Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 9:11

"In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up its ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old;" — Amos 9:11 (ASV)

In that day I will raise up - Amos, as the prophets were taught to do, sums up his prophecy of woe with this one full promise of overflowing good. For the ten tribes, in their separate condition, there was no hope, no future. He had pronounced the entire destruction of the kingdom of Israel. The ten tribes were, from then on, only an aggregate of individuals, good or bad. They had no separate corporate existence.

In their spiritual existence, they still belonged to the one family of Israel and, belonging to it, were heirs of the promises made to it. When no longer separate, individuals out of its tribes were to become Apostles to their whole people and to the Gentiles. Concerning individuals in it, God had declared His judgment, anticipating the complete exactness of the Judgment of the Great Day: All the sinners of His people should die an untimely death by the sword; not one of those who were the true grain should perish with the chaff.

He now foretells how that salvation, of those indeed His own, would be effected through the house of David, in whose line Christ was to come. He speaks of the house of David, not in any terms of royal greatness; he tells, not of its palaces, but of its ruins. Under the word tabernacle, he probably blends the ideas that it would be in a poor condition, and yet that it would be the means by which God would protect His people. The succah, tabernacle (translated booth in Jonah (Jonah 4:5); also see Genesis 33:17) was originally a rude hut, formed of intertwined branches.

It is used of the cattle-shed (Genesis 33:17), and of the rough tents used by soldiers in war (2 Samuel 11:11), or by the watchman in the vineyard (Isaiah 1:8; Job 27:18), and of those in which God made the children of Israel to dwell, when He brought them out of the land of Egypt (Leviticus 23:43). The name of the feast of tabernacles, Succoth, as well as the rude temporary huts in which they were commanded to dwell, associated the name with a state of outward poverty under God’s protection.

Hence, perhaps, the word is employed also of the secret place of the presence of God (Psalms 18:11; Job 36:29). Isaiah, as well as Amos, seems, in the use of the same word (Isaiah 4:6), to hint that what is poor and mean in man’s sight would be, in the Hands of God, an effectual protection. This hut of David was also at that time to be fallen. When Amos prophesied, it had been weakened by the schism of the ten tribes, but Azariah, its king, was mighty (2 Chronicles 26:6–15). Amos had already foretold the destruction of the palaces of Jerusalem by fire (Amos 2:5).

Now he adds that the abiding condition of the house of David would be a state of decay and weakness, and that from that state, not human strength, but God Himself would raise it. I will raise up the hut of David, the fallen. He does not say, of that time, the hut that is fallen, as if it were already fallen, but the hut, the fallen—that is, the hut of which the characteristic would then be its falling, its caducity.

So, under a different figure, Isaiah prophesied, There shall come forth a rod out of the stump of Jesse, and a Branch shall put forth from its roots (Isaiah 11:1). When the trunk was hewn down even with the ground, and the rank grass had covered the stump, that rod and Branch would come forth which would rule the earth, and to which the Gentiles should seek (Isaiah 11:10). From these words of Amos, the Son of the fallen, became, among the Jews, one of the titles of the Christ. Both in the legal and mystical schools the words of Amos are alleged, in proof of the fallen condition of the house of David, when the Christ should come. “Who would expect,” one asks, “that God would raise up the fallen tabernacle of David? And yet it is said, I will raise up the tabernacle of David which is fallen down. And who would hope that the whole world should become one band? As it is written, Then I will turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one shoulder (Zephaniah 3:9).”

This is no other than the king Messiah.” And in the Talmud: “R. Nachman said to R. Isaac, ‘Have you heard when the Son of the fallen will come?’ He answered, ‘Who is he?’ R. Nachman: ‘The Messiah.’ R. Isaac: ‘Is the Messiah so called?’ R. Nachman: ‘Yes: In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David which is fallen down.’”

And close up - Literally, wall up, the breaches thereof. The house of David had at this time sustained breaches. It had yet more serious breaches to sustain after that. The first great breach was the rending off of the ten tribes. It sustained breaches through the Assyrians, and yet more when it itself was carried away captive to Babylon, and so many of its residue fled into Egypt.

Breaches are repaired by new stones; the losses of the house of David were to be filled up by accessions from the Gentiles. God Himself would close up the breaches; so they would remain closed, and the gates of hell should not prevail against the Church which He built. Amos heaps upon one another the words implying destruction: a hut and that falling; breaches; ruins; (literally, his ruinated, his destructions).

But he also speaks of it in a way which excludes the idea of the hut of David being the royal Dynasty or the kingdom of Judah. For he speaks of it, not as an abstract thing, such as a kingdom is, but as a whole, consisting of individuals.

He speaks not only of the hut of David, but of ‘their (fem.)’ breaches, ‘his’ ruins, that God would build ‘her’ up, and that ‘they’ (masc.) may inherit; using apparently this variety of numbers and genders to show that he is speaking of one living whole, the Jewish Church, now rent in two by the great schism of Jeroboam, but which would be reunited into one body, members of which would win the pagan to the true faith in God. “I will raise up,” he says, “the tabernacle of David, the fallen, and will wall up ‘their’ breaches” (the breaches of the two portions into which it had been rent), “and I will raise up ‘his’ ruins” (the ruinated places of David), “and I will build ‘her’ (as one whole) as in the days of old” (before the rent of the ten tribes, when all worshiped as one), “that ‘they,’ (masculine) that is, individuals who should go forth out of her, ‘may inherit, etc.’”