god's complaint against us.
Amos ii. 13. Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves.
THE effect of long-continued provocations is to weary out our patience. Some few occasional offences we can easily forgive : but when they are repeated from time to time, they gall the mind, and produce considerable irritation, and stir us up, either by word or deed, to avenge ourselves. Something of this kind is represented as passing in the mind of God. We must not indeed conceive of him as if he had the same passions with ourselves ; but yet he will so suit his dispensations to our conduct, that they shall bear the stamp of retributive justice, and accord, in a measure, with what is produced in the world by hu- man passions. Hence he speaks of himself after the manner of men, in order to accommodate himself to our weak and carnal apprehensions : and, having told his people how greatly their transgressions had been multiplied against him, he declares, as one whose patience was quite exhausted, that he was " pressed under them, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves."
Let us consider,
I. What reason God has for this complaint against us — We need not enter minutely into the particular accusations brought against the Israelites of old : in
a general view, they may be reduced to three ; which may with equal justice be laid to our charge :
1 . Our disregard of his laws —
[God had given his people laws, which they violated with- out remorse a. And has he not prescribed the moral law as the rule of our conduct ? and is it not in all respects " holy, and just, and good?" Yet how have we obeyed it? Have we stu- died it with a view to find out the will of God ? Have we been restrained and regulated by it as far as we knew it ? Have we not, on the contrary, transgressed it in ten thousand instances? Have we not been swayed by the considerations of our worldly honour and interest, more than by a regard to God's authority? Where our own will has stood in competition with God's, have we not been ready to say, like Pharaoh, " Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?"
Do we then suppose, that the Governor of the universe is indifferent about the observance of his laws? Or, if he be not, must he not be " fretted b," " grieved0," and " vexed d," with our rebellions, and even " broken with our whorish heart e?" Lot vexed his righteous soul from day to day, on account of what he saw and heard in Sodom*: and must not He who is infinitely holy, and who sees all the iniquity in the world at one view, be overwhelmed, as it were, with grief and vexation at our iniquities ? Surely the comparison in the text rather falls short of, than exceeds, the truth: for we have " drawn out iniquity as a cart ropes," continually adding fresh materials, and protracting it, without intermission, to an un- known length ; and therefore well may God complain, that " we have wearied him with our iniquities11," and that he is " pressed under us as an overloaded cart."]
2. Our mindfulness of his mercies —
[God particularly specifies the mercies he had vouchsafed to Israel, which had only served to aggravate their guilt1. And what innumerable mercies has he conferred on us ! How has he formed us in the womb, and made us perfect in all our members ; when we might have been hideous monsters, that could not endure the light of day ! How has he furnished us with rational faculties, when many of our fellow-creatures are idiots, yea, less rational than the beasts ! Above all, how has
a Compare ver. 6 — 8. with 2 Chron. xix. G, 7. 1 Kings xxi. 3, 4. Lev. xviii. 8, 15. Exod. xxii. 26.