CRITICAL NOTES.] Amos sees God standing, fixed in purpose, by the altar. Posts] Thresholds (Isaiah 6:4). Cut] Human victims demanded; wounded with fragments of broken columns (cf. Psalms 68:21; Habakkuk 3:13). Last] Those left cannot escape.
Amos 9:2.] The Lord everywhere will pursue and destroy them (ch. Amos 2:14). Hell] Though they hide themselves in the deepest holes and caverns of earth. Climb] the greatest heights (Job 20:6-7; Jeremiah 51:53).
Amos 9:3. Carmel] One of the highest mountains, full of caves and forests (Judges 6:2; 1 Samuel 13:6). Serpent] A great sea-monster (Isaiah 27:1).
Amos 9:4. Go] willingly into captivity; the sword shall slay them. Set] “God has fixed His eye upon them, i.e. has taken them under His special superintendence (cf. Jeremiah 39:12); not to shelter, protect, and bless, but for evil, i.e. to punish them” [Keil]
HOMILETICS
THE FINAL CALAMITY.—Amos 9:1-4
In previous visions we see the ripeness of the people and the nearness of judgment. In this God himself is engaged to execute it. The temple at Bethel is a fitting emblem of the nation, which gathers round it. The command is given to smite. It shakes, falls, and buries the multitude under its ruins. The sanctuary was overthrown by the judgment of God, and the kingdom of Israel totally destroyed.
I. The nature of the calamity.
1. It is moral. God stands upon the altar and smites the idolatrous temple. He is ready to depart from them and punish them for apostasy. He was forsaking his people because they had forsaken him. God warns men, before he departs from them. But idolatry provokes him, and turns the place of sacrifice into a throne of vengeance. The posts and pillars of the temple are smitten. “Begin at my sanctuary” (Ezekiel 9:6). The nearer to God, the greater the provocations; the higher the privileges, the nearer to judgment (Daniel 9:12; 1 Peter 4:17).
2. It is complete. It involves the utter destruction of the kingdom, the overthrow of the nation in its corporate existence.
(1) The heads of the people. “Cut them in the head, all of them.” Civil and religious leaders had neglected their duty, forgotten their dignity, and disregarded the good of the nation. God is no respecter of persons. Head or heel they cannot escape. “He is terrible to the kings of the earth.”
(2) The posterity of the people. “I will slay the last of them with the sword.” God will slay all the remainder, their families and their posterity, all that are left, unto the very last. Justice is unsparing. Great and small, kings and common people, must suffer. Universality in sin brings universality in punishment. Neither pre-eminence nor poverty can protect from guilt. When the head is smitten, the body faints, and every member suffers with it.
II. The certainty of the calamity. None can escape, for God is Omniscient (Amos 9:2-4), and God is Omnipotent.
1. God has determined to punish. He appears in an attitude of judgment; fixed in purpose, to prohibit sacrifices and avenge his honour. Israel’s iniquity was like that of the house of Eli, which “could not be purged with sacrifice nor offering for ever” (1 Samuel 3:14).
2. It is impossible to escape punishment.
(1) The loftiest heights cannot protect them, (a) Carmel, with its caves and its forests, a hiding-place for robbers and runaways, could afford no refuge. “I will search and take them out thence.” (b) Heaven itself could not hide them. If they fixed their throne in the stars, and climbed the highest regions of space, they would fall into the hands of God. From thence would he humble, judge, and condemn them. “Thence will I bring them down.”
(2) The greatest depths cannot hide them, (a) If they were to “dig in Hell,” in the deepest and most secret places of the earth, God would find them. “Thence shall my hand take them.” (b) “Though they be hid in the bottom of the sea,” the deadly serpent would bite them (Isaiah 27:1). Diving would avail no more than climbing. Height and depth, light and darkness are alike open to the Omnipresent God. Men would gladly hide themselves from God’s presence, but they cannot.
(3) The longest distance cannot shelter them. Captivity might seem safe, for men do not often slay those whom they carry away. But God would discover them among their enemies, and remotest countries could not befriend them. Sinners would gladly dig into hell or climb up to heaven to escape from God’s presence; but God is everywhere. “If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me” (Psalms 139:7-11).
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Amos 9:1. Standing upon the altar. The place of mercy turned into judgment. The Bible, the means of grace, and every altar of idolatry, literal or spiritual, will be smitten by God. Abused altars will be turned into seats of justice, and cry for vengeance, not sacrifice. “They were in counterfeit of the sacrifices which God had appointed, they offered would-be-atoning sacrifices, and sinned in them; God appeared standing, to behold, to judge, to condemn” [Pusey].
Amos 9:2 to Amos 4:1. The power of Divine judgments.
2. The subservience of God’s attributes in their execution.
3. The impossibility of escaping them. “Every syllable is important, even though at first it may seem otherwise. The Holy Spirit designs to shake off our self-flatteries and rouse our innate torpor, that we may not think of God as of ourselves, but know that his power extends to all hiding-places” [Calvin].
I. Desperate efforts of sinners to escape. They dig, they climb, and “they go into captivity,” willingly, in presumption and fear. In presence of danger men are roused to most strenuous efforts. They multiply endless means, and think they can get out of every trouble by turning away from God, II. Fruitless efforts of sinners to escape. What the Psalmist says of God’s omnipresence (Psalms 139) the Prophet declares concerning his justice. All refuge is hopeless and ruin is inevitable. No depth of delusion nor human devices can secure the sinner from the serpent-bite of conscience here, and no mountains nor hills can hide from the presence of God hereafter. Only in Christ can refuge be found. Escape for thy life.
He contrasts Mount Carmel, which rises abruptly out of the sea, with depths of that ocean which it overhangs. Carmel was in two ways a hiding-place.
1. Through its caves (some say 1000, some 2000) with which it is perforated, whose entrance sometimes scarcely admits a single man; so close to each other that a pursuer would not discern into which the fugitive had vanished; so serpentine within, that 10 steps apart, says a traveller, we could hear each others’ voices, but could not see each other.
2. Its summit, about 1800 feet above the sea, is covered with pines and oaks, and lower down with olive and laurel trees. These forests furnished hiding-places to robber-hordes at the time of our Lord. In those caves Elijah probably at times was hidden from the persecution of Ahab and Jezebel. Carmel, as the western extremity of the land, projecting into the sea, was the last place which a fugitive would reach. If he found no safety there, there was none in his whole land. Nor was there by sea [Pusey].
HOMILETICS
GOD’S EYE FIXED ON SINNERS.—Amos 9:4
This is a figurative expression setting forth a solemn thought. As we indicate pleasure or anger by the look of the eye, or the form of our countenance, so God in providence fixes his “eyes over the righteous,” but his “face is against them that do evil” (Psalms 34:15).
1. In displeasure at his guilt. God is not indifferent to human conduct. He sets his eye upon all wicked deeds, and will give them no countenance nor support. If men obstinately rebel against him, he will show his displeasure against them. “I will set my face against that man” (Ezekiel 14:8: Leviticus 20:3; Leviticus 26:17).
2. In tracking his steps. “I will search and take them out thence.” God discovers the hypocrisy and finds out the hiding-place of men. They are watched as by spies, guarded as by sentinels; hemmed in and forbidden to escape. In repose and occupation, by night and by day, alone and with others, God narrowly looks into all their paths (Job 13:27).
3. In determination to punish his sin. “For evil and not for good.” The evil man is checkmated in life, followed by Nemesis, the prediction and in part the experience of justice. He flees from himself, from conscience, from God, and meets them all! His punishment is everywhere below, how then can he escape hereafter? If the eyes of Tamerlane had such power that men could hardly endure to behold them, what must the eyes of God be? If the frown of Augustus Cæsar or Queen Elizabeth was death, who can endure the anger of God? “For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his goings” (Job 34:21-22).
“So writhes the mind remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death” [Byron].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 9
Amos 9:1-4. Hide themselves. God is everywhere, not as the air is everywhere. The air is part in one place and part in another; God is all in every place. God is wholly in the height of heaven, and wholly in the depth of hell; wholly in the length of the earth, and wholly in the breadth of the sea. All God is in all things, and all God is without all things; He is without all things, and not shut out of anything. He is in all things, and not included in anything. So the ancients speak of this wonderful mystery of God’s omnipresence [Caryl].
God’s Eye—Sentences—
“Heaven hath its countless eyes to view men’s acts.
Can we outrun the heavens?
However wickedness outstrips men, it has no wings to fly from God” [Shakespeare].