The Pulpit Commentary — Amos — Section 163

.JusH(ving, and justice demands eat.isfaction. From the provided satiRfaction tho unbelioving sinner has turned away, and so from the grace of hie own salvation. Neither can sin unforsalcen. The sinner is in actual conflict with God, and the rebel may not J,e forgiven with arms in hie hands, Neither WIT/, sin unrepented of Still loving sin, the impenitent is not in a moral condition to appreciate pardon, and the gift of God is not to be thrown away. By such e. threefold cord was Ierael bound to inevite.ble destruction, III. THE WORK~ THAT 0ANNOT BE FORGOTTEN. There e.re sins more heinous, and for the authors of which it will be less tolerable in the juclgment than for othel"!I (Me.tt. xi. 22), 1. Such are the sins committed against the poor and needy. "God bath chosen the poor of this world." '!'heir poverty presents the minimum of resistance to his grace. Their hardships excite his special pity. Their helplessness commends them to his special protection. He gives them the most prominent .place in bis religion. He champions them against their enemies, He requires his people to do the same. He identifies himself with them in the judgment, and he deals with men then in terms of their relation to the duties they owe the needy (Matt. xxv. 35-45). While God is "the Avenger of all such," oppression of the poor shall not go unpunished. 2. S'11,Ch especially are the sins committed against the poor by those who bear his Name. 'l'he element of beneficence bulked large in Judaism. Besides the general injunctions to regard the poor (Deut. xv. 7-11), there were special enactments allocating to them a poor tithe (Deut. xiv. 28, 29), the spontaneous produce of the soil (Lev. x:xv. 5), the droppings from the sheaves, and the produce of the comers of the fields (Lev. xix. 9, 10; x:x:iii. 22), also sheaves accidentally dropped (Deut. x:xiv. 19), as much from vineyan, or field as the hungry wayfarer required to eat on the spot (Deut. xxiii 24, 25), ana. periodical entertainments at the tables of the rich (Deut. xvi. 10, 11). Thus nothing could be more utterly antagonistic to the genius of the Jewish religion than to rob or oppress the poor. The Israelite guilty of it sinned against Scripture, against custom, against education, against every deterrent powerful with men and increasing guilt before God. Christianity, too, is essentially benevolent. To "love one another," and " do good unto all," is the very spirit and essence of the religion of Christ. Injustice or oppression under Christian auspices is sin in its most abominable and heinous form. Vers. 8-10.-0arried away as with a flood. A man in earnest is always graphic. IC he be also inspired he can afford to be explicit. In this passage Amos is both. The words were spoken before the convulsions they foretell, and written after some of them had occurred. But the descriptions of events, transpired between the speaking and the writing, have no flavour of an (!II) post f(J,Cto deliverance. There is a bare record of the original verbe.l utterance without the attempt to write into any part of it details of what meantime had become history. Such an apologetic device, suicidal in any case, is a thing to which a man who is God's mouthpiece could not and needs not stoop. I. THE EARTH TREMBLING WHEN Goo SWEARS. "For this" (ver. 8), i.e. the oath of God, and its purport. That oath means a catastrophe on the way in the shock of which the earth would tremble. '!'he very utterance of it was a cause of trembling. "He uttered bis voice, the earth melted." His word is a word of power. It operates in the physical forces, and shakes the whole frame of nature. In the poetic language of the psalmist, "the voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars," "shaketh the wilderness," "'divideth the flames of fire." In the world of matter, as in the world of spirit, the great ultimate force is the word of God, II. THE CREATION SUFFERING IN THE BUFl!'ERINGS 01!' MEN. Man sins, and the earth is smitten, It was so at first with the ground. It we.s so at the Deluge with the lower animals e.nd plants. It is so here. The universe is one throughout, and all its parts are in closest connection and interdependence. "Not a leaf rotting on the high- way but is e.n indissoluble part of solar and stellar worlds" (Carlyle). Our life, our anime.\ spirits, our ree.son itself, have fundamental e.nd probably undiscovered relations with the sun and moon and stars. Relations so intimate may be assumed to be mutual, and we need not be surprised if we find casualties meant primarily for either extending to both. III. Goo's JUDGMENTS, LONG MENACED, TAKE THE INCREDULOUS BY SURPRISE AT LAST, (Ver. 9.) The antediluvians were no better prepared for the Flood by thfr  THE BOOK OF AMOS. [011, VIII. 1-14,