Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 3.9.1–3.9.11

Verse 1. — “I saw the Lord standing on the altar, and he said: Strike the hinge, and let the lintels be shaken. For greed is at the head of them all, and the last of them I will kill with the sword.” Some have believed that this altar, on which the avenger stood, was the lawful one, placed in the temple at Jerusalem, so that, according to what another prophet says, “Begin from my sanctuary,” the destruction of the temple itself would seem to be threatened; but the context of the passage refutes such an understanding. For no mention of Judah had gone before; rather, it hung especially over the ten tribes. Then, after he said, “They swear by the sin of Samaria,” and, “Those who say, As your God lives, Dan, and as the way of Beersheba lives, shall fall,” he says, “and not rise again,” and then added, “I saw the Lord standing on the altar.” Since, then, he struck most expressly at the ten tribes and Samaria, we ought to take the altar and the shrine that he commands to be overthrown as the one of which he said a little before, “And the end has come upon my people Israel; I will no longer pass it by; and the hinges of the temple will creak in that day, says the Lord.” And a little above: “Amos said to Amaziah: Now hear the word of the Lord. You say, You shall not prophesy against the house of Israel and shall not drip words against the house of the idol. Therefore thus says the Lord: Your wife shall commit sexual immorality in the city, your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, your land shall be measured by line, and you shall die in a polluted land, and Israel shall go captive out of his land.” Since, then, he had said that those who swore by the sin of Samaria would be subjected to the exile they deserved, he follows up the effect of that very threat, and says that he saw the Lord standing to tear down the altars of the profane. And although he appears under various images, now as one meeting, now as one standing, yet since he accomplished everything by command, “he said,” he says, to his ministers, whether angels or the nations coming at his will, that they should strike the doors and the shaken lintels should burst apart, and so the whole ruin of the buildings would follow; and at once showing the causes of his anger, he says: “For greed is at the head of them all, and the last of them I will kill with the sword.” There seems to be a certain deficiency in the expressions, but if you look carefully, it was taken up by design rather than by chance. For since through the whole book he had set out their crimes and the torments owed to them, he rightly now chose a brief form of speech, so as both to mark the wounds of conduct by the sign of one vice and to touch the weight of condemnation in a concise word. By the striking of the hinges and the shaking of the lintels he declares the ruin of the shrines; by the name of greed dwelling at the head of all, that all, from the princes to the lowest, bristled with filth and sacrileges; and by marking that the last of them would be killed by the enemy’s sword, he shows that not even the lowly would be spared, but that nobles and common people would perish in mixed slaughter. “There will be [or: was] no flight for them,” he says; “they will flee, and none of them who flees will be saved.” He had named flight for escape; to explain this, after saying, “There will be no flight for them,” he at once added, “he will flee, and none of them who flees will be saved.” Since, then, it was of no use to those to be captured to have fled, he declares that they will not even take to flight. But lest this be uncertain, he brought in what served to explain it: “He will flee,” he says, “and none of them who flees will be saved.” In this sense is that in the psalm: “Let their way be darkness and slippery, and the angel of the Lord pursuing them.” But lest this very thing, briefly indicated, should elude the understanding of the hearers, he goes on to widen the sentence through images, to sharpen the feeling of fear by the length of the description, and at the same time to show that when he, who is the inspector of the whole world, is indignant, there is no region and no creature that can give any help or comfort to the condemned. After he said, then, “There will be no flight for them; he will flee, and none of them who flees will be saved”:

Verses 2–4. — “If they go down to hell,” he says, “from there my hand will bring them out; and if they go up to heaven, from there I will drag them down. And if they hide on the top of Carmel, from there I will search them out and take them; and if they conceal themselves from my eyes at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent and it will bite them. And if they go into captivity before their enemies, there I will command the sword and it will kill them.” Not that captured Israel could reach or wished to reach any of the places he listed; but to make known the greatness of the eternal judge, he gathered examples from impossible things: that is, “If, when I pursue, they could fly up to the heights of heaven, or be swallowed by the chasms of the earth to hide, or, as is often the folly of the fearful, make for the top of Carmel as if for a safe hiding place, or sink in the depths of the sea’s gulfs, they still could nowhere escape the force of our vengeance. And lest the very condition by which they are punished perhaps flatter them, and they think that by bearing captivity they are so done with it that I have no further right over those whom I have handed over to barbarian rule, I announce that they will not be defended even by the lot of captives, whom the cruelty of masters, wearied or sated, is usually accustomed to spare; but there too, at my nod, weapons will pierce their throats; for no one will be allowed to pity those against whom I too have been compelled to rage.” This figure the writer of the holy songs developed in praise of God, saying: “Where shall I go from your spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? If I go up into heaven, you are there; if I go down into hell, you are present. If I take my wings before the dawn and dwell at the ends of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand will hold me. If I say, Darkness will hide me, and night will be my comfort,” I consider again and see that as is darkness, so is his light: that is, to the eyes of God the darkness of dense night, however dense, is as plain as the light of day. As blessed David listed these and other things in wonder at divine power, so now too through Amos our God set forth things that would serve both to show his power and to heighten fear, and showed that they could find no comfort, saying: “And I will set my eyes on them for evil and not for good”: that is, “I will look on them to punish them, so that they may feel in pains with what power the God was whom the wretches despised for a long age.”

Verse 5. — “And the Lord God of hosts, who touches the earth and it melts; and all who dwell in it shall mourn.” He seems indeed, to show his power, to have mentioned the whole world under the name of the whole earth: that it would flow away without any difficulty if God commanded, according to the word of the apostle Peter, who says: “What sort of people ought we to be in holy conduct, awaiting the coming of the Lord, in which the heavens will pass away with a great rush and the elements will melt with the heat of fire” (2 Pet 3:11–12). And the sense would be this: “O people of the Jews, given to profanities, do not take what I said, that you can escape the force of my vengeance by no flight, as if I had spent all I can on the greatness of your calamity. For you can understand how slight this effect of my power is from this: if I look in anger on the whole mass of the earth, it will dissolve no less easily than wax by the heat of fire. For I am the Lord Sabaoth, that is, of hosts, for whom countless troops of angels fight, who, though late, at last become the avenger. Weigh, then, the greatness of your calamity, since he whose wrath now pursues you can do all things.” But it fits the sequence of the reading better if he seems to have said this too of the region of Judea, against which the threats had sounded from the beginning of the book. For when he had said, “I will set my eyes on them for evil and not for good,” and that no elements would dare or be able to hide them, he consequently added that he was the king of powers and the Lord of lords, who would clothe that polluted region with squalor. “And it shall rise wholly like a river, and flow away like the river of Egypt”: that is, the whole nation will go into captivity. And as another prophet says, “They shall come to nothing like water running off.” For he calls the Nile the river of Egypt, which, when it has covered the fields of Egypt with its yearly flood, draws its streams back into its bed so that almost no traces of the waters are left in the fields. So the people of Samaria too, which had once filled the land of Palestine as if to enrich it, will lay aside its dignity and freedom and enter the confines of foreign rule, and keep no signs of its former honor.

Verse 6. — “He who builds his ascent in heaven and has founded his bundle upon the earth.” The proclamation woven of God’s praises that now appears goes on: for to what he had said, “The Lord God of hosts, who touches the earth and it melts, and all who dwell in it shall mourn,” this coheres, “He who builds his ascent in heaven and has founded his bundle upon the earth”: that is, “You could not escape the eyes of him who is Lord of the angels, who created and holds together the world, whether you went up to heaven or sank in the depths of the sea.” “He who builds his ascent in heaven and has founded his bundle upon the earth.” The sense is that, although he sits on the throne of heaven as befits his majesty, he has nonetheless deigned to have on earth as it were his own bundle, namely the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose God he chose to be specially called, though he is Lord of the universe. He called it a bundle as a possession, according to that in Deuteronomy: “When the Most High divided the nations, he set their boundaries according to the number of the angels of God, and Jacob became his portion, Israel the lot of his inheritance.” By bringing this in briefly, he showed with what great kindness he dealt with the Jews and how much he was provoked by their crimes. “He who builds,” then, that is, who has built and from the beginning of creation ordered by his holy laws that he himself, as protector of the world, should go up into heaven, as into the heights of his world, and sit there in eternal dominion, but assigned the earth to be inhabited by his servants, according to what blessed David says: “The heaven of heavens is the Lord’s, but the earth he has given to the sons of men.” Although he is thus lofty in throne and scepter, and not only the stars but the heavens of heavens receive him with trembling, yet he bends the eyes of his goodness to the depths, and so regards lowly things that he leaves no creature without the government of his providence. Not only [because] he deigned to have a bundle, as we have said, namely a nation to be instructed in holy rites in honor of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; but (according to what the holy song says, “The Lord is good to all, and his mercies are over all his works,” and, “He makes his sun rise on the good and the bad, and sends rain on the just and the unjust”) he supplies food not only to men but also to birds and beasts, according to that word of David: “All look to you to give them food in season; when you give, they gather; when you open your hand, all will be filled with goodness; but when you turn away your face, they will be troubled.” And elsewhere: “Who gives food to the beasts and grass for the service of men, to gladden the face with oil, and bread to strengthen the hearts of men.” So that the earth may bear crops and fruits for the food of men, they are made fruitful by the rain falling from the clouds, whose softness was created for this, that, sent into the waves, they may be filled like sponges; and, the same waters being purged of their native saltiness by this very transfusion and passing into drinkable sweetness, they pour over the thirsty fields and multiply the variety of seeds with wonderful abundance: confessing that there is one Lord, by sure right, who ordered these things. But let us see what the preceding description of divine power serves.

Verse 7. — “Are you not like the children of the Ethiopians to me, children of Israel, says the Lord?” Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? For there is one God, who justifies the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith. “Although, then, by the testimony of my providence, which takes thought for all mortals in common, you could and should have recognized that I chose your race especially in honor of your holy fathers, yet did not drive the other nations from my care, at least recognize from what has been done that I am Lord of all; and do not claim so much for yourselves, when you have fallen into crimes, as to think that you alone are preferred to the rest because you were wonderfully brought out of Egyptian servitude and possess a rich region, with its inhabitants, what is more, cast out. For I did not exercise the gift of such a dispensation toward you alone; but as I brought the Israelites from the land of Egypt, so I brought the Philistines from Cappadocia and the Syrians from Cyrene and put them in the places of those who deserved to be expelled. Do not believe, then, that your virtues deserved what I always spent for my justice: namely, to destroy kingdoms polluted by sacrileges, testifying that this is the chief care of a lawful Lord, to leave no one unpunished whom he sees thinking nothing of correction.”

Verse 8. — “See, the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom, and I will crush it from the face of the earth.” “Learn, then, at least from the dangers of events, that no mortal is safe by riches or strength who is not surrounded by the uprightness of innocence. My justice, then, has always shown that not only one or two but even a whole kingdom, if subject to sins, perishes. Yet the holiness of your fathers obtained from me that I will not let you be destroyed by slaughter; but even if, weighing the measures of deserts, I rouse vengeance against your crimes, forgetfulness of mercy will never creep upon me; but even if I crush the guilty, I will not let the name of the Israelites perish. There will be this distinction, then, between you and the rest: that you will be shown to have been chastised, they to have been destroyed.” And since, in the very onrush of indignation, God nonetheless revealed that he would spare a remnant, he goes on with what [follows].

Verses 9, 10. — “For see, I will command, and I will shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes with a sieve, and not a pebble shall fall on the ground. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say: It will not draw near, and evil will not come upon us.” “What my indignation has roared through this whole book will not rage with poured-out swiftness, but will shake you, as it were, with a careful hand and anxious inspection, like a sieve by which grain is cleaned, whose narrow holes let neither grains nor pebbles fall, but separate only the dust and darnel and the other useless things.” As for his saying that pebbles remain among the grain, he seems to have looked to the custom of those who clean grain, who often put pebbles into the sieve so that, striking against its rims, they add force to the shaking and let nothing of the refuse remain. But in a subtler sense, touching more nearly the matter for which the image was taken up, by the name of pebbles he indicates the firmness of those who are not easily corrupted by bad examples, as we read that in those times there were prophets and other just men: while the rest of the crowd perished like wood and stubble, they remained like solid and therefore precious stones, on whom the Church would rightly be founded, since no storm could overturn them. “So although the captivity sent upon you,” he says, “carries off all alike, I will by no means value you so cheaply that you perish in mixed slaughter; but the scale of judgment will be applied, so that the sword touches no innocent and passes over no guilty. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say: It will not draw near, and evil will not come upon us”: that is, those who resisted the holy seers and, eager as it were to refute them, affirmed that none of the calamities they announced would come and that they would experience no evils: “these,” he says, “raging vengeance will pursue. But all who are conspicuous either for innocence or for tested virtue our hand will so defend that they will be shown to have been exercised indeed, but not destroyed.” But let us see the rest.

Verses 11, 12. — “In that day, says the Lord, I will raise up the tent of David that has fallen, and I will rebuild the breaches of its walls, and restore what had collapsed, and I will rebuild it as in the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations, because my name has been called upon them, says the Lord who does these things.” Since he had promised that even in the time of kindled indignation he would have such regard of mercy for the nation of the Jews that he would not let them be wholly abolished (but that in the very whirlwind of captivity, when savage barbarity already held them, he would nevertheless defend with wonderful help those endowed with innocence or justice, so that destruction would have no power over them, which certainly seemed difficult), he fittingly and necessarily added the prosperity that was to come, so as to heap up still plainer proofs of his mercy, whose signs he had promised, and to show that he cared for those whose deserts he was judging, and so they might understand that he would let no one perish without judgment, since he exercised this distinction not only toward persons but also between nations. For when the ten tribes had already been taken over by Assyrian domination, [he promised] to defend Judah and Benjamin, which are marked by the mention of Judah alone, from Sennacherib’s attack. So, naming the time in prophetic manner, he says: “In that day I will raise up the tent of David that has fallen, and I will rebuild the breaches of its walls, and restore what had collapsed, and I will rebuild it as in the days of old.” By these words he certainly marks the age in which the tribe of Judah too, with the rest, was freed from the Babylonian captivity. For as almost all the prophets had foretold in harmony, so the outcome of events also proved it. Here, then, when he had narrated all the sad things under the person of the ten tribes, as he came to the foretelling of joyful things he ran through their series on the occasion of Judah, at the same time indicating that the people of Jerusalem would come under adversity, from which he promises they would be led out. Signs of this freedom appeared under Hezekiah, when God defended with wonderful protection those in Jerusalem suffering grave want at the hands of the besiegers. “When all adversities have been driven away, then,” he says, “I will take up again that mason’s trowel which I had laid down in indignation, to build the breaks in the walls that had been shaken by the enemy’s attack, and I will raise up all the houses that had grown old and bring them back to the vigor of their ancient happiness. And I will grant not only the sweetness of freedom but also of vengeance: that is, that they may possess the remnant of the Edomite nation, descended from the stock of Esau, by whose fratricidal hatred they had constantly suffered, and may set all the nations so under their own rule that it may appear how great a fruit of piety they obtained, who gained rich and frequent victories by calling on my name.” It should be noted, however, that blessed James recalled this passage in the Acts of the Apostles in a subtler understanding, to proclaim the mystery of our Redeemer, calling the body of Christ the tent of David: which, when by the very condition of nature it had fallen into death, was raised by the power and mystery of the resurrection; and truly the faithful holiness of David, that is, the eternal one, shone forth, when God did not let his holy one see corruption, but glorified him before the face of all peoples, to the glory of his people Israel. Following the teaching of the apostles, then, let us know that the books of the prophets are to be understood thus: while they embrace the deeds of their own time through the context, by sudden digressions or heaped-up meanings they also signified future things, and taught that their greatness is to be seen in the narrative of the things that went before. For so the form of the present passage has established: as regards history, the Babylonian domination was ended and the captivity the Jews had borne was broken off, and the long-awaited freedom, often promised, shone on the anxious; yet if you examine it by the rule of virtue, you will confess that it came, as to mortals still enduring the bitter things of this life, as something very small. But this liberation which the mysteries of Christ have bestowed on the faithful, once it has come, is longer beyond belief and higher beyond comparison: its walls of firmness and sweetness are such that the riches stored in them can fear neither attack nor fraud. And it will be believed to possess the remnant of Edom when this body, which seems to be shown by the red color of the Jews, as it was sown in dishonor, so will rise in glory (1 Cor 15), and will cause no troubles of weakness either to the understanding or to the senses; but God will be all in all. Having explained these things briefly, let us return to the series of the reading.

Verse 13. — “See, the days are coming, says the Lord, when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; and the mountains shall drip sweetness, and all the hills shall be cultivated.” “Not content with having restored freedom,” he says, “I will also make you rejoice in abundance of crops, so that there is something to gather the whole year, and the harvest time, too rich, runs on into the vintage, and the sowing follows the vintage”; according to what is sung by blessed David: “You will bless the crown of the year of your kindness, and your fields will be filled with abundance; the borders of the desert will grow fat, and the hills will be girded with exultation.” So here too, after the promises, he added: “The mountains shall drip sweetness, and all the hills shall be cultivated.” For in the time of adversity cultivators were very scarce; now, on the contrary, restored tranquility will multiply the inhabitants, and the cultivation of the mountains will witness to the good of public peace, so that they drip sweetness, that is, wine seems to flow from rocks and honey from mountains.

Verse 14. — “And I will turn back the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the deserted cities and live in them; and they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and make gardens and eat their fruit.” What he had said by exaggeration, namely that nectar would burst out from the mountains everywhere, he set out in the narrative that follows, saying that, enjoying the goods of freedom, they would build the walls of the city and repair their houses, plant vineyards and not fear a plunderer, but be filled with their longed-for fruits; and not only the rich but also people of modest means would carefully tend gardens and gladly eat the abundance they had obtained.

Verse 15. — “And I will plant them on their soil, and I will no longer pluck them up from their land which I have given them, says the Lord your God.” That is: “The people whom the whips of captivity have corrected, when I look again to the possession of their lands, I will make to rejoice in continual security, so that it no longer experiences the commands of proud masters, nor tastes bitter exile again, but stands in its own regions in everlasting possession.” By saying this he certainly did not promise that they would never be changed into a perverse will, since it is known that they afterward both denied and persecuted the Redeemer of the human race, and were driven from the lands they had received so far that they are constantly kept from dwelling in them. But the Lord of things made known his purpose: that he had restored them to their ancestral borders in such a way that he would never have wished them expelled, if their life had allowed it; and so it might be plain to understand that all the adversities that followed afterward are to be charged to their conduct. In the body of Christ, however, that is, in the members of the Church, all these things are seen fulfilled faithfully and fully; for to them such happiness of hope is [given] that, when the time of resurrection has come and true blessedness has befallen them, they will confess that their goods are precious as much for their eternity as for their sweetness.