The Pulpit Commentary — Amos — Section 162

0'1e device is Oie use of a false balance. "Make the ephab smatl, and the shekel great," i.e. give thirt.ecn p0unds to the stone, and charg<' twenty-one shillings to the pound, 'l.'hoy r,erpetrate thus a d0uble swindle, robbing" with both bands earnestly." Buch fraud is too unscientific and direct for any but the coarser cheats. There are more delicate ways of fraudulent dealing, which t.he more refined rogues affect. Such a method is: 2. &/Ung on adulterated or inferior article. "The refuse of the corn we will sell " (,•er. 6). This is probably the commonest form of commercial fraud. There are few who possess the strength of moral fibre to avoid it entirely. We might arrange it on " graduated scale. At one end is the man who bluntly sells one thing under the name of another. At the other end is the man who, in selling, insinuates the impression that the thing is of better quality than it really is. Between these two are dishonest artifices of all varieties and shades. All, however, originate in covetousness, eventuate in injus- tice, and deserve the generic name of fraud. V. IT TRAFFICS IN HUMAN LIFE, AND THAT FOR A CONTEMPTIDLE PRICE. (Ver. 6.) The law, oompelling the poor to sell themselves to their creditors to work for what they owed, was enforced in t.be case of the paltriest debts, and the needy might be brought into bon<iage for want of the price of even a pair of shoes. To work such hardship on ~nch trifling occasion argues inhumanity too gross to be long endured. The worker hns inverted the natural order, has lost out the sense of reverence, is blind to the dignity of human nature, and has conclusively shown that he is an eyesore, and his life a curse, to the society in which he lives. His selfishness puts the least interest of his mYn above the most essential interest of others. His greed of gain has so intensified that he is blind at last to all other considerations. He has fallen altogether beneath the human level, and when a man has done this, the chances are that he has lived his day. Well may we pray, "Incline my heart to thy testimonies, and not to covetousness." Ver. 7.-Confirming by an oath. God's judgments sometimes take, and will con tin no io take, the wicked by surprise (Matt. xxiv. 36-39). But this need not be, and should not be, and can be only where blindness, or heedlessness, or incredulity make warning useless. God always warns before he strikes. Sometimes he warns by divers methods at once. Often he warns again and &l!ain. Invariably he warns with a solemnity that makes disbelief a crime and stupid. Here is a case in point. L THE OATH THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN. "God is not a man, that he should lie." To do so would be a natural impossibility, a contradiction of himself. For the same reason his truthfulness can have no degrees; his slightest word is absolutely inviolable. Yet to human apprehension an oath is peculiarly convincing, and, accommodating himself to men's weakness, God condescends, on peculiarly solemn occasions, not merely to say, but swear. Here be swears : I. By himself. "The Pride of Jacob" is Jehovah himself. Elsewhere explicitly God swears by "himself" (Jer. Ii. 14), by his "great Name" (Jer. xliv. 26), by his "holiness" (eh. iv. 2), by his "life" (Ezek. xxxiil. 11). This is of necessity. Men " swear by the greater." God, " becauee he can swear by no greater, swears by himself" (Heh. vi. 17, 13). In this form of oath the greatest Being is invoked, and so the maximum of solemnity is reached, whether it is God who sweare or man. 2. By himsel.f in his idtnJ, re/,a,tion to Israel. "By the Pride of Jacob." Israel, e.la.s ! did not " glory in the Lord." They gloried in their idols. " These be thy gode, which brought thee ont of the land of Egypt," they had said, in their blind fatuity, of the molten calf. God had been forgotten 11.nd his wonders ignored before they were many days accomplished, and in this forgetfulness they had persistently gone on. Yet was he none the less their Glory still, the Strength of Israel, their Light and Life, the Founder, Builder, Sustainer, of their kingdom, the one Source and Spring of all that made them great. This fundamental relation he emphasizes here in vowing vengeance on their sin. By this character, as their Life and Strength and Excellence, he swears he will now degrade and destroy them utterly. The nearer God's tie to the rebels, the grosser outrage is their rebellion, and the more embittered the after-relations. It is on the ruins of violated friendship that the most irreconcilable enmity arises. Not even the heathen is as hateful, or doomed to a fate as direful, as the apostate. ll. THE BEOOBD THAT CANNOT BE EBA.l!ED. "I will not forget and for ever." To forget is to forgive, put out of sight, treat as non-existent. "I will remember their iniquities no more.' 8'n wnatoned for cannot be forgiven. God must be juHt in his. OH. VIJI, 1-14.] THE BOOK OF AMOS.