Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 2

Moab - The relation of Moab to Israel is only accidentally different from that of Ammon. One spirit motivated both, expressing itself in one and the same way as opportunity arose, and mostly together (see the note at Amos 1:13).

Besides those more formal invasions, the history of Elisha mentions one, probably of many, inroads of bands of the Moabites. It seems as if, when the year entered in, and with it the harvest, the bands of the Moabites entered in too, like the Midianites and Amalekites and the children of the east (Judges 6:3–4, Judges 6:11) in the time of Gideon, or their successors the Bedouins, now.

This their continual hostility is related in the few words of a parenthesis. There was no occasion to relate at length a uniform hostility, which was as regular as the seasons of the year, and the year’s produce, and the temptation to the greed of Moab, when Israel was weakened by Hazael.

Because he burned the bones of the king of Edom - The deed here condemned is unknown. Doubtless it was connected with that same hatred of Edom, which the king of Moab showed when besieged by Israel. People are often more enraged against a friend or ally who has made terms with one whom they hate or fear, than with the enemy himself. Certainly, when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him (2 Kings 3:26–27), his fury was directed personally against the king of Edom. He took with him 700 chosen men to cut through to the king of Edom, and they could not. Escape was not their object.

They sought not to cut through the Edomite contingent into the desert, but to the king of Edom. Then he took his oldest son, that is, probably the oldest son of the king of Edom whom he captured, and offered him up as a burnt offering on the wall.

Such is the simplest structure of the words: He strove to cut through to the king of Edom, and they could not, and he took his oldest son, etc., and there was great indignation against Israel. That indignation too on the part of Edom (for there was no other to be indignant against Israel) is best accounted for, if this expedition, undertaken because Moab had rebelled against Israel, had occasioned the sacrifice of the son of the king of Edom, who took part in it only as a tributary of Judah.

Edom would have had no special occasion to be indignant with Israel, if on occasion of an ordinary siege, the king of Moab had, in a shocking way, performed the national idolatry of child-sacrifice. That hatred the king of Moab carried beyond the grave—hatred which the pagan too held to be unnatural in its implacability and insatiability.

The soul being, after death, beyond man’s reach, the hatred, expressed upon his remains, is a sort of impotent grasping at eternal vengeance.

It inflicts on what it knows to be unfeeling the hatred with which it would pursue, if it could, the living being who is beyond it. Its impotence demonstrates its fierceness, since, having no power to inflict any real revenge, it has no object but to show its hatred. Hatred, which death cannot extinguish, is the beginning of the eternal hate in hell. With this hatred Moab hated the king of Edom, seemingly because he had been, though probably against his will, on the side of the people of God.

It was then sin against the love of God, and directed against God Himself. The single instance, which we know, of any feud between Moab and Edom was when Edom was engaged in a constrained service of God. At least there are no indications of any conquest of each other. The Bozrah of Moab, being in the Mishor, the plain (Jeremiah 48:21, Jeremiah 48:24), is certainly distinct from the Bozrah of Edom, which Jeremiah speaks of at the same time as belonging to Edom (Jeremiah 49:13). Each kingdom, Edom and Moab, had its own strong city, Bozrah, at one and the same time.

And if the rock, which Isaiah speaks of as the stronghold of Moab (Isaiah 16:1), was indeed the Petra of Edom (and the mere name, in that country of rock-fortresses, is not strong proof, yet is the only proof), they won it from Judah who had taken it from Edom, and in whose hands it remained in the time of Amos (2 Kings 14:7; see above the note at Amos 1:12), not from Edom itself.

Or, again, the tribute may have been only sent through Petra, as the great center of commerce. Edom’s half-service gained it no good, but evil; Moab’s malice was its destruction.

The proverb, speak good only of the dead, shows what reverence human nature dictates: not to condemn those who have gone before their Judge, unless He has already openly condemned them. Death, says Athanasius in relating the death of Arius on his perjury, is the common end of all people, and we ought not to insult the dead, though he be an enemy, for it is uncertain whether the same event may not happen to ourselves before evening.

It shall devour the palaces of Kerioth - Literally, “the cities,” that is, a collection of cities. It may have received a plural form upon some enlargement, as Jerusalem received a dual form, as a double city. The name is, in different forms, very common. In the plain or high downs of Moab itself, there were both Kiriathaim, “double city,” and Kerioth (Jeremiah 48:23–24); in Naphtali, a Kiriathaim (1 Chronicles 6:76; 1 Chronicles 6:61 in Hebrew) or Kartan (Joshua 21:32); in Judah, the Kerioth (Joshua 15:25) from where the wretched Judas has his name Iscariot; in Zebulon, Kartah (Joshua 21:34) also, which reappears as the Numidian Cirta. Moab had also a Kiriath-huzoth, “city of streets” (Numbers 22:39), within the Arnon. This alone was within the proper border of Moab, such as the Amorites had left it.

Kerioth and Kiriathaim were in the plain country which Israel had won from the Amorites, and its possession would imply an aggression of Moab. Jeroboam II had probably at this time brought Moab to a temporary submission (see the note at Amos 6:14); but Israel only required fealty and tribute from Moab. Moab appears, even before the captivity of the two and a half tribes, to have invaded the possessions of Israel. Kerioth was probably a new capital beyond the Arnon, now adorned with “palaces” and enlarged, just as Paris, Prague, Cracow, and London are composed of different towns. In Jerome’s time, it had probably ceased to exist.

Shall die with tumult - Jeremiah, when prophesying the destruction of Moab, designates it by this same name, sons of tumult (Jeremiah 48:45). A flame shall devour the corner of Moab and the crown of the sons of tumult. And probably in this he explains the original prophecy of Balaam, shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of tumult (Numbers 24:17). As they had done, so should it be done to them; tumults they caused, “in tumult” they should perish.

After the subjugation of Moab by Nebuchadnezzar, it disappears as a nation, unless indeed Daniel in his prophecy, Edom and Moab and the chief of the children of Ammon shall escape out of his hand (Daniel 11:41, referring to Antiochus Epiphanes), means the nations themselves, and not merely peoples like them. Otherwise, the intermarriage with Moabite women (Ezra 9:1) is mentioned only as that with women of other pagan nations which had ceased to exist as distinct peoples. The old name, Moabitis, is still mentioned; but the Arabs had taken possession of it and bore the old name.

Alexander Jannaeus, we are told, “subdued of the Arabians, the Moabites and Gileadites,” and then, again, when in difficulty, handed it over with its fortified places to the king of the Arabians. Among the cities which Alexander took from the king of the Arabians were cities throughout Moab, both in that part in which they had succeeded to Israel, and their proper territory south of the Arnon.

And I will cut off the judge – The title “judge” (shophet) is nowhere used absolutely of a king. Holy Scripture speaks in several places of all the judges of the earth (Job 9:24; Psalms 2:10; Psalms 148:11; Proverbs 8:16; Isaiah 40:23). Hosea (Hosea 13:10), under the term “judges,” includes “kings and princes” as ones who judge the people. The word “judge” is always used for one invested with the highest, but not regal, authority, as with all the judges from the death of Joshua to Samuel.

Similarly, it (Sufetes) was the title of the chief magistrates of Carthage, who held much the same authority as the Roman Consuls.

The Phoenician histories, although they would not acknowledge that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Tyre, still acknowledge that after his 13-year siege, Baal reigned for 10 years; and after him, judges were established (one for two months, a second for ten months, a third, who was a high priest, for three months, and two more for six months), and between these periods of judicial rule, one person reigned as king for a year.

After this king’s death, they sent for Merbaal from Babylon, who reigned for four years. On Merbaal's death, they sent for Hiram, his brother, who reigned for twenty years. The judges at that time exercised supreme authority, as the king’s sons had been carried away captive.

Probably, then, when Jeroboam II recovered the old territory of Israel, Moab lost its kings. This aligns with what Amos says, the princes thereof—literally, “her princes” (the princes of Moab)—not, as in the case of Ammon, “his princes” (that is, the princes of the king).

For three transgressions of Judah etc. - Rup.: "Here too there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. The word of God, a just judge, shows no partiality. Those whom sin joins together, the sentence of the Judge does not separate in punishment" (Romans 2:12).

"For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law."

Jerome: "Those other nations, Damascus and the rest, He does not rebuke for having cast away the law of God and despised His commandments, for they did not have the written law, but only that of nature."

So then, concerning them He says that "they corrupted all their compassions"—and similar things. But Judah, who, at that time, had the worship of God and the temple and its rites, and had received the law and commandments and judgments and precepts and testimonies, is rebuked and convicted by the Lord, because it had "cast aside His law and not kept His commandments;" therefore it should be punished as it deserved.

And since they rejected and despised these, then, consequently, "their lies deceived them," that is, their idols; lies on their part who made them and worshiped them for the true God, and lies and lying to them, as deceiving their hopes. For an idol is nothing in the world (1 Corinthians 8:4), just as all the vanities in the world of which people make idols are nothing, but they deceive by a vain show, as if they were something.

Jerome: "They would not have been deceived by their idols, unless they had first rejected the law of the Lord and not kept His commandments."

They had sinned with a high hand: despising and so rejecting the law of God; and so He despised and rejected them, leaving them to be deceived by the lies which they themselves had chosen.

So it always is with man. Man must either love God’s law and hate and abhor lies (Psalms 119:163), or he will despise God’s law and cling to lies.

He first in act despises God’s law (and whoever does not keep it, despises it), and then he must inevitably be deceived by some idol of his own, which becomes his God. He first willfully chooses his own lie, that is, whatever he chooses apart from God, and then his own lie deceives him.

So, morally, liars in the end believe themselves. So, whatever false maxim anyone has adopted against his conscience, whether in belief or practice, to justify what he wills against the will of God, or to explain away what God reveals and he dislikes—stifling and lying to his conscience—in the end deceives his conscience. And finally, a man believes that to be true which, before he had lied to his conscience, he knew to be false.

The prophet uses a bold word in speaking of man’s dealings with his God: despises. Man carries on the serpent’s first fraud, Hath God indeed said? Man would not willingly admit that he is directly opposed to the Mind of God. Man, in his powerlessness, at war with Omnipotence, and, in his limited knowledge, with Omniscience! It would be too silly, as well as too terrible.

So he smooths it over for himself, lying to himself. "God’s word must not be taken so precisely;" "God cannot have meant;" "the Author of nature would not have created us so, if He had meant;" and all the other excuses by which he would evade admitting to himself that he is directly rejecting the Mind of God and trampling it underfoot.

Scripture draws back the veil. Judah had the law of God and did not keep it; then, he despised it. On the one side was God’s will, His Eternal Wisdom, His counsel for man's good; on the other, what debasements! On the one side were God’s awful threats, on the other, His extraordinary promises.

Yet man chose whatever he willed, lying to himself, and acting as if God had never threatened or promised or spoken. This ignoring of God’s known Will and law and revelation is to despise them, as effectually as to curse God to His face (Job 2:5). This rejection of God was hereditary.

Their lies were those after which their fathers walked, in Egypt and from Egypt onward, in the wilderness (see the note at Amos 5:25-26), "making the image of the calf of Egypt and worshiping Baalpeor and Ashtoreth and Baalim." Evil acquires a sort of authority by time. People become accustomed to evils to which they have become accustomed.

False maxims, undisputed, are thought indisputable. They are in possession; and possession is held a good title. The popular error of one generation becomes the axiom of the next. The descent of the image of the great goddess Diana from Jupiter or of the Koran, becomes a thing which cannot be spoken against (Acts 19:35–36).

The lies after which the fathers walked deceive the children. "The children canonize the errors of their fathers." Human opinion is as dogmatic as revelation. The second generation of error demands as implicit submission as God’s truth.

The transmission of error against Himself, God says, aggravates its evil, does not excuse it (Nehemiah 5:5). "Judah is the Church. In her the prophet reproves whoever, worshiping his own vices and sins, comes to have that as a god by which he is overcome; as Peter says, Whereby a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage (2 Peter 2:19).

The covetous worships mammon; the glutton, his belly (Philippians 3:19); the impure, Baalpeor; she who, living in pleasure, is dead while she lives (1 Timothy 5:6), the pleasure in which she lives."

Of such idols the world is full. Every fair form, every idle imagination, everything which gratifies self-love, passion, pride, vanity, intellect, sense, each the most refined or the most debased, is such a lie, as soon as man loves and regards it more than his God.

I will send a fire upon Judah - All know now how Jerusalem, its temple, and its palaces perished by fire, first by Nebuchadnezzar, then by the Romans. Yet some two centuries passed before that first destruction came. The ungodly Jews flattered themselves that it would never come. So we know that a fiery stream (Daniel 7:10) will issue and come forth from Him; a fire that consumeth to destruction (Job 31:12), all who, whether or not they are in the body of the Church, are not of the heavenly Jerusalem; dead members in the body which belongs to the Living Head.

And it will not come any less because it is not regarded. Rather, the very condition of all God’s judgments is to be disregarded and to come, and then all the more to come when they are most disregarded.