievable cruelty against the two and a half tribes who had settled in
Gilead, east of the Jordan. In one raid on Gilead, or perhaps in many, they
had ripped open pregnant women in what is generally believed to have been a
systematic attempt to wipe out the Gileadites altogether so that they, the
Ammonites could seize their land.
1:14.
“But I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah, and it shall devour the
palaces thereof, with shouting in the day of battle, with a tempest in the day
of the whirlwind:”
1:15.
“And their king shall go into captivity, he and his princes together, saith
the Lord.”
However forgetful Ammon might
be relative to the kindness shown them by God and His people, God does not
forget, and in His own perfect time will call every offender to judgment.
Rabbah was the capital city of
the Ammonites, and in its destruction God bids the observer see the
destruction of the whole kingdom, the instrument of that destruction being
Nebuchadnezzar, for though Ammon continued to exist thereafter, it was of
little importance, and by the time of the Romans had disappeared from
history. The tempest and the whirlwind are both frequently used scriptural
symbols of God’s judgmental wrath.
[Amos 2]