Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 3.7.1–3.7.6

Verses 1–3. — “These things the Lord God showed me: and see, one forming locusts at the beginning of the springing up of the late rain, and see, the late one after the shearer of the flock. And it came to pass, when it had finished eating the grass of the land, I said: Lord God, be merciful, I beseech you; who will raise up Jacob, for he is small? The Lord had mercy concerning this: It shall not be, said the Lord.” He wove his speech in the manner of a prophet; indeed he showed what revelations the prophets used to behold in the spirit (whence they were also called seers): that brief images of future things appeared to them under various forms, but such as they could already understand; and so they were moved to various feelings, pertaining either to censure or to mercy. After he had announced that a nation had been roused against them that would bring them destruction, lest the very brevity of the judgment fail to move the hearer enough, he dwells on explaining the images he had seen, and on their occasion shows how earnestly he prayed for them, lest anyone think that he announced those calamities with the mind of one insulting or not grieving at all. “Hear, then, into what spectacles of images our God led me. There stood one who, like a potter, was forming, that is, shaping, swarms of locusts, and was assigning to them, numberless as they were, that they should graze on all the [blades] of crops and all the shoots with tireless bites, as it were.” What he says, “at the beginning of the springing up of the late rain,” serves to show the increase of the disaster: that is, that a heavy drought seems to occupy the times of the timely rain, and the cultivators, wearied and troubled by a long waiting for rains, begin to have the comfort of the [late] rain, and so hastily lay down the seeds they had despaired of; but when the very seeds, barely and very late covered, had begun to sprout, before they rose into stalks and ears they perished as the locusts grazed; yet, lest their hope be soothed even a little, another, a “late one,” came after the locust. “For see,” he says, “the late one after the shearer of the flock”: that is, that one which followed consumed down to the roots the shoots that the locusts had sheared. Since he kept silent about its name here, let us gather from the earlier prophecy what he meant. For blessed Joel says, “What the caterpillar left the locust has eaten, and what the locust left the cankerworm has eaten, and what the cankerworm left the blight has eaten.” So the prophet Amos too indicated by the “late one,” following the remnants of the shearer, the cankerworm. As for his seeing one forming the locust, when he could have been shown as summoning a creature already existing, it serves to make known the inestimable multitude of those creatures: not that as many swarms as could be found in the world were gathered, but that new ones were fashioned by the power of the judge, who is also Creator of the universe. When the devastation fulfilled had revealed the cause of the first forming, and the consumption of food the multitude of the [devourers], “I cried out,” he says: “Lord God, be merciful, I beseech you: who will raise up Jacob, for he is small?” That is: “If by your indignation our nation comes to such smallness as these figures promise, who will be able to raise it again, once you have finished it with such devastation?” “The Lord had mercy concerning this: It shall not be, said the Lord”: that is, the change of sentence that followed showed that my intercession had been effective. For God, ready for mercy, removed that blow whose greatness he saw had terrified me, and answered that what I had prayed should not happen would not happen. But he brought in another which he judged milder.

Verse 4. — “For this the Lord God showed me: see, the Lord God will call judgment to fire, and it will devour the great deep, and will eat up a part as well.” Unless we take what is said prudently and carefully, no small absurdity will be found in the meanings. For after the losses that the grazing locust and the following cankerworm had brought, fire is brought in as a milder blow, although it is not at all doubtful that the calamity that a fire sent upon them works is much greater than all that the shearing of shoots brought. How, then, does the prophet say that God, having had mercy and been bent as by the tears of the intercessor, called judgment to fire, that is, assigned the guilty to burning, from whom he had driven away the danger of want? It should therefore be noticed that by the name of fire he wished to indicate here the passing of a flame, which, though by its violence it scorches whatever it touches, yet as long as it does not linger on what it has blown upon, neither descends into what is deep nor consumes the trunks it seemed to have seized. By the images of locusts and cankerworms intent on the work they had undertaken, then, he wished to show the slaughter of the condemned nation. When the prophet had seen this in the spirit, dismayed both by affection for the people and by the reverence due to the judge, he came to meet it, and obtained that the atrocity of that sentence be changed. But since the inveterate profanity of the people did not allow full pardon to be granted, a punishment of this kind follows, which, though sent upon them it consumes a great part, yet lets remnants remain. For so he says: “See, the Lord God will call judgment to fire, and it will devour the great deep, and will eat up a part as well.” But the prophet, encouraged by the effect of his first supplication, dares to resist this announcement too, and says that Israel is small, that is, that its diminished forces would be destroyed by slaughter if he who judges, as a chastiser, kindled the wrath of enemies. Some have thought that by the image of the locust the Assyrians are signified, and by the image of fire the Babylonians, not seeing that this conflicts with history. For the prophet says that the blows of both locust and fire were removed by his prayers, and that the Lord answered the suppliant about both: “This shall not be,” that is, “This devastation will not rush in.” But the Assyrian and Babylonian enemies, having won their victories, laid waste Israel and Judah with heavy slaughter. Here, then, our God shows through the prophet, who had been made a spectator of the images, both that the Jewish people deserved a much heavier destruction than it suffered, and that the heavenly arbiter could wipe it out by slaughter if he had wished either to multiply the number of enemies or to kindle their indignation, and that he suffered a kind of necessity of afflicting that nation, which he did not wish to perish entirely.

Verses 7–9. — But when he had removed these two kinds of threatening dangers, “This,” he says, “the Lord showed me: and see, the Lord standing on a plastered wall, and in his hand a mason’s trowel. And the Lord said to me: What do you see, Amos? And I said: A mason’s trowel. And the Lord said to me: See, I will set the trowel in the midst of my people Israel; I will no longer go on plastering it over. And the high places of the idol shall be demolished, and the sanctuaries of Israel laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” The vision of the prophet we are speaking of has made public a great part of God’s dispositions, under which the way of mortals runs. For whereas the preceding sentences showed the judge either threatening or roaring and gaping like a lion for the deaths of the guilty (which movement or feeling is taught, according to the reason of doctrine, to be foreign to the nature of God, who rejoices in continual tranquility), the occasion of the present passage has revealed in what manner above all our God rises to punish: namely, by abandoning rather than by roaring. For since the heap of calamities was rushing on, if he had reluctantly withdrawn, he says that they fell as if he struck them; and to stir compunction in the hearts of the guilty he takes on the bearing and movement that the enemy had, raging by his permission. So when the intervening prayer had taken away his double sentence, which he had set out according to the deserts of the Jews, he brought a third, which the prophet, as if it were very mild, did not dare to resist, but which contained the fullest feeling of vengeance. “For on a plastered wall,” he says, “that is, one put together by the builder’s art, the Lord of things seemed to me to stand, holding in his hand a mason’s trowel, by which he indicated the office he used to perform: namely, that he protected them with constant defense and applied frequent healing, by which they were restored and renewed. But if he removed the providence that bestowed these things on the wretches, none of them could hold together or stand. This trowel, then,” he says, “that is, my care, by which shaken things were plastered and strengthened, I will lay down, and I will proclaim a kind of rest for my kindness, since Israel compels it; nor will I any longer bear the labor of contending with shameless profanity with ineffective goodness. And so they will at last recognize what they have done, when they perish, though I do not strike, yet do not protect them.” “And the high places of the idol shall be demolished, and the sanctuaries of Israel laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. For enemies will come, and, celebrating a full triumph, will rage with sword and fire, burning shrines and profane places together with whole cities, and will lay waste the family of Jeroboam with the avenging sword.” After the speech of the preaching prophet had gone this far, a certain Amaziah by name, a priest of idols, sent to Jeroboam, who at that time ruled the ten tribes, and announced to him that Amos, by the impulse of a spirit of rebellion rather than of prophecy, was both announcing destruction to him by name, that is, to the king, and was terrifying the whole people with such manifold threats that it was becoming doubtful in opinion which king it would follow, uncertain as it was. And briefly embracing the purpose of the whole prophetic book,

Verse 11. — “For thus,” he says, “Amos says: Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall go captive out of his land.” From these words we consequently notice what we also experience in the affairs of our own times: that the lowlier part of the nation, that is, the common people, the less they had of the pride of nobility, the more easily they were moved by the words of the prophets; but the priests and nobles, striving to favor the vices of the king, rejected, indeed accused, and, if they could, killed the teachers of salvation. But let us follow the order of the reading. When, then, he had sent to King Jeroboam messages by which he might be inflamed against the prophet of God, not content to wait for the end of the contest he had stirred up, as it were, but wishing that the holy man be driven out in any way whatever, the instigator summoned him himself.

Verses 12, 13. — “And Amaziah said to Amos: You seer, go, flee to the land of Judah; eat bread there, and prophesy there. And at Bethel you shall prophesy no more, for it is the king’s sanctuary and the house of the kingdom.” Fearing, I believe, that the king’s indignation might be restrained by reverence for the prophet, he tried to drive him out himself, and, addressing him with honor, said: “You who see, go away and flee to the neighboring region of Judah, where you can both live and teach safely. But in this place, that is, Bethel, in which you see the palace built and the king’s sanctuaries, namely the image to whose worship we are enslaved together with the prince himself, do not go on sounding such words, which you will understand may not perhaps go unpunished for you.”

Verses 14, 15. — “Amos answered and said to Amaziah: I am not a prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I am a herdsman, nipping sycamores. And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and said to me: Go, prophesy to my people Israel.” From the occasions of answers, things left unsaid also often come to mind to be understood: as now the prophet, when the soothsayer had told him to flee, answered that he was not descended from the stock of prophets, nor had he undertaken this office from the beginning, yet that he ought not for that reason to be despised by his hearers as one prophesying falsely. But what they used to say to insult him he professes even with joy: that he was neither of the company nor of the stock of the prophets, but, devoted only to the office of shepherd, leading herds through the forests and gathering food from trees in the meanest way, he had been chosen by God, who looks on the heart, and appointed to this office of prophesying. In this manner the apostle too glories when he says that when it pleased God to reveal his Son through me, “I did not immediately consult flesh and blood, nor did I go to the apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus”: that is, “I sought no teaching or privilege, but at once obeyed our Redeemer when he called me so promptly and eagerly that I entered on the work of preaching.” So blessed Amos too professes himself a shepherd of cattle, who came to this work by no ambition but solely by the choice of the one who called him: “who said to me,” he says, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel. The things, then, that I threatened above, you, O Amaziah, and all your partners ought to have received not as my words but as those of God speaking through me, and not to doubt that by God’s will I was announcing what I had learned would come. That you may not be ignorant of this, receive the proof of him who speaks in me, Christ. Your wife shall commit sexual immorality in the city, your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be measured by line; and you shall die in a polluted land, and Israel shall go captive out of his land. What does it profit you, then, to refuse to hear what you must endure, since it is not the words of the one announcing that will torment you but the wounds of the one pursuing? So that you may feel that the sentence hanging over you can be removed by no art, I foretell that you will feel the torments of all affections, those that a husband, a father, and a distinguished citizen receive. For your wife will be polluted not by secret shame but will lie subject to the lust of the conquerors in the middle of the city; the sword will lay waste your children while you look on, unable even to mourn; and you, struck by disgrace and bereavement together, will die in a polluted land”: that is, either in the very region of the Jews, which first the sacrileges of its citizens and then the crimes of its enemies polluted, or else in barbarian lands, which you always thought most polluted; “and Israel will be driven into exile by the whirlwind of captivity.” But let us see the rest.