The Pulpit Commentary — Amos — Section 70

associates the drought with the sin, and the withering with the drought, and thus puts his signature and endorsement on bis disciplinary work. 4. In minure correspondence to l!'ophetic warnings. They were plagued with pestilence "after the manner of Egypt" {ver. 10). 'l'his Moses had circumstantially announced would be the result of disobeying the Law revealed on Sinai (Deut. xxviii. 27, 60), whilst immunity from it was promised in connection with fealty and obedience (Deut. vii. 15). Then, with blood-curdling explicitness (ver~. 6, 7, 10), famine, pestilence, the sword, and desolation (Lev. xxvi. 23-33), blasting, mildew, drought, and locusts (ver. 9; Deut. xxviii. 21-26, 38, 42), and, to crown all, destruction and ruin, as of Sodom and Gomorrah (Deut. xxix. 22 -28), a.re piled (ver. 11), Ossa on Pelion, in prophetic intimation to Israel to be "upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever" (Deut. xxviii. 46). iin all this the work of identifying national judgments, as from a pledge-keeping and •in-avenging Jehovah, is made easy to all but the wilfully blind. II. TIIEIB MEAGRE RESULTS. Judgments fell thick and wide in five varieties of terror-moving severity and appositeness, and five times the prophet, gleaning vainly after the scythes of God for a grain of good result, can but repeat the sadly reproachful refrain," Yet ye have not returned unto me, saith the Lord." 1. The sinner refuses to believe that his ajftiction ls punishment. He attributes it to accident, or bad manage- ment, or natural causes, or the malice of others, as the case may be. While unconscious of his sin, he is necessarily blind to the significance of his suffering, and until he sees this he cannot profit by it. If men would" hear the rod and who bath appointed it" they would have realized a primary condition of improvement under it. 2. Suffering is not in itself purifying. A bad man it often makes worse. He wants to "curse God and die." Even if the hardening stops short of this, he is frequently soured and embittered. Suffering, to be beneficial, must not go alone. It prepares for other measures. It makes men more amenable to moral influence, but if no such influence be brought to bear in connection with it, it is no more fitted of itself to purify the character than ploughing is to fertilize the desert sand. "Bray a fool in a mortar, yet will not his folly depart from him." 3. The love of sin is stronger than the fear of -.u.!Jering. Courses, which all observation and experience declare to be ruinous to health and happiness, are entered on deliberately by millions. Even the physical evil consequences of the early steps in sinful indulgence, which a.re soon felt, do not arrest the evil-doer in his way. By the confirmed sinner hell itself is practically, if not con- sciously, preferred to reformation. Only what weakens the love of sin secures the successful application of suffering for its removal. The operation of one or other of these principles, or the concurrence of them all, no doubt accounted for Israel's per- sistent sinning even in the fire. III. THE LAST RESORT TO WHICH Gon WILL NOW BETAKE Hlllt:SELF. "Therefore thus will I do unto thee." The terror of these words is in nothing lessened by their vagueness. It is evident rather: 1. That the thing menaced would in point of severity " an advance upon all that had yet been done. Only thus would t.here be any use in adopting it. After expostulation the rod, and after the rod a sword-that is the logical order of corrective measures. "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee," was a foreshadowing of God's consistent policy. 2. lt would involve being brought face ,lo fau with God. "Because I will . . . prepare" (ver. 12). 'l'he kind or occasion of the meeting with God is not explained. It is, therefore, to be taken to include all modes and occasions, whether in life, at death, or at the final judgment, A.nd the thought of it is one of terror to the ungodly, under whatever circumstances. They ca.n face his judl/.ments; God is not in them, unless in figurative sense. They can face his prophets; God is not in them, unless in a spiritual sense. But to face God literally was, even to a pious Jew, like facing death (Exod. xxxiii. 20; J udg. xiii. 22); whilst to the impious it must have been the embodiment of all terror. It is from the "presence of the Lord" ,that the wicked in the judgment call upon the hills to hide them. That, of all things in the universe, is an ordeal they cannot face. 3. It is left undefined. that it may seem the more terrible. We have here the eloquence of silence. The terror of the threat is enhanced by its vagueness. Familiarity breeds contempt. If a thing, how- ~ver bad is exactly defined, we can familiarize ourselves with the thought of it in time_ and brae~ our courage up to meet it. "It doth not ye~ a~pear wh_at we ~hall be," but. 41ur idea of it, meantime, has an element of enlargement m its Vf//CY mde6.n1teness, God 70 THE DOOK OF AMOa [cu. xv. 1-13.