Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 1

The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen - Amos begins by setting forth his own nothingness, and also the great grace of his Teacher and Instructor, the Holy Spirit, referring all to His glory. He, like David, Peter, Paul, and Matthew, was one of the weak things of the world, whom God chose to confound the mighty.

He was himself a herdsman only among herdsmen; but the words which he spoke were not his own. They were words which he saw, not with eyes of flesh, but with that vision with which words can be seen, the seer’s vision in the mind.

They were words concerning, or rather upon Israel, heavy words coming upon the heavy transgressions of Israel. The Hebrew word saw is not of mere sight, but of a vision given by God. Amos only says that they were his words, in order immediately to add that they came to him from God, that he himself was but the human organ through which God spoke.

Two years before the earthquake - This earthquake must plainly have been one of the greatest, since it was vividly in people’s memories in the time of Zechariah, and Amos speaks of it as the earthquake. The earthquakes of the East, like that of Lisbon, destroy whole cities. In one, a little before the birth of our Lord, some ten thousand were buried under the ruined houses.

This terrific earthquake (for as such Zechariah describes it) was one of the preludes of that displeasure of God, which Amos foretold. A warning of two years, and time for repentance, were given, before the earthquake should come, the token and beginning of a further shaking of both kingdoms, unless they should repent. In effect, it was the first flash of the lightning which consumed them.

The Lord will roar - Amos connects his prophecy to the end of Joel’s, in order to attest immediately in its opening the unity of their mission, and to prepare people’s minds to see that his own prophecy was an expansion of those words, declaring the nearer and coming judgments of God.

Those nearer judgments, however, of which he spoke, were only the preludes of the judgments of the Great Day that Joel foretold, and of that last terrible voice of Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, of whom Jacob prophesies: He couched, He lay down as a lion, and as a young lion; who shall raise Him up? (Genesis 49:9).

God is said to “utter His” awful “voice from Zion and Jerusalem,” because there He had set His Name; there He was present in His Church.

It was, so to speak, His own place, which He had hallowed by tokens of His presence, although the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. At the outset of his prophecy, Amos warned Israel that God dwelt there—not among themselves in their separated state.

Jeremiah, in using these same words toward Judah, speaks not of Jerusalem but of heaven: The Lord shall roar from on high, and utter His voice from His holy habitation (Jeremiah 25:30). The prophecy is to the ten tribes or to the pagan: God speaks out of the Church.

He utters His Voice from Jerusalem, as He says, Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Isaiah 2:3), showing that God was not in the cities of Israel (that is, in Dan and Bethel, where the golden calves were, nor in the royal cities of Samaria and Jezreel) but in the true religion, which was then in Zion and Jerusalem.

And the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn - Perhaps, with a feeling for the home he had loved and left, the prophet’s first thought amid the desolation he predicts was toward his own shepherd-haunts. The well-known Mount Carmel was far in the opposite direction in the tribe of Asher.

Its name is derived from its richness and fertility, perhaps signifying “a land of vine and olive yards.” In Jerome’s time, it was “thickly studded with olives, shrubs and vineyards,” and its very summit was known for “glad pastures.”

It is one of the most striking natural features of Palestine. It ends a line of hills, 18 miles long, by a long bold headland reaching out far into the Mediterranean, and forming the south side of the Bay of Acco or Acre. Rising 1,200 feet above the sea, it stands out “like some guardian of its native strand;” yet it was rich with every variety of beauty, flower, fruit, and tree. It is almost always called “the Carmel,” “the rich garden-ground.” From its nearness to the sea, heavy dews nightly supply it with ever-renewed freshness, so that in mid-summer it is green and flowery.

Travelers describe it as “quite green, its top covered with firs and oaks, lower down with olives and laurels, and everywhere excellently watered.” “There is not a flower,” says Van de Velde, “that I have seen in Galilee or on the plains along the coasts, that I do not find here again on Carmel. It is still the same fragrant lovely mountain as of old.” Furthermore, “Its varied world of flowers attracts such a number of the rarer varicolored insects that a collector might for a whole year be richly employed.” It has also been called “a natural garden and repository of herbs.”

Its pastures were rich, so as to equal those of Bashan. It is said that “it gives rise to a number of crystal streams, the largest of which gushes from the spring of Elijah” (Jeremiah 50:19; Nahum 1:4). It had abundant supplies in itself.

If it too became a desert, what else would be spared? If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry? (Luke 23:31).

All, high and low, shall be stricken in one common desolation; all the whole land, from “the pastures of the shepherds” in the south to Mount Carmel in the North. And this, as soon as God had spoken: “He spake, and it was made.”

So now, conversely, He utters His Voice, and Carmel has languished. Its glory has passed away, as in the twinkling of an eye. God has spoken the word, and it is gone.

What depended on God’s gifts abides; what depended on man is gone. There remains a wild beauty still; but it is the beauty of natural luxuriance. “All,” says one who explored its depths, “lies waste; all is a wilderness. The utmost fertility is here lost for man, useless to man. The vineyards of Carmel, where are they now? Behold the long rows of stones on the ground, the remains of the walls; they will tell you that here, where now with difficulty you force your way through the thick entangled copse, lay, in days of old, those incomparable vineyards to which Carmel owes its name.”

The order of God’s threatenings seems to have been addressed to gain the people's attention. The punishment is first pronounced upon their enemies, for their sins, directly or indirectly, against God's people and God in them. Then, concerning those enemies themselves, the order is not of place or time, but of their relation to God’s people. It begins with their most oppressive enemy, Syria; then Philistia, the old and ceaseless, although less powerful, enemy; then Tyre, not an oppressor like these, yet violating a bond they did not have with others—the ties of former friendship and covenant—being also malicious and hardhearted due to covetousness. Then follow Edom, Ammon, and Moab, who also broke the bonds of kinship. Finally, and closest of all, judgment falls on Judah, who had the true worship of the true God among them but despised it.

Every infliction on those like ourselves finds an echo in our own consciences. Israel heard and readily believed God’s judgments upon others. It was not tempted to set itself against believing them.

How then could Israel refuse to believe about itself what it believed of others like itself? “Change but the name, the tale is told of you,” was a pagan saying that has almost passed into a proverb. The course of the prophecy convicted “them,” just as the things written in Holy Scripture “for our examples” convict Christians. If they who sinned without law, perished without law (Romans 2:12), how much more should they who have sinned in the law, be judged by the law. God’s judgments rolled around like a thundercloud, passing from land to land, giving warning of their approach, at last to gather and center on Israel itself, unless it repented.

In the judgments on others, Israel was to read its own fate; and this was truer the nearer God was to them. “Israel” is placed last because on it the destruction was to fall completely and rest there.

For three transgressions and for four - These words express not four transgressions added to three, but an additional transgression beyond the former ones—the final sin, by which the measure of sin, which before was full, overflows, and God’s wrath comes. So in other places where similar wording occurs, the added number is one beyond, and mostly relates to something greater than all the rest. For example, He shall deliver you in six troubles; yes, in seven there shall no evil touch you (Job 5:19). The word “yes” denotes that the seventh is some heavier trouble, beyond all the rest, which would seem likely to break endurance. Again, give a portion to seven, and also to eight (Ecclesiastes 11:2).

Seven is used as a symbol of a whole, since on the seventh day God rested from all which He had made, and therefore the number seven featured so prominently in the whole Jewish ritual. All time was measured by seven.

The rule then is: “Give without bounds; when that whole is fulfilled, still give.” Again, in that series of sayings in the book of Proverbs (Proverbs 30), the fourth is, in each case, something greater than the three preceding. There are three things that are never satisfied; yes, four things say not, ‘It is enough’ (Proverbs 30:15–16). The other things cannot be satisfied; the fourth, fire, grows fiercer by being fed.

Again, There be three things which go well; yes, four are comely in going (Proverbs 30:29–31). The moral majesty of a king is obviously greater than the rest. So the handmaid which displaces her mistress (Proverbs 30:21–23) is more intolerable and overbearing than the others. The art and concealment of a man in approaching a maiden is of a subtler kind than things in nature which leave no trace of themselves: the eagle in the air, the serpent on the rock, the ship in its pathway through the waves (Proverbs 30:18–19).

Again, Sowing discord among brethren (Proverbs 6:16–19) has a special hatefulness, as not only being sin, but causing widespread and destructive sin, and destroying in others the chief grace, love. Soul-murder is worse than physical murder and requires more devilish art.

These things - Job says, God works these things twice and three times with man, to bring back his soul from the pit (Job 33:29). The last grace of God, whether sealing up the former graces of those who use them, or granted to those who have wasted them, is the crowning act of His love or forbearance.

In pagan poetry also, as a trace of a mystery which they had forgotten, three is a sacred whole; where “three times and fourfold blessed” stands among them for something exceeding even a full and perfect blessing, a superabundance of blessings.

The fourth transgression of these pagan nations is alone mentioned. For the prophet had no mission to “them;” he only declares to Israel the reason for the judgment which was to come upon them. The three transgressions stand for a whole sum of sin, which had not yet brought down extreme punishment; the fourth was the crowning sin, after which God would no longer spare. But although the fourth drew down His judgment, God, at the last, punishes not the last sin only, but all that went before.

Because the prophet says not, “for the fourth,” but “for three transgressions and for four,” he expresses at once that God did not punish until the last sin, by which the iniquity of the sinful nation became full (Genesis 15:16), and that, “then,” He punished for all—for the whole mass of sin described by the three, and for the fourth also. God is longsuffering and ready to forgive; but when the sinner finally becomes a vessel of wrath (Romans 9:22), He punishes all the earlier sins which, for a time, He passed by.

Sin adds to sin, out of which it grows; it does not overshadow the former sins, it does not obliterate them, but increases the mass of guilt, which God punishes. When the Jews killed the Son, there came on them all the righteous bloodshed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias (Matthew 23:35–36; Luke 11:50–51). All the blood of all the prophets and servants of God under the Old Testament came upon that generation. So each individual sinner who dies impenitent will be punished for all that, in his whole life, he did or became, contrary to the law of God.

Deeper sins bring deeper damnation at the last. So Paul speaks of those who treasure up to themselves wrath against the Day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God (Romans 2:5). As good people, by the grace of God, do, through each act done with the help of that grace, gain an addition to their everlasting reward, so the wicked, by each added sin, add to their damnation.

Of Damascus - Damascus was one of the oldest cities in the world and one of its key points of contact with other regions. It lay in the middle of its plain, a high table-land of rich cultivation, whose breadth, from Anti-Lebanon eastward, was about half a degree. On the west and north, its plain lay sheltered under the range of Anti-Lebanon; on the east, it was protected by the great desert that lay between its oasis-territory and the Euphrates.

Immediately, it was bounded by the three lakes which receive the surplus water that enriches it. The Barada (the “cold”), having joined the Fijeh (the traditional Pharpar, a name which well describes its tumultuous course), runs on the north of, and through the city, and then chiefly into the central of the three lakes, the Bahret-el-kibliyeh (the “south” lake); from there, it is supposed, but in part also directly, into the Bahret-esh-Shurkiyeh (the “east” lake).

The ‘Awaj (the “crooked”) (perhaps the old Amana, “the never-failing,” in contrast with the streams which are exhausted in irrigation) runs near the old south boundary of Damascus, separating it probably from the northern possessions of Israel beyond Jordan—Bashan (in its widest sense), and Jetur or Ituraea. The area has been calculated at 236 square geographical miles.

This area was more the center of its dominions than a measure of their full extent. But it supported a population far beyond what that space would maintain in Europe. Taught by the face of creation around them, where the course of every tiny rivulet, as it burst from the rocks, was marked by a rich luxuriance, the Damascenes of old utilized the continual supply from the snows of Hermon or the heights of Anti-Lebanon with a systematic diligence that is hard for us in our northern climate to imagine, as we have no such need for it.

“Without the Barada,” says Porter, “the city could not exist, and the plain would be a parched desert; but now aqueducts intersect every quarter, and fountains sparkle in almost every dwelling, while innumerable canals extend their ramifications over the vast plain, clothing it with verdure and beauty.”

Five of these canals are led off from the river at different elevations before it enters the plain. They are carried along the precipitous banks of the ravine, being in some places tunneled through solid rock. The two on the northern side water Salahiyeh at the foot of the hills about a mile from the city, and then irrigate the higher portions of the plain for a distance of nearly twenty miles. Of the three on the south side, one is led to the populous village Daraya, five miles distant; the other two supply the city, its suburbs, and gardens.

Similar use was made of every fountain in every larger or smaller plain. In ancient times it was said, “The Chrysorrhoas (the Barada) is nearly expended in artificial channels.” It was also said: “Damascus is fertile through drinking up the Chrysorrhoas by irrigation.” Fourteen names of its canals are still known; and while it has been common to select 7 or 8 chief canals, as many as 70 have been counted. No art or labor was thought too great. The waters of the Fijeh were carried by a great aqueduct tunneled through the side of the perpendicular cliff. Yet this was as nothing.

Its whole plain was intersected with canals and tunneled below. An account states: “The waters of the river were spread over the surface of the soil in the fields and gardens; underneath, other canals were tunneled to collect the excess water which seeps through the soil, or from little fountains and springs below. The stream thus collected is led off to a lower level, where it comes to the surface.” Furthermore: “The whole plain is filled with these remarkable aqueducts, some of them running for 2 or 3 miles underground. Where the water of one is spreading life and greenery over the surface, another branch is collecting a new supply.” “In former days these extended over the whole plain to the lakes, thus irrigating the fields and gardens in every part of it.”

Damascus then was, in ancient times, famed for its beauty. Its white buildings, embedded in the deep green of its surrounding orchards, were like diamonds encircled by emeralds. They reach nearly to Anti-Lebanon westward, “and extend on both sides of the Barada some miles eastward. They cover an area at least 25 (or 30) miles in circuit, and make the environs an earthly Paradise.” Therefore the Arabs said, “If there is a garden of Eden on earth, it is Damascus; and if in heaven, Damascus is like it on earth.”

But this beauty of Damascus was also its strength. “The river,” says William of Tyre, “having abundant water, supplies orchards on both banks, thick-set with fruit-trees, and flows eastward by the city wall. On the west and north the city was far and wide fenced by orchards, like thick dense woods, which stretched four or five miles toward Libanus. These orchards are an exceedingly strong defense; for from the density of the trees and the narrowness of the ways, it seemed difficult and almost impossible to approach the city on that side.”

Even to this day it is said, “The true defense of Damascus consists in its gardens, which, forming a forest of fruit-trees and a labyrinth of hedges, walls and ditches, for more than 7 leagues in circumference, would present no small impediment to a Muslim enemy.”

The advantage of its site doubtless occasioned its early selection as a settlement. It lay on the best route from the interior of Asia to the Mediterranean, to Tyre, and even to Egypt.

Chedorlaomer and the four kings with him, doubtless, came that way, since the first whom they struck were at Ashteroth Karnaim (Genesis 14:5–6) in Jaulan or Gaulonitis, and from there they swept on southward, along the west side of Jordan, striking, as they went, first the “Zuzim,” (probably the same as the Zamzummim (Deuteronomy 2:2)) in Ammonitis; then “the Emim in the plain of Kiriathaim” in Moab (Deuteronomy 9:11),

then “the Horites in Mount Seir to Elparan” (probably Elath on the Gulf called from it). They returned that way, since Abraham overtook them at Hobah near Damascus (Genesis 14:15). Damascus was already the chief city, and Hobah was known only through its relation to Damascus. It was on the route by which Abraham himself came at God’s command from Haran (Charrae of the Greeks), whether over Tiphsah (“the passage,” Thapsacus) or another more northern passage over the Euphrates.

The fact that his chief and confidential servant whom he entrusted to seek a wife for Isaac, and who was, at one time, his heir, was a Damascene (Genesis 15:2–3), implies some intimate connection of Abraham with Damascus. Around the first century AD, the name of Abraham was still held in honor in the region of Damascus; a village was named from him “Abraham’s dwelling;” and a native historian Nicolas said that he reigned in Damascus on his way from the country beyond Babylon to Canaan. The name of his servant “Eliezer,” meaning “my God is help,” implies that at this time too the servant was a worshiper of the One God. The name Damascus probably signified the strenuous, energetic character of its founder.

Like the other names connected with Aram in the Old Testament, it is, in accordance with the common descent from Aram, Aramaic. It was no part of the territory assigned to Israel, nor was it disturbed by them. Judging, probably, David’s defensive conquests by its own policy, it joined the other Syrians who attacked David, was subdued, garrisoned, and became tributary (2 Samuel 8:5–6). It was at that time probably a subordinate power, whether on the ground of the personal eminence of Hadadezer king of Zobah, or any other. Certainly Hadadezer stands out conspicuously; the Damascenes are mentioned only subordinately.

Consistently with this, the first mention of the kingdom of Damascus in Scripture is the dynasty of Rezon son of Eliada, a fugitive servant of Hadadezer, who formed a marauding band, then settled and reigned in Damascus (1 Kings 11:23–24). Before this, Scripture speaks only of the people of Damascus, not of their kings. Its native historian admits that the Damascenes were, in the time of David, and continued to be, the aggressors, while he glosses over their repeated defeats and represents their kings as having reigned successively from father to son for ten generations, a thing probably unknown in any monarchy. This historian states: “A native, Adad, having gained great power, became king of Damascus and the rest of Syria, except Phoenicia. He, having carried war against David, king of Judea, and disputed with him in many battles, and that finally at the Euphrates where he was defeated, had the character of a most eminent king for prowess and valor.”

“After his death, his descendants reigned for ten generations, each receiving from his father the name (Hadad) together with the kingdom, like the Ptolemies of Egypt. The third, having gained the greatest power of all, seeking to repair the defeat of his grandfather, warring against the Jews, wasted what is now called Samaritis.” They could not tolerate a defeat which they had brought upon themselves.

Rezon renewed, throughout the later part of Solomon’s reign, the aggression of Hadad. After the schism of the ten tribes, the hostility of Damascus was concentrated against Israel, who lay next to them. Abijam was in league with the father of Benhadad (1 Kings 15:19). Benhadad at once broke his league with Baasha at the request of Asa in his later mistrustful days (1 Chronicles 16:2–7), and turned against Baasha (1 Chronicles 16:2–7; 1 Kings 15:20).

From Omri also Benhadad I took cities and extorted “streets,” probably a Damascus quarter, in Samaria itself (1 Kings 20:34). Benhadad II had “thirty-two” vassal “kings” (1 Kings 20:1, 24) (dependent kings like those of Canaan, each of his own city and little territory) and led them against Samaria, intending to plunder it (1 Kings 20:6–7), and, during the plundering, probably to make it his own or to destroy it.

By God’s help they were twice defeated; the second time, when they directly challenged the power of God (1 Kings 20:22–25, 28), so decisively that, had not Ahab been flattered by the appeal to his mercy (1 Kings 20:31–32), Syria would no longer have been in a condition to oppress Israel. Benhadad promised to restore the cities which his father had taken from Israel and to make an Israel-quarter in Damascus (1 Kings 20:34).

If this promise was fulfilled, Ramoth-Gilead must have been lost to Syria at an earlier period, since, three years afterward, Ahab perished in an attempt, with the help of Jehoshaphat, against God's counsel, to recover it (1 Kings 22). Ramoth-Gilead being thus in the hands of Syria, all north of it—half of Dan and Manasseh beyond Jordan—must also have been conquered by Syria.

Except for the one great siege of Samaria, which brought it to dire straits and which God dissipated by a panic He infused into the Syrian army (2 Kings 7:6), Benhadad and Hazael encouraged only marauding expeditions against Israel during the 14 years of Ahaziah and Jehoram. Benhadad was, according to Assyrian inscriptions, defeated three times, Hazael twice, by Shalmanubar king of Assyria.

Benhadad appears to have acted on the offensive, in alliance with the kings of the Hittites, the Hamathites and Phoenicians. Hazael was attacked alone, driven to take refuge in Anti-Lebanon, and probably became tributary.

Assyrian chronicles relate only Assyrian victories. The brief notice that through Naaman the Lord gave deliverance to Syria (2 Kings 5:1) probably refers to some notable check which Assyria received through him. For there was no other enemy from whom Syria had to be “delivered.”

Subsequently to that retreat from Samaria, Hazael even lost Ramoth (2 Kings 9:14–15) to Jehoram after a battle before it (2 Kings 8:29), in which Jehoram was wounded. It is a probable conjecture that Jehu, by his political submission to Assyria, brought upon himself the calamities which Elisha foretold. Hazael probably became the instrument of God in chastening Israel, while he was avenging Jehu’s submission to a power whom he dreaded and from whom he had suffered.

Israel, having lost the help of Judah, became an easier prey. Hazael not only took from Israel all east of Jordan (2 Kings 10:32–33) but made the whole open country unsafe for the Israelites to live in.

Not until God gave Israel a saviour, could they dwell in their tents as beforetime (2 Kings 13:5). Hazael extended his conquests to Gath (2 Kings 12:17), intending probably to open a connecting line with Egypt.

With a small company of men he defeated a large army of Judah (2 Chronicles 24:23–24). Joash, king of Judah, bought him off, when advancing against Jerusalem, with everything of gold, consecrated or civil, in the temple or in his own treasures (2 Kings 12:18).

Jehoash recovered from Benhadad III the cities on this side of the Jordan (2 Kings 13:25); Jeroboam II recovered all their lost territories and even Damascus and Hamath (2 Kings 14:28). Yet after this, Damascus was to recover its power under Rezin, to become formidable to Judah, and, through its aggressions on Judah, to bring destruction on itself. At this time, Damascus was probably, like ourselves, a rich, commercial, as well as warlike, but not as yet a manufacturing (see the note at Amos 3:12) nation.

Its wealth, as a great emporium of transit commerce (as it is now), provided it with the resources for war. The white wool (Ezekiel 27:18), in which it traded with Tyre, implies the possession of a large remote area in the desert, where the sheep yield the whitest wool. It had then doubtless, besides the population of its plain, large nomadic hordes dependent upon it.

I will not turn away the punishment thereof - Literally, “I will not turn it back.” What was this that God would not turn back? Amos does not express it. Silence is often more emphatic than words.

Not naming it, he rather leaves it to be imagined, as something which had long been coming upon them to overwhelm them, which God had long held back, but which, since He would now hold it back no longer, would burst in with more terrifying and overwhelming power because it had been restrained before. Sin and punishment are by a great law of God bound together.

God’s mercy long holds back the punishment, allowing only some slight signs of His displeasure to show themselves, so that the sinful soul or people may not be without warning. When He no longer withholds it, the law of His moral government holds its course. “Seldom,” as pagan experience observed, “has punishment, with its slow pace, let the advancing evildoer escape.”

Because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron - The instrument, Jerome relates here, was “a type of wagon, rolling on iron wheels beneath, set with teeth; so that it both threshed out the grain and bruised the straw and cut it in pieces, as food for the cattle, for want of hay.” A similar instrument, called by nearly the same name, is still in use in Syria and Egypt.

Elisha had foretold to Hazael his cruelty to Israel: Their strongholds you will set on fire, and their young men you will slay with the sword, and will dash their children, and rip up their women with child (2 Kings 8:12).

Hazael, like others gradually steeped in sin, thought it impossible but did it. In the days of Jehu, Hazael smote them in all the coasts of Israel from Jordan eastward; all the land of Gilead, the Gadites and the Reubenites and the Manassites, from Aroer which is by the River Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan (2 Kings 10:32–33); in those of Jehoahaz, Jehu’s son, he oppressed them, neither did he leave of the people to Jehoahaz but fifty horsemen and ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen, for the king of Syria had destroyed them, and had made them like the dust by threshing (2 Kings 13:7).

The type of death spoken of here, although more ghastly, was probably not more severe than many others; not nearly so severe as some which have been used by Christian legal systems. It is mentioned in the Proverbs as a capital punishment (Proverbs 20:26) and is alluded to as such by Isaiah (Isaiah 28:28).

David, for some cause unexplained by Holy Scripture, had to inflict it on the Ammonites (2 Samuel 12:31; 1 Chronicles 20:3). Probably not the punishment in itself alone, but the attempt to so extirpate the people of God brought down this judgment on Damascus.

Theodoret supposes the horrible aggravation that it was thus that the women with child were destroyed with their children, “casting the previously mentioned women, as into a sort of threshing-floor, they savagely threshed them out like ears of grain with saw-armed wheels.”

Gilead is here undoubtedly to be understood in its widest sense, including all the possessions of Israel east of Jordan, as, in the account of Hazael’s conquests, all the land of Gilead (2 Kings 10:32–33) is explained to mean all that was ever given to the two tribes and a half, and to include Gilead proper, as distinct from Bashan. Similarly, Joshua relates that the children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh returned to go into the country of Gilead, to the land of their possessions (Joshua 22:9). Throughout that whole beautiful tract, including two and a half degrees of latitude, Hazael had carried on his war of extermination into every peaceful village and home, sparing neither the living nor the unborn.

And I will send a fire on the house of Hazael - The fire is probably at once material fire, by which cities are burned in war, since he adds, it shall devour the palaces of Benhadad. It also stands as a symbol of all other severity in war, as in the ancient proverb: a fire is gone out from Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon; it hath consumed Ar of Moab, the lords of the high places of Arnon (Numbers 21:28). And again, it is a symbol of the displeasure of Almighty God, as when He says, a fire is kindled in Mine anger, and it shall burn unto the lowest hell (Deuteronomy 32:22).

For the fire destroys not only the natural buildings, but the house of Hazael, that is, his whole family. In these prophecies, a sevenfold vengeance by fire is denounced against the seven people, an image of the eternal fire into which all iniquity shall be cast.

The palaces of Benhadad - Hazael, having murdered Benhadad his master and ascended his throne, called his son after his murdered master, probably in order to connect his own house with the ancient dynasty. Benhadad, meaning son or worshiper of the idol Hadad, or the sun, had been the name of two of the kings of the old dynasty. Benhadad III was at this time reigning.

The prophet foretells the entire destruction of the dynasty founded in blood. This prophecy may have had a fulfillment in the destruction of the house of Hazael, with whose family Rezin, the king of Syria in the time of Ahaz, stands in no known relation. Defeats, such as those of Benhadad III by Jeroboam II who took Damascus itself, are often the close of an usurping dynasty. Having no claim to regard except success, failure vitiates its only title.

The name Hazael, whom God looked upon, implies a sort of acknowledgment of the One God, like Tab-el, God is good, El-iada’, whom God knoweth, even amid the idolatry in the names, Tab-Rimmon, good is Rimmon; Hadad-ezer, Hadad is help; and Hadad, or Benhadad. Bad men abuse every creature, ordinance, or appointment of God. It may be then that, as Sennacherib boasted, am I now come up without the Lord against this land to destroy it? the Lord said unto me, Go up against this land and destroy it (Isaiah 36:10); so Hazael made use of the prophecy of Elisha to give himself out as the scourge of God, and thought of himself as one on whom God looked.

Knowledge of futurity is an awful gift. As Omniscience alone can wield Omnipotence, so superhuman knowledge needs superhuman gifts of wisdom and holiness. Hazael seemingly hardened himself in sin with the help of the knowledge which should have been his warning. Probably he came to Elisha with the intent to murder his master already formed, in case he should not die a natural death, and Elisha read his heart.

But he very probably justified himself to himself in what he had already purposed to do, on the ground that Elisha had foretold to him that he should be king over (2 Kings 8:13). In his massacres of God’s people, he gave himself out as being, what he was, the instrument of God. Scourges of God have known themselves to be what they were, although they themselves were no less sinful in sinfully accomplishing the Will of God (see the note at Hosea 1:4). We have heard of a Christian Emperor who has often spoken of his mission, although his mission has already cost the shedding of much Christian blood.

I will also break the bar of Damascus - In the East, every city was fortified; the gates of the stronger cities were cased in iron, so that they might not be set on fire by the enemy; they were fastened within with bars of brass (1 Kings 4:13) or iron (Psalms 107:16; Isaiah 45:2; Jeremiah 51:3). They were flanked with towers, and built over, so that what was naturally the weakest point and the readiest access to an enemy became the strongest defense. In Hauran the huge doors and gates of a single stone 9 and 10 feet high, and 1 1/2 foot thick, are still extant, and “the place for the ponderous bars,” proportioned to such gates, “may yet be seen.” The walls were loosened with the battering-ram, or scaled by mounds; the strong gate was seldom attacked; but, when a breach was made, was thrown open from within. The “breaking of the bar” laid open the city to the enemy, to go in and come out at his will.

The whole strength of the kingdom of Damascus lay in the capital. It was itself the seat of the empire and was the empire itself. God says then, that He Himself would shiver all their means of resistance, whatever could hinder the inroad of the enemy.

And cut off the inhabitant from the plain of Aven - Literally, “from the valley of vanity,” the “Bik’ah” being a broad valley between hills. Here it is doubtless the rich and beautiful valley, still called el-bukaa by the Arabs, La Boquea by William of Tyre, lying between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, the old Coele-Syria in its narrowest sense. It is, on high ground, the continuation of that long deep valley which, along the Jordan, the Dead Sea, and the Arabah, reaches to the Red Sea. Its extreme length, from its southern close at Kal’at-esh-shakif to Hums (Emesa) has been counted at 7 days journey; it narrows towards its southern extremity, expands at its northern, yet it cannot in any way be said to lose its character of a valley until 10 miles north of Riblah.

Midway, on it, was Baalbek, or Heliopolis, where the Egyptian worship is said to have been brought long ago from their “city of the sun.” Baalbek, as the ruins still attest, was full of the worship of the sun. But the whole of that beautiful range, “a magnificent vista”, it has been said, “carpeted with verdure and beauty”, “a gem lying deep in its valley of mountains,” was a citadel of idolatry. The name Baal-Hermon connects Mount Hermon itself, the snow-capped height which so towers over its southeast extremity, with the worship of Baal or the sun, and that, from the time of the Judges (Judges 3:3). The name Baal-gad connects “the valley of Lebanon,” that is, most probably the south end of the great valley, with the same worship, before Joshua (Joshua 11:17; Joshua 12:7; Joshua 13:5).

The name Baalbek is probably an abbreviation of the old name, Baal-bik’ah, “Baal of the valley,” in contrast with the neighboring Baalhermon. For example, “The whole of Hermon was girded with temples.” Moreover, “Some eight or ten of them cluster round it,” and, which is more remarkable, one is built “to catch the first beams of the sun rising over Hermon;” and temples on its opposite sides face towards it, as a sort of center.

In Jerome’s time, the pagan still reverenced a celebrated temple on its summit. On the crest of its central peak, 3,000 feet above the glen below, in winter inaccessible, beholding far apart the rising and the setting sun on the eastern desert and in the western sea, are still seen the foundations of a circular wall or ring of large stones, a rude temple, within which another of Grecian art was subsequently built. “On three other peaks of the Anti-Lebanon range are ruins of great antiquity.” Additionally, “The Bukaa and its borders are full of the like buildings.”

“Lebanon, Anti-Lebanon and the valleys between are thronged with ancient temples.” Some indeed were Grecian, but others Syro-Phoenician. The Grecian temples were probably the revival of Syro-Phoenician.

The “massive substructions of Baalbek are conjectured to have been those of an earlier temple.” The new name “Heliopolis” only substituted the name of the object of worship (the sun) for its title Lord. The pagan emperors would not have lavished so much and such wondrous cost and gorgeous art on a temple in Coele-Syria, had not its pagan celebrity recommended it to their superstition or their policy. On the west side of Lebanon at Afca (Apheca) was the temple of Venus at the source of the River Adonis, a center of the most hateful Syrian idolatry, “a school of wrongdoing for all profligates.”

At Heliopolis too, men “shamelessly gave their wives and daughters to shame.” The outburst of paganism there in the reign of Julian the Apostate shows how deeply rooted was its idolatry. Probably then, Amos pronounces the sentence of the people of that whole beautiful valley, as “valley of vanity” or “iniquity”, being wholly given to that worst idolatry which degraded Syria.

Here, as the seat of idolatry, the chief judgments of God were to fall. Its inhabitants were to be cut off, that is, utterly destroyed; on the rest, captivity is the only sentence pronounced. The Assyrian monarchs often put to death those who despised their religion, and so may in this have executed blindly the sentence of God.

From the house of Eden - A Proper, but significant, name, “Beth-Eden,” that is, “house of pleasure.” The name, like the Eden of Assyria (2 Kings 19:12; Isaiah 37:12; Ezekiel 27:23), is, in distinction from man’s first home, pronounced “EH-den,” not “EE-den.” Two places near, and one in, the Bik’ah have, from similarity of name, been thought to be this “house of delight.”

1. Most beautiful now for situation and climate, is what is probably mispronounced Ehden; a Maronite Village “of 4 or 500 families, on the side of a rich highly-cultivated valley” near Beshirrai on the road from Tripolis to the Cedars. Its climate is described as a ten months spring; “the hills are terraced up to their summits;” and every place full of the richest, most beautiful, vegetation; “grain is poured out into the lap of man, and wine into his cup without measure.” “The slopes of the valleys, one mass of verdure, are yet more productive than the hills; the springs of Lebanon gushing down, fresh, cool and melodious in every direction.” The wealthier families of Tripoli still resort there for summer, “the climate being tempered by the proximity of the snow-mountains, the most luxuriant vegetation favored by the soft airs from the sea.” “It is still counted” the Paradise of Lebanon.”

2. Beit-el-Janne, literally, “house of Paradise,” is an Arabic translation of Beth-Eden. It “lies under the root of Libanus (Hermon) gushing forth clear water, from where,” says William of Tyre, “it is called ‘house of pleasure.’” It lies in a narrow valley, where it widens a little, about three-quarters of an hour from the plain of Damascus, and about 27 miles from that city on the way from Banias. “Numerous rock-tombs, above and around, bear testimony to the antiquity of the site.” It gives its name to the Jennani (Paradise River), one of two streams which form the second great river near Damascus, the Awadj.

3. The third, the Paradisus of the Greeks, one of the three towns of Laodicene, agrees only accidentally with the Scripture name, since their Paradisus signifies not an earthly Paradise, but a “hunting-park.” For this the site is well suited; but in that country so abounding in water, and of soil so rich that the earth seems ready, on even little human effort, to adorn itself in luxuriant beauty, what probably is the site of the old Paradisus, is hopelessly barren. Beth-Eden may have been the residence of one of the subordinate kings under the king of Damascus, who was to be involved in the ruin of his suzerain; or it may have been a summer-residence of the king of Damascus himself, where, in the midst of his trust in his false gods, and in a Paradise, as it were, of delight, God would cut him off altogether.

Neither wealth nor any of a man’s idols protect against God. As Adam, for sin, was expelled from Paradise, so the rulers of Damascus from the place of their pleasure and their sin.

And the people of Syria shall go into captivity - Syria or Aram perhaps already included, under the rule of Damascus, all the little kingdoms on this side of the Euphrates, into which it had been formerly subdivided. At least, it is spoken of as a whole, without any of the additions which occur in the earlier history, Aram-beth-rehob, Aram-zobah, Aram-Maachah. Before its captivity Damascus is spoken of as the head of Syria (Isaiah 7:8).

Into Kir - Kir has been identified in the following ways:

1. With the part of Iberia near the River Kur which unites with the Araxes, not far from the Caspian, to the north of Armenia.

2. As a city called by the Greeks Kourena or Kourna on the River Mardus in southern Media.

3. As a city, Karine, the modern Kerend.

The first is the most likely, as the most known; the Kur is probably part of the present name Kurgistan, our “Georgia.” Armenia at least which lay on the south of the River Kur, is frequently mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions, as a country where the kings of Assyria warred and conquered. The two parricide sons of Sennacherib are as likely to have fled (Isaiah 37:38) to a distant portion of their father’s empire, as beyond it. Their flight there may have been the ground of Esarhaddon’s war against it. It has at all times afforded a shelter to those expelled from others’ lands. The domestic, though late, traditions of the Armenians count as their first inhabitants some who had fled out of Mesopotamia to escape the yoke of Bel, king of Babylon.

Whatever be the value of particular traditions, its mountain-valleys form a natural refuge to fugitives.

On occasion of some such oppression, as that from which Asshur fled before Nimrod, Aram may have been the first of those who took shelter in the mountains of Armenia and Georgia, and from there spread themselves, where we afterward find them, in the lowlands of Mesopotamia. The name Aram, however, is in no way connected with Armenia, which is itself no indigenous name of that country, but was probably formed by the Greeks, from a name which they heard. The name Aram, “lofty,” obviously describes some quality of the son of Shem, as of others who bore the name. Contrariwise, Canaan, (whether or not anticipating his future degraded character as participating in the sin of Ham) may signify “crouching.” But neither has Aram any meaning of “highland,” nor Canaan of “lowland,” as has recently been imagined.

From Kir the forefathers of the Syrians had, of their own will, been brought by the good all-disposing Providence of God; to Kir should the Syrians, against their will, be carried back. Aram of Damascus had been led to a land which, for its fertility and beauty, has been and is still praised as a sort of Paradise. Now, softened as they were by luxury, they were to be transported back to the austere though healthy climate, from where they had come.

They had abused the might given to them by God, in the endeavor to uproot Israel; now they were themselves to be utterly uprooted. The captivity which Amos foretells is complete; a captivity by which (as the word means) the land should be bared of its inhabitants. Such a captivity he foretells of no other, except the ten tribes.

He foretells it absolutely of these two nations alone, of the king and princes of Ammon (Amos 1:15), not of Tyre, or the cities of Philistia, or Edom, or Ammon, or Moab. The punishment did not reach Syria in those days, but in those of Rezin who also oppressed Judah. The sin not being cut off; the punishment too was handed down.

Tiglath-pileser carried them away, about 50 years after this, and killed Rezin (2 Kings 16:9). In regard to these two nations, Amos foretells the captivity absolutely. Yet at this time, there was no human likelihood, no ground, except of a divine knowledge, to predict it of these two nations especially.

They went into captivity too long after this for human foresight to predict it; yet long enough before the captivity of Judah for the fulfillment to have impressed Judah if they would. The transportation of whole populations, which subsequently became part of the standing policy of the Persian and of the later Assyrian Empires, was not, as far as we know, any part of Eastern policy at the time of the prophet. Sesostris, the Egyptian conqueror, some centuries before Amos, is related to have brought together “many men,” “a crowd,” from the nations whom he had subdued, and to have employed them on his buildings and canals.

Even this account has received no support from the Egyptian monuments, and the deeds ascribed by the Greeks to Sesostris have been supposed to be a blending of those of two monarchs of the 19th Dynasty, Sethos I and Raamses II, interwoven with those of Ousartesen III (12th Dynasty) and Tothmosis III (18th Dynasty). But the carrying away of a tiny number of prisoners from fields of battle is something altogether different from the political removal of a nation. It had in it nothing systematic or designed. It was but the employment of those whom war had thrown into their hands, as slaves.

The Egyptian monarchs availed themselves of this resource, to spare the labor of their native subjects in their great works of utility or of vanity. But the prisoners so employed were but a slave population, analogous to those who, in other nations, labored in the mines or in agriculture.

They employed in a similar way the Israelites, whom they had received peacefully. Their earlier works were carried on by native labor. After Tothmosis III, in whose reign is the first representation of prisoners employed in forced labor, they could, during their greatness, spare their subjects. They imported labor, not by slave trade, but through war.

Nubia was incorporated with Egypt, and Nubian prisoners were, of course, employed, not in their own country but in the north of Egypt; Asiatic prisoners in Nubia. But they were prisoners made in a campaign, not a population; a foreign element in Egyptian soil, not an interchange of subject-populations. Doubtless, “the mixed multitude” (Exodus 12:38), which “went up with” Israel from Egypt, were in part these Asiatic captives, who had been subjected to the same hard bondage.

The object and extent of those forced transportations by the later Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians were altogether different. Here the intention was to remove the people from their original seat, or at most to leave those only who, from their small number or poverty, would be in no condition to rebel. The cuneiform inscriptions have brought before us, to a great extent, the records of the Assyrian conquests, as given by their kings. But whereas the later inscriptions of Sargon, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, mention repeatedly the deportation of populations, the earlier annals of Asshurdanipal or Asshurakhbal relate the carrying off of soldiers only as prisoners, and women as captives. They mention also receiving slaves as tributes, the number of oxen and sheep, the goods and possessions and the gods of the people which they carry off.

Otherwise the king relates, how he crucified or impaled or put to death men at arms or the people generally, but in no one of his expeditions does he mention any deportation. Although modern writers often assume, that the transportation of nations was part of the hereditary policy of the Monarchs of Asia, no instances before this period have been found. It appears to have been a later policy, first adopted by Tiglath-pileser toward Damascus and east and north Palestine, but foretold by the prophet long before it was adopted. It was the result probably of experience, that they could not keep these nations in dependence upon themselves while they left them in their old abodes. As far as our knowledge reaches, the prophet foretold the removal of these people, at a time when no instance of any such removal had occurred.