Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 7:5-6

"Then said I, O Lord Jehovah, cease, I beseech thee: how shall Jacob stand? for he is small. Jehovah repented concerning this: this also shall not be, saith the Lord Jehovah." — Amos 7:5-6 (ASV)

Just as our Lord repeated the same words in the Garden, so Amos interceded with God with words, all but one the same, and with the same plea: that if God did not help, Israel was indeed helpless. Yet a second time God spared Israel.

From a human perspective, what was so strange and unexpected as the fact that the Assyrian and his army, having utterly destroyed the kingdom of Damascus, carried away its people, and devoured like fire more than half of Israel, then rolled back like an ebb tide, swept away to ravage other countries, and spared the capital? And who, looking at the mere outward appearance of things, would have thought that this tide of fire was rolled back, not by anything in that day, but by the prophet’s prayer some 47 years before?

People would undoubtedly look for motives of human policy that led Tiglath-Pileser to accept tribute from Pekah while he killed Rezin, and that led him, while he carried off all the Syrians of Damascus, to leave half of Israel to be removed by his successor.

Humanly speaking, it was a mistake. He merely checked his enemy, leaving him to make an alliance with Egypt, his rival, who contested with him the possession of the countries that lay between them.

If we knew the details of Assyrian policy, we might know what induced him to turn aside in his conquest. There were, and always are, human motives. These, however, do not interfere with the foundational purpose in the mind of God, who directs and controls them.

Even in human mechanisms, the wheels, interlacing and acting on one another, merely transmit to each other the motion and impulse that they have received from the central force.

The earth’s rotation on its own axis does not interfere with its revolution around the center of our solar system; rather, this rotation is a condition for it. Amidst the alternations of night and day, this rotation brings each portion of the earth within the influence of the sun, around which the earth revolves.

Similarly, the affairs of human kingdoms have their own subordinate centers of human policy. Yet, it is precisely through these that they revolve all the more surely within the circuit of God’s appointment.

In the history of His former people, God gives us a glimpse into a hidden order of things: the secret spring and power of His wisdom, which sets in motion the intricate and complex machinery that alone we see. And in observing only this machinery, people often lose awareness of the unseen agency behind it.

While humans strive with one another, prayer, prompted by God, moves God, the Ruler of all.