BIG IDEA:
INTERCESSORY PRAYER CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
INTRODUCTION:
Gary Smith: These vision reports in Amos 7 begin the third major section of the book. Five visions are described (7:1–3, 4–6, 7–9; 8:1–3; 9:1–4), with the first two having a common structure: an introductory formula, a description of the vision (introduced with the particle hinneh, “behold,” not trans. in NIV), the intercession of the prophet, and God’s decision. The almost identical wording of the prophet’s prayer and God’s response draws the two visions together as a pair. The autobiographical nature of the language of the dialogue testifies to the personal nature of the prophet’s involvement in the process and his deep concern for his audience. .
The graphic nature of visions allowed the prophet to see God’s intentions, thus bringing out a more powerful understanding and feeling about what he said he would do. Amos’s visions move him to cry out for mercy and to intercede for those who will suffer, a reaction that is not aroused by the earlier spoken words by God in Amos 1–6.
Billy Smith: All the vision accounts follow the first-person style of reporting. Advantages of the style include (1) enhancement of the claim to authority, (2) establishment of rapport between the prophet and his audience, and (3) a more powerful emotional appeal. The report form enabled the audience to identify with what Amos reported, and it enabled Amos to identify with the audience as an intercessor.
Lloyd Ogilvie: The visions can provide the basis of one message or class session or can be presented as a series. I have done it both ways. When using the series approach, I have found it effective to do the first two visions as a unit, and each of the last three as separate units. Whatever the method, it is important to stress the flow of Amos’s dynamic interaction with the Lord about Israel and the consequences of her refusal to repent and to accept His forgiveness. . .
The visions can provide the basis of one message or class session or can be presented as a series. I have done it both ways. When using the series approach, I have found it effective to do the first two visions as a unit, and each of the last three as separate units. Whatever the method, it is important to stress the flow of Amos’s dynamic interaction with the Lord about Israel and the consequences of her refusal to repent and to accept His forgiveness.
Alec Motyer: The Third Part of Amos opens with two visions of total destruction (7:1-6). In each case it is of such proportions and such timing that national survival is counted impossible: ‘How can Jacob survive, being so small?’ (verses 2, 5, JB). In each case also the Lord repents and promises that such a thing will not happen. The doubling makes the message emphatic. Twice over the Lord rejects the thought of a judgment of total destruction coming on His people. But the doubling also is cumulative. In verse 3 it is simply It shall not be, but in verse 6 there is almost a degree of warm rejoinder in This also shall not be. It is as if the Lord rather rounded on the praying prophet: And neither shall this be! Furthermore, in verse 3 the speaker is Yahweh, but in verse 6 ‘the sovereign Yahweh’; this is to say, since in Amos’ theology Yahweh is in any case the sovereign God, the adjective ‘sovereign’ adds nothing to Him but adds the element of absolute guarantee to what He pledges to do. In this sense, then, of emphatic repetition, cumulative force and solemn divine affirmation, the idea of the total destruction of God’s people is ruled out of court. It will not happen, and since it is the Lord Himself who says so, it cannot happen.
Robert Martin-Achard: In both instances Amos intervenes on Israel’s behalf. He pleads the cause of the guilty party and succeeds in imploring God’s pardon. Three matters deserve to be noted
a) Amos makes himself an intercessor, since his prophetic activity seems to demand it ( 20:7; Jer. 15:1 ff; etc.). A revealing factor is that in spite of the harshness of his pronouncements with regard to the Israelites, Amos does not hesitate to appeal to the divine mercy.
(b) He makes a case of the smallness of Jacob, that is to say, of his frailty and vulnerability, and this at the precise moment when Israel thought herself to be great and strong. The arrogance of the ruling classes contrasts here with this humble, resolute and lucid prayer.
(c) Yahweh allows himself to be convinced by the pleading of his witness and ‘repents’ for striking the guilty party: the plague that has been announced will not come to pass. The issue of ‘anthropopathism’ in the Bible (the ‘repentance’ of Yahweh is the issue here) worries only those who conceive of God as an abstract, cold and distant idea. They have not understood how near the living God is to men and how he is able to share in their feelings.
Tchavdar Hadjiev: Taken in isolation the first two visions extol the power of prayer and the merciful nature of God who is willing to forgive. The Lord plans to punish Israel, but Amos dissuades him from doing so, not because the people do not deserve it but because they are small and weak. Some interpreters have postulated that this passage reflects the earliest period of Amos’s ministry (cf. 5:4–6), when he was still hoping for a positive response to his message. Whether this is true is impossible to say. In the present shape of the text the passage serves as an introduction to the rest of the visions with their message of irrevocable punishment. Its primary function within the book is to stress the tragic nature of the missed opportunities of the past.
I. (:1-3) DESOLATION – VISION OF SWARMING LOCUSTS
A. (:1) The Vision Revealed
“Thus the Lord God showed me,
and behold, He was forming a locust-swarm when the spring crop began to sprout. And behold, the spring crop was after the king’s mowing.”
Gary Smith: The timing of this plague is critical, for two chronological indicators appear in this vision. The locusts are being formed after the king’s share of the crop has been harvested (probably grass for his horses; see 1 Kings 4:26–28; 18:5) and just as the young tender spring crops are sprouting (probably in April). This suggests that the royal needs have been met but that the average peasant farmer will be in serious trouble. If the locusts had come a few weeks earlier, there would not yet be any sprouting grain and thus no harm to Israel’s farmers. If it had come later, the crops would be set back by the locusts but not totally destroyed. This heightens Amos’s compassion for the poor farmers, who will be left in a hopeless situation.
Allen Guenther: Locusts were commonly understood to convey the divine judgment. They represent one of the futility curses threatened against a covenant-breaking Israel (Deut. 28:38, 42) [Covenant, p. 379]. Joel depicts them as a marauding army, leaving death and destruction in their wake (Joel 1-2). Here they are expressly said to be prepared or shaped (cf. Gen. 2:19) for the divine purpose.
James Mays: In the first vision Amos is shown a locust swarm being created and made ready just when the ‘late planting’ (leqeš) had begun to spring up. The threat looms when the last growth of pasture and field before the summer’s dry season is beginning; if it were lost the people would have nothing to carry them over until the next harvest. The reference to the royal mowing (2b) suggests that the king had the prerogative to claim the first cutting of hay for the use of his military establishment (I Kings 18.5). . .
When Amos was made to see the locust swarm being made ready by Yahweh, the event carried its own portentous message; Yahweh’s wrath had broken out against his people; punishment had been decreed for Israel. In the elevated consciousness of the vision, time is telescoped and Amos watches the progress of the plague until the crops and pasture of the land are almost gone. The event belongs completely to the realm of vision, is not yet actual event. It is the dramatic portrayal of the divine purpose shaped into revealing experience for the sake of the prophet that he may know the decision of Yahweh before it is executed (cf. the vision of Micaiah ben Imlah, I Kings 22.17). It is none the less real because it is a preview; what Yahweh prepares in heaven will inexorably unfold on earth. The timing of his appeal indicates that, were the event to be completed in the vision, its re-enactment on earth would be an accomplished fact, a decree that could not be turned back. At this crucial juncture Amos addresses Yahweh.
B. (:2) The Prophet’s Intercession
“And it came about, when it had finished eating the vegetation of the land,
that I said, ‘Lord God, please pardon! How can Jacob stand, For he is small?’”
Gary Smith: The action in 7:1 sets the plot, but nothing has actually happened yet. Some translations of Amos 7:2 picture the crops already eaten by the locusts (RSV, NASB, NIV). This raises the difficult situation of having the prophet intercede after the danger is past and of God’s stopping the punishment after it has already happened. This makes no sense and is not required by the Hebrew text. Since the word used here (klh) can mean to determine, decide, complete a plan (1 Sam. 20:7, 9, 33; Est. 7:7; Prov. 16:30), the text can read, “when he determined to destroy the vegetation.” With this translation, Amos’s intercession comes when he realizes God has finally determined to release the locusts on the land.
At that point the prophet prays for compassion. Much like Moses at the golden calf, Amos relies on the long-suffering, patient, and forgiving nature of God (Ex. 34:6). But unlike Moses, there is no reasoning with God about the impression this will have on Israel’s neighbors or any appeal to some promise to the forefathers (32:11–14). The prophet’s prayer seems more like a lament (a lament often asks how long or why; see Ps. 13:1–2; 42:5, 11; 79:5), which is full of deep sympathy for the poor farmers who will suffer the most misery. They have already suffered under the oppression of the wealthy landowners. Why will God make them the object of his anger?
Billy Smith: The basis for the prophet’s plea was that “Jacob” (Israel) was small. The word “small” may refer to helplessness rather than to size. During the time of Jeroboam II the nation and its army was not especially small or weak, except before God. “How can Jacob survive?” reveals the prophet’s assessment that the nation could not survive the potential plague. The nation’s survival hinged on the prophet’s intercession and God’s response to it.
Tchavdar Hadjiev: He accepts that the punishment is deserved but appeals to the Lord’s pity by pointing out the vulnerability of the people. His strategy proves successful. God’s declaration It shall not be announces a change in the divine plan, made in response to the prophetic request. Such an alteration in God’s intentions is not unique to this passage (Andersen and Freedman 1989: 638–679). The Old Testament portrays the Lord on numerous occasions changing his prior resolve to punish or bless someone in response to intercession (Exod. 32:12–14), repentance (Jer. 18:8) or sin (1 Sam. 15:35; Jer. 18:10). The statements to the contrary (Num. 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29) must mean that he does not change his mind in an arbitrary and capricious manner. The verb relented (niḥam), describing the divine reaction, carries strong emotional overtones. It can describe feelings of compassion and pity (Judg. 2:18; 21:15) as well as regret (Gen. 6:6–7; 1 Sam 15:11).
Allen Guenther: The description small is more frequently a reference to significance than to size. It appears as a deliberate literary linkage of this final part of the book with what preceded. As such, it represents Amos’s confession of the sin previously mentioned: Israel is a proud people, claiming God’s victories as their own doing (6:13).
M. Daniel Carroll R.: He does not ask on the basis of the people’s positive response to his message, and there is no mention of the nation’s historical relationship with God (2:9–10; 3:2). Some see this cry as a challenge to God on the basis of covenant, but in context it is simply an appeal to divine mercy on behalf of a shattered people.
C. (:3) The Lord’s Response
“The LORD changed His mind about this. ‘It shall not be,’ said the LORD.”
Gary Smith: God’s response is immediate and somewhat surprising. The plague is stopped before it begins, and without any prerequisites. God does not make his decision to stop the locusts if the people first do this or that—a condition that would make his decision understandable (see Jer. 18:1–12). It is an act of pure grace on a people who have been rebelling against him for centuries. God’s relenting (niḥam) on his plans is an anthropomorphic way of explaining his personal interaction with the prophet and his people. Compassion for the people is not inconsistent with God’s character; rather, it reveals the depth of his patience and his openness to hearing the prayers of righteous intercessors (James 5:13–18).
God is not a mindless abstract principle of philosophy who rules by some set of mechanical computer formulas. He is a personal caring ruler who does not enjoy the punishment of the wicked (Ezek. 18:23). He richly pours out his love to those who do not deserve it. The removal of the locust plague postpones God’s wrath for another day.
James Mays: The outcome of the first vision leaves a sense of unbearable tension. Israel has been spared the cataclysmic outbreak of the divine wrath only because of Yahweh’s willingness to hear the intercession of one man. But the circumstances which provoked the decree of punishment continue unchanged.
M. Daniel Carroll R.: Yahweh is presented as supremely sovereign, all-knowing, and omnipotent. What is clear is that redirection of potential outcomes is consistent with God’s mercy. His person is unchanging, even as he is willing to alter a course of action in ways congruent with his character.
Trent Butler: Here we see the prophetic office at its best. A prophet called to pronounce judgment identifies with his people and stands between the judging God and the sinful people. Through his prayers he brings God to forgive and to stop his judgment.
II. (:4-6) DESTRUCTION – VISION OF CONSUMING FIRE
A (:4) The Vision Revealed
“The Lord God showed me,
and behold, the Lord God was calling to contend with them by fire,
and it consumed the great deep and began to consume the farm land.”
Lloyd Ogilvie: It is a sweeping conflagration of the land, a fire that would be so devouring that it “consumed the great deep” (v. 4). It would be inextinguishable. That means a fire that even water cannot put out. It would happen in midsummer when the fields were dry and would burn like a wildfire across all of Israel.
John Goldingay: We already know that fire is key to Yahweh’s self-assertion in relation to wrongdoing (1:4, 7, 10, 12, 14; 2:2, 5; 5:6); the sequence of locust and fire also compares with Joel 1:2–20. The Great Deep is the vast sea underneath the world’s land mass, from which springs and rivers bubble up; the fire that can burn up such a sea is obviously quite a fire. This calamitous confrontation is thus more drastic than the epidemic in the first revelation; if Yahweh’s fire burns up the Great Deep, a total drought results, another disaster like one described in 4:6–11 but much worse.
B (:5) The Prophet’s Intercession
“Then I said, ‘Lord God, please stop! How can Jacob stand, for he is small?’”
Billy Smith: The basis for his request was Israel’s need: “How can Jacob survive? He is so small.” Israel’s leaders thought of themselves as the top leaders of the top nation. Amos saw the nation in its weakness and vulnerability, not “the foremost nation” (6:1) but “small” (7:5). No one should overlook the prophet’s solidarity with the people of Israel when he interceded in their behalf.
Allen Guenther: There are, however, limits to the divine forbearance, as shown in Amos 7:8; 8:2. Indeed, three times Jeremiah is told to stop praying for the people (7:16; cf. 11:14; 14:11). The repetition of this instruction implies that Jeremiah persisted in intercession and that God’s hand was stayed by the prophet’s appeal. This illustrates both the limits of the divine forbearance and the power of intercession. Elsewhere those limits are stated yet more dramatically: God announced that even the prayers of intercessors such as Noah, Daniel, and Job will be impotent (Ezek. 14:20).
C. (:6) The Lord’s Response
“The LORD changed His mind about this.
‘This too shall not be,’ said the Lord God.”
Gary Smith: The basis for this request is the same as his earlier rational: Israel is so small, and it cannot last under this great judgment. God’s response is the same as his earlier decision. He stops the fire, for no one can survive the onslaught of his wrath. More time is provided for the Israelites to respond before his judgment. Indeed, God is long-suffering and surprisingly patient; his grace extends to undeserving people again and again.
Allen Guenther: Indeed, the multiplied warnings and threats of this book are a reminder of the reluctance with which God acts against his chosen people, Israel. The sentence is executed only when all means to create repentance as well as all other avenues of appeal have been exhausted. Twice God responds to the intercession of his prophet.
Gary Cohen: Such a thorough judgment is represented that it is as if both the unseen roots and the visible surface area are destroyed without a trace. Amos could not bear this, and again he prayed to God for mercy, and the vision of fire was halted. God granted Amos’s plea for mercy because when the Assyrians finally took Samaria and the Northern Kingdom, they did not destroy Israel, but rather were content to scatter the Israelites and mix them into the nations.