John Calvin Commentary Amos 9:2-4

"Though they dig into Sheol, thence shall my hand take them; and though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down. And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and it shall bite them. And though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will I command the sword, and it shall slay them: and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for good." — Amos 9:2-4 (ASV)

Here the Prophet denounces horrible punishments, but not without reason, for there was astonishing lethargy in that people, as there usually is in all hypocrites when they have any shadow of excuse. They were then the only elect people in the whole world. When, therefore, they thought that they excelled others and that they were endowed with singular privileges beyond all other nations, this glory intoxicated them, and they imagined that God was in a way bound to them, as we have seen in other places. This, then, was the reason why the Prophet in so many ways elaborated on the judgment of God on hypocrites: it was so that they might be terrified by the vehemence and severity of his words.

Hence he says, If they dig for themselves passages to hell, that is, to the center of the earth, for שאול, shaul, is here used for the center; from there my hand shall draw them out; and then, If they ascend to heaven, from there I will draw them down, says the Lord. If they hide themselves in deserts, if they flee to the top of Carmel, I will trace them out. In short, they shall find no corner either in heaven, or on the earth, or in the sea, where they can be hidden from my sight.

There is no need here to understand “heavens” as high citadels, as the Chaldean paraphraser explains it; it is a cold paraphrase. But the Prophet speaks in hyperbolic language of the center of the earth, of the heavens, and of the deep of the sea, as if he had said, “Should all the elements open themselves for hiding places, yet the Israelites shall in vain try to escape, for I will follow them when sunk in the depth of the sea; I will draw them down from heaven itself. There shall, in a word, be no hiding place for them either above or below.”

We now understand the Prophet’s meaning, and a useful warning may be gathered from this: when God threatens us, we in vain seek evasions, as his hand extends itself to the lowest deep as well as to heaven, as it is said in Psalm 139:7-9:

Where shall I flee from your presence, O Lord?
If I ascend into heaven, you are there;
if I descend to the grave, you are present;
if I take the wings of the dawn, (or, of the morning star,)
and dwell in the extremities of the sea,
there also shall your hand lead me.

The Prophet does not speak in that psalm, as some have very absurdly philosophized, of the unlimited essence of God, but he rather shows that we are always in his sight. So then we ought to feel assured that we cannot escape whenever God designs to scrutinize our sins and to summon us to his tribunal.

But we must at the same time remember that the Prophet has not employed an unnecessary heap of words; there is not one syllable here that is not important, though at first glance it seems otherwise. But the Holy Spirit, as I have already reminded you, knowing our carelessness, here shakes off all our self-flatteries.

There is in us, we know, an innate lethargy by nature, so that we despise all threats, or at least we are not properly moved by them. As the Lord sees us to be so careless, he rouses us with his goads.

Whenever, then, Scripture denounces punishment on us, let us at the same time learn to join with it what the Prophet here relates: “You have to do with God. What can you achieve now by evasions? Though you climb to heaven, the Lord can draw you down; though you descend to the abyss, God’s hand will from there draw you out; if you seek a hiding place in the lowest depths, he will from there also bring you out to the light; and if you hide yourself in the deep sea, he will there find you out. In a word, wherever you take yourself, you cannot withdraw yourself from the presence and from the hand of God.”

From this we see the design of all these expressions: that we may not think of God as being like ourselves, but that we may know that his power extends to all hiding places.

But these words ought to be subjects for meditation, though it is sufficient for our purpose to summarize in a few words what the Prophet had in view. But as we are so entangled in our vain confidences, the Prophet, as I have said, has not used so many words in vain.

Now as to what he says, I will command the serpent to bite them, some understand by נחש, nuchesh, not a serpent on land, but the whale, or some other marine animal, such as the leviathan, which is mentioned in Scripture. And we may learn from other parts of Scripture that “nachash” means not only a serpent, but also a whale or some animal living in the sea. In a word, God intimates that he would be armed everywhere whenever he resolves to punish his adversaries, and that in all elements means are ready by which he can destroy the wicked who seek to escape from his hand.

Now when he says, If they go into captivity among their enemies, I will there command the sword to slay them, some interpreters confine this part to that foolish flight when a certain number of the people sought to provide for their safety by going down into Egypt. Johanan followed them, and a few escaped (Jeremiah 43:2), but according to what Jeremiah had foretold when he said, Bend your necks to the king of Babylon, and the Lord will bless you; whoever will flee to Egypt shall perish. So it happened; they found this to be really true, though they had always refused to believe the prediction.

Jeremiah was drawn there against his own will; he had, however, pronounced a curse on all who thought that it would be an asylum to them. But the Lord permitted him to be drawn there, so that he might to his last breath pronounce the Woe which they had before heard from his mouth. But I hardly dare to restrict these expressions of the Prophet in this way; I therefore explain them generally, as meaning that exile, which is commonly said to be a civil death, would not be the end of evils for the Israelites and for the Jews. For even when they surrendered themselves to their enemies and suffered themselves to be led and drawn away wherever their enemies pleased, they could not even in this way preserve their life, because the Lord would command the sword to pursue them even when exiles. This, in my view, is the real meaning of the Prophet.

He at last adds, I will set my eyes on them for evil, and not for good. There is a contrast to be understood in this clause, for the Lord had promised to be a guardian to his people, according to what is said in Psalm 121:4:

Behold, he who guards Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers.

As hypocrites always lay hold of the promises of God without repentance and faith, without any religious feeling, and afterwards turn them to support their vain boasting, the Prophet therefore says here that the eye of God would be upon them. This would not be in his customary manner to protect them, as he had done from the beginning, but, on the contrary, to accumulate punishment on punishment.

It was as if he said, “As I have until now watched over the safety of this people, whom I have chosen for myself, so from now on I will most diligently watch, that I may omit no kind of punishment, until they are utterly destroyed.”

And this sentence deserves to be specially noted, for we are reminded that though the Lord does not indeed spare unbelievers, yet he observes us more closely. He will punish us more severely if he sees us to be obstinate and incurable to the very end.

Why so? Because we have come nearer to him, and he looks on us as his family, placed under his eyes—not that anything is hidden or concealed from him, but Scripture speaks in human terms.

While God, then, favors his people with a gracious look, he yet cannot endure hypocrites, for he minutely observes their vices so that he may punish them the more severely. This, then, is the substance of the whole.