Woe to Those at Ease in Zion
Today started out discussing how those that slept in beds of ivory and ate lambs and calves from the flock singing idle songs would be the first to go to exile. Their arrogance and vanity would be the end of them. The Lord declared:
“I abhor the pride of Jacob
and hate his strongholds,
and I will deliver up the city and all that is in it,”
-Amos 6:8
It went on then to tell of a fearful scene of a survivor cowering in a house, and the relative forbidding him even to pray because God’s wrath had fallen on the city.
Warning Visions
This section introduced reports of visions that conveyed God’s message through things seen as well as heard. The Lord showed Amos visions and Amos would beg for forgiveness or to cease, but God said, “It shall not be.”
Amos Accused
Amos was accused of conspiring against Jeroboam the king of Israel for saying, “Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.” Amos was told to go away to the land of Judah and prophesy there, and never prophesy at the king’s temple again.
Amos answered and explained that he was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the Lord took him from following the flock, and told him to go and prophesy to the people of Israel.
After being dismissed, Amos told them what the Lord had said regarding the situation, and wow! God having your back is pretty intense. He said how their wives would be prostitutes, children would die at the sword, the land would be divided up, they would die in an unclean land, and Israel would go into exile away from its land.
The Coming Day of Bitter Mourning
The Lord showed Amos a basket of summer fruit and said that the end had come to Israel, and He would never again pass by them. The songs of the temple would become wailings and dead bodies would be thrown everywhere.
On that day the sun would go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. The feasts would be turned into mourning and all the songs would be lamentations. Sackcloth would be on every waist, and baldness on every head. It would be like the mourning for an only son.
“Behold, the days are coming,”
declares the Lord God,
“when I will send famine on the land–
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
They shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro,
to seek the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.
-Amos 8:11-12
When God’s judgment began to take effect and in times of great distress, Israel turned to the Lord for a prophetic word of hope or guidance. But in this coming judgment the Lord answered all their appeals with silence.
The Destruction of Israel
“I saw the Lord standing beside the altar.” God was now poised on earth and was about to initiate the destruction from the very place that the people would expect to hear words of peace and blessings. God would shatter the temple completely.
There is no escape from God’s impending judgment. The imaginary extremes to which a person might go could be compared with those in Psalm 139:7-12. God’s domain includes every place, even the realm of the grave.
There was no where that a person could hide that they would be able to escape God. Even in the depths of the sea, God would send the great serpent to bite them. Even there all are subject to Him. In pagan mythology, this serpent would’ve been a fierce sea monster.
“The Lord God of hosts,
he who touches the earth and it melts,
and all who dwell in it mourn,
and all of it rises like the Nile,
and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt;
who builds his upper chambers in the heavens
and founds his vault upon the earth;
who calls for the waters of the sea
and pours them out upon the surface of the earth–
the Lord is his name.”
-Amos 9:5-6
The hymnic reminder is introduced to know that Israel’s God is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. This contrasts the scale of God with the scale of man, whose structures fall at the movement of the earth.
The Restoration of Israel
Here, there’s underlying hope in Amos’s words that has been seen so far throughout the entire Old Testament. That of bringing blessing after judgment and God not completely rejecting Israel.
After all the forecasts of destruction and death, Amos’s final words picture a glorious Edenic prosperity, when the seasons will run together so that sowing and reaping are without interval, and there will be a continued supply of fresh produce.
In the promised land, God would make his people productive, fruitful and secure. When Israel was finally and fully restored, she would never again be destroyed.
“In that day I will raise up
the booth of David that is fallen
and repair its breaches,
and raise up its ruins
and rebuild it as in the days of old,
that they may possess the remnant of Edom
and all the nations who are called by my name,”
declares the Lord who does this.
“Behold, the days are coming,”
declares the Lord,
“when the plowman shall overtake the reaper
and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed;
the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
and all the hills shall flow with it.
It will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,
and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.
I will plant them on their land,
and they shall never again be uprooted
out of the land that I have given them,”
says the Lord your God.
-Amos 9:11-15