Amos 8 - Introduction
VIII.... [ Continue Reading ]
VIII.... [ Continue Reading ]
The visions are resumed as though the priest at Bethel had trembled at the presence of Amos, and had ceased to persecute him. There is a remarkable play of words, _qaits_ being the Hebrew for “summer fruit,” and _qêts_ for “end.” It is harvest time, the end of the agricultural year. Israel is ripe f... [ Continue Reading ]
TEMPLE. — The word thus rendered (_hêchal_) also signifies “palace,” and this is probably the meaning in this passage. The “songs” have been already spoken of in Amos 6:5. The construction of the following clauses in the original is somewhat doubtful. Some commentators would break up the sentence in... [ Continue Reading ]
YE THAT SWALLOW UP... — Better, _ye that pant_ (or _are greedy_)_ for the very ashes on their heads._ MAKE... TO FAIL. — Literally, _make_... _to cease: i.e.,_ destroy.... [ Continue Reading ]
WHEN... GONE. — They desired that the festivals of the New Moon and Sabbath should be over, when they might not only return to their secular employments, but pursue their search for ill-gotten gains — a proof that these festivals were observed in the northern nation, even if they were disliked. SET... [ Continue Reading ]
On this perverse straining of the Law, comp. Amos 2:6. Their money-making propensity was carried to such unscrupulous lengths, that they even sold the refuse of corn, little better than mere chaff.... [ Continue Reading ]
EXCELLENCY OF JACOB. — In the previous use of this remarkable expression (Amos 6:8) Jehovah is said to abhor it, but here He swears by it. The “excellency” which He abhorred was the miserable substitute which they had made for His great Name. Here He gives it the value which, in itself, it ought to... [ Continue Reading ]
SHALL NOT THE LAND...? — The rendering should be, _The whole of it rises as the Nile, surges and subsides_ (or _sinks_)_ as the Egyptian Nile._ The solid land shall rise up in earthquake, like the Nile that ascends twenty feet in the time of its inundation, and then subsides.... [ Continue Reading ]
DARKEN THE EARTH. — The darkening of the sun at noon-day gives an image of confusion and terror (comp. Amos 5:20). The eclipse of the sun that is here alluded to (see _Excursus_ C), like the earthquake in the preceding verse, is employed as a powerful image of national calamity, the extinction of th... [ Continue Reading ]
The imagery is very vivid. The prophet threatens a famine of the word of Jehovah, and a parching thirst for the Water of Life, now no longer attainable. Such terrible destitution often supervenes on the neglect of the Word of God, the power to discern the ever-present Word being exhausted. Then come... [ Continue Reading ]
THEY SHALL WANDER FROM SEA TO SEA... — Stagger and reel from east to west to find one seer who knows the mind of the Lord: they shall not find one. The reference to the east here has an instructive parallel in Isaiah 2:6, where the house of Jacob is enounced as being “full of the east.” Probably Del... [ Continue Reading ]
FAINT. — That fair virgins and strong brave youths should faint by reason of their raging thirst suggests that the less vigorous would suffer even more keenly. It is sad when old men stumble into the darkness of unbelief amid the shining of the noon-day sun, seeing that they can remember the brightn... [ Continue Reading ]
THY GOD, O DAN, LIVETH. — Translate, _By the life of thy God, O Dan, and by the life of the way of Beersheba._ On such forms of oath, see Note on Amos 6:8. The “way of Beersheba” was the ritual practised at Beersheba, another mode of designating the deity himself (probably Baal).[18] So LXX. Similar... [ Continue Reading ]