Amos 1:1-5

PUNISHMENT PROMISED, THE HEATHEN NATIONSDAMASCUS

TEXT: Amos 1:1-5

1.

The words of Amos, who was among the herdsmen 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.

2.

And he said, Jehovah will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the pastures of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither.

3.

Thus saith Jehovah; For three transgressions of Damascus, yea, for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron:

4.

but I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, and it shall devour the palaces of Benhadad.

5.

And I will break the bar of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitant from the valley of Aven, and him that holdeth the sceptre from the house of Eden; and the people of Syria shall go into captivity into Kir, saith Jehovah.

QUERIES

a.

Why would God send a man from Judah to prophesy to Israel?

b.

How does Jehovah roar from Zion?

c.

Where is Kir?

PARAPHRASE

These are words of Amos who was a herdsman living in the village of Tekoa. One day, in a vision, God told him some of the things which were going to happen to the northern kingdom, Israel. This vision came to him at the time Uzziah was king of Judah, and while Jeroboam, (son of Joash), was king of Israeltwo years before the great earthquake. Amos said, The Lord, like a ferocious lion, roars His warning from His dwelling place in Jerusalem, the city of Zion. The lush pasturelands wither from the top of Mount Carmel to the plains.
This the Lord's word: Because of sin after sin committed by Damascus I will not leave her unpunished. Because these Syrians crushed the prisoners of my people to death with iron threshing machines of war I will punish them. I will burn down the palaces of Hazael and Benhadad. I will tear down the defenses of the capital city Damascus and slaughter the inhabitants of Syria's major cities, even the potentates of these cities will I slaughter. Those who are left of Syria I will send into captivity into the land of Elam.

SUMMARY

The Lord roars His warnings like a lion from its lair. He begins with Damascus, or Syria. The heathen are responsible to God for their injustices and immoralities.

COMMENT

Amos 1:1. THE WORDS OF AMOS. OF TEKOA. CONCERNING ISRAEL. We do not know exactly why God chose a man of the southern kingdom, Judah, to send with His message to the northern kingdom, Israel. The fact that God's presence remained in the Temple which was in Jerusalem, the southern kingdom, may have had something to do with it. However, Hosea, a younger contemporary of Amos, prophet to Israel, was from Israel. All we need to know is that God selected the right man at the right time to do the right job. We have already discussed the date of Amos-' prophecy and his place of birth in the Introduction of this book. It should be remembered that he preached his messages of denunciation and doom in an atmosphere of unprecedented material prosperity which was being accompanied by a widespread decay of moral values and a wicked oppression of the poor. Disaster seemed most unlikely. Amos and his message were extremely unpopular. Yet within a very few years four kings of Israel had been assassinated, then Hoshea was deposed and imprisoned and Israel ceased to be a nation in 722-721 B.C. at the Assyrian captivity. Though he was a shepherder, Amos is the author of the purest and most classical Hebrew in the entire Old Testament. His style is grave, measured, and rhetoricalAmos was an orator. He uses brief, uninvolved sentences. His vocabulary and style are conspicuously those of Semetic homeliness, especially of a man of the wilderness.

Amos 1:2 JEHOVAH WILL ROAR FROM ZION. PASTURES SHALL MOURN. AND THE TOP OF CARMEL. WITHER. How often Amos had probably heard the wild lion of the mountainous regions around Tekoa roar its warning from its lair. The Hebrew people were very familiar with lions and many books in the Bible mention them. The Lord Jesus Christ is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah. A number of instances are mentioned where a man of Palestine killed a lion in a single-handed encounter (Judges 14:5-8; 1 Samuel 17:36-37). See our comments on Joel 3:16 also. Zion is tsiyon in Hebrew and probably means citadel. It is the name of one of the hills or mountains on which Jerusalem stood. It is first mentioned in the O.T. as a Jebusite fortress (2 Samuel 5:6-9), but David captured it and called it the city of David. It is used figuratively for the covenant people of God both of O.T. times and N.T. times (cf. Isaiah 33:14; Isaiah 34:8; Isaiah 49:14, etc. for O.T. covenant people; of. Hebrews 12:22 for N.T. usage which also indicates some O.T. usage of Zion was prophetic of the N.T. church). In this case Zion means the city of God, Jerusalem (as evidenced by the parallelism here), where God's presence dwells. It would be a subtle reminder to the northern kingdom that God was to be worshiped only at Jerusalem! (cf. Exodus 25:21-22; Exodus 29:42-43; Exodus 40:33-38; Numbers 7:89; Leviticus 1:1; 1 Kings 8:10-11).

Amos reveals that the Sovereign God will bring His judgment upon Israel first through a drought. God will wither the pasture land from the top of forest-crowned Mt. Carmel, the mountain at the mouth of the Kishon river, to the verdant plains of the lowlands. The shepherd's heart of Amos could picture no greater display of God's judgment than the burning and withering of the fresh green pasture lands so urgently necessary to the life of this farming, shepherding people. Carmel means garden. Mt. Carmel was an especially verdant place for grazing sheep. Its perennial springs outlasted even the three years and six months of drought in Elijah's days (cf. 1 Kings 17:18). If this pasture-land should wither it would be manifestly at the command of God. Practically every prophet reveals Jehovah God as the Sovereign of naturethe Creator, Sustainer and User of Nature. He sustains nature under certain laws inviolable only until He deems it necessary to manipulate or contravene them to serve His omnipotent and omniscient purposes.

Amos 1:3. FOR THREE TRANSGRESSIONS OF DAMASCUS. FOR FOUR. I WILL NOT TURN AWAY THE PUNISHMENT. THEY HAVE THRESHED GILEAD WITH THRESHING INSTRUMENTS OF IRON. K & D say, ... the numbers merely serve to denote the multiplicity of the sins, the exact number of which has no bearing upon the matter. It is a Hebrew idiom expressing fulness. J. B. Phillips, in Four Prophets, translates it, Because of outrage after outrage committed by Damascus. The Syrians have filled their cup of wickedness full to overflowing. God will not relent! He is going to punish them. Their one greatest sin has been to cruelly crush the Gileadites (a territory east of the Jordan allocated to Reuben, Gad and Manasseh) with iron threshing carts. Hazael the Syrian king did this when he conquered that territory during the reign of Jehu (2 Kings 10:32-33; 2 Kings 13:7; cf. also 2 Samuel 12:31). The threshing cart was a sort of a cart with toothed iron wheels underneath, which was driven about to crush the straw in the threshing-floors after the grain had been beaten out. They have despoiled God's possessionthey have violated, and that in the cruelest fashion, the most basic law of Godthe sanctity of human life. But even worse, they have done despite to the covenant people of God (cf. our comments on Obadiah). To attack God's people is to attack God!

Amos 1:4-5. I WILL SEND A FIRE INTO THE HOUSE OF HAZAEL. BREAK THE BAR OF DAMASCUS. AND THE PEOPLE OF SYRIA SHALL GO INTO CAPTIVITY INTO KIR. Hazael was the murderer of Benhadad I, to whom the prophet Elisha foretold that he would reign over Syria, and predicted the cruelties that he would practice towards Israel (2 Kings 8:7 ff). An inscription of Shalmaneser III states that Benhadad perished and Hazael, a son of nobody, (meaning not of royal lineage), seized the throne. Shalmaneser III also records two attacks on Hazael in which he claims great victories for Assyria with severe damage to the Syrian countryside. Hazael reigned for at least 43 years and perhaps longer, and he oppressed Israel all the days of his reign. In 732 Tiglathpileser III subdued the city of Damascus and brought an end to the Aramaean state.

To break the bar of Damascus would mean to break the bolt of the gate. Literally, to destroy the city's defenses and overcome it. To cut off the inhabitant is to slaughter him. Those who were not slaughtered, God would cause to be taken into captivity to Kir. Kir (cf. Isaiah 22:6) the territory in ancient Elam east of the Persian Gulf, on the banks of the river Kur, from which, according to Amos 9:7, the Syrians originally emigrated. Many of the Syrians were taken captive in Tiglathpileser's conquest in 732 B.C.

Jehovah God, all-sovereign Creator of the universe, orders the migrations and national boundaries of the nations (Acts 17:26), and cares for their welfare (Acts 14:15-18). He brought up the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir (Amos 9:7). He has the right and the power to punish them for their sins. And what are the sins of which they are guilty? As we have mentioned before, they are guilty of desecrating God's holy people. But in the main their sin is simply inhumanity. They have broken those most basic laws of God written on the heart and conscience of all mankind by which the relation of man to man and nation to nation ought to be governed. They are capable of exercising moral judgments. Therefore the violation of the natural laws of humanity written on their consciences demands punishment.

QUIZ

1.

Why was Amos-' message so unpopular in his day?

2.

What is the figure of God roaring referring to?

3.

Why be so specific that God's warning would come from Zion?

4.

How does God use nature to serve His purposes?

5.

How did the Syrians thresh the people of Gilead?

6.

Who was Hazael and when did he live and what kind of a person was he?

7.

What do we learn from God's message to the heathen here?