seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
Amos 7:1 This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts after the king’s share had been harvested and just as the late crops were coming up. 2 When they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, “Sovereign Lord, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”
3 So the Lord relented.
“This will not happen,” the Lord said.
4 This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: The Sovereign Lord was calling for judgment by fire; it dried up the great deep and devoured the land. 5 Then I cried out, “Sovereign Lord, I beg you, stop! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”
6 So the Lord relented.
“This will not happen either,” the Sovereign Lord said.
7 This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb,[a] with a plumb line[b] in his hand. 8 And the Lord asked me, “What do you see, Amos?”
“A plumb line,” I replied.
Then the Lord said, “Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.
9 “The high places of Isaac will be destroyed
and the sanctuaries of Israel will be ruined;
with my sword I will rise against the house of Jeroboam.”
10 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent a message to Jeroboam king of Israel: “Amos is raising a conspiracy against you in the very heart of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words. 11 For this is what Amos is saying:
“‘Jeroboam will die by the sword,
and Israel will surely go into exile,
away from their native land.’”
12 Then Amaziah said to Amos, “Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. 13 Don’t prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.”
14 Amos answered Amaziah, “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. 15 But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ 16 Now then, hear the word of the Lord. You say,
“‘Do not prophesy against Israel,
and stop preaching against the descendants of Isaac.’
17 “Therefore this is what the Lord says:
“‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city,
and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword.
Your land will be measured and divided up,
and you yourself will die in a pagan[c] country.
And Israel will surely go into exile,
away from their native land.’”
a. Amos 7:7 The meaning of the Hebrew for this phrase is uncertain.
b. Amos 7:7 The meaning of the Hebrew for this phrase is uncertain; also in verse 8.
c. Amos 7:17 Hebrew an unclean
This is from the easy English site.
The patience of God is over. He will send his locusts as a judgement. The time of this picture is late spring. There was an earlier crop. The king took a share from this crop. However, we know very little about the circumstances of this. The harvest from the second crop was for the farmers. So if the locusts ate this second crop, there would be no food left.
Prophets often saw the future. Amos saw what might happen. Amos saw that the people were going to starve. Very few people or animals could live. Amos therefore stood between God and the people. He prayed for Israel. He prayed that God would not send this punishment. But he did not remind God about his covenant with Israel although he had done this before. This was because Israel had too many sins.
Amos now has another picture from God. God is going to send fire. But it is not a natural fire. It can even burn water. The great deep is deep water. This came up as streams and rivers. Fire can often be a sign of judgement in the Bible (Joel 1:19-20; 2:3, 5, 30).
These verses are similar to verses 2-3. Amos cries out ‘Stop!’ He uses the same reason as he used before. The fire will destroy everything. In the same way as before, God listens. He changes his mind. The fire will not happen.
Amos now has a third picture. God compares Israel to a wall. A plumb-line is a builder’s tool. It is a piece of string with a weight on the end. A plumb-line shows if a wall is straight or not. God himself ‘built’ Israel. He led Israel in the beginning. He made standards for his people. These were the laws he gave to Moses. There was therefore no reason for the Israelites to fail.
God compared this straight wall with Israel. He is not pleased with what he saw. The Israelites were not following his standards. They were not ‘straight’ any more. He had no more patience with them. So he would punish them. The Hebrew says that God will not ‘pass by them’. Instead, he will see their sin. This reminds us of the Passover (Exodus 12:23). The Israelites found shelter because of the blood. Now, however, there would be no escape.
God would even destroy the ‘holy places’. Actually, they were not very holy. They were important places for false religion. People worshipped Baal and other gods. They worshipped God at these places. But they worshipped him as if he were a Baal. Isaac had a connection with Beersheba (Genesis 26:33; 28:10). This was also a place of worship in the time of Amos. People thought that this connection made the worship legal.
Amos has a hard message for Israel. The leaders thought that this message was too hard. They did not want to hear it. Amaziah was probably the chief priest at Bethel at this time. Certainly, he hated the attack on Israel’s religion. So he appealed to the king. This was because the king controlled nearly all the religion in Israel. In fact, the first King Jeroboam almost made a new religion. But this religion was not true to God’s covenant. Amaziah said that Amos was trying to destroy the government. But this was not true.
Amaziah hoped that Amos would return to Judah. Then his prophecies would not make the leaders in Israel so nervous. Amaziah tried to say that Amos could earn more money in Israel. Prophets needed to receive gifts of money. So it was easy for Amaziah to attack Amos in this way.
Amaziah received his authority from Jeroboam. This was the reason that the prophets attacked the royal authority. Amaziah said that the temple at Bethel was the king’s temple. It was a special place. Amaziah looked after this temple. Therefore, Amaziah thought that he had the authority to decide things. He thought that he was able to tell Amos to go to Judah.
Therefore Amaziah was actually asking Amos not to obey God! Amos mentions both Israel and Isaac. All Israel, both north and south (including Judah) was part of God’s plan. Amaziah was opposing the real king. The real king was God.
Amos now said that four bad things would happen to Amaziah.
1) Amaziah’s wife would become a prostitute. This could happen if another country defeated Israel. Amaziah and his wife might then have to separate.
2) His children would die fighting against a foreign army.
3) The enemy would take his land and give it to other people. ‘The land’ probably does not refer to the personal land of Amaziah. It probably refers to the country of Israel.
4) He would go into exile and die there. The *Hebrew for ‘foreign country’ means ‘a land that is not clean’. Amaziah would hate to live in a country where people had other gods. Exile would be the final judgement of God.
And this is the installment from bibletrack.org.Amos first gets a vision of the locusts coming and eating up all the grass after the first mowing of the season, the crop tax designated for the king's livestock. This would leave no grass for the cattle of the people of Israel. Amos makes an appeal, and God dismisses that judgment.
Then Amos has a second vision of fire consuming the land of Israel, but God dismisses this judgment as well. However, in the third vision, God invokes the plumb line. You've seen a plumb line before. It's a weight on the end of a string to make certain that vertical structures are precisely vertical. Here's what God is saying in this third vision. His judgment will be based upon a concrete standard (like a plumb line) of Israel serving (or not) the one true God. If they don't, they will fall to the Assyrians. Verse 8 says, "...I will not again pass by them any more:" God is saying that he will no longer pass by them without judging them for their sin.
Whoa! The truth hurts. Remember? Amos lived in Judah, but prophesied in religiously-corrupt Israel. Well, the chief priest (Amaziah) of Pagan Central (my term) in Bethel was sent by Jeroboam II to put a stop to the prophesying of Amos - to send him packing back to Judah and never return. In effect he says, "Go home and prophesy, and don't come back here." In the process, he accuses Amos of conspiracy against the king by twisting the prophecy of Amos in order to try to evoke a more violent reaction from Jeroboam.
Listen, it's not good to mess with God's prophets; you might get a little personal prophecy that you didn't bargain for...as Amaziah did in verse 17. Amos tells him: your wife will be violated, your children will die, you will lose all you have and die in a pagan country. Whoa! I know Amaziah (the pagan priest) was sorry he brought it up! Isn't it interesting that God's man (Amos) had no tolerance (nor did God) for the false religion of this priest and the King of Israel he served. I'm amused at the reply Amos gives the big-wig pagan priest in verses 14-15, "I wasn't a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but God told me to tell them, and I told them." So, what are the qualifications for proclaiming righteousness? Just God's command to go.
The scene with the locusts and the scene with the water..... are both really interesting.... but they never happened.In Judah.... the first harvest went to God. The finest, most tender grains were to be offered to God at the Temple in Jerusalem, Judah. But in Israel... the first harvest went to the king... and what was left was to feed the poor. If God allowed the locusts to eat what was left after the king took his share... the people would starve.... so God gave the people a break.
I'm not sure if the water in these verses is the water that occurs naturally underground.... as an aquifer [underground river] or if the water is the water in the piping they used to get water from the source to the city. At any rate..... God was planning to send a fire so hot that it would evaporate the water in the system or in the aquifer. He created the world so a fire that hot would be nothing for Him to ignite..... but the poor would have died of thirst.... so God gave the people a break.
So instead of causing a natural disaster like locusts or fire..... God will let the Assyrians castrate, rape, murder and enslave those calf worshiping, self absorbed, over indulged, moronic humans who would rather worship a hunk of metal than the One Living God.
The amazing Amaziah worked for the king. Amos worked for God. I can just hear the amazing Amaziah telling Amos to go home and preach where he belongs. Amaziah was telling Amos that Amos might as well go back to Judah because Amos would not be able to preach to the paycheck and the free housing in Israel. Amaziah said the people of Israel didn't want to listen to anything Amos had to say. I can just hear Amos responding.... "I'm not doing it for the paycheck or the housing..... I was minding my own business caring for sheep and trees.... when God told me I had to come here."