Amos 8:9 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And it shall come to pass, &c.— Times of calamity are frequently expressed by the failing of the light of the sun, and the day's being overspread with darkness. Archbishop Usher has observed, that about eleven years after the time when Amos prophesied, there were two great eclipses of the sun; one at the feast of tabernacles, the other some time before the passover; so that the text may probably be understood of that darkness, used here to typify the dreadful calamities of Israel. We have heretofore observed, that the eastern poets use a variety of expressions very similar to those of the sacred writers. See Ezekiel 20:47. Aboul-Farrage Sangiari, a Persian who lived at the time of the irruption of the Tartars under Genghiz-Khan, gives this description of those miserable days: "It was a time in which the sun arose in the West; every kind of joy was then banished from the world, and men appeared to be made for no other end but suffering. In all countries through which I have passed, I either found nobody at all, or met only with distressed wretches." Just so the prophet threatens that God would make the sun go down at noon, &c. The sun's going down at noon, and its rising in the West, are different expressions, but of the same import, and serving to illustrate one another; for they both signify how extremely short their time of prosperity would be, how unexpectedly it would terminate, and for how long a time it would be succeeded by suffering, of which darkness was often made the emblem. See Observations, p. 322.