Amos 2:10 Commento

In this chapter, I. God, by the prophet, proceeds in a like controversy with Moab as before with other nations (Amo 2:1-3). II. He shows what quarrel he had with Judah (Amo 2:4, Amo 2:5). III. He at length begins his charge against Israel, to which all that goes before is but an introduction. Observe, 1. The sins they are charged with - injustice, oppression, whoredom (Amo 2:6-8). 2. The aggravations of those sins - the temporal and spiritual mercies God had bestowed upon them, for which they had made him such ungrateful returns (Amo 2:9-12). 3. God's complaint of them for their sins (Amo 2:13) and his threatenings of their ruin, and their utter inability to prevent it (Amo 2:14-16).

INTRODUCTION TO AMOS 2 In this chapter the prophet foretells the calamities that should come upon the Moabites for their transgressions, Amo 2:1; and the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem for their iniquities, Amo 2:4; also the judgments of God that should come upon Israel the ten tribes for their sins, which sins are enumerated; their oppression of the poor, their lewdness and idolatry, Amo 2:6; and which are aggravated by the blessings of goodness bestowed upon them, both temporal and spiritual, Amo 2:9; wherefore they are threatened with ruin, which would be inevitable, notwithstanding their swiftness, strength, and courage, and their skill in shooting arrows, and riding horses, Amo 2:13.

Also I brought you up from the land of Egypt,.... Where they were bond slaves, and in great affliction and distress, and unable to help themselves; but the Lord wrought deliverance for them, and brought them out of this house of bondage with a high hand and a mighty arm: and led you forty years through the wilderness: going before them in a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night; providing them with all things necessary, with food and raiment, and protecting them from all their enemies: to possess the land of the Amorite; the whole land of Canaan, so called from a principal nation of it.

(Verse 9 and following) But I destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of cedar trees, and he was strong like an oak tree. And I destroyed his fruit from above and his roots from below. I am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt and led you into the wilderness for forty years, so that you could possess the land of the Amorite. And I raised up prophets from among your sons and Nazirites from among your young men. LXX: But I destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks; and I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots beneath. I brought you out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in the wilderness, that you might possess the land of the Amorites. And I took your sons as prophets and your young men as consecrated ones. Is it not true that you have sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals? You have struck the heads of the poor, crushing them to the ground, and you have turned aside from the way of the humble. So much so that both father and son go to the same girl, defiling my holy name. Your garments are stained with the blood of the innocent and your clothes are polluted with adultery. You have bound yourselves with the chains of sin, committing adultery even in the sanctuary and joining injustice with drunkenness. You drink wine bought with foreign money in the house of your God. But on the contrary, I bestowed good things upon you in return for the evils you inflicted on me, so that I might destroy, before your presence, Seon, the king of the Amorites, who was so lofty and strong like a cedar and an oak, and I broke his fruit from above and his roots from below. I led you out of Egypt (Deut. 29), and for forty years I made you go around in circles to reach the holy land, so that you might possess the land of the Amorites, of which we have spoken before: which Moses divided to the sons of Reuben and Gad, and to half the tribe of Manasseh (Num. 32); and after so many benefits, I also added this, that I would take prophets for myself from your sons, and from your young men or chosen ones, I would make Nazarites, who the Seventy have interpreted as sanctified. And indeed, when it comes to praising God, the order of history must be preserved; but it often happens that what happened first is told last, and what is most recent is related to what came first. The seventy-seventh and one hundred and fourth psalms, where the power of signs is described, not the order, will teach us this, as well as the titles of the psalms, of which we will give just two examples: the third psalm and the fifty-first, where what happened first is narrated last, and what we read last is referred to in the beginning. For before we read in the book of Kings about Doeg the Edomite (1 Kings 21, 22), which is titled as the fifty-first psalm, how Absalom rose up against his father (2 Kings 15), which is mentioned in the title of the third psalm. And so the last Amorite was exterminated or erased, as is now first reported, and he made them go up from the land of Egypt and led them into the desert for forty years, we read about this in the beginning (2 Kings 21), which are called the last here with the order changed. Therefore, before God brought us out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, He exterminated before our face the Amorite, who is called bitter or insolent, that is, speaking, or notorious, and celebrated in frequent conversation. But this Amorite is also called Seon, an unfruitful and barren tree, not because it does not produce fruit, but because it produces bad fruit, of which it is said: Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire (Matth. 3:10; 7:19). And concerning false prophets, we read: They come in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves, by their fruits you shall know them (Matthew VII, 15, 16): namely, by their evil fruits. Therefore, whether they do not bear fruit, or they bear fruit but not good fruit: they are called fruitless trees. This is similar to Seon, about whom it is written: Now the axe is laid to the root of the trees (Luke III, 9), because he was a fruitless tree, and when the Lord struck, he was cut down, whose height is compared to that of cedars, of which we read: I have seen the wicked exalted, and lifted up as the cedars of Lebanon: and I passed by, and behold, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found (Psalm XXXVI, 35, 36). And he says that he passes beautifully, because he who passes from the world can say: Passing, I will see this great vision (Exod. III, 3), the cedar is removed, and the place of pride cannot be found. His strength, like that of the hardest and strongest oak tree. From which word, Philo, the most eloquent of the Hebrews, thinks that Esau is called 'δρύινον', that is, oaken and strong: although Esau can also be understood as 'ποίημα', that is, a work, referring to evil deeds. About this strong and robust, the Lord speaks in the Gospel: When a strong armed man guards his courtyard, all the things he possesses are in peace; but if a stronger man comes and defeats him, he will take away all his weapons in which he trusted, and distribute his spoils. And the Lord has granted us that he would crush and take away the fruits of this Amorite Sihon, whom we have interpreted as the fruitless tree, because they were evil, so that no one, thinking them good, would eat and perish. He also cut and crushed its roots, so that nothing would grow afterward from the evil tree. The Lord Himself made us leave the world, and for forty years, which is always a number of affliction and fasting, mourning and sorrow, through tribulations and distress, to come into the holy land, so that we would possess the land of the Amorites first, and that region would become our possession, and later He would raise up Prophets from our descendants, all holy men who received the prophetic spirit, about whom we read more fully in the first Epistle to the Corinthians (I Cor. XIV). And from our young men, or chosen ones, let him take the Nazarites and the sanctified ones, who offer their souls to God as a sacrifice, and who do not touch wine that can intoxicate and disturb the state of mind, so that they may have the hair of Samson, in whose head (for the head of a man is Christ) strength and victory resided (Judges 16).

The prophet goes on to declare the judgments of God against Moab, Amo 2:1-3; against Judah, Amo 2:4, Amo 2:5; and then against Israel, the particular object of his mission. He enumerates some of their sins, Amo 2:6-8, aggravated by God's distinguishing regard to Israel, Amo 2:9-12; and they are in consequence threatened with dreadful punishments, Amo 2:13-16. See Kg2 15:19; Kg2 17:6.

CHARGES AGAINST MOAB, JUDAH, AND LASTLY ISRAEL, THE CHIEF SUBJECT OF AMOS' PROPHECIES. (Amos 2:1-16) burned . . . bones of . . . king of Edom into lime--When Jehoram of Israel, Jehoshaphat of Judah, and the king of Edom, combined against Mesha king of Moab, the latter failing in battle to break through to the king of Edom, took the oldest son of the latter and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall (Kg2 3:27) [MICHAELIS]. Thus, "king of Edom" is taken as the heir to the throne of Edom. But "his son" is rather the king of Moab's own son, whom the father offered to Molech [JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, 9.3]. Thus the reference here in Amos is not to that fact, but to the revenge which probably the king of Moab took on the king of Edom, when the forces of Israel and Judah had retired after their successful campaign against Moab, leaving Edom without allies. The Hebrew tradition is that Moab in revenge tore from their grave and burned the bones of the king of Edom, the ally of Jehoram and Jehoshaphat, who was already buried. Probably the "burning of the bones" means, "he burned the king of Edom alive, reducing his very bones to lime" [MAURER].

brought you up from . . . Egypt--"brought up" is the phrase, as Egypt was low and flat, and Canaan hilly. to possess the land of the Amorite--The Amorites strictly occupied both sides of the Jordan and the mountains afterward possessed by Judah; but they here, as in Amo 2:9, stand for all the Canaanites. God kept Israel forty years in the wilderness, which tended to discipline them in His statutes, so as to be the better fitted for entering on the possession of Canaan.

Moab. - Amo 2:1. "Thus saith Jehovah: for three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I shall not reverse it, because it has burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime, Amo 2:2. I send fire into Moab, and it will devour the palaces of Kirioth, and Moab will perish in the tumult, in the war-cry, in the trumpet-blast. Amo 2:3. And I cut off the judge from the midst thereof, and all its princes do I strangle with it, saith Jehovah." The burning of the bones of the king of Edom is not burning while he was still alive, but the burning of the corpse into lime, i.e., so completely that the bones turned into powder like lime (D. Kimchi), to cool his wrath still further upon the dead man (cf. Kg2 23:16). This is the only thing blamed, not his having put him to death. No record has been preserved of this event in the historical books of the Old Testament; but it was no doubt connected with the war referred to in 2 Kings 3, which Joram of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah waged against the Moabites in company with the king of Edom; so that the Jewish tradition found in Jerome, viz., that after this war the Moabites dug up the bones of the king of Edom from the grace, and heaped insults upon them by burning them to ashes, is apparently not without foundation. As Amos in the case of all the other nations has mentioned only crimes that were committed against the covenant nation, the one with which the Moabites are charged must have been in some way associated with either Israel or Judah, that is to say, it must have been committed upon a king of Edom, who was a vassal of Judah, and therefore not very long after this war, since the Edomites shook off their dependence upon Judah in less than ten years from that time (Kg2 8:20). As a punishment for this, Moab was to be laid waste by the fire of war, and Keriyoth with its palaces to be burned down. הקּריּות is not an appellative noun (τῶν πόλεων αὐτῆς, lxx), but a proper name of one of the chief cities of Moab (cf. Jer 48:24, Jer 48:41), the ruins of which have been discovered by Burckhardt (Syr. p. 630) and Seetzen (ii. p. 342, cf. iv. p. 384) in the decayed town of Kereyat or Krrit. The application of the term מת to Moab is to be explained on the supposition that the nation is personified. שׁאון signifies war tumult, and בּתרוּעה is explained as in Amo 1:14 by בּקול שׁופר, blast of the trumpets, the signal for the assault or for the commencement of the battle. The judge with all the princes shall be cut off miqqirbâh, i.e., out of the land of Moab. The feminine suffix refers to Moab as a land or kingdom, and not to Keriyoth. From the fact that the shōphēt is mentioned instead of the king, it has been concluded by some that Moab had no king at that time, but had only a shōphēt as its ruler; and they have sought to account for this on the ground that Moab was at that time subject to the kingdom of the ten tribes (Hitzig and Ewald). But there is no notice in the history of anything of the kind, and it cannot possibly be inferred from the fact that Jeroboam restored the ancient boundaries of the kingdom as far as the Dead Sea (Kg2 14:25). Shōphēt is analogous to tōmēkh shēbhet in Amo 1:5, and is probably nothing more than a rhetorical expression applied to the מלך, who is so called in the threat against Ammon, and simply used for the sake of variety. The threatening prophecies concerning all the nations and kingdoms mentioned from Amo 1:6 onwards were fulfilled by the Chaldeans, who conquered all these kingdoms, and carried the people themselves into captivity. For fuller remarks upon this point, see at Jeremiah 48 and Eze 25:8.