The Pulpit Commentary — Amos — Section 93

bottom selfishness, to take. It was a specially prevalent form, moreover, among the Hebrew people. From Jacob down the sordid race has cheated the strong and imposed <>n the weak. Action is in a sense the fruit of character, and answers to the tree. ·God's grace is to convert the thorn into the fir tree, and the briar into the myrtle tree; but man's sin works the converse process, and changes the sweet "tree of righteous- ness" into bitt~r wormwood. Casting" righteousness down to earth" ie another aspect Clf the Mme charge. Righteousness ought to rule. Its proper place is the throne of -human life. But Israel had dethroned and cast it down to the earth, and set injustice, a usurper, in its place. 2. As oppressive. (Vers. 11, 12.) The oppression suffered by Israel had done nothing to produce detestation of the thing. What other nations had infilct.ed on them in this way, they were only too ready to inflict, with interest, on ea.eh other as they had opportunity. Humiliation does not always prepare for exaltation, nor poverty for wealth, nor the endurance of injustice for power. The freed slave will often make the very worst master, and the erewhile victim of wrong the most out- rageous inflicter of it (Prov. xix. 10; ux. 22, 23). 3. .il, venal. "Who take a bribe." They did injustice, not only in their private, but in their public, capacity. They not only plundered the public them.selves, but made a profit by helping others to do the same. A dishonest man will make a corrupt magistrate. He will use for his own aggrandizement whatever power he gains. 4. .As impious. (Vere. 10, 12.) As cowardice appeared in oppressing the poor, so did impiety in oppressing tho righteous. Much of what the righteous suffer is due to the hatred of righteousness by the wicked. They hate the thing itself, they hate it as a standing rebuke to their own ways, and their antipathy invariably exhibits itself as it has occasion. IlL TREIB FUTURE RELATIONS CLEAR DI THE LIGHT OF BOTH. Given what God is and what Israel is, and the Divine course of treatment may easily be anticipated. 1. God will disappoint their schemes of self-aggrandizement. (Ver. 11.) Their labour and pains and sin would prove in the end to have been thrown away. Their ill-gotten gains would never be enjoyed. The vineyards and houses, in which they had invested them, would, after having been acquired at great pains, be lost again before they had even begun to be used. Gain gotten by injustice is seldom abiding, and never remunerative. The one condition of getting satisfaction out of earthly good is to a.cquire it according t.o the will of God. 2. He will l.eave them unrebuked. (Ver. 13.) '.!.'be prophets and the wise would both be silent. This would be a great calamity. It would be followed by an increase of sin, involving in tum an aggravation of punish- ment. It would mean abandonment to fate; for when God ceases to strive, a man's doom is sealed. It is the Physician discontinuing his treatment because the hand of death is on the pa.tient. The sinner sins conviction away, and then congratulates him.self on the discovery of peace. But it is only God saying," Ephraim is joined to his idols : let him alone." It is the one spiritual case that is utterly desperate. Ver. 13.-" .A. tiTM to be silent." "Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in thai time ; for it is an evil time." These words describe an evil time, a.nd specify one of its most evil features. It is a time of culminating wickedness, of imminent destruction, and., as related to both, of Divine non-intervention. "There is a time to keep silence" (Eccles. iii. 7) as well as " a time to speak." And that time, as pointed out by charac- teristic features, was at hand in this case. Israel, which in vain had been pied with and plagued, would then be severely left alone. Her victims would suffer in silence. Her prophets would cease to expostulate. God, in judgment, would cease to strive for her restraint or turning. In an awful and unnatural calm she would pass the moments before there broke on her the storm of doom. And the dawning of this "dies irm" was al.most come. As t.o the particular characteristic of this day, note that God's ilCrvants are silent-- L WHEN THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN BE SAID TO THE PURPOSE. Thie will often happen. Seasonable speech is a valuable thing. But men are not infallible, and occasions are often puzzling, and the right thing to say is hard to find. 1. Silence ia a(mu:tiuv:s the reswrce offeiling too dup for word,. There are unspeakable things. "' Speech is but broken light on the depth of the unspoken." The finest thoughts, the .deepest feelings, are unuttered often because they cannot be expressed in words. As 11 uoted 6ha.k.espeari.an character says- CII, V, 1-27.] THE BOOK OF AMOS. 93