Amos 9
Notes
Transcript
Final vision
Final vision
In our last half of Amos We’ve encountered 4 visions, in pairs. We start chapter 9 with a fifth vision. It’s different than the other visions we’ve read so far. No pretext about God showing Amos it’s just immediately the statement of what’s seen. We also don’t get any comment or pleas from Amos either. We began in Chapter seven with a heavy dose of Amos’ involvement so much that his words outnumbered the Lord’s In the second pair of visions there were very few words from Amos and now Amos is only the witness and not a participant of the vision.
I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said:
“Strike the capitals until the thresholds shake,
and shatter them on the heads of all the people;
and those who are left of them I will kill with the sword;
not one of them shall flee away;
not one of them shall escape.
“If they dig into Sheol,
from there shall my hand take them;
if they climb up to heaven,
from there I will bring them down.
If they hide themselves on the top of Carmel,
from there I will search them out and take them;
and if they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea,
there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them.
And if they go into captivity before their enemies,
there I will command the sword, and it shall kill them;
and I will fix my eyes upon them
for evil and not for good.”
Destruction is ordered from the top by God - no one escapes and the survivors are not to remain alive. We don’t get told what altar this is but the fact that it’s the capitals and we’ve been naming off the important places which all happened to be centers of pagan worship it seems likely to me we’re talking about pagan altars and pagan temples that will be knocked down crushing the worshipers within.
Next we have this list of IF conditions. I just want to contrast what we just read to the positive perspective on the possibility of being hidden from God.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
psalms has if in heaven if in sheol - Amos has if in sheol if in heaven
psalms says if from here to the farthest there (the largest horizontal) - Amos says from the highest to the lowest (the largest vertical)
the psalmist writes the darkest darkness of night - Amos says from the midst of their enemies
From all those places the psalmist rejoices God will find you and strengthen you - Amos says they shall be found and killed no matter where they may go
I do want to address this last phrase “I will fix my eyes upon them for evil and not for good.” In English we have a pretty weighted perspective on Evil. Evil is a moral wrong in our book. The Hebrew word RA used here just means bad. It’s the same word for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. If you had an apple and it was rotten would you describe it as bad or as evil? You’d say bad because there is nor moral failure of the apple. If you could cause it to become rotten would you be making the apple bad or evil? You’d still just be making it bad. If you cause the bad or the calamity to come about it’s not necessarily a moral evil. To determine that we’d have to examine all the facts and justifications. We have in this case and found that all of the bad is happening to those who are evil, which is a good.
Next we move to a wonderful short poem or hymn if you will.
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.
Melt is the word waver or sway back and forth it is often translated melt though possibly landslides when talking of earth like we see in the next line.
This is the mighty God who has powers over all the earth and heaven.
“Are you not like the Cushites to me,
O people of Israel?” declares the Lord.
“Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt,
and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?
Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom,
and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground,
except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,”
declares the Lord.
“For behold, I will command,
and shake the house of Israel among all the nations
as one shakes with a sieve,
but no pebble shall fall to the earth.
All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword,
who say, ‘Disaster shall not overtake or meet us.’
This is the final oracle of judgment of Amos, but there is hope like we’ve said many times about the prophets there is always an individual hope.
We end on a high note without the depressing impression some pastors might leave you with when talking about the minor prophets...
“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.
I 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.
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