Therefore thus saith the LORD; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou shalt die in a polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land.
Therefore thus saith the Lord; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city - i:e., shall be forced by the enemy, while thou art looking on, unable to prevent her dishonour (Isaiah 13:16; Lamentations 5:11). The words, "saith THE LORD," are in striking opposition to "thou sayest" (Amos 7:16).
And thy land shall be divided by line - among the foe.
And thou shalt die in a polluted land. Israel regarded every foreign land as that which really her own land was now, "polluted" (Isaiah 24:5; Jeremiah 2:7). Probably, in Pul's invasion of Israel under Menahem, Amaziah met his doom. God is not anxious to vindicate His word. He does not as to Shebna (Isaiah 22:17-18), Amaziah, Ahab, or Zedekiah (Jeremiah 29:20-22). The sentence of the criminal, unless reprieved, in itself implies the execution. 'The majesty of Scripture doth not lower itself to linger on baser persons' (Pusey).
Remarks:
(1) The Lord here marks three stages in His punishment of Israel. Each succeeding one exceeds the preceding in severity. The two earlier ones, through the intercession of the prophet, stop short of utter ruin. The third and last brings with it complete destruction. These three prophetic stages correspond to the three successive invasions of the Assyrians. The first, under Pul, brought upon the Israelite king, Menahem, and his people, a heavy fine. The second, under Tiglath-pileser, who was invited by Ahaz, king of Judah, brought on Pekah and Israel the deportation of the northern and eastern Israelites. The third, under Shalmaneser and Esar-haddon, utterly extinguished the kingdom of the ten tribes.
(2) The prophet saw in vision the Lord God in the act of forming (for such is the force of the Hebrew) locusts as instruments to execute His judgments. The least as well as the greatest creatures are continually being formed by His hand. "My Father worketh, hitherto, and I work" (John 5:17), is the Lord's own refutation of those who deify 'the laws of nature,' and substitute their operation for that of the Omnipresent and Omnipotent God. God overrules and guides those laws of His own appointment, according to His own sovereign will. The same God forms the locust, who created the universe: and both alike execute the mission for which He appoints them.
(3) The power of intercessory prayer is remarkably illustrated in the prophet's intercessions with God for his afflicted country, and their results. Unlike his self-seeking countrymen, Amos was truly "grieved for the affliction of Joseph" (Amos 6:6). Those are our best friends who are friends of God, and who pray for us. Like grass that had been mown down, and then sprang up afresh, but was again, and more utterly, eaten up by locusts (Amos 7:1-2), so Israel, after its sufferings from the Syrian invasions, had temporarily revived under Jeroboam II, but was again reduced to "small" dimensions by the Assyrian, Pul. At this critical time Amos lifted up his prayer, "O Lord God, forgive, I beseech thee" (Amos 7:2). His plea is his people's prostrate state, which precluded all hope of "arising," save by the special grace of God. We can use no more effective argument with God than our necessity, as the ground for His exercise of mercy. 'Who is Jacob, that he should arise? for he is small.' When we learn, through chastisement, to become small in our own eyes, the Lord repents of the further evil which otherwise we should have incurred. God heard His servant Amos' prayer: "It shall not be, saith the Lord" (Amos 7:3). How immediate is the answer to prayer, and how God waits to be gracious, if only we will wait on Him!
(4) When one chastisement fails to lead men to thorough repentance, another and a severer follows. The Lord God has at His "call" (Amos 7:4) all the elements wherewith to "contend" with sinful rebels who virtually dare to "contend" with Him. If the locusts will not bring the rebels to submission, "fire," which is still more destructive, shall follow. And if this also fail, then the plumb-line of final and everlasting destruction shall be extended over the doomed transgressors. Amos at this point ceases to intercede, because the extreme limit of God's forbearance was now, in vision, by this time past, and nothing remained but consuming judgment.
(5) It was a thing most improbable that the Assyrian monarch, after having utterly destroyed the Syrian monarchy, and depopulated half of Israel, should turn back in the full tide of victory, and not advance on the capital, Samaria. Yet so it came to pass. No doubt there were secondary causes that operated for this result; but the primary cause was the gracious answer of God to the intercessory prayer of the herdman of Tekoa, about 47 years before. Like the planets that revolve on their own axis, and all the while are constrained to revolve round the central sun, so the politics of man, while turning on the axis of human policy, are all the while overruled so as to move in the orbit of God's purposes.
(6) When destruction at last came upon Israel it was in accordance with the divine announcement made through Amos long before. The Lord had "stood over (so the Hebrew may be better rendered, instead of the English version) the wall made by a plumb-line, with a plumb-line in His hand" (Amos 7:7). The wall symbolizes the Israelite state, originally designed to be "Jeshurun," the upright people (Deuteronomy 33:5; Deuteronomy 33:26; Isaiah 44:2). Just as a wall is originally made straight by the perpendicular plumb-line, and is afterward by the architect discovered with the same plumb-line to have fallen out of the perpendicular, and to be a bowing, bulging wall, so, now that Israel was proved, by the exact rule of God's perfect law, to be altogether crooked in her ways, God was about to destroy her by the same rule of right wherewith He had built her up (Amos 7:8). The high places called after Isaac, whose meditative, gentle piety, his descendants so utterly failed to copy, were to be desolate. The Lord Himself world rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword (Amos 7:9). A day is coming upon us all when, by the law and the grace which we have received, by the same shall we be judged. As the Lord stood "in the midst of Israel," so shall He "stand at the latter day (Job 19:25) upon the earth," and shall give to each in exact accordance with has deserts: and He who has so often spared "will not again pass by" the impenitent "anymore" (Amos 7:8).
(7) They who will be faithful to their Lord are sure, like Amos, to encounter adversaries. Amaziah, the priest of the idolatrous altar at Bethel, feared that his craft, whereby he had his wealth (Acts 19:25), was in danger, through the prophesyings of Amos, which led many to renounce the worship of the calves. He therefore sent to Jeroboam II, accusing the prophet of a conspiracy against the king "in the middle of the house of Israel" (Amos 7:10). Amos had declared the words of God, "I will set a plumb-line in the midst of my people Israel." This Amaziah construes into treason against the king in the midst of the people. In all ages the servants of God have been maligned as if they were enemies of their king and country. Involuntarily the worldly recognize the power of the really religious man's words, as Amaziah did when he said of Amos, "The land is not able to bear all his words." "Unable to resist the wisdom and the spirit" by which God's servants speak (Acts 6:10), they have recourse to persecution, the resource of those who feel their cause a bad one, and who dare not appeal to reason and the Word of God.
(8) Amaziah, retaining part of Amos' words in his allegation against him, alters the rest: "Thus Amos saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword." But Amos had always said, not I say, but "Thus saith the Lord." Again, what Amos had said was, not Jeroboam shall die with the sword, but "I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword" (Amos 7:9). A lie blended with partial truth is the most subtle, and therefore the most dangerous form of falsehood. The grain of truth gains credence for the wholesale lie. It was so that the father of lies first gained the ear of Eve, and then from an insinuated lie boldly advanced to an open lie. Amaziah suppresses the truth that Amos had stated Israel's sins as the ground of Israel's coming punishment. Amaziah also omits Amos' repeated calls to repentance, with the accompanying promise, "Seek the Lord, and ye shall live" (Amos 5:6). Thus slander and heresy ever recommend their falsehoods with fragments of truth. Let us see that, in speaking to and of others, we scrupulously respect the majesty of truth, not only shunning a lie, but neither suggesting what is untrue, nor suppressing aught of the whole truth, which would tend to deceive our neighbour.
(9) Worldly men think that those who profess religion do so for the sake of gain. Visionary "seer," said Amaziah to Amos in contempt, "flee away into Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there." The self-seeking men of the world do not credit the existence of disinterested piety. He preaches, say they of the self-denying minister, because he is paid for it. He is indeed paid for it; but not in earthly gain: the service and glory of his God are his richest reward.
(10) "Prophesy not again anymore at Beth-el," said Amaziah, "for it is the king's chapel" or sanctuary. Unwittingly he lets out the truth, that the altar at Bethel was the creation of the king, not the ordinance of God. Amos in reply alleges the Lord's mission as his warrant for prophesying-a mission which he durst not resist. "The Lord took me, as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel" (Amos 7:15). 'Heaven thundered, and commanded him to prophesy; the frog croaked in answer out of his marsh, Prophesy no more' (from Pusey). However humble our sphere, when God calls, we must answer the summons. "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). Therefore Amos, when accused of rebellion against the earthly king, pronounces boldly the doom of his accuser, who had rebelled against the King of kings. Amos now expressly uses the words, inaccurately before attributed to him by Amaziah, "Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land" (cf. Amos 7:17 with 11). Thus the sinner pronounces unwittingly his own sentence. They who pollute themselves with earthly idols shall die in their pollutions, and shall be given up to them everlastingly (Amos 7:17). Let us adore the righteous God for His judgments, and live as those who have passed from under condemnation into life!