Amos 2:3 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.

And I will cut off the judge from the midst thereof,.... Either from the midst of Moab, the country in general; or from Kerioth in particular, so Kimchi; meaning their principal governor, their king, as Aben Ezra; for kings sometimes have acted as judges, took the bench, and sat and administered justice to their subjects: and I will stay all the princes thereof with him, saith the Lord; the king, and the princes of the blood, and his nobles; so that there should be none to succeed him, or to protect and defend the people; the destruction should be an entire one, and inevitable, for the mouth of the Lord had spoken it. This was fulfilled at the same time as the prophecy against the children of Ammon by Nebuchadnezzar, five years after the destruction of Jerusalem (o), which is next threatened. (o) Joseph. Antiqu. l. 10. c. 9. sect. 7. Vid. Judith i. 12.

(Chapter 2, Verse 1 and following) Thus says the Lord: Concerning the three sins of Moab, and concerning four, I will not revoke my punishment, because he burned the bones of the king of Edom to ashes. And I will send fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth, and Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet. And I will cut off the judge from the midst of her, and will slay all her princes with him, says the Lord. LXX: Thus says the Lord: Concerning the three impious acts of Moab, and concerning four, I will not turn away from them, because he burned the bones of the king of Edom to ashes. And I will send fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the foundations of its cities, and Moab shall die with affliction, with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet. And I will cut off the judge from her, and will slay all her princes with him, says the Lord. Not only the sons of Ammon, but also Moab, was descended from Lot, who was the son of Abraham's brother. And in order to demonstrate that He is the Lord of all and that all souls belong to Him, who is their creator, He avenges the injustice of the king of Edom, indeed the crime that was perpetrated against him by the Moabites, that they burned his bones to ashes, and their cruelty and rage did not end even in death. The Hebrews tell that the bones of the king of Edom, who had gone up with the king of Israel, Joram, and the king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, against Moab in revenge for a grievance, were later torn apart and burned by the Moabites (2 Kings 3). Therefore, they say, God declares that he will send fire upon Moab, or the capital city of the Moabites, from which the whole province is named, or the entire province, to devour the city of Carioth, which is the name of the city. Although the Seventy translated it as 'the cities of Moab', that is, Moab: and it will perish in the sound and wailing of the conquering army, of which one is called Saon in Hebrew, the other Therua; and in the blast of the trumpet or horn, for this is what Sophar means. And when Moab shall perish, the counsel of the princes and judges shall be in vain, with the cities and leaders being overthrown. However, it is necessary to transfer the perfect captivity, or Solomon's, and conclude it in Edom, so that it may make them humble and earthly from the high and heavenly, as Gaza and Tyre are said to have done. Thus, we should not burn the bones of the king of Edom and dissolve them into ash and dust. The Jews transfer spiritual understanding into Edomite flesh, and weaken and diminish the royal sense, which is found in scripture and is most solid and firm, with certain genealogies and unnecessary traditions, reducing it to dust. And it is not only they who do this, but all heretics who want to sit God on a high and elevated throne in a human likeness, and to place feet on the ground so that they do not hang; to have a nose to smell the fragrance of good scent, eyes to see, hands to work, feet to walk, ears to hear, a mouth to speak, teeth to chew food. He who reads that Judah went in to Thamar the harlot and from her begot two sons (Gen. XXXVIII): if he follows the disgraceful letter and does not ascend to the beauty of spiritual understanding, he will burn the bones of the king of Edom. He who thinks that Hosea took a harlot as a wife (Hosea I), and understands nothing more in the statement than what is contained in simple words, he will burn the bones of the king of Edom. And therefore the Lord will send fire into Moab, which is interpreted 'from the father,' because although he was indeed born from God, yet he has forsaken him. And it shall devour cities, or towns, because it is interpreted as Carioth. Hence Cariathiarim is translated into our language as the village of the woods. And Moab shall not die in any other way except in a clamor, and a noise, and a wailing, and the blast of the trumpet, so that they may be overwhelmed in their high senses, which are compared in holy books to the blasts of the trumpet. Then the judges and princes, and all those who are in charge of earthly works, are destroyed by the divine word, and the Church commands to the teachers: \"Climb up to a high mountain, you who preach Zion, lift up your voice, you who proclaim Jerusalem\" (Isaiah XL, 9).

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.

I will cut off the judge - It shall be so destroyed, that it shall never more have any form of government. The judge here, שופט shophet, may signify the chief magistrate. The chief magistrates of the Carthaginians were called suffetes; probably taken from the Hebrew Judges, שופטים shophetim.

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].

the judge--the chief magistrate, the supreme source of justice. "King" not being used, it seems likely a change of government had before this time substituted for kings, supreme judges.

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.