14 Those who swear by the sin of Samaria, And say, 'As your god, Dan, lives;' And, 'As the way of Beersheba lives;' They will fall, and never rise up again."
But don't seek Bethel, Nor enter into Gilgal, And don't pass to Beersheba: For Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, And Bethel shall come to nothing.
and asked for letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, that if he found any who were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold; and he said to them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: see your gods, Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt. He set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan.
I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burnt it with fire, and stamped it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust: and I cast the dust of it into the brook that descended out of the mountain.
Let Samaria throw out his calf-idol! My anger burns against them! How long will it be before the are capable of purity? For this is even from Israel! The workman made it, and it is no God; Indeed, the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces.
About that time there arose no small stir concerning the Way.
But when some were hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus.
those who worship the host of the sky on the housetops, those who worship and swear by Yahweh and also swear by Malcam,
"The virgin of Israel has fallen; She shall rise no more. She is cast down on her land; There is no one to raise her up."
Now they sin more and more, And have made themselves molten images of their silver, Even idols according to their own understanding, All of them the work of the craftsmen. They say of them, "They offer human sacrifice and kiss the calves."
The inhabitants of Samaria will be in terror for the calves of Beth Aven; For its people will mourn over it, Along with its priests who rejoiced over it, For its glory, because it has departed from it.
"Though you, Israel, play the prostitute, Yet don't let Judah offend; And don't come to Gilgal, Neither go up to Beth Aven, Nor swear, 'As Yahweh lives.'
and you shall say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise again because of the evil that I will bring on her; and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.
who brings forth the chariot and horse, the army and the mighty man (they lie down together, they shall not rise; they are extinct, they are quenched as a wick):
He who is often rebuked and stiffens his neck Will be destroyed suddenly, with no remedy.
There the workers of iniquity are fallen. They are thrust down, and shall not be able to rise.
but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the wrath of Yahweh arose against his people, until there was no remedy.
He bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver; and he built on the hill, and called the name of the city which he built, after the name of Shemer, the owner of the hill, Samaria.
He will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he has sinned, and with which he has made Israel to sin.
but came back, and have eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which he said to you, Eat no bread, and drink no water; your body shall not come to the tomb of your fathers. It happened, after he had eaten bread, and after he had drunk, that he saddled for him the donkey, [to wit], for the prophet whom he had brought back. When he was gone, a lion met him by the way, and killed him: and his body was cast in the way, and the donkey stood by it; the lion also stood by the body. Behold, men passed by, and saw the body cast in the way, and the lion standing by the body; and they came and told it in the city where the old prophet lived. When the prophet who brought him back from the way heard of it, he said, It is the man of God, who was disobedient to the mouth of Yahweh: therefore Yahweh has delivered him to the lion, which has torn him, and slain him, according to the word of Yahweh, which he spoke to him. He spoke to his sons, saying, Saddle me the donkey. They saddled it. He went and found his body cast in the way, and the donkey and the lion standing by the body: the lion had not eaten the body, nor torn the donkey. The prophet took up the body of the man of God, and laid it on the donkey, and brought it back; and he came to the city of the old prophet, to mourn, and to bury him. He laid his body in his own grave; and they mourned over him, [saying], Alas, my brother! It happened, after he had buried him, that he spoke to his sons, saying, When I am dead, then bury me in the tomb in which the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones. For the saying which he cried by the word of Yahweh against the altar in Bethel, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, shall surely happen. After this thing Jeroboam didn't return from his evil way, but made again from among all the people priests of the high places: whoever would, he consecrated him, that there might be priests of the high places. This thing became sin to the house of Jeroboam, even to cut it off, and to destroy it from off the surface of the earth.
Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast that is in Judah, and he went up to the altar; so did he in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made: and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places that he had made.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Amos 8
Commentary on Amos 8 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
The Ripeness of Israel for Judgment - Amos 8:1-14
Under the symbol of a basket filled with ripe fruit, the Lord shows the prophet that Israel is ripe for judgment (Amos 8:1-3); whereupon Amos, explaining the meaning of this vision, announces to the unrighteous magnates of the nation the changing of their joyful feasts into days of mourning, as the punishment from God for their unrighteousness (Amos 8:4-10), and sets before them a time when those who now despise the word of God will sigh in vain in their extremity for a word of the Lord (Amos 8:11-14).
Vision of a Basket of Ripe Fruit. - Amos 8:1. “Thus did the Lord Jehovah show me: and behold a basket with ripe fruit. Amos 8:2. And He said, What seest thou, Amos? And I said, A basket of ripe fruit. Then Jehovah said to me, The end is come to my people Israel; I will not pass by them any more. Amos 8:3. And the songs of the palace will yell in that day, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah: corpses in multitude; in every place hath He cast them forth: Hush!” כּלוּב from כּלך , to lay hold of, to grasp, lit., a receiver, here a basket (of basket-work), in Jeremiah 5:27 a bird-cage. קיץ : summer-fruit (see at 2 Samuel 16:1); in Isaiah 16:9; Isaiah 28:4, the gathering of fruit, hence ripe fruit. The basket of ripe fruit ( qayits ) is thus explained by the Lord: the end ( qēts ) is come to my people (cf. Ezekiel 7:6). Consequently the basket of ripe fruit is a figurative representation of the nation that is now ripe for judgment, although qēts , the end, does not denote its ripeness for judgment, but its destruction, and the word qēts is simply chosen to form a paronomasia with qayits . לא אוסיף וגו as in Amos 7:8. All the joy shall be turned into mourning. the thought is not that the temple-singing to the praise of God (Amos 5:23) would be turned into yelling, but that the songs of joy (Amos 6:5; 2 Samuel 19:36) would be turned into yells, i.e., into sounds of lamentation (cf. Amos 8:10 and 1 Maccabees 9:41), namely, because of the multitude of the dead which lay upon the ground on every side. השׁליך is not impersonal, in the sense of “which men are no longer able to bury on account of their great number, and therefore cast away in quiet places on every side;” but Jehovah is to be regarded as the subject, viz., which God has laid prostrate, or cast to the ground on every side. For the adverbial use of הס cannot be established. The word is an interjection here, as in Amos 6:10; and the exclamation, Hush! is not a sign of gloomy despair, but an admonition to bow beneath the overwhelming severity of the judgment of God, as in Zephaniah 1:7 (cf. Habakkuk 2:20 and Zechariah 2:13).
To this vision the prophet attaches the last admonition to the rich and powerful men of the nation, to observe the threatening of the Lord before it is too late, impressing upon them the terrible severity of the judgment. Amos 8:4. “Hear this, ye that gape for the poor, and to destroy the meek of the earth, Amos 8:5. Saying, When is the new moon over, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may open wheat, to make the ephah small, and the shekel great, and to falsify the scale of deceit? Amos 8:6. To buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and the refuse of the corn will we sell.” The persons addressed are the השּׁאפים אביון , i.e., not those who snort at the poor man, to frighten him away from any further pursuit of his rights (Baur), but, according to Amos 2:6-7, those who greedily pant for the poor man, who try to swallow him (Hitzig). This is affirmed in the second clause of the verse, in which שׁאפים is to be repeated in thought before להשׁבּית : they gape to destroy the quiet in the land ( ענוי־ארץ = ענוים , in Amos 2:7), “namely by grasping all property for themselves, Job 22:8; Isaiah 5:8” (Hitzig). Amos 8:5 and Amos 8:6 show how they expect to accomplish their purpose. Like covetous usurers, they cannot even wait for the end of the feast-days to pursue their trade still further. Chōdēsh , the new moon, was a holiday on which all trade was suspended, just as it was on the Sabbath (see at Numbers 28:11 and 2 Kings 4:23). השׁבּיר שׁבר , to sell corn, as in Genesis 41:57. פּתח בּר , to open up corn, i.e., to open the granaries (cf. Genesis 41:56). In doing so, they wanted to cheat the poor by small measure (ephah), and by making the shekel great, i.e., by increasing the price, which was to be weighed out to them; also by false scales ( ‛ivvēth , to pervert, or falsify the scale of deceit, i.e., the scale used for cheating), and by bad corn ( mappal , waste or refuse); that in this way they might make the poor man so poor, that he would either be obliged to sell himself to them from want and distress (Leviticus 25:39), or be handed over to the creditor by the court of justice, because he was no longer able to pay for a pair of shoes, i.e., the very smallest debt (cf. Amos 2:6).
Such wickedness as this would be severely punished by the Lord. Amos 8:7. “Jehovah hath sworn by the pride of Jacob, Verily I will not forget all their deeds for ever. Amos 8:8. Shall the earth not tremble for this, and every inhabitants upon it mourn? and all of it rises like the Nile, and heaves and sinks like the Nile of Egypt.” The pride of Jacob is Jehovah, as in Hosea 5:5 and Hosea 7:10. Jehovah swears by the pride of Jacob, as He does by His holiness in Amos 4:2, or by His soul in Amos 6:8, i.e., as He who is the pride and glory of Israel: i.e., as truly as He is so, will He and must He punish such acts as these. By overlooking such sins, or leaving them unpunished, He would deny His glory in Israel. שׁכח , to forget a sin, i.e., to leave it unpunished. In Amos 8:8 the negative question is an expression denoting strong assurance. “For this” is generally supposed to refer to the sins; but this is a mistake, as the previous verse alludes not to the sins themselves, but to the punishment of them; and the solemn oath of Jehovah does not contain so subordinate and casual a thought, that we can pass over Amos 8:7, and take על זאת as referring back to Amos 8:4-6. It rather refers to the substance of the oath, i.e., to the punishment of the sins which the Lord announces with a solemn oath. This will be so terrible that the earth will quake, and be resolved, as it were, into its primeval condition of chaos. Râgaz , to tremble, or, when applied to the earth, to quake, does not mean to shudder, or to be shocked, as Rosenmüller explains it after Jeremiah 2:12. Still less can the idea of the earth rearing and rising up in a stormy manner to cast them off, which Hitzig supports, be proved to be a biblical idea from Isaiah 24:20. The thought is rather that, under the weight of the judgment, the earth will quake, and all its inhabitants will be thrown into mourning, as we may clearly see from the parallel passage in Amos 9:5. In Amos 8:8 this figure is carried out still further, and the whole earth is represented as being turned into a sea, heaving and falling in a tempestuous manner, just as in the case of the flood. כּלּהּ , the totality of the earth, the entire globe, will rise, and swell and fall like waters lashed into a storm. This rising and falling of the earth is compared to the rising and sinking of the Nile. According to the Parallel passage in Amos 9:5, כּאר is a defective form for כּיאר , just as בּוּל is for יבוּל in Job 40:20, and it is still further defined by the expression כּיאור מצרים , which follows. All the ancient versions have taken it as יאור , and many of the Hebrew codd. (in Kennicott and De Rossi) have this reading. Nigrash, to be excited, a term applied to the stormy sea (Isaiah 57:20). נשׁקה is a softened form for נשׁקעה , as is shown by שׁקעה in Amos 9:5.
“And it will come to pass on that day, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, I cause the sun to set at noon, and make it dark to the earth in clear day. Amos 8:10. And turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation: and bring mourning clothes upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and make it like mourning for an only one, and the end thereof like a bitter day.” The effect of the divine judgment upon the Israelites is depicted here. Just as the wicked overturn the moral order of the universe, so will the Lord, with His judgment, break through the order of nature, cause the sun to go down at noon, and envelope the earth in darkness in clear day. The words of the ninth verse are not founded upon the idea of an eclipse of the sun, though Michaelis and Hitzig not only assume that they are, but actually attempt to determine the time of its occurrence. An eclipse of the sun is not the setting of the sun ( כּוא ). But to any man the sun sets at noon, when he is suddenly snatched away by death, in the very midst of his life. And this also applies to a nation when it is suddenly destroyed in the midst of its earthly prosperity. But it has a still wider application. When the Lord shall come to judgment, at a time when the world, in its self-security, looketh not for Him (cf. Matthew 24:37.), this earth's sun will set at noon, and the earth be covered with darkness in bright daylight. And every judgment that falls upon an ungodly people or kingdom, as the ages roll away, is a harbinger of the approach of the final judgment. Amos 8:10. When the judgment shall burst upon Israel, then will all the joyous feasts give way to mourning and lamentation (compare Amos 8:3 and Amos 5:16; Hosea 2:13). On the shaving of a bald place as a sign of mourning, see Isaiah 3:24. This mourning will be very deep, like the mourning for the death of an only son (cf. Jeremiah 6:26 and Zechariah 12:10). The suffix in שׂמתּיה (I make it ) does not refer to אבל (mourning), but to all that has been previously mentioned as done upon that day, to their weeping and lamenting (Hitzig). אחריתהּ , the end thereof, namely, of this mourning and lamentation, will be a bitter day ( כ is caph verit. ; see at Joel 1:15). This implies that the judgment will not be a passing one, but will continue.
And at that time the light and comfort of the word of God will also fail them. Amos 8:11. “Behold, days come, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, that I send a hungering into the land, not a hungering for bread nor a thirst for water, but to hear the words of Jehovah. Amos 8:12. And they will reel from sea to sea; and from the north, and even to the east, they sweep round to seek the word of Jehovah, and will not find it.” The bitterness of the time of punishment is increased by the fact that the Lord will then withdrawn His word from them, i.e., the light of His revelation. They who will not now hear His word, as proclaimed by the prophets, will then cherish the greatest longing for it. Such hunger and thirst will be awakened by the distress and affliction that will come upon them. The intensity of this desire is depicted in Amos 8:12. They reel ( נוּע as in Amos 4:8) from the sea to the sea; that is to say, not “from the Dead Sea in the east to the Mediterranean in the west,” for Joel 2:20 and Zechariah 14:8 are not cases in point, as the two seas are defined there by distinct epithets; but as in Psalms 72:8 and Zechariah 9:10, according to which the meaning is, from the sea to where the sea occurs again, at the other end of the world, “the sea being taken as the boundary of the earth” (Hupfeld). The other clause, “from the north even to the east,” contains an abridged expression for “from north to south and from west to east,” i.e., to every quarter of the globe.
“In that day will the fair virgins and the young men faint for thirst. Amos 8:14. They who swear by the guilt of Samaria, and say, By the life of thy God, O Dan! and by the life of the way to Beersheba; and will fall, and not rise again.” Those who now stand in all the fullest and freshest vigour of life, will succumb to this hunger and thirst. The virgins and young men are individualized, as comprising that portion of the nation which possessed the vigorous fulness of youth. עלף , to be enveloped in night, to sink into a swoon, hithp. to hide one's self, to faint away. הנּשׁבּעים refers to the young men and virgins; and inasmuch as they represent the most vigorous portion of the nation, to the nation as a whole. If the strongest succumb to the thirst, how much more the weak! 'Ashmath Shōm e rōn , the guilt of Samaria, is the golden calf at Bethel, the principal idol of the kingdom of Israel, which is named after the capital Samaria (compare Deuteronomy 9:21, “the sin of Israel”), not the Asherah which was still standing in Samaria in the reign of Jehoahaz (2 Kings 13:6); for apart from the question whether it was there in the time of Jeroboam, this is at variance with the second clause, in which the manner of their swearing is given, - namely, by the life of the god at Dan, that is to say, the golden calf that was there; so that the guilt of Samaria can only have been the golden calf at Bethel, the national sanctuary of the ten tribes (cf. Amos 4:4; Amos 5:5). The way to Beersheba is mentioned, instead of the worship, for the sake of which the pilgrimage to Beersheba was made. This worship, again, was not a purely heathen worship, but an idolatrous worship of Jehovah (see Amos 5:5). The fulfilment of these threats commenced with the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, and the carrying away of the ten tribes into exile in Assyria, and continues to this day in the case of that portion of the Israelitish nation which is still looking for the Messiah, the prophet promised by Moses, and looking in vain, because they will not hearken to the preaching of the gospel concerning the Messiah, who appeared as Jesus.