Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 9:13

"Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt." — Amos 9:13 (ASV)

Behold, the days are coming – The Day of the Lord is continually approaching: every act, good or bad, is drawing it nearer; everything which fills up the measure of iniquity or which “hastens the accomplishment of the number of the elect;” all time speeds its arrival. The plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that sows seed. The image is taken from God’s promise in the law: Your threshing shall reach to the vintage, and the vintage shall reach to the sowing time (Leviticus 26:5), which is the order of agriculture. The harvest should be so abundant that it would not be threshed out until the vintage; the vintage so large that, instead of ending, as usual, in the middle of the 7th month, it would continue on to the seed-time in November. Amos appears intentionally to have altered this.

He describes what is entirely beyond nature, so that it might more clearly appear that he was speaking of no mere gifts of nature, but, under natural emblems, of the abundance of gifts of grace. “The plowman,” who breaks up the fallow ground, “shall overtake,” or “throng,” the reaper. The “plowman” might “throng,” or “join on to the reaper,” either following him, or being followed by him; either preparing the soil for the harvest which the reaper gathers in, or breaking it up again for fresh harvest after the in-gathering.

But the vintage falls between the harvest and the seed-time. If then by “the plowmen thronging on the reaper,” we understand that the harvest, due to its abundance, would not be over before the fresh seed-time, then, since the vintage is much nearer to the seed-time than the harvest had been, the words, “he that treads out the grapes, him that sows the seed,” would only say the same thing with less force. Understood the other way, it is one continuous whole. So vast would be the soil to be cultivated, so beyond all the powers of the cultivator, and yet so rapid and unceasing the growth, that seed-time and harvest would be but one.

So our Lord says, Do not say, There are yet four months, and then harvest comes? Behold, I say to you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest (John 4:35). “Four months” ordinarily intervened between seed-time and harvest. Among these Samaritans, seed-time and harvest were one.

They had not, like the Jews, had teachers from God; yet, as soon as our Lord taught them, they believed. But, as seed time and harvest should be one, so should the vintage be continuous with the following seed-time. “The treader of grapes,” the last crowning act of the year of cultivation, should join on to “him that sows” (literally, “draws” forth, sows broadcast, scatters far and wide the) “seed.”

All this is beyond nature, and so, all the more in harmony with what came before: the establishment of a kingdom of grace, in which “the pagan” should have “the Name of God called upon” them. He had foretold to them how God would send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord (Amos 8:11).

Now, under the same image, he declares the repeal of that sentence. He foretells not only the fullness of God’s gifts but also their unbroken continuation.

Jerome says: “All shall succeed one another, so that no day should be void of grain, wine, and gladness.” And they shall not only follow one another, but shall all go on together in one perpetual round of toil and fruitfulness. There shall be one unceasing inpouring of riches; no break in the heavenly husbandry; labor shall at once yield fruit; the harvest shall but encourage fresh labor. The end shall come swiftly on the beginning; the end shall not only close the past but emerge anew.

Such is the character of the toils of the Gospel. All the works of grace go on in harmony together; each helps on the other; in one, the fallow ground of the heart is broken up; in another, seed is sown, the beginning of a holy conversation; in another, is the full richness of the ripened fruit, in advanced holiness or the blood of martyrs.

And so, also, with the ministers of Christ: some are particularly suited to one office, some to another; yet all together carry on His one work. All, too—patriarchs, prophets, Apostles—shall meet together in one; those who, before Christ’s coming, “sowed the seed, the promises of the Blessed Seed to come,” and those who entered into their labors, not to displace, but to complete them; all shall rejoice together in that Seed, who is Christ.

And the mountains shall drop sweet wine and all the hills shall melt – Amos takes the words of Joel to identify their prophecies, yet strengthens the image. For instead of saying, the hills shall flow with milk, he says, “they shall melt, dissolve themselves.” Such shall be the abundance and super-abundance of blessing that it shall be as if the hills dissolved themselves in the rich streams which they poured down.

The mountains and hills may be symbols, regarding either their height, their natural barrenness, or their difficulty of cultivation. In past times they were scenes of idolatry. In the time of the Gospel, all should be changed; all should be above nature. All should be obedient to God, all full of the graces and gifts of God.

What was exalted, like the Apostles, should be exalted not for itself, but to pour out the streams of life-giving doctrine and truth, which would refresh and gladden the faithful.

And the lesser heights, “the hills,” should, in their degree, pour out the same streams. Everything previously barren and unfruitful should overflow with spiritual blessing. The mountains and hills of Judea, with their terraced sides clad with the vine, were a natural symbol of fruitfulness to the Jews, but they themselves could not think that natural fruitfulness was meant under this imagery. It would have been a hyperbole regarding things of nature; but what, in natural things, is a hyperbole, is but a faint shadow of the joys, rich delights, and glad fruitfulness of grace.