tench. How many wars, how much bloodshed and desolation and misery, are directly traceable to "the strong man glorying in his strength" I ' II. THE CRIME. Gilead, meaning the whole land given to the two tribes and a ha!( is here put by metonymy for the inhabitants. The horrible and atrocious outrages on the people described by Amos suggest that: 1. Tl,e obverse of ungodliness is inhumanity. The relation to God is the fundamental one. If it be wrong, all others are awry. Morality has its basis in religion. There is no duty to men apart from a God and a revelation of his will. 'l'here is no good will toward men apart from his gracious influence (Titus iii. 3). The mere animal nature is selfish, and regardless of all life but its own. It will kill for the most trifling advantage, and sometimes in the lust of blood for no advantage a.t all. Heathen hearts are " hateful and hating one another," and a heathen home is "a. habitation of cruelty." 2. Bloodthirsty men make war even with the implements of ,peace. There is a time coming when warlike weapons will be converted into farmin,::: -implements (Isa. ii. 4:; Micah iv. 3). This will be when the gospel shall universally prevail. Meanwhile a readier ear is leant to Joel (iii. 10) than to Micah, and the converse process goes on instead. The threshing-instrument' was not made, but only .pressed into service, for the occasion. Fallen ma.n is at heart a savage, and, under excita- tion, bis inner nature will break out through the artificial habits of peace. So little is there between work a.nd war, between lawful industry and lawless murder, in the godlcs~ _life. 3. Ideal crue7,ty is utterly indiscriminate. Elisha's prophecy to Hazael (2 Kings viii. 12), of which this horrid butchery was the fulfilment, mentions women and children as the chief victims of the outrage. 'l'here is a bloodhound instinct in wicked men which is aroused to fury by the taste of blood. The horrors of the French Revolution and of the Spanish Inquisition reveal it in the infidel and the fanatic respectively. It knows no distinction of age, or condition, or sex. It simply wants to "slay, a.nd slay, and slay." It is a. humiliating thought about our species, but it is a. fact that must be faced by all who would humanize the race, The tie of blood is perhaps a. natural one, and respected more or less by even heathen peoples, as it is by the very beasts that perish. But even this scarcely operates beyond the filial relation and the period of childhood. And then, as for friendship and philanthropy, they have no place in the sphere of mere nature. The question, n-rs ma.n utterly selfish?" is rather a nice one than practical. He has shown himself sufficiently selfish to make unsafe the life of a.ny human being whom he could go.in by killing. III. THE SENTENOE, This is severe, detailed, a.nd striking. 1. Ie falls on the things in which the nation was pre-eminent. "I will break also the bar of Damascus." The bar or bolt which secured the gate was a.n essential part of the city defence. To break it would be to throw open the city to the enemy. By this figure is meant the breaking of the national strength and means of resistance, and leaving the nation helpless before its enemies. Thus God declares himself omnipotent. 'l'hose who glory in their strength are broken, and those who trust in their riches are impoverished (Isa. ii. 11 ; xiii. 11 ; Ps. Iii. 7). Puuishment adjusted so is moro effectual for its purpose, whether of mercy 9r of judgment, for it brings the criminal to his knees at once. The niceness of the adjustment is, moreover, a revelation of the Divine directing hand in the whole event, and so a lesson in itself. 2. It strikes at the national sin. The" vale of Aven," whose inhabitant was to be cut off, was remarkable as containing Baalbec, or Heliopolis, the seat nnd centre of the Syrian sun-worship. Thero were observed idolatrous oraies, in wh~ch men and women abandoned themselves to shameless profligacy; and there~ where their "offence smells rank to Heaven," the hottest bolts of Heaven's vengeance fall, Others would be carried into captivity, but the inhabitants of Aven would be utterly cut off. 'l'he flies of God's judgment a.light upon the sores of our idol sins. He strikes the covetous in his pocket, a.nd the self-indulgent in his power of enjoyment. And so in every other case. The practice that provokes his judgment is the one on which its first and heaviest effects fall. 3. It t"ncludes the royal house, The king is in a. sense the figur~head of the nation. His policy embodies the national sentiment, if it does not inspire it; Accordingly, national guilt culminates in him. It would be an anomaly if the people were to peri ■h and he escape. Then the destruction that includes kin~ and people is utter a.nu irretrievable. There could be no re~toration, no resurrection. ·when only ashes remain, the rekindling of the fire of national existence has become impossible. 4:. It denounces on all poetic jY,stice. "Shall go into captivity to Kir." "From Kir the 12 THE BOOK OF A'MOS. [OH, L 1-15.
forefathers of the Syrians had, of their own will, been brought by the p;ood all-disposing providence of God. Now, softened as they were by luxury, they were to be transported back to the austere though healthy climate whence they had come" (Pusey). The family of Ne'er-do-well fall into the mud out of which they were raised at first, and find it bas got deeper in the interval. The last state of the misuser of good, in the nature of the case, is worse than the first. IV. THE EXEOUTION. The woe fell half a century later, in the time of Tiglath- Pileser, who slew Rezin the king, and carried the Syrians away captive, Thus th6 event was fifty years after the prediction. Prophecy by the Spirit of God is as easy to the prophet a millennium before the event as an hour. But if it has not been forgotten in the mean time, it is the more impressive and striking, the longer the interval between the utterance and the fulfilment. Then the evil prophesied was one previously unheard of, and antecedently most unlikely. "'!'he transportation of whole populations was not, so far as we know, any part of Eastern policy at the time of the prophet" (Pusey), '!'here are unfulfilled predictions, loaded with the world's weal or ill, whose fulfilment is even more distant and more unlikely. But the "sure Word of prophecy" overrides both time and chance, and lifts remotest events above the horizon, and into the light of decisive certitude. For all we fear and hope this is the guarantee, "Rath he said it, and shall he not do it? Rath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?"