《The Biblical Illustrator – Amos》(A Compilation)
General Introduction
Over 34,000 pages in its original 56 volume printing, the Biblical Illustrator is a massive compilation of treatments on 10,000 passages of Scripture. It is arranged in commentary form for ease of use in personal study and devotion, as well as sermon preparation.
Most of the content of this commentary is illustrative in nature, and includes from hundreds of famous authors of the day such as Dwight L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, J. C. Ryle, Charles Hodge, Alexander MacLaren, Adam Clark, Matthew Henry, and many more. The collection also includes lesser known authors published in periodicles and smaller publications popular in that ara. Unlike modern publishers, Exell was apparently not under any pressure to consolidate the number of pages.
While this commentary is not known for its Greek or Hebrew exposition, the New Testament includes hundreds of references to, and explanations of, Greek words.
Joseph S. Exell edited and compiled the 56 volume Biblical Illustrator commentary. You will recognize him as the co-editor of the famous Pulpit Commentary (this commentary is even larger than the Pulpit Commentary). This remarkable work is the triumph of a life devoted to Biblical research and study. Assisted by a small army of students, the Exell draws on the rich stores of great minds since the beginning of New Testament times.
The Biblical Illustrator brings Scripture to life in a unique, illuminating way. While other commentaries explain a Bible passage doctrinally, this work illustrates the Bible with a collection of:
- illustrations
- outlines
- anecodtes
- history
- poems
- expositions
- geography
- sermons
- Bible backgrounds
- homiletics
for nearly every verse in the Bible. This massive commentary was originally intended for preachers needing help with sermon preperation (because who else in that day had time to wade through such a lengthy commentary?). But today, the Biblical Illustrator provides life application, illumination, inspiriation, doctrine, devotion, and practical content for all who teach, preach, and study the Bible.
00 Overview
AMOS
INTRODUCTION
No better illustration of the perfect freeness with which the Holy Ghost selected the men who spoke in old time to the fathers could be desired than that which is furnished by the contrast between Joel and Amos. Not more than half a century separated the periods of their prophetic activity; and perhaps they had actually looked one another in the face. They were both men of God, both natives of the same little land, both commissioned to preach to one people--the people whom Jehovah had chosen for His own. Yet they were entirely distinct intemperament and in personal surroundings. Joel was tender andpitiful, and Amos rigorous and severe. Joel’s words were those of a cultured citizen; Amos sprang from the poor of the people, and his language was simpler and stronger and more keen and cutting, coming from the heart of a man who had himself borne the yoke in his youth. Joel was a child of the busy town; Amos was a child of the quiet country-side, summoned from the spade and the goad to preach to the educated ranks of men. But the Holy Spirit shone through both alike, and spoke with the lips of both. For there are seasons when His light is the White light of the diamond, and other seasons when it is the ruddy glow of the ruby. His voice may be compassionate to-day, and full of an awful solemnity to-morrow.
I. What was the history of amos?--Theyarebut hints and glimpses ofhis biography which he gives us; but, slight as they are, they tell us a good deal. His home was in the kingdom of Judah, not in any of its great centres of life, but in the little town of Tekoa, which lies some six miles south of Bethlehem. Far away on the horizon he saw the summits of Olivet, which were so well known to Joel; but the scenes among which he was nurtured were different altogether from those familiar to one born and trained in the city. Though Tekoa was itself a fruitful spot, well adapted for flocks and for the cultivation of the sycamore-fig, it lay on the very edge of the wilderness. Immediately beyond it fertility ceased. The eye looked out on rugged and desolate mountains, and through the gorges between the barren hills glittered the waters of the Dead Sea. In this last outpost which man had snatched from nature, Amos had his birthplace; and most of his life was spent among these solitudes. He was one of the herdsmenof the district, not himself the owner of large flocks, but simply the guardian of the sheep and lambs that belonged to another. £ He was a poor man, and his usual food, he tells us, was the sycamore fruit, one of the coarsest and least desirable of all the fruits of Canaan. But the prophet’s vision and faculty are not the prerogatives of the rich, and God’s grace can exalt those of low degree to the chief seats in His kingdom. In the loneliness of the desert Amos was prepared little by little for his life-task. If we study his prophecy we shall find that he was taught wisdom by two great instructors. He read much in the book of nature which lay open before him. The imagery of his visions is drawn from his life in the country. The locusts in the meadow, the basket of fruit, the shepherds fighting with the lions for their prey, the sifting of corn, the foaming winter torrents that descend to the Dead Sea, the midnight sky, in which the seven stars and Orion shine conspicuously--such are his metaphors. It was the sublime and tragic in the outside world, rather than the merely beautiful, which fascinated the mind of Amos. When the writer of such a psalm as the nineteenth opened his eyes on nature he beheld it with a gaze of childlike joy. The sun was like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoicing as a strong man to run his race. But the prophet looked on the world with other eyes. He was impressed by the nakedness and changelessness of the desert on the confines of which he had his home, by the overwhelming grandeur of the heavens, which bent over him at night as he watched beside his flocks, by the conflict and death which he saw around him. This proneness to meditate on the more terrible aspects of the outer world was to colour his words when God called him away from the sheepfolds. He loved to point his teaching by wild and disquieting images taken from what he had himself seen, telling his hearers how Jehovah would crush Israel “as a waggon full of sheaves presses what isunder it,” how the remnant left of the people would be “as when the shepherd saves from the mouth of the lion two feet or a piece of an ear,” how like some devouring animal the Lord would roar out of Zion on the shuddering and doomed nation. Thus from the great picture-book of nature Amos gleaned many profound thoughts and many solemn truths. But during those years of preparation he read deeply, too, in another book--the book of the law of the Lord. He brooded over the revelation which before his time God had given to His people. He traced His doings in history, in the vicissitudes which had befallen the nation of Israel, and in those of other nations too. In this fashion he sought to gather for himself some conception of the Divine character, and some understanding of the principles which regulate the Divine government. That his endeavour was not in vain his writings make very clear. In his solitude he learned much of the ways of God to man; and when at last he came forth to speak on behalf of the Lord to the mightiest in the land, he was able to enforce his declarations by many references to God’s dealings in the past. The law of Moses was familiar to him, and he recalled its commandments and threatenings to the minds of his listeners. He knew of the forty years’ march through the wilderness, and of the idolatry into which the people fell in former days. (Amos 2:10; Amos 5:25-26). He reiterated in some of its very expressions the prophecy of Balaam against Moab. Compare his words, “Moab shall die with tumult,” with those of Balaam in Numbers 24:17, where the Star of Jacob is said to “smite the corners of Moab and destroy all the children of tumult.” He hinted at the story of Jacob and Esau, when he denounced the sin of Edom. “His brother” (Amos 1:11) is, of course, Jacob. He repeated once and again the phrases of his predecessor Joel. Compare Amos 1:2 with Joel 3:16; Amos 5:18 with Joel 2:1etseq. We cannot but feel that the bleak and lonely desert was the best of all schools for Amos. There he was moulded into fitness for a great and perilous enterprise. There, like Moses and Elijah and John the Baptist, he was taught by God Himself. And one day the wilderness life came suddenly to an end. He received the call of Jehovah to special work. The glory and the burden of the prophet were laid upon him. How the wish of heaven was indicated we cannot tell; but there was not a doubt left on the mind of Amos that God had summoned him to unwonted scenes and hazardous duties. He had no choice in the matter, and he desired none. “The lion had roared,” he said in his own characteristic style--once for all he had heard the thunder of Jehovah’s voice--and “who could but prophesy?” So he went out from the desert to proclaim the message of judgment revealed to him. For whither was the stern shepherd sent? Away from Judah altogether, northward into the territory of the ten tribes; and not to some quiet Israelitish village like the Tekoa which he knew, but to the court of the king, to the brilliant crowd that thronged the royal sanctuary at Bethel. It was not indeed a long journey, as we reckon distances in our day; for Palestine in its entirety is but a small country. But it transported Amos into a new world. In his home he had heard of the greatness and the sin of Israel; now he saw them with his own eyes. Somewhere in the closing years of the ninth century before Christ this memorable expedition took place. JeroboamII. was reigning at the time over the Northern Kingdom. Under his rule it had reached its highest splendour. He “restored the coast of Israel,” we are told in the historical books, “from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plate.” He was a brave and vigorous man, though “he did evil in the sight of the Lord”; and his arms had been successful everywhere. His subjects were secure in the consciousness of their strength. They did not dream of disaster or defeat. But the proud and careless kingdom was being undermined from within. Its sins were sapping its vitality. These sins, we learn from the denunciations of Amos, were of three kinds. The root evil, from which the others sprang, was the corruption of the worship of Jehovah. Induced as much by political as by religious reasons, the rulers of Israel had erected golden calves at Bethel and Gilgal within their own territories, and at Beersheba in the far south for such of their subjects as had settled there. Their design was to prevent the ten tribes from repairing to God’s house in Jerusalem; for, had they been permitted to join the people of Judea in the great annual feasts, they might have been won back to their allegiance to the house of David, and the separation between the kingdoms would have been brought to an end. To secure their continued independence the sovereigns of the North established a special ritual and founded sanctuaries of their own; and at these sanctuaries they commanded their people to serve God. The character of the religion practised at the shrines of Israel must not be misapprehended. It was far from the pure worship of Jehovah, but just as certainly it was not rank and utter idolatry, like the service of Baal. It was the adoration of the true Lord under visible forms and images. Doubtless many genuine lovers of Jehovah bent the knee before the golden image at Bethel, even as in corrupt churches of our own day there may be much simple and earnest piety. And it was not otherwise in the ancient kingdom of Israel. In spite of its erroneous worship, numbers of its citizens may have been the children and servants of Him who is not like unto gold or silver or stone graven by art and man’s device. The fact that God still spoke with them through His prophets is proof in itself that He had not quite cast them off, and that, while their religion was sadly mixed with evil, it was not entirely false in His sight. But notwithstanding all this, they sinned grievously when they tried to frame an outward likeness of the Lord who transcends thought and sense; and He told them, by the mouth of Amos, that the altar of Bethel was an abomination to Him. And this initial sin was speedily followed by other offences; for when once the worship of God is corrupted, it is hard to keep contamination out of any department of human life. The little leaven very soon leaveneth the whole lump. Luxuriousness and effeminacy, with the sensual lusts which generally accompany them, were but too common in Samaria. The prophet describes its inhabitants as lying on beds of ivory and stretching themselves on couches, as chanting to the sound of the viol and inventing to themselves instruments of music, as drinking in bowls of wine and anointing themselves with the finest ointments. And he found them willing to stain their lives with even darker crimes, of which an apostle says that it is a shame so much as to speak. Many of these proud Israelites were sunk in the grossest impurity, as the clear-sighted shepherd from the desert quickly discovered. There was much social oppression, much greed of gain, much injustice done the destitute and helpless. The nobles turned judgment into wormwood, Amos declared. The judges sold the righteous to obtain money, and the poor for a pair of sandals. The princes put the day of calamity far off, and brought the seat of violence near. These were the influences which were working toward the downfall of the state. Fearless as Amos was, it must have tested his courage to put into execution God’s command and to repair to Bethel. But he obeyed. His tragic words rang soon through all the wayward northern country. They were sharp as arrows in the hearts of the King’s enemies. The people were bowed down before the prophet, as the trees are bowed before the storm. Perhaps Jeroboam himself, like another ruler of a later day, trembled for a little as he listened to the preacher of righteousness and temperance and judgment to come. But Amos made one relentless enemy in Israel. Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, began to fear for the reputation and the gains of his sanctuary. He determined to silence the daring speaker. “Get thee hence, O seer,” he said, “flee into the land of Judah, and there earn thy bread, and prophesy there.” Judging Amos by himself, he regarded him as a man whose prophesying was a financial speculation, and who “had made a bold stroke for notoriety.” The Judean visitor returned him a prompt and pitiless answer. “I am no prophet,” he declared, “nor a prophet’s son, but a simple herdsman, whom Jehovah took of His good will from following the flocks, and sent to this sinful place to cry against it a heavy and bitter woe. And thou, who callest thyself His servant, and seekest, nevertheless, to close the lips of His chosen messenger, thou wilt yet know His special chastizement, His fiercest and hottest indignation.” There is a tradition that Amaziah, angry at so dauntless a witness-bearer, sought to put him to death, and that Amos, wounded by the attendants of the priest, crossed the border of his native Judah only to yield up his spirit to God. But that cannot have been the case. For when he had reached his home again he set himself to write the story of his mission and the record of the words he had spoken while he was away. This book of his prophecy is most carefully arranged. Its sections are linked artistically each to each. That is the life-story of Amos of Tekoa, So far as we can gather it from the book he has written. It tells us--does it not?--how condescending God’s grace is. This humble shepherd was His minister. He chose the weak things of the world to confound the things that were mighty. It tells us, too, how devoid of feverish haste, and how free from foolish pomp and display, God’s movements are. He spent a long time in educating Amos for a task which was probably accomplished in a few weeks