Amos 7:15 Ulasan

In this chapter we have, I. God contending with Israel, by the judgments, but are reprieved, and the judgments turned away at the prayer of Amos (Amo 7:1-6). 2. God's patience is at length worn out by their obstinacy, and they are rejected, and sentenced to utter ruin (Amo 7:7-9). II. Israel contending with God, by the opposition given to his prophet. 1. Amaziah informs against Amos (Amo 7:10, Amo 7:11) and does what he can to rid the country of him as a public nuisance (Amo 7:12, Amo 7:13). 2. Amos justifies himself in what he did as a prophet (Amo 7:14, Amo 7:15) and denounces the judgments of God against Amaziah his prosecutor (Amo 7:16, Amo 7:17); for, when the contest is between God and man, it is easy to foresee, it is very easy to foretel, who will come off with the worst of it.

INTRODUCTION TO AMOS 7 In this and the two following chapters are the visions of Amos, in number five; three of which are contained in this chapter, and with which it begins. The first is of the grasshoppers or locusts eating up the later grass of the land, which are stopped at the intercession of the prophet, Amo 7:1; the second is of fire the Lord called for to contend by, whose devouring flames are made to cease by the same interposition, Amo 7:4; and the other is of the plumbline, signifying the utter destruction of the people of Israel, according to the righteous judgment of God, Amo 7:7; upon the delivery of which prophecies and visions, the priest of Bethel forms a charge against the prophet to the king; and advises Amos to flee into Judea, and prophesy there, and not at Bethel, being willing to be rid of him at any rate, Amo 7:10; next follows the prophet's vindication of himself showing his divine call to the prophetic office, and his mission and express order he had from the Lord to prophesy unto Israel, Amo 7:14; and concludes with a denunciation of divine judgments on the priest's family, and upon the whole land of Israel, Amo 7:16.

And the Lord took me as I followed the flock,.... Or "from behind" it (u); a description of a shepherd, such an one Amos was, and in this employ when the Lord called him, and took him to be a prophet; he did not seek after it, nor did he take this honour to himself; by which it appears that his mission was divine, and that he did not enter on this work with lucrative views: thus God took David in a like state of life, and made him king of Israel; and Elisha from the plough, and made him a prophet: and Christ several of his disciples from being fishermen, and made them fishers of men, or ministers of the word; and so their call appeared more clear and manifest; and the Lord said unto me; in a vision or dream by night; or by an articulate voice he heard; or by an impulse upon his spirit, which comes from the Spirit of God: go, prophesy unto my people Israel; for so they were by profession, and notwithstanding their apostasy; as yet they were not tallied "Loammi", Hos 1:9; to these the prophet was bid to go out of the land of Judea, where he was a herdsman, and prophesy in the name of the Lord to them; wherefore what he did was in obedience to the command of God, and he did but his duty; and what he in this verse and Amo 7:14 declares, is a sufficient vindication of himself, his character, and conduct; and having done this, he has something to say to the priest, as follows. (u) "de post pecus", Montanus; "de post gregem", Vatablus; "a post gregem", Liveleus.

Amos also said, “I was no prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but only a herdsman, a gatherer of sycamore fruit. And God took me.” He did not say this to exalt himself but to stop their mouths that suspected him as no prophet, and to show that he is no deceiver, and what he says does not come from his own mind.

(v. 14 onwards) And Amos answered and said to Amaziah, 'I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet, but I am a herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit. And the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me (the Vulgate adds 'the Lord'): Go, prophesy to my people Israel. Now hear the word of the Lord: You say, 'Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of idolatry.' Therefore thus says the Lord: 'Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by a measuring line; and you yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.' LXX: And Amos answered, and said to Amasiah: I was not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I gathered sycamore fruit ((or: a kind of wild fruit)), and the Lord took me from among the flock, and the Lord said to me: Go, and prophesy to my people Israel, and now hear the word of the Lord: you say, Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Jacob. Therefore, thus says the Lord: Your wife will commit adultery in the city, and your sons and your daughters will fall by the sword, and your land will be divided by a measuring line, and you will die in an unclean land; but Israel will be led captive from their own land. The Scripture recounts this which the blessed apostles did when the Scribes and Pharisees forbade them to teach in the name of Jesus; and they responded, saying: It is necessary to obey God rather than men. (Acts 4:16) We also know that the prophet Amos did this, who, being forbidden by the high priest of idols, prophesied in Bethel; he not only prophesied, but also showed that he feared God more by sending him, than by prohibiting him; and boldly and freely he himself denounced the punishment that he had tried to forbid and hinder the word of God. Not only, he said, am I not a prophet, or was not (one of whom is of humility, the other of truth) nor the son of a prophet, nor descended from the prophetic lineage; but when I was a shepherd and was pasturing the herds in the meadows, the Lord took me following the flocks. For the term 'shepherd,' which is called 'Bocer' in Hebrew, Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion, and the fifth edition translated it as 'herdsman,' who pastures herds; not sheep. The Seventy alone have called him 'shepherd' (αἰπόλον), who is properly the shepherd of goats, from the αἰπολία (the high country), which of course means a flock that grazes in high places, showing that herds of goats always climb steep rocks and lofty heights. But since he continues: 'And the Lord hath brought me forth from the sheep' (ἐκ τῶν προβάτων), he seems to suggest sheep more than goats, although in the beginning we read in Leviticus that sheep and goats are designated by the name of cattle. For thus the Lord speaks. If someone offers from the sheep, that is, from the flock, to the Lord a lamb or a kid, and a sheep or a goat (Leviticus 1:10). Furthermore, what he says, 'plucking mulberries', which Aquila interpreted as 'inspecting sycomores', and Symmachus, having sycomores, some have explained it in such a way that 'mulberries' are understood to be a type of tree that grows in the plains of Palestine, and they bring forth wild figs if they are not plucked, which become extremely bitter and are infected by mosquitoes. But for us, since the solitude in which Amos stayed does not produce any such tree, it seems more fitting to say brambles, which cause delay and provide consolation for the hunger and scarcity of the shepherds. However the reader wishes to understand it, it must be said that the Lord took on a humble and rustic shepherd, and sent him to his people Israel, and commanded him to go out from his land and journey to Samaria, and there prophesy about what is to come. Therefore, as the Lord said, you tell me, Amos: Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not drop dew upon the house of idols. Listen to what the Lord threatens against you. Concerning the house of idols, it is written in Hebrew as Beth Isaac, that is, the house of laughter (for Isaac is interpreted as laughter), which the Septuagint translated as the house of Jacob, substituting one name for another and not understanding the meaning. Again, where it says, 'Do not drop dew,' Symmachus interpreted it as 'Do not rebuke.' But to drip prophets, the language of the Scriptures is: that they do not pour out all of God's wrath at once, but rather proclaim it in small drops. Therefore, because you have said to me, 'You will not prophesy; your wife will fornicate in the city,' which Symmachus has interpreted better as 'she will be prostituted,' not that she will commit fornication herself, but that she will endure prostitution inflicted by others in a passive manner. However, it is a great pain and an incredible disgrace when a husband, in the midst of the city and in the presence of everyone, cannot prevent harm to his wife. Your sons and your daughters, he says, will also fall by the sword. There is not as much pain in a raped daughter as there is in a polluted wife, nor is there as much pain in a wife who is killed as there is in slaughtered sons. For a husband would rather hear of his wife being killed than being defiled. And this is not enough for him to feel wronged, unless his land is also divided by enemies with a rope and receives new cultivators. Even Amaziah himself, who now boasts in the power of the priesthood, will not die in his own land, but will be led captive and die in a land polluted by idols, and he will not die until he sees the people he deceived serving and captive. According to allegory, Amasias the priest is interpreted as strong and rigid ((or cold)), because he forbids the rebellious and fierce ecclesiastical man and true prophet from speaking the words and teaching of God and correcting the erring people. His wife, the false Church, will openly engage in fornication with everyone. And his sons and daughters, whom he has generated badly in error, will be struck by the sword of the Lord. His land and all his possessions will also be a portion of demons, and he himself will die in a defiled land that does not have the indwelling of God, but is contaminated by the errors of a corrupt religion, and every people who assumes a false name for itself, Israel, will migrate as captives from their land, so that they do not serve God, but submit their necks to the yoke of heretics and demons.

How good it is to raise up eyes of faith to the power of this worker, the Holy Spirit, and to look here and there at our ancestors in the Old and New Testaments. With the eyes of my faith open, I gaze on David, on Amos, on Daniel, on Peter, on Paul, on Matthew—and I am filled with a desire to behold the nature of this worker, the Holy Spirit. But I fall short. The Spirit filled a boy who played upon the harp, and made him a psalmist; on a shepherd and herdsman who pruned sycamore trees, and made him a prophet; on a child given to abstinence, and made him a judge of his elders; on a fisherman, and made him a preacher; on one who persecuted the church, and made him the teacher of the Gentiles; on a tax collector, and made him an Evangelist. What a skilled worker this Spirit is! There is no question of delay in learning what the Spirit teaches us. No sooner does the Spirit touch our minds in regard to anything than we are taught; the Spirit’s very touch is teaching. The Spirit changes the human heart in a moment, filling it with light. Suddenly we are no longer what we were; suddenly we are something we never used to be.

If the spirit of prophecy had always been present to the prophets, the prophet Amos when asked would never have said, “I am no prophet”; he even adds, “neither a prophet’s son, but I am a herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit.” How then was he no prophet who foretold so many true things concerning the future? Or in what way was he a prophet if he at the time disowned the truth concerning himself? At the moment that he was called in question, he felt that the spirit of prophecy was not with him. He bore true testimony concerning himself in saying, “I am not a prophet.” Yet he added afterward, “Now therefore hear the word of the Lord. Therefore thus said the Lord, ‘Your wife shall be a harlot in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by line, and you shall die in a polluted land.’ ” By these words of the prophet it is plainly shown that while he was bearing that testimony about himself he was filled, and on the instant rewarded with the spirit of prophecy, because he humbly acknowledged himself to be no prophet.

“And Amaziah sends, etc.” In fact, since the prophet had received the order to prophesy beside the temple of the idols, so that his words might be heard not only by the ten tribes but also by the people living around, Amaziah, the priest of the temple, thinks that if these words were addressed to the people for some time, inevitably they would have been afraid and would not have come to worship the idols anymore, and therefore he would have lost authority. So he sends his complaint to excite the reaction of the king against the prophet, asking that either he was executed or expelled from that place. But since the king was afraid to harm the prophet, Amaziah dares say to the prophet by mocking him and laughing at him—in fact, the word seer is used with scorn: “Go, flee away to the land of Judah.” That is, there you will be treated justly by receiving the wage for your role as a prophet, because those of the house of Judah are accustomed to taking care of their prophets. This priest of the demons had believed that the prophet had taken up his task as if it was an ordinary job, that is, to make a living as he himself had done. He imagined that the motive of Amos was to stuff himself with food. But the prophet answered, according to the Greek text, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son.” That is, I have not learned this profession as a trade nor have I inherited it from my fathers, but it is the work of divine grace that is given to those who seek after God. “I was a goat herder and dug around sycamore trees.” Other versions read, “I looked for the fruits of the sycamore trees,” or “I scraped the wild fig trees,” or “I made incisions on the fruits of the sycamores.” This meaning is, sometimes I pastured goats and sheep as well, sometimes I tilled the ground by digging and raking and irrigating around the trees. By mentioning the sycamore trees, which are wild fig trees, he refers to all trees.

In this chapter God represents to Amos, by three several visions, the judgments he is about to bring on Israel. The first is a plague of locusts, threatening to cut of the hopes of the harvest by attacking it in the time of the second growth; the first luxuriances of the crop being probably mowed for the king's horses, Amo 7:1-3. The next vision threatens a judgment by fire, which would consume a great part, Amo 7:4-6; and the third a total overthrow of Israel, levelling it as it were by a line, Amo 7:7-9. The rest of the chapter is a denunciation of heavy judgments against Amaziah, priest of Beth-el, who had brought an accusation to the king against the prophet, Amo 7:10-17.

showed . . . me; and, behold--The same formula prefaces the three visions in this chapter, and the fourth in Amo 8:1. grasshoppers--rather, "locusts" in the caterpillar state, from a Hebrew root, "to creep forth." In the autumn the eggs are deposited in the earth; in the spring the young come forth [MAURER]. the latter growth--namely, of grass, which comes up after the mowing. They do not in the East mow their grass and make hay of it, but cut it off the ground as they require it. the king's mowings--the first-fruits of the mown grass, tyrannically exacted by the king from the people. The literal locusts, as in Joel, are probably symbols of human foes: thus the "growth" of grass "after the king's mowings" will mean the political revival of Israel under Jeroboam II (Kg2 14:25), after it had been mown down, as it were, by Hazael and Ben-hadad of Syria (Kg2 13:3), [GROTIUS].

took me as I followed the flock--So David was taken (Sa2 7:8; Psa 78:70-71). Messiah is the antitypical Shepherd (Psa 23:1-6; John 10:1-18). unto my people--"against" [MAURER]; so Amo 7:16. Jehovah claims them still as His by right, though slighting His authority. God would recover them to His service by the prophet's ministry.

III. Sights or Visions The last part of the writings of Amos contains five visions, which confirm the contents of the prophetic addresses in the preceding part. The first four visions, however (ch. 7 and Amo 8:1-14), are distinguished from the fifth and last (Amo 9:1-15) by the fact, that whereas the former all commence with the same formula, "Thus hath the Lord showed me," the latter commences with the words, "I saw the Lord," etc. They also differ in their contents, inasmuch as the former symbolize the judgments which have already fallen in part upon Israel, and in part have still to fall; whilst the latter, on the contrary, proclaims the overthrow of the old theocracy, and after this the restoration of the fallen kingdom of God, and its ultimate glory. And again, of these four, the first and second (Amo 7:1-6) are distinguished from the third and fourth (Amo 7:7-9, and Amo 8:1-3) by the fact, that whereas the former contain a promise in reply to the prophet's intercession, that Jacob shall be spared, in the latter any further sparing is expressly refused; so that they are thus formed into two pairs, which differ from one another both in their contents and purpose. This difference is of importance, in relation both to the meaning and also to the historical bearing of the visions. It points to the conclusion, that the first two visions indicate universal judgments, whilst the third and fourth simply threaten the overthrow of the kingdom of Israel in the immediate future, the commencement of which is represented in the fifth and last vision, and which is then still further depicted in its results in connection with the realization of the divine plan of salvation. Visions of the Locusts, the Fire, and the Plumb-Line. The Prophet's Experience at Bethel - Amos 7