John Calvin Commentary Amos 4:7

"And I also have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest; and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered." — Amos 4:7 (ASV)

I have said that another kind of punishment is recorded here by the Prophet; it is not, however, wholly different, for from where does the want we have noticed come, except through drought? For when God intends to deprive people of support, He shuts up heaven and makes it iron, so that it does not hear the earth, according to what we have noticed elsewhere.

Yet these words of the Prophet are not superfluous, for God intends for the punishment He inflicts on people to be more attentively considered. When people are reduced to want, they will indeed acknowledge it to be the curse of God, unless they are very stupid. But when a drought precedes, when the earth disappoints its cultivators, and then a want of food follows, more time is given to people to think of God’s displeasure.

This is the reason why the Prophet now distinctly speaks of rain being withheld, after having said that the people had previously been visited with a deficiency of provisions. It is as if he said, “You ought to have returned, at least after a long course of time, to a sound mind.

If God had been offended with you only for one day and had given tokens of His displeasure, the shortness of time might have been some excuse for you. But as the earth had become dry, as God had restrained rain, and as sterility consequently followed, and afterward want came, how great was your stupidity not to attend to so many and so successive tokens of God’s wrath?” We now perceive why the Prophet here connects drought with want of food—the cause with the effect: it was so that the stupidity of the people might therefore be more evident.

But he says that God had withheld rain from them, when three months still remained to the harvest. When it does not rain for a whole month, the earth becomes dry, and people become anxious, for it is an ill omen. But when two months pass without rain, people begin to be filled with apprehension and even dread. But if continual dryness lasts to the end of the third month, it is a sign of some great evil.

The Prophet, then, here shows that the Israelites had not been chastised in an ordinary way, and that they were very stupid, as they did not, during the whole three months, apply their minds to consider their sins, though God urged them, and though His wrath had been manifested for so long a time. So we now see that the hardness of the people is amplified by the consideration of time, since they were not awakened by such a portentous sign, When there were yet three months, he says, to the harvests I withheld rain from you.

Another circumstance follows: “God rained on one city, on another he did not rain; one part was watered, and no drop of rain fell on another.” This difference could not be ascribed to chance. Unless people resolved to be willfully mad and to reject all reason, they must surely have been constrained to confess that these were manifest signs of God’s wrath.

How did it happen that one place was rained upon and another remained dry? That two neighboring cities were treated so differently? Why was this, unless God appeared angry from heaven? The Prophet then here again condemns the obstinacy of the people: they did not see in this difference the wrath of God, which was nevertheless so very conspicuous. The meaning of the whole is that God shows He had to do with a people past recovery, for they were refractory and obstinate in their wickedness and could not bear the application of any remedy.