BIG IDEA:
JUDGMENT MUST FOLLOW WHEN GOD’S PATIENCE AND FORBEARANCE WITH HIS STUBBORNLY REBELLIOUS PEOPLE HAVE REACHED THEIR LIMIT
INTRODUCTION:
Alec Motyer: Basically the word translated ‘holy’ throughout the Old Testament seems to have the meaning ‘separate’, or ‘different’. Unfortunately these are both comparative words. They provoke us to ask ‘separate from what? different from what? other than what?’ But ‘holy’ is not comparative. It expresses that distinct, positive ‘something’ which makes the gods belong to their own class of being. We, for example, would find it inadequate to try to define ‘man’ in terms of what makes him different from ‘dog’. We would want to say that there is much more to it than comparisons can express, that there is a whole realm of positive, unique distinctiveness which comparisons cannot catch. In the same way, ‘holy’ is not a word for the way in which God or the gods are different from men but is a word for that basic uniqueness, that positive speciality, which is the ground of all actual differences. And the ‘holy woman’ earned her title by the fact that her ‘dedication’ (see RV mg.) had brought her to belong to that other, different, special sphere of things.
Thus ‘holiness’ is that which makes God what He is. It is ‘not a word that expresses any attribute of Deity but deity itself’. . .
Holiness therefore both makes the Lord what He is (God) and also what He distinctively is (the God of utter moral perfection). In both these ways, and in every way, it is His inmost, utmost and uppermost being. It is what makes Him uniquely distinct from man, and what marks Him out from all other claimants to be God. . .
Amos has gathered his facts; he now allows them to assemble into sharply focused pictures, the first in a wealthy Samaritan home (4:1-3) and the second in the well-attended shrines at Bethel and Gilgal (4:4, 5). The point in each case is the same: all is organized by self for self.
Robert Martin-Achard: This chapter begins with a summons as do 3:1 and 5:1, and concludes with a portrayal of Yahweh’s irresistible might (v. 13). Israel must now get ready to meet it (v. 12), since she has paid no attention to the warnings which her God has offered her (vv. 6 ff). The chapter is composed of three elements:
(a) an oracle of judgment upon the great ladies of the city (vv. 1–3);
(b) a kind of parody upon priestly instruction (vv. 4 f);
(c) a long pericope exhibiting a rhythmical refrain (vv. 6b, 8b, 9b, 10b, 11b), which concludes with the announcement of a final confrontation between Yahweh and his own people (vv. 6–13).
Allen Guenther: Persistent Patterns of Sinning
Oracle 1: Conspicuous Consumption, 4:1-3
4:1-2a The Socialite Sinners
4:2b-3 Led Out by the Nose
Oracle 2: Invitation to Sin, 4:4-5
4:4-5a Priestly Invitation
4:5b Sarcastic Punch Line
Oracle 3: Incomplete Repentance, 4:6-11
4:6-11 I Did…
4:6-11 Yet You Did Not…
Oracle 4: Watch Out! 4:12-13
4:12 Get Ready!
4:13 God’s Awesome Identity
Bob Utley: Notice the structure of this chapter.
- Amos addresses the wealthy women of Israel (i.e., all exploitative elements of Israeli society), Amos 4:1-3
- YHWH’s sarcastic response to their religiosity, Amos 4:4-5
- YHWH’s sending of the covenant curses of Deut. 27-29, but they still will not repent, Amos 4:6-11
- YHWH’s threat of personal, temporal visitation (i.e., the Day of the Lord), Amos 4:12
- Amos’ doxology to God as creator, and therefore, rightful judge, Amos 4:13
I. (:1-11) JUDGMENT DESERVED FOR IDOLATRY AND OPPRESSION
A. (:1-3) Humiliating Deportation due to Decadent Opulence
- (:1) Target of Judgment
a. Call to Attention
“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan
who are on the mountain of Samaria,”
J. Vernon McGee: Bashan is a territory on the east of the Jordan River between the mountains of Gilead in the south and Mount Hermon in the north. It was settled by the three tribes that stayed on the wrong side of Jordan, and it was part of the northern kingdom of Israel. It was a very fertile area and noted for its fine breed of cattle. The cows of Bashan were strong and sleek in appearance because of the lush grazing lands.
Thomas McComiskey: Amos begins this new judgment oracle with a call to the upper class women of Israel to hear God’s condemnation of their oppression. The region of Bashan (located in Transjordan on both sides of the Yarmuk River) was known for its well-fed cattle (Ps 22:12; Eze 39:18), and Amos sarcastically likens the women of Samaria to these plump cattle that grazed in the rich uplands of Bashan. Amos accuses these rich women of oppressing the poor, just as he accused the male leaders of society. These women may not have been directly involved in mistreating the poor, but their incessant demands for luxuries drove their husbands to greater injustices. Their demand “Bring us some drinks” creates a vivid picture of their indolence.
b. Condemnation for Oppression and Opulent Living
“Who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,
Who say to your husbands, ‘Bring now, that we may drink!’”
Here Amos condemned the opulence of the women of Samaria who were as greedy and insensitive as their husbands.
Billy Smith: The basic charge against the “cows of Bashan” was exploitation of the poor. Three plural participles describe their indirect methods of getting what they wanted: “the ones oppressing the poor”; “the ones striking the needy”; “the ones saying to their husbands.” The imperative “bring” addressed to the husbands reveals the indirect methods employed by the women. They nagged their husbands to “bring” more and more to satisfy their thirst. Thus, while pagan worship may be in the background, it is more likely the term “cows of Bashan” was simply a figure for women whose every desire was being abundantly met. In turn the lords exploited the poor, taking their meager material wealth to satisfy the insatiable desire of their women. . .
Use of the imperative “bring” indicates the strong will and determination of Samaria’s court women to satisfy their indulgent appetites. Their demand for an indulgent lifestyle led to oppression of the poor to support that lifestyle.
John Goldingay: What they themselves do is put pressure on their husbands (sardonically called their “lords”—not a usual word to describe husbands) so that the capital’s economic system keeps making people pay taxes in the form that works well for the women, and for the men (again cf. 2:8).
Alec Motyer: If we are to find a distinct emphasis in each of these descriptions, the first points to self-concern, whereby even the poor must lose their little all to satisfy the needs of the lady of the manor; the second points to self-importance, whereby everyone of lower rank must accept a conscript’s place in the army serving the cause of the ‘big house’; and the third (how Amos must have enjoyed the irony of calling the husbands of these matriarchs ‘their lords’—as the word literally is, see RV. It is clear who lorded it in these marriages!) points to self-determination, whereby no-one can side-step the mandate of the mistress.
Bob Utley: This phrase has two VERBS of command. . . These women had been indulging in luxury to the point that alcoholism and greed were the normal way of life. Their motto would have been “more and more for me at any cost” (i.e., the essence of the Fall)!
- (:2-3) Terror of Deportation
a. (:2a) Certainty of Deportation Confirmed by Oath Formula
“The Lord God has sworn by His holiness,”
Billy Smith: “Has sworn” (v. 2) is an oath formula and is more forceful than the messenger formula (“thus says the LORD”) as the procedure for announcing judgment. “His holiness” refers to God’s essential being and to a quality of his character. As surely as God is separate from humankind, his verdict on the court women of Samaria was to be executed (cf. Ps 89:35).
Alec Motyer: In his great oath the Lord, specified as ‘the sovereign Yahweh’, commits the whole unique resource of His nature to the complete reversal and destruction of this order of things. It seems that there is no room in His world for life organized on a self-basis.
- Status will be lost in subjugation, for they shall take you away (4:2),
- bodily comfort lost in the excruciating hooks and cords of the captive (2),
- security lost in the downfall of the city whereby it will no longer be necessary to go out by the gate, for everyone can walk confidently straight ahead knowing that the wall has been breached into non-existence (3).
Thomas McComiskey: The holiness of God is not a transferable divine energy but the absolute separation of God from anything secular or profane. When God swears by his holiness in Psalm 89:35, it is a guarantee that he will not lie, because doing so would be a violation of holiness. When he swears by his holiness in Amos 4:2, he guarantees that the judgment will become a reality, because the holy God does not lie, nor can his holiness allow sin to go unpunished.
b. (:2b) Cruelty of Deportation
“Behold, the days are coming upon you When they will take you away with meat hooks, And the last of you with fish hooks.”
James Mays: ‘Behold! Days are coming …’is one of the formulae of prophetic ‘eschatology’ (8.11; 19.13; I Sam. 2.31; II Kings 20.17; Jer. 7.32 and 12 other times in Jer.) used to designate the imminent inbreaking time when Yahweh would effect his great setting-right, whether for woe (8.11) or weal (9.13). In Amos ‘the coming days’ are the ‘day of Yahweh’ (5.18) in which the one true Lord will be the terrible circumstance exclusively determining Israel’s experience.
John Goldingay: To say that “days are coming” is to speak of a time that is on its way, which will bring something quite new (it may be bad news or good news: cf. 8:11; 9:13) and which is certain to arrive, without committing oneself to a time frame but with an implication that a response is needed now. Otherwise, the women’s fate will mirror an event that they and Amos were evidently familiar with—the catching of fish in the Mediterranean or in Kinneret, or their arrival in a place such as Samaria.
Gary Cohen: After He follows imagery of heavy, splendid, lazy cows with an oath of certainty, the Lord enunciates the violent fate that awaited the women of Samaria when the Assyrians would invade. The horrible picture of the gashing meat hook, with all its implied tearing and ripping, comes as a sharp contrast to the lazy life of the well bred cow. This portrayed well the savagery of the Assyrian siege, with its breaking down of walls, taking women captive, and dragging them screaming out of their houses. The fishhooks picture a more gentle, baited allurement, but still an action that would end in a violent tug with painful tearing. Perhaps the fishhook describes the later invasions that would eventually empty Samaria and leave it an abandoned, ruined city. The fishhook metaphor, following the meat hook as it does, also fits the view that Sargon II’s first invasion in 722-721 B.C. took only about 27,000 of the inhabitants out, whereas later Assyrian monarchs soon completed his damage and finished implementing the policy of moving the population. . .
The announcement that the women would not leave the city by the ordinary means of going through the gates is a further description of the violent judgment that would befall them. Gaping holes and breaks would be made in the city’s walls, and the captives would be led out of those openings nearest to them.
c. (:3) Casting Out of Deportation
“‘You will go out through breaches in the walls,
Each one straight before her, And you will be cast to Harmon,’
declares the LORD.”
Robert Martin-Achard: The punishment will be in proportion to these shameful deeds (vv. 2bf). These ‘high-born ladies’ will be seen to depart one after the other, through breaches in the walls of a town in ruins, one that has been destroyed by an enemy, or perhaps by some form of earth tremor. But they will not go out as free women, neither they nor their servants, nor their offspring (aharitken, those who come after you, who are behind you; others translate the same word by ‘their bottoms’!). They will be led, like obstreperous beasts goaded by blows (or, according to other commentators, with hooks). They will be dragged away like long files of prisoners, bound to each other by chains bored through the nose, such as one can see in Assyrian reliefs. Other translations again suggest that the women of Samaria, or their dead bodies, will be carried out with hooks or pruning-hooks.
If the details of the punishment of the grand ladies of Samaria are not clear to us, it is certain that the prophet reserves for them a fate both humiliating and painful. They are to be led off with blows from steel-tipped clubs, packed together like sardines, or chained like captives. Thus they will be driven or transported in the direction of Hermon (according to the Greek), which marks the northern limit of the northern kingdom on the other side of the Jordan. So Amos hints here perhaps (v. 3) that the female inhabitants of Samaria will be deported (Amos 5:27).
B. (:4-5) Sacrilegious Worship – Religious Rites without Heartfelt Repentance
Sacrifices – Tithes / Thank Offerings / Freewill Offerings
- (:4a) Call to Hypocritical Worshp
“Enter Bethel and transgress; In Gilgal multiply transgression!”
Gary Smith: The prophet sarcastically calls for more sinful worship at Israel’s temples (4:4–5), an obvious put-down of what has been happening in their “wonderful” worship services. . . This paradoxical statement reveals the value of the people’s useless praise. Their sacrifices do not bring forgiveness of sin but add to the people’s sinfulness before God.
Billy Smith: The form of these two verses is that of a priestly call to worship. A typical priestly call would have directed the worshiper to come to the shrine to seek God and to find life (5:4, 6). The audience must have been shocked when Amos invited them to come to the worship site to sin. They would immediately recognize the sarcasm in this parody as an accusation for doing not what the Lord requires but rather the very things that are detestable. . .
He was not calling them to do something new but ironically to continue their sinful worship. The following verses show that the ritual itself was not at fault. They were bringing the prescribed sacrifices, even freewill offerings and tithes. Where they were at fault was in making their rituals an end in themselves when they were meant to be a means toward and an expression of fellowship with God. . .
The law prescribed daily offerings (Lev 6:8-13) and a special tithe every three years for the benefit of the Levites (Deut 14:28-29). Leavened bread as well as unleavened was to be brought with the thank offering (Lev 7:11-13), which along with the freewill offering was voluntary. The thank offering was brought either in anticipation of or gratitude for a deliverance of some kind. The freewill offering was to be an expression of gratitude for God’s goodness more generally. These were both types of peace offerings, unique in that the worshiper was to share in the sacred meal.
Lloyd Ogilvie: Again Amos shocked and stunned his audience. He could not have used a more harsh term than transgress to describe what the people were planning to do in the sanctuary. The word transgress (pāšaʿ) means “to break with.” It is the same root used to describe the plot of Joseph’s brothers to kill him (Gen. 50:17) or for rebellion. Amos uses the word here to jar the people with the fact that it is a sin to carry on with rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices, when they have not obeyed Yahweh. The religious observances were totally separated from true worship of Him and obedience to Him. Nothing is more godless than worship that follows traditional procedures without an encounter with God Himself or any accountability to His commandments or obedience to His moral requirements.
Thomas McComiskey: Bethel was the chief religious sanctuary of the northern kingdom. In the premonarchic period, it once housed the ark of the covenant and was one of the locations in the circuit followed by Samuel in his work as judge (1Sa 7:16). Shortly after the division into two kingdoms, Bethel was established as a sanctuary by Jeroboam I to provide an alternative center to Jerusalem (1Ki 12:25 – 13:34). In the time of Amos, Bethel was known as “the king’s sanctuary” (Am 7:13). It thus may have been the scene of royal as well as religious pomp. . .
Gilgal was another Israelite sanctuary in Amos’s time (5:5; cf. Hos 4:15; 9:15; 12:11). Lest the people think that Bethel, with its pagan heritage, should be the only sanctuary that bears an onus, the prophet includes Gilgal.
Trent Butler: Gilgal near Jericho had an equally illustrious history. There the Israelites under Joshua set up their first campsite and worship site in the promised land (Josh. 4:19–20). The nation’s entire male population received circumcision there, and the people celebrated Passover for the first time in the new land. This identified them once again as the obedient people of God, distinct from the murmuring generation of the wilderness years (Josh. 5:2–12). But somewhere along the way, Gilgal became a center of false worship and met prophetic condemnation, betraying its historical beginnings (Hos. 12:11).
- (:4b) Call to Offer Sacrifices and Tithes
“Bring your sacrifices every morning, Your tithes every three days.”
- (:5) Call to Offer Thank Offering and Freewill Offerings
“Offer a thank offering also from that which is leavened,
And proclaim freewill offerings, make them known.
For so you love to do, you sons of Israel,’ Declares the Lord God.”
John MacArthur: Though prohibited from most offerings, leaven was required as a part of the thank offering (Lv 7:11-15).
Thomas McComiskey: It is possible that Amos here represents the current-day practices prescribed for pilgrimage to the cultic centers; but it is also possible that he is using hyperbole to show the futility of offering many sacrifices and tithes. This latter view seems to reflect the intent of the passage, because Amos says, “This is what you love to do.” It is as though he is telling them that even if they sacrifice every morning and tithe every three days in order to have something to boast about, in the end they are only engaging in acts of rebellion against God.
James Mays: a charge that the sacrificial cult has nothing to do with Yahweh. It is not the Lord, but the self of Israel which is the ground of their worship. The people themselves have displaced the Lord as the central reality of cult. However pious and proper all their religious acts, the sacrifices and offerings are no submission of life to the Lord, but merely an expression of their own love of religiosity. The cult of Bethel and Gilgal has become a breaking with Yahweh because it evades rather than enforces the Lord’s rule over the nation. It flourishes on an affluence gained by violence against the poor (2.8); it produces a passion for neither justice nor righteousness (5.24).
C. (:6-11) Five Historical Scenarios of Stubbornly Spurning God’s Fatherly
Discipline – 5 Covenant Curses
Key: “’Yet you have not returned to Me,’ declares the Lord.”
Gary Smith: This paragraph is divided into five short sections by the concluding phrase, “ ‘yet you have not returned to me,’ declares the LORD” (4:6, 8, 9, 10, 11). By the repetition of this phrase, Amos hammers home the central message that the Israelites do not have a proper relationship with God. The paragraph is also unified by the recitation of five different curses God has already brought on the nation (no food, no rain, no crops, no life, and his overthrowing of them). These are the covenant curses God said he would bring on the nation if they disobeyed him (see Lev. 26; Deut. 27–28).
Alec Motyer: The troubles of life are spread before us here by Amos: troubles caused by deprivation (famine and drought), troubles caused by infliction (blight and epidemic), troubles caused by opposition (war and earthquake)—all the troubles of life are there in principle, falling into one category or the other. Right at the centre is one of the things that worries us most of all: troubles apparently falling by chance—rain here, drought there, seemingly haphazard, luck for one, ill-luck for the other (4:7b, 8). But over them all the first person singular of divine decision and action. Everything on earth comes from a God who rules and reigns in heaven.
Thomas McComiskey: The point of vv.6–11 is that the Israelites have become spiritually hardened. Because Amos does not want his hearers to forget this fact, he states five times, “Yet you have not returned to me” (vv.6, 8–11).
James Mays: The catalogue of calamity is based upon episodes of disaster through which Israel had passed. The validity of citing these events as deeds of Yahweh rested, first of all, upon their actuality in the experience of the audience. By their nature nothing can be said about them as historical occurrences except that they all represent the type of misfortune which happened from time to time in Syria-Palestine. Famine, drought, crop-failure, war, contagious disease, natural calamity, all punctuate the story of peoples in that region. . . The raw material for Amos’ narrative certainly lay at hand in the experience of a people for whom life was often nasty, brutish, and short. One need not assume that these misfortunes were either contiguous or contemporary. The audience would remember such calamities in their own time or in the days of their fathers.
The striking feature of the narrative is its presentation as a Yahweh-history. The God of Israel speaks in first-person style and proclaims these disasters as his own deeds in the past. Amos uncovers and articulates a dimension of Yahweh’s dealing with Israel which stands in stark contrast to the deeds of the classical salvation-history which was proclaimed in the cult and heard as a message of salvation. The proclamation of the Exodus, the leading through the Wilderness and the Conquest was heard as a promise of protection and benevolence. But Amos’ history spoke of the very opposite of security and blessing. His oracular narrative takes the separate sporadic hardships of Israel’s life in Canaan and makes them coalesce into a continuous cohesive record in which Yahweh’s personal dealings with Israel are disclosed. And it is a history with a rationale. Its purpose is insistently stated in the refrain which interprets the disasters as Yahweh’s quest for Israel’s return to him. The cogency of reciting this narrative as a record of Israel’s failure to respond to Yahweh presupposes that Amos had a basis for recognizing the blows as the personal overtures of Yahweh, and that the people should have recognized them as such and responded.
Allen Guenther: God chronicles the history of repeated attempts to recall Israel from her ignorance, disobedience, and pride. These are acts of the covenant by which God intended to wake up and call back a rebellious people. The Lord threatened his people with punishments if they rebelled (Lev. 26:14-46; Deut. 28:15-68). Heaven and earth, acting as the two witnesses, would cast the first stone against this disobedient people (cf. Deut. 4:26; 17:1-7; 30:19; 31:28). Creation acts as God’s agent, though in that action, creation also suffers for the sins of human alienation. God, the effective Agent, draws on the rest of the created world to witness against this disobedient people. So while famine, drought, plant diseases, plagues, and earthquakes serve to mediate punishments, in the Lord’s hand these judgments become invitations and incentives to repentance. Even the most severe judgments are motivated by the desire to restore rather than to destroy the nation (Jer. 18:1-11).
- (:6) Discipline of Famine – no food to eat
“‘But I gave you also cleanness of teeth in all your cities
And lack of bread in all your places,
Yet you have not returned to Me,’ declares the LORD.”
Billy Smith: Famine was a common event in the ancient Near East. Here the famine is brought by God as a warning to the people, but they did not heed the warning. “Empty stomachs” is literally “cleanness of teeth.” “Lack of bread” is the reason. Taken together the two expressions experientially describe a famine. A literal translation reveals the emphasis on God as the causative agent in the calamity: “And also I, even I, gave to you cleanness of teeth.” Both phrases affirm the reality of a famine. The verb translated “returned” is the primary word for repentance in the Old Testament. Famine should have driven Israel to repentance and return to God, but it failed to elicit that response.
Trent Butler: Yet you have not returned to me. Here is Amos’s chorus (4:6,8–11). Deuteronomy 4:29–31 and 30:1–10 showed Israel how to respond to God’s judgment. God’s discipline has a strong purpose—to lead his people to repent, to turn away from their frivolous, God-ignoring lifestyle, and to turn back to a God-fearing lifestyle. Israel refused to recognize God’s sovereignty. They thought they could get away with worship the way they planned it and life the way they enjoyed it. Famine just called for more and better offerings in their kind of worship. But famine should call them to feast on God’s Word and seek God’s will. If not, the call to worship continued to be a call to sin and thus a call to judgment.
2. (:7-8) Discipline of Drought – Providentially withholding or providing Rainfall
“’And furthermore, I withheld the rain from you While there were still three months until harvest.
Then I would send rain on one city And on another city I would not send rain; One part would be rained on, While the part not rained on would dry up.
8 So two or three cities would stagger to another city to drink water, But would not be satisfied;
Yet you have not returned to Me,’ declares the LORD.”
Gary Cohen: Withholding rain (vv. 7-8). “Three months until harvest” would be at the time of the latter rains, late February through April, at the very time when rain was most needed to produce good crops (Hos. 6:3; Joel 2:23). God also selectively withheld the rain from certain cities. Few things would be as heart searching as having one’s fields in a drought while others in the same region were having rain.
3. (:9) Discipline of Disease and Plagues upon the Crops
“’I smote you with scorching wind and mildew;
And the caterpillar was devouring Your many gardens and vineyards, fig trees and olive trees;
Yet you have not returned to Me,’ declares the LORD.”
4. (:10) Discipline of Defeats in War – the stench of dead bodies in the Camp
“‘I sent a plague among you after the manner of Egypt;
I slew your young men by the sword along with your captured horses,
And I made the stench of your camp rise up in your nostrils;
Yet you have not returned to Me,’ declares the LORD.”
5. (:11) Discipline of Devastating Destruction – cf. Sodom and Gomorrah
“‘I overthrew you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,
And you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze;
Yet you have not returned to Me,’ declares the LORD.”
Billy Smith: Total destruction was conveyed by the reference to the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah (cf. Deut 29:22-24; Jer 20:16). Israel, like Lot and his family, was like a brand snatched from the fire, fortunate to be alive. But even Israel’s narrow escape did not turn them toward God. Secular society sees only natural phenomena when various calamities adversely affect people. God’s people correctly inquire about the possible purpose of God in such calamities. Always the right question to ask when people are hit by destructive calamities is, “What does God want to see happen as a result of the calamity?” Is repentance the appropriate response?
Thomas McComiskey: referring to violence suffered by certain Israelite cities during the Syrian incursions. The account of them in 2 Kings 13:1-9 refers to a “deliverer” (v. 5) who restored the conquered people to their homes. The analogy of the stick snatched from the fire aptly describes the conquered towns that might have been lost forever to Israel but were “snatched” from the fire of conflict and restored to their inhabitants because of the intervention of this unnamed “deliverer.”
II. (:12-13) JUDGMENT DECREED – HOPELESSNESS OF ISRAEL ESCAPING GOD’S JUDGMENT
A. (:12) Prepare to Meet Your God
“Therefore, thus I will do to you, O Israel;
Because I shall do this to you, Prepare to meet your God, O Israel.”
Robert Martin-Achard: Yahweh’s patience with his own people has its limits; the hour of judgment has come (v. 12). This verse makes a clear announcement of the judgment upon the guilty, without entering into details.
Thomas McComiskey: The command “Prepare” should not be understood as a plea for the people to repent. The die was cast. They did not turn to God when he chastised them (vv. 6-11), and now Amos held out no hope for their full-scale repentance. The words seem nothing more than an imperative for the people to get ready for the national calamity about to befall them.
James Mays: In some of his sayings Amos points to his expectation that in the impending judgment Yahweh will act directly and personally, that its central reality will be a theophany. The day of Yahweh would be a climax whose finality transcended the ineffective chastisements of the past (5.18–20). Yahweh would pass by his people no more (7.8; 8.2); instead he will pass through their midst (5.17). In his identity as Lord of the covenant, ‘your God’, Yahweh will confront his people. They will not return to him, so he will come to them in a terrifying historical theophany so inexorable that no Israelite can avoid it (9.1–4) and so awesome that none can mistake it (2.13–16)—not in a sanctuary, but in history—not for covenant-making, but for judgment. The cultic summons is displaced and applied to history, just as the curses were in vv. 6–11. The summons to ‘prepare to meet your God’ is in actuality an announcement of judgment day.
B. (:13) Know the Capabilities of Your God –
What do you learn about God:
Allen Guenther: That it is a hymn is established formally. A hymn focuses on the name of God (Yahweh), and uses participles (at least initially) to denote the characteristics of this God who is addressing Israel (4:13; cf. Ps. 103:3-9; 104:2ff.). The God who confronts Israel is no petty deity. All domains of human existence are under his control. He is not at Israel’s beck and call, nor can anyone manipulate him into serving Israel.
No, God addresses his people as Lord and comes to them in his own time and way. The best Israel can do is to prepare (Amos 4:12; cf. Exod. 19:11) to meet their Goof.
The hymn (Amos 4:13) extols the majesty of God in the language of creation and of the Sinaitic covenant. The presence of God is the ultimate hope for a trusting people. When they reject the God of Sinai, they need to remember that he is the One who forms the mountains, brings the breath of nature (wind) and of humankind (spirit) into existence, and discloses his most intimate thoughts to those who love him (cf. Gen. 18:17; Amos 3:7).
In addition to being Creator and to revealing himself, God acts as Judge within the world. He makes the morning darkness and superintends the affairs of individuals and nations from his vantage point on the heights of the earth. When God steps onto the mountaintops, the earth trembles (Exod. 19:18; Ps. 68:7-8). This word from Amos irresistibly leads us to God’s self-disclosure at Sinai. Now, however, God addresses his people with what appears as a final appeal. Though the precise nature of the judgment remains hidden in the threat, the metaphor of an earthquake dominates the scene.
- From His Role as Creator and Ruler of Nature
“For behold, He who forms mountains and creates the wind”
- From His Role as Revealer
“And declares to man what are His thoughts,”
- From His Role as Judge
“He who makes dawn into darkness
And treads on the high places of the earth,”
- From His Essential Character
“The LORD God of hosts is His name.”
Tchavdar Hadjiev: This is the first of the three ‘hymnic fragments’ in the book of Amos (5:8–9; 9:5–6) which are united by their common use of participles to describe God, the shared theme of creation and the recurring cultic formula the Lord . . . is his name. The hymn paints an awesome and terrifying picture of the God whom Israel is about to meet (v. 12). The five participles correspond to the five occurrences of the refrain you did not return to me. The power of the Lord is demonstrated first and foremost in acts of creation. He is the one who forms the solid, immovable mountains, as well as the fleeting wind. Both stability and dynamic motion emanate from him. He has complete control over Israel’s universe. The third participial phrase, which occupies the centre, could be translated ‘declares to mortals their thoughts’ (nab); in other words, he brings to the surface the hidden plans and desires of human beings. Most scholars, however, prefer reveals his thoughts to mortals – that is, God not only controls the created world but communicates with humanity (3:7). Makes the morning darkness is unsettling. Whether it refers to a solar eclipse (Paas 2003: 277) or to clouds and smoke hiding the morning sun (Hubbard 1989: 162) the phrase does not depict the normal rhythm of day and night and carries ominous overtones. Treads on the heights of the earth (Job 9:8; Mic. 1:3) depicts a divine march and the subjection of the earth to the authority of its creator. The hymnic conclusion evokes a sense of awe with its picture of unstoppable divine power.
Lloyd Ogilvie: Verse 13 follows with a magnificent self-disclosure of Yahweh’s might and majesty. He is in control of everyone and all things. He shapes the mountains, creates the spirit of man (rûaḥ, “wind,” also “spirit, breath”), reveals His thoughts (“his plan,” śēḥô), His will, and His law. Yahweh asserts His power above the false gods of the Baal cults. He alone can control the revolution of the earth around the sun for He is sovereign of the whole universe. The “high places of the earth” refer to claims made for Baal Shamem who was touted as taking the high places of the land. Yahweh, not a diminutive Canaanite false god, is Lord over all creation. “The Lord GOD of hosts is His name.” Yahweh is not one god in the pantheon of syncretistic religion, but the only God of heaven and earth. When Israel lost the sense of awe and wonder of true worship, she began to lose everything else.
Thomas McComiskey: In one bold sweep, this hymn shows the sovereignty of God – from his creation of the world to his daily summoning of the dawn, from his intervention in history to his revelation of mankind’s thoughts. Every believer can take comfort in the fact that, while sometimes it seems that God does not interfere in human affairs, the world is never out of his control. His sovereignty extends to every aspect of human experience.
Robert Martin-Achard: What strikes us in this confession that ends chapter 4 is the omnipresence of Yahweh, his unceasing activity, his universal sovereignty. It is with such a God then that the Israelites are to meet!