The Lord Judges the Nations and Dwells with His People

Joe 3:2-8 In Joe 3:2 and Joe 3:3 Joel is speaking not of events belonging to his own time, or to the most recent past, but of that dispersion of the whole of the ancient covenant nation among the heathen, which was only completely effected on the conquest of Palestine and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and which continues to this day; though we cannot agree with Hengstenberg, that this furnishes an argument in favour of the allegorical interpretation of the army of locusts in ch. 1 and 2.

For since Moses had already foretold that Israel would one day be driven out among the heathen (Lev 26:33. ; Deu 28:36.) , Joel might assume that this judgment was a truth well known in Israel, even though he had not expressed it in his threatening of punishment in ch. 1 and 2. Joe 3:3 depicts the ignominious treatment of Israel in connection with this catastrophe.

The prisoners of war are distributed by lot among the conquerors, and disposed of by them to slave-dealers at most ridiculous prices, - a boy for a harlot, a girl for a drink of wine. Even in Joel’s time, many Israelites may no doubt have been scattered about in distant heathen lands (cf. v. 5); but the heathen nations had not yet cast lots upon the nation as a whole, to dispose of the inhabitants as slaves, and divide the land among themselves.

This was not done till the time of the Romans. But, as many of the earlier commentators have clearly seen, we must not stop even at this. The people and inheritance of Jehovah are not merely the Old Testament Israel as such, but the church of the Lord of both the old and new covenants, upon which the Spirit of God is poured out; and the judgment which Jehovah will hold upon the nations, on account of the injuries inflicted upon His people, is the last general judgment upon the nations, which will embrace not merely the heathen Romans and other heathen nations by whom the Jews have been oppressed, but all the enemies of the people of God, both within and without the earthly limits of the church of the Lord, including even carnally-minded Jews, Mohammedans, and nominal Christians, who are heathens in heart.

Before depicting the final judgment upon the hostile nations of the world, Joel notices in Joe 3:4-8 the hostility which the nations round about Judah had manifested towards it in his own day, and foretels to these a righteous retribution for the crimes they had committed against the covenant nation. Joe 3:4. “And ye also, what would ye with me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all ye coasts of Philistia?

will ye repay a doing to me, or do anything to me? Quickly, hastily will I turn back your doing upon your head. Joe 3:5. That ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have brought my best jewels into your temples. Joe 3:6. And the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem ye have sold to the sons of Javan, to remove them far from their border. Joe 3:7. Behold, I waken them from the place whither ye have sold them, and turn back your doing upon your head.

Joe 3:8. And sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of Javan, and they sell them to the Sabaeans, to a people far off; for Jehovah has spoken it. ” By vegam the Philistines and Phoenicians are added to the gōyim already mentioned, as being no less culpable than they; not, however, in the sense of, “and also if one would inquire more thoroughly into the fact” (Ewald), or, “and even so far as ye are concerned, who, in the place of the friendship and help which ye were bound to render as neighbours, have oppressed my people” (Rosenmüller), for such additions as these are foreign to the context; but rather in this sense, “and yea also ...

do not imagine that ye can do wrong with impunity, as though he had a right so to do. ” מה־אתּם לי does not mean, “What have I to do with you? ” for this would be expressed differently (compare Jos 22:24; Jdg 11:12); but, “What would ye with me? ” The question is unfinished, because of its emotional character, and is resumed and completed immediately afterwards in a disjunctive form (Hitzig).

Tyre and Sidon, the two chief cities of the Phoenicians (see at Jos 19:29 and Jos 11:8), represent all the Phoenicians. כל גּלילות פל, “all the circles or districts of the Philistines,” are the five small princedoms of Philistia (see at Jos 13:2). גּמוּל, the doing, or inflicting (sc. , of evil), from gâmal , to accomplish, to do (see at Isa 3:9). The disjunctive question, “Will ye perhaps repay to me a deed, i.

e. , a wrong, that I have done to you, or of your own accord attempt anything against me? ” has a negative meaning: “Ye have neither cause to avenge yourselves upon me, i. e. , upon my people Israel, nor any occasion to do it harm. But if repayment is the thing in hand, I will, and that very speedily ( qal mehērâh , see Isa 5:26), bring back your doing upon your own head” (cf.

Psa 7:17). To explain what is here said, an account is given in Joe 3:5, Joe 3:6 of what they have done to the Lord and His people, - namely, taken away their gold and silver, and brought their costly treasures into their palaces or temples. These words are not to be restricted to the plundering of the temple and its treasury, but embrace the plundering of palaces and of the houses of the rich, which always followed the conquest of towns (cf.

1Ki 14:26; 2Ki 14:14). היכליכם also are not temples only, but palaces as well (cf. Isa 13:22; Amo 8:3; Pro 30:28). Joel had no doubt the plundering of Judah and Jerusalem by the Philistines and Arabians in the time of Jehoram in his mind (see 2Ch 21:17). The share of the Phoenicians in this crime was confined to the fact, that they had purchased from the Philistines the Judaeans who had been taken prisoners, by them, and sold them again as salves to the sons of Javan, i.

e. , to the Ionians or Greeks of Asia Minor. The clause, “that ye might remove them far from their border,” whence there would be no possibility of their returning to their native land, serves to bring out the magnitude of the crime. This would be repaid to them according to the true lex talionis (Joe 3:7, Joe 3:8). The Lord would raise up the members of His own nation from the place to which they had been sold, i.

e. , would bring them back again into their own land, and deliver up the Philistines and Phoenicians into the power of the Judaeans ( mâkhar beyâd as in Jdg 2:14; Jdg 3:8, etc.) , who would then sell their prisoners as slaves to the remote people of the Sabaeans, a celebrated trading people in Arabia Felix (see at 1Ki 10:1). This threat would certainly be fulfilled, for Jehovah had spoken it (cf.

Isa 1:20). This occurred partly on the defeat of the Philistines by Uzziah (2Ch 26:6-7) and Hezekiah (2Ki 18:8), where Philistian prisoners of war were certainly sold as slaves; but principally after the captivity, when Alexander the Great and his successors set many of the Jewish prisoners of war in their lands at liberty (compare the promise of King Demetrius to Jonathan, “I will send away in freedom such of the Judaeans as have been made prisoners, and reduced to slavery in our land,” Josephus, Ant.

xiii. 2, 3), and portions of the Philistian and Phoenician lands were for a time under Jewish sway; when Jonathan besieged Ashkelon and Gaza (1 Maccabees 10:86; 11:60); when King Alexander (Balas) ceded Ekron and the district of Judah (1 Maccabees 10:89); when the Jewish king Alexander Jannaeaus conquered Gaza, and destroyed it (Josephus, Ant. xiii. 13, 3; bell.

Jud. i. 4, 2); and when, subsequent to the cession of Tyre, which had been conquered by Alexander the Great, to the Seleucidae, Antiochus the younger appointed Simon commander-in-chief from the Ladder of Tyre to the border of Egypt (1 Maccabees 1:59).

Joe 3:2-8 In Joe 3:2 and Joe 3:3 Joel is speaking not of events belonging to his own time, or to the most recent past, but of that dispersion of the whole of the ancient covenant nation among the heathen, which was only completely effected on the conquest of Palestine and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and which continues to this day; though we cannot agree with Hengstenberg, that this furnishes an argument in favour of the allegorical interpretation of the army of locusts in ch. 1 and 2.

For since Moses had already foretold that Israel would one day be driven out among the heathen (Lev 26:33. ; Deu 28:36.) , Joel might assume that this judgment was a truth well known in Israel, even though he had not expressed it in his threatening of punishment in ch. 1 and 2. Joe 3:3 depicts the ignominious treatment of Israel in connection with this catastrophe.

The prisoners of war are distributed by lot among the conquerors, and disposed of by them to slave-dealers at most ridiculous prices, - a boy for a harlot, a girl for a drink of wine. Even in Joel’s time, many Israelites may no doubt have been scattered about in distant heathen lands (cf. v. 5); but the heathen nations had not yet cast lots upon the nation as a whole, to dispose of the inhabitants as slaves, and divide the land among themselves.

This was not done till the time of the Romans. But, as many of the earlier commentators have clearly seen, we must not stop even at this. The people and inheritance of Jehovah are not merely the Old Testament Israel as such, but the church of the Lord of both the old and new covenants, upon which the Spirit of God is poured out; and the judgment which Jehovah will hold upon the nations, on account of the injuries inflicted upon His people, is the last general judgment upon the nations, which will embrace not merely the heathen Romans and other heathen nations by whom the Jews have been oppressed, but all the enemies of the people of God, both within and without the earthly limits of the church of the Lord, including even carnally-minded Jews, Mohammedans, and nominal Christians, who are heathens in heart.

Before depicting the final judgment upon the hostile nations of the world, Joel notices in Joe 3:4-8 the hostility which the nations round about Judah had manifested towards it in his own day, and foretels to these a righteous retribution for the crimes they had committed against the covenant nation. Joe 3:4. “And ye also, what would ye with me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all ye coasts of Philistia?

will ye repay a doing to me, or do anything to me? Quickly, hastily will I turn back your doing upon your head. Joe 3:5. That ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have brought my best jewels into your temples. Joe 3:6. And the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem ye have sold to the sons of Javan, to remove them far from their border. Joe 3:7. Behold, I waken them from the place whither ye have sold them, and turn back your doing upon your head.

Joe 3:8. And sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of Javan, and they sell them to the Sabaeans, to a people far off; for Jehovah has spoken it. ” By vegam the Philistines and Phoenicians are added to the gōyim already mentioned, as being no less culpable than they; not, however, in the sense of, “and also if one would inquire more thoroughly into the fact” (Ewald), or, “and even so far as ye are concerned, who, in the place of the friendship and help which ye were bound to render as neighbours, have oppressed my people” (Rosenmüller), for such additions as these are foreign to the context; but rather in this sense, “and yea also ...

do not imagine that ye can do wrong with impunity, as though he had a right so to do. ” מה־אתּם לי does not mean, “What have I to do with you? ” for this would be expressed differently (compare Jos 22:24; Jdg 11:12); but, “What would ye with me? ” The question is unfinished, because of its emotional character, and is resumed and completed immediately afterwards in a disjunctive form (Hitzig).

Tyre and Sidon, the two chief cities of the Phoenicians (see at Jos 19:29 and Jos 11:8), represent all the Phoenicians. כל גּלילות פל, “all the circles or districts of the Philistines,” are the five small princedoms of Philistia (see at Jos 13:2). גּמוּל, the doing, or inflicting (sc. , of evil), from gâmal , to accomplish, to do (see at Isa 3:9). The disjunctive question, “Will ye perhaps repay to me a deed, i.

e. , a wrong, that I have done to you, or of your own accord attempt anything against me? ” has a negative meaning: “Ye have neither cause to avenge yourselves upon me, i. e. , upon my people Israel, nor any occasion to do it harm. But if repayment is the thing in hand, I will, and that very speedily ( qal mehērâh , see Isa 5:26), bring back your doing upon your own head” (cf.

Psa 7:17). To explain what is here said, an account is given in Joe 3:5, Joe 3:6 of what they have done to the Lord and His people, - namely, taken away their gold and silver, and brought their costly treasures into their palaces or temples. These words are not to be restricted to the plundering of the temple and its treasury, but embrace the plundering of palaces and of the houses of the rich, which always followed the conquest of towns (cf.

1Ki 14:26; 2Ki 14:14). היכליכם also are not temples only, but palaces as well (cf. Isa 13:22; Amo 8:3; Pro 30:28). Joel had no doubt the plundering of Judah and Jerusalem by the Philistines and Arabians in the time of Jehoram in his mind (see 2Ch 21:17). The share of the Phoenicians in this crime was confined to the fact, that they had purchased from the Philistines the Judaeans who had been taken prisoners, by them, and sold them again as salves to the sons of Javan, i.

e. , to the Ionians or Greeks of Asia Minor. The clause, “that ye might remove them far from their border,” whence there would be no possibility of their returning to their native land, serves to bring out the magnitude of the crime. This would be repaid to them according to the true lex talionis (Joe 3:7, Joe 3:8). The Lord would raise up the members of His own nation from the place to which they had been sold, i.

e. , would bring them back again into their own land, and deliver up the Philistines and Phoenicians into the power of the Judaeans ( mâkhar beyâd as in Jdg 2:14; Jdg 3:8, etc.) , who would then sell their prisoners as slaves to the remote people of the Sabaeans, a celebrated trading people in Arabia Felix (see at 1Ki 10:1). This threat would certainly be fulfilled, for Jehovah had spoken it (cf.

Isa 1:20). This occurred partly on the defeat of the Philistines by Uzziah (2Ch 26:6-7) and Hezekiah (2Ki 18:8), where Philistian prisoners of war were certainly sold as slaves; but principally after the captivity, when Alexander the Great and his successors set many of the Jewish prisoners of war in their lands at liberty (compare the promise of King Demetrius to Jonathan, “I will send away in freedom such of the Judaeans as have been made prisoners, and reduced to slavery in our land,” Josephus, Ant.

xiii. 2, 3), and portions of the Philistian and Phoenician lands were for a time under Jewish sway; when Jonathan besieged Ashkelon and Gaza (1 Maccabees 10:86; 11:60); when King Alexander (Balas) ceded Ekron and the district of Judah (1 Maccabees 10:89); when the Jewish king Alexander Jannaeaus conquered Gaza, and destroyed it (Josephus, Ant. xiii. 13, 3; bell.

Jud. i. 4, 2); and when, subsequent to the cession of Tyre, which had been conquered by Alexander the Great, to the Seleucidae, Antiochus the younger appointed Simon commander-in-chief from the Ladder of Tyre to the border of Egypt (1 Maccabees 1:59).

Joe 3:2-8 In Joe 3:2 and Joe 3:3 Joel is speaking not of events belonging to his own time, or to the most recent past, but of that dispersion of the whole of the ancient covenant nation among the heathen, which was only completely effected on the conquest of Palestine and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and which continues to this day; though we cannot agree with Hengstenberg, that this furnishes an argument in favour of the allegorical interpretation of the army of locusts in ch. 1 and 2.

For since Moses had already foretold that Israel would one day be driven out among the heathen (Lev 26:33. ; Deu 28:36.) , Joel might assume that this judgment was a truth well known in Israel, even though he had not expressed it in his threatening of punishment in ch. 1 and 2. Joe 3:3 depicts the ignominious treatment of Israel in connection with this catastrophe.

The prisoners of war are distributed by lot among the conquerors, and disposed of by them to slave-dealers at most ridiculous prices, - a boy for a harlot, a girl for a drink of wine. Even in Joel’s time, many Israelites may no doubt have been scattered about in distant heathen lands (cf. v. 5); but the heathen nations had not yet cast lots upon the nation as a whole, to dispose of the inhabitants as slaves, and divide the land among themselves.

This was not done till the time of the Romans. But, as many of the earlier commentators have clearly seen, we must not stop even at this. The people and inheritance of Jehovah are not merely the Old Testament Israel as such, but the church of the Lord of both the old and new covenants, upon which the Spirit of God is poured out; and the judgment which Jehovah will hold upon the nations, on account of the injuries inflicted upon His people, is the last general judgment upon the nations, which will embrace not merely the heathen Romans and other heathen nations by whom the Jews have been oppressed, but all the enemies of the people of God, both within and without the earthly limits of the church of the Lord, including even carnally-minded Jews, Mohammedans, and nominal Christians, who are heathens in heart.

Before depicting the final judgment upon the hostile nations of the world, Joel notices in Joe 3:4-8 the hostility which the nations round about Judah had manifested towards it in his own day, and foretels to these a righteous retribution for the crimes they had committed against the covenant nation. Joe 3:4. “And ye also, what would ye with me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all ye coasts of Philistia?

will ye repay a doing to me, or do anything to me? Quickly, hastily will I turn back your doing upon your head. Joe 3:5. That ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have brought my best jewels into your temples. Joe 3:6. And the sons of Judah and the sons of Jerusalem ye have sold to the sons of Javan, to remove them far from their border. Joe 3:7. Behold, I waken them from the place whither ye have sold them, and turn back your doing upon your head.

Joe 3:8. And sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of Javan, and they sell them to the Sabaeans, to a people far off; for Jehovah has spoken it. ” By vegam the Philistines and Phoenicians are added to the gōyim already mentioned, as being no less culpable than they; not, however, in the sense of, “and also if one would inquire more thoroughly into the fact” (Ewald), or, “and even so far as ye are concerned, who, in the place of the friendship and help which ye were bound to render as neighbours, have oppressed my people” (Rosenmüller), for such additions as these are foreign to the context; but rather in this sense, “and yea also ...

do not imagine that ye can do wrong with impunity, as though he had a right so to do. ” מה־אתּם לי does not mean, “What have I to do with you? ” for this would be expressed differently (compare Jos 22:24; Jdg 11:12); but, “What would ye with me? ” The question is unfinished, because of its emotional character, and is resumed and completed immediately afterwards in a disjunctive form (Hitzig).

Tyre and Sidon, the two chief cities of the Phoenicians (see at Jos 19:29 and Jos 11:8), represent all the Phoenicians. כל גּלילות פל, “all the circles or districts of the Philistines,” are the five small princedoms of Philistia (see at Jos 13:2). גּמוּל, the doing, or inflicting (sc. , of evil), from gâmal , to accomplish, to do (see at Isa 3:9). The disjunctive question, “Will ye perhaps repay to me a deed, i.

e. , a wrong, that I have done to you, or of your own accord attempt anything against me? ” has a negative meaning: “Ye have neither cause to avenge yourselves upon me, i. e. , upon my people Israel, nor any occasion to do it harm. But if repayment is the thing in hand, I will, and that very speedily ( qal mehērâh , see Isa 5:26), bring back your doing upon your own head” (cf.

Psa 7:17). To explain what is here said, an account is given in Joe 3:5, Joe 3:6 of what they have done to the Lord and His people, - namely, taken away their gold and silver, and brought their costly treasures into their palaces or temples. These words are not to be restricted to the plundering of the temple and its treasury, but embrace the plundering of palaces and of the houses of the rich, which always followed the conquest of towns (cf.

1Ki 14:26; 2Ki 14:14). היכליכם also are not temples only, but palaces as well (cf. Isa 13:22; Amo 8:3; Pro 30:28). Joel had no doubt the plundering of Judah and Jerusalem by the Philistines and Arabians in the time of Jehoram in his mind (see 2Ch 21:17). The share of the Phoenicians in this crime was confined to the fact, that they had purchased from the Philistines the Judaeans who had been taken prisoners, by them, and sold them again as salves to the sons of Javan, i.

e. , to the Ionians or Greeks of Asia Minor. The clause, “that ye might remove them far from their border,” whence there would be no possibility of their returning to their native land, serves to bring out the magnitude of the crime. This would be repaid to them according to the true lex talionis (Joe 3:7, Joe 3:8). The Lord would raise up the members of His own nation from the place to which they had been sold, i.

e. , would bring them back again into their own land, and deliver up the Philistines and Phoenicians into the power of the Judaeans ( mâkhar beyâd as in Jdg 2:14; Jdg 3:8, etc.) , who would then sell their prisoners as slaves to the remote people of the Sabaeans, a celebrated trading people in Arabia Felix (see at 1Ki 10:1). This threat would certainly be fulfilled, for Jehovah had spoken it (cf.

Isa 1:20). This occurred partly on the defeat of the Philistines by Uzziah (2Ch 26:6-7) and Hezekiah (2Ki 18:8), where Philistian prisoners of war were certainly sold as slaves; but principally after the captivity, when Alexander the Great and his successors set many of the Jewish prisoners of war in their lands at liberty (compare the promise of King Demetrius to Jonathan, “I will send away in freedom such of the Judaeans as have been made prisoners, and reduced to slavery in our land,” Josephus, Ant.

xiii. 2, 3), and portions of the Philistian and Phoenician lands were for a time under Jewish sway; when Jonathan besieged Ashkelon and Gaza (1 Maccabees 10:86; 11:60); when King Alexander (Balas) ceded Ekron and the district of Judah (1 Maccabees 10:89); when the Jewish king Alexander Jannaeaus conquered Gaza, and destroyed it (Josephus, Ant. xiii. 13, 3; bell.

Jud. i. 4, 2); and when, subsequent to the cession of Tyre, which had been conquered by Alexander the Great, to the Seleucidae, Antiochus the younger appointed Simon commander-in-chief from the Ladder of Tyre to the border of Egypt (1 Maccabees 1:59).

Joe 3:9-14 Fulfilment of the judgment upon all the heathen predicted in Joe 3:2. Compare the similar prediction of judgment in Zec 14:2. The call is addressed to all nations to equip themselves for battle, and march into the valley of Jehoshaphat to war against the people of God, but in reality to be judged by the Lord through His heavenly heroes, whom He sends down thither.

Joe 3:9. “Proclaim ye this among the nations; sanctify a war, awaken the heroes, let all the men of war draw near and come up! Joe 3:10. Forge your coulters into swords, and your vine-sickles into spears: let the weak one say, A hero am I. Joe 3:11. Hasten and come, all ye nations round about, and assemble yourselves! Let thy heroes come down thither, O Jehovah!

Joe 3:12. The nations are to rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there shall I sit to judge all the heathen round about. ” The summons to prepare for war (Joe 3:9) is addressed, not to the worshippers of Jehovah or the Israelites scattered among the heathen (Cyr. , Calv. , Umbreit), but to the heathen nations, though not directly to the heroes and warriors among the heathen, but to heralds, who are to listen to the divine message, and convey it to the heathen nations.

This change belongs to the poetical drapery of thought, that at a sign from the Lord the heathen nations are to assemble together for war against Israel. קדּשׁ מלחמה does not mean “to declare war” (Hitzig), but to consecrate a war, i. e. , to prepare for war by sacrifices and religious rites of consecration (cf. 1Sa 7:8-9; Jer 6:4). העירוּ: waken up or arouse (not wake up) the heroes from their peaceful rest to battle.

With יגּשׁוּ the address passes over from the second person to the third, which Hitzig accounts for on the ground that the words state what the heralds are to say to the nations or heroes; but the continuance of the imperative kōttū in Joe 3:10 does not suit this. This transition is a very frequent one (cf. Isa 41:1; Isa 34:1), and may be very simply explained from the lively nature of the description.

עלה is here applied to the advance of hostile armies against a land or city. The nations are to summon up all their resources and all their strength for this war, because it will be a decisive one. They are to forge the tools of peaceful agriculture into weapons of war (compare Isa 2:4 and Mic 4:3, where the Messianic times of peace are depicted as the turning of weapons of war into instruments of agriculture).

Even the weak one is to rouse himself up to be a hero, “as is generally the case when a whole nation is seized with warlike enthusiasm” (Hitzig). This enthusiasm is expressed still further in the appeal in Joe 3:11 to assemble together as speedily as possible. The ἁπ. λεγ. עוּשׁ is related to חוּשׁ, to hasten; whereas no support can be found in the language to the meaning “assemble,” adopted by the lxx, Targ.

, etc. The expression כּל־הגּוים by no means necessitates our taking these words as a summons or challenge on the part of Joel to the heathen, as Hitzig does; for this can be very well interpreted as a summons, with which the nations call one another to battle, as the following ונקבּצוּ requires; and the assumption of Hitzig, Ewald, and others, that this form is the imperative for הקּבצוּ, cannot be sustained from Isa 43:9 and Jer 50:5.

It is not till Joe 3:11 that Joel steps in with a prayer addressed to the Lord, that He will send down His heavenly heroes to the place to which the heathen are flowing together. Hanchath an imper. hiph. , with pathach instead of tzere , on account of the guttural, from nâchath , to come down. The heroes of Jehovah are heavenly hosts, or angels, who execute His commands as gibbōrē khōăch (Psa 103:20, cf.

Psa 78:25). This prayer is answered thus by Jehovah in Joe 3:12 : “Let the nations rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there will He hold judgment upon them. ” יעורוּ corresponds to העירוּ in Joe 3:9; and at the close, “all the heathen round about” is deliberately repeated. Still there is no antithesis in this to “all nations” in Joe 3:2, as though here the judgment was simply to come upon the hostile nations in the neighbourhood of Judah, and not upon all the heathen universally (Hitzig).

For even in Joe 3:2 כל הגוים are simply all the heathen who have attacked the people of Jehovah - that is to say, all the nations round about Israel. Only these are not merely the neighbouring nations to Judah, but all heathen nations who have come into contact with the kingdom of God, i. e. , all the nations of the earth without exception, inasmuch as before the last judgment the gospel of the kingdom is to be preached in all the world for a testimony to all nations (Mat 24:14; Mar 13:10).

It is to the last decisive judgment, in which all the single judgments find their end, that the command of Jehovah to His strong heroes refers. Joe 3:13. “Put ye in the sickle; for the harvest is ripe: come, tread, for the win-press is full, the vats overflow: for their wickedness is great. ” The judgment is represented under the double figure of the reaping of the fields and the treading out of the grapes in the wine-press.

The angels are first of all summoned to reap the ripe corn (Isa 17:5; Rev 14:16), and then commanded to tread the wine-presses that are filled with grapes. The opposite opinion expressed by Hitzig, viz. , that the command to tread the wine-presses is preceded by the command to cut off the grapes, is supported partly by the erroneous assertion, that bâshal is not applied to the ripening of corn, and partly upon the arbitrary assumption that qâtsı̄r , a harvest, stands for bâtsı̄r , a vintage; and maggâl , a sickle (cf.

Jer 50:16), for mazmērâh , a vine-dresser’s bill. But bâshal does not mean “to boil,” either primarily or literally, but to be done, or to be ripe, like the Greek πέσσω, πέπτω, to ripen, to make soft, to boil (see at Exo 12:9), and hence in the piel both to boil and roast, and in the hiphil to make ripe of ripen (Gen 40:10), applied both to grapes and corn. It is impossible to infer from the fact that Isaiah (Isa 16:9) uses the word qâtsı̄r for the vintage, on account of the alliteration with qayits , that this is also the meaning of the word in Joel.

But we have a decisive proof in the resumption of this passage in Rev 14:15 and Rev 14:18, where the two figures (of the corn-harvest and the gathering of the grapes) are kept quite distinct, and the clause כּי בשׁל קציר is paraphrased and explained thus: “The time is come for thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. ” The ripeness of the corn is a figurative representation of ripeness for judgment.

Just as in the harvest - namely, at the threshing and winnowing connected with the harvest - the grains of corn are separated from the husk, the wheat being gathered into the barns, the husk blown away by the wind, and the straw burned; so will the good be separated from the wicked by the judgment, the former being gathered into the kingdom of God for the enjoyment of eternal life, - the latter, on the other hand, being given up to eternal death. The harvest field is the earth (ἡ γῆ, Rev 14:16), i.

e. , the inhabitants of the earth, the human race. The ripening began at the time of the appearance of Christ upon the earth (Joh 4:35; Mat 9:38). With the preaching of the gospel among all nations, the judgment of separation and decision (ἡ κρίσις, Joh 3:18-21) commenced; with the spread of the kingdom of Christ in the earth it passes over all nations; and it will be completed in the last judgment, on the return of Christ in glory at the end of this world.

Joel does not carry out the figure of the harvest any further, but simply presents the judgment under the similar figure of the treading of the grapes that have been gathered. רדוּ, not from yârad , to descend, but from râdâh , to trample under foot, tread the press that is filled with grapes. השׁיקוּ היקבים is used in Joe 2:24 to denote the most abundant harvest; here it is figuratively employed to denote the great mass of men who are ripe for the judgment, as the explanatory clause, for “their wicked (deed) is much,” or “their wickedness is great,” which recals Gen 6:5, clearly shows.

The treading of the wine-press does not express the idea of wading in blood, or the execution of a great massacre; but in Isa 63:3, as well as in Rev 14:20, it is a figure denoting an annihilating judgment upon the enemies of God and of His kingdom. The wine-press is “the wine-press of the wrath of God,” i. e. , “what the wine-press is to ordinary grapes, the wrath of God is to the grapes referred to here” (Hengstenberg on Rev 14:19).

The execution of this divine command is not expressly mentioned, but in Joe 3:14. the judgment is simply depicted thus: first of all we have a description of the streaming of the nations into the valley of judgment, and then of the appearance of Jehovah upon Zion in the terrible glory of the Judge of the world, and as the refuge of His people. Joe 3:14. “Tumult, tumult in the valley of decision: for the day of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision.

” Hămōnı̄m are noisy crowds, whom the prophet sees in the Spirit pouring into the valley of Jehoshaphat. The repetition of the word is expressive of the great multitude, as in 2Ki 3:16. עמק החרוּץ not valley of threshing; for though chârūts is used in Isa 28:27 and Isa 41:15 for the threshing-sledge, it is not used for the threshing itself, but valley of the deciding judgment, from chârats , to decide, to determine irrevocably (Isa 10:22; 1Ki 20:40), so that chârūts simply defines the name Jehoshaphat with greater precision.

כּי קרוב וגו (compare Joe 1:15; Joe 2:1) is used here to denote the immediate proximity of the judgment, which bursts at once, according to Joe 3:15.

Joe 3:9-14 Fulfilment of the judgment upon all the heathen predicted in Joe 3:2. Compare the similar prediction of judgment in Zec 14:2. The call is addressed to all nations to equip themselves for battle, and march into the valley of Jehoshaphat to war against the people of God, but in reality to be judged by the Lord through His heavenly heroes, whom He sends down thither.

Joe 3:9. “Proclaim ye this among the nations; sanctify a war, awaken the heroes, let all the men of war draw near and come up! Joe 3:10. Forge your coulters into swords, and your vine-sickles into spears: let the weak one say, A hero am I. Joe 3:11. Hasten and come, all ye nations round about, and assemble yourselves! Let thy heroes come down thither, O Jehovah!

Joe 3:12. The nations are to rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there shall I sit to judge all the heathen round about. ” The summons to prepare for war (Joe 3:9) is addressed, not to the worshippers of Jehovah or the Israelites scattered among the heathen (Cyr. , Calv. , Umbreit), but to the heathen nations, though not directly to the heroes and warriors among the heathen, but to heralds, who are to listen to the divine message, and convey it to the heathen nations.

This change belongs to the poetical drapery of thought, that at a sign from the Lord the heathen nations are to assemble together for war against Israel. קדּשׁ מלחמה does not mean “to declare war” (Hitzig), but to consecrate a war, i. e. , to prepare for war by sacrifices and religious rites of consecration (cf. 1Sa 7:8-9; Jer 6:4). העירוּ: waken up or arouse (not wake up) the heroes from their peaceful rest to battle.

With יגּשׁוּ the address passes over from the second person to the third, which Hitzig accounts for on the ground that the words state what the heralds are to say to the nations or heroes; but the continuance of the imperative kōttū in Joe 3:10 does not suit this. This transition is a very frequent one (cf. Isa 41:1; Isa 34:1), and may be very simply explained from the lively nature of the description.

עלה is here applied to the advance of hostile armies against a land or city. The nations are to summon up all their resources and all their strength for this war, because it will be a decisive one. They are to forge the tools of peaceful agriculture into weapons of war (compare Isa 2:4 and Mic 4:3, where the Messianic times of peace are depicted as the turning of weapons of war into instruments of agriculture).

Even the weak one is to rouse himself up to be a hero, “as is generally the case when a whole nation is seized with warlike enthusiasm” (Hitzig). This enthusiasm is expressed still further in the appeal in Joe 3:11 to assemble together as speedily as possible. The ἁπ. λεγ. עוּשׁ is related to חוּשׁ, to hasten; whereas no support can be found in the language to the meaning “assemble,” adopted by the lxx, Targ.

, etc. The expression כּל־הגּוים by no means necessitates our taking these words as a summons or challenge on the part of Joel to the heathen, as Hitzig does; for this can be very well interpreted as a summons, with which the nations call one another to battle, as the following ונקבּצוּ requires; and the assumption of Hitzig, Ewald, and others, that this form is the imperative for הקּבצוּ, cannot be sustained from Isa 43:9 and Jer 50:5.

It is not till Joe 3:11 that Joel steps in with a prayer addressed to the Lord, that He will send down His heavenly heroes to the place to which the heathen are flowing together. Hanchath an imper. hiph. , with pathach instead of tzere , on account of the guttural, from nâchath , to come down. The heroes of Jehovah are heavenly hosts, or angels, who execute His commands as gibbōrē khōăch (Psa 103:20, cf.

Psa 78:25). This prayer is answered thus by Jehovah in Joe 3:12 : “Let the nations rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there will He hold judgment upon them. ” יעורוּ corresponds to העירוּ in Joe 3:9; and at the close, “all the heathen round about” is deliberately repeated. Still there is no antithesis in this to “all nations” in Joe 3:2, as though here the judgment was simply to come upon the hostile nations in the neighbourhood of Judah, and not upon all the heathen universally (Hitzig).

For even in Joe 3:2 כל הגוים are simply all the heathen who have attacked the people of Jehovah - that is to say, all the nations round about Israel. Only these are not merely the neighbouring nations to Judah, but all heathen nations who have come into contact with the kingdom of God, i. e. , all the nations of the earth without exception, inasmuch as before the last judgment the gospel of the kingdom is to be preached in all the world for a testimony to all nations (Mat 24:14; Mar 13:10).

It is to the last decisive judgment, in which all the single judgments find their end, that the command of Jehovah to His strong heroes refers. Joe 3:13. “Put ye in the sickle; for the harvest is ripe: come, tread, for the win-press is full, the vats overflow: for their wickedness is great. ” The judgment is represented under the double figure of the reaping of the fields and the treading out of the grapes in the wine-press.

The angels are first of all summoned to reap the ripe corn (Isa 17:5; Rev 14:16), and then commanded to tread the wine-presses that are filled with grapes. The opposite opinion expressed by Hitzig, viz. , that the command to tread the wine-presses is preceded by the command to cut off the grapes, is supported partly by the erroneous assertion, that bâshal is not applied to the ripening of corn, and partly upon the arbitrary assumption that qâtsı̄r , a harvest, stands for bâtsı̄r , a vintage; and maggâl , a sickle (cf.

Jer 50:16), for mazmērâh , a vine-dresser’s bill. But bâshal does not mean “to boil,” either primarily or literally, but to be done, or to be ripe, like the Greek πέσσω, πέπτω, to ripen, to make soft, to boil (see at Exo 12:9), and hence in the piel both to boil and roast, and in the hiphil to make ripe of ripen (Gen 40:10), applied both to grapes and corn. It is impossible to infer from the fact that Isaiah (Isa 16:9) uses the word qâtsı̄r for the vintage, on account of the alliteration with qayits , that this is also the meaning of the word in Joel.

But we have a decisive proof in the resumption of this passage in Rev 14:15 and Rev 14:18, where the two figures (of the corn-harvest and the gathering of the grapes) are kept quite distinct, and the clause כּי בשׁל קציר is paraphrased and explained thus: “The time is come for thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. ” The ripeness of the corn is a figurative representation of ripeness for judgment.

Just as in the harvest - namely, at the threshing and winnowing connected with the harvest - the grains of corn are separated from the husk, the wheat being gathered into the barns, the husk blown away by the wind, and the straw burned; so will the good be separated from the wicked by the judgment, the former being gathered into the kingdom of God for the enjoyment of eternal life, - the latter, on the other hand, being given up to eternal death. The harvest field is the earth (ἡ γῆ, Rev 14:16), i.

e. , the inhabitants of the earth, the human race. The ripening began at the time of the appearance of Christ upon the earth (Joh 4:35; Mat 9:38). With the preaching of the gospel among all nations, the judgment of separation and decision (ἡ κρίσις, Joh 3:18-21) commenced; with the spread of the kingdom of Christ in the earth it passes over all nations; and it will be completed in the last judgment, on the return of Christ in glory at the end of this world.

Joel does not carry out the figure of the harvest any further, but simply presents the judgment under the similar figure of the treading of the grapes that have been gathered. רדוּ, not from yârad , to descend, but from râdâh , to trample under foot, tread the press that is filled with grapes. השׁיקוּ היקבים is used in Joe 2:24 to denote the most abundant harvest; here it is figuratively employed to denote the great mass of men who are ripe for the judgment, as the explanatory clause, for “their wicked (deed) is much,” or “their wickedness is great,” which recals Gen 6:5, clearly shows.

The treading of the wine-press does not express the idea of wading in blood, or the execution of a great massacre; but in Isa 63:3, as well as in Rev 14:20, it is a figure denoting an annihilating judgment upon the enemies of God and of His kingdom. The wine-press is “the wine-press of the wrath of God,” i. e. , “what the wine-press is to ordinary grapes, the wrath of God is to the grapes referred to here” (Hengstenberg on Rev 14:19).

The execution of this divine command is not expressly mentioned, but in Joe 3:14. the judgment is simply depicted thus: first of all we have a description of the streaming of the nations into the valley of judgment, and then of the appearance of Jehovah upon Zion in the terrible glory of the Judge of the world, and as the refuge of His people. Joe 3:14. “Tumult, tumult in the valley of decision: for the day of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision.

” Hămōnı̄m are noisy crowds, whom the prophet sees in the Spirit pouring into the valley of Jehoshaphat. The repetition of the word is expressive of the great multitude, as in 2Ki 3:16. עמק החרוּץ not valley of threshing; for though chârūts is used in Isa 28:27 and Isa 41:15 for the threshing-sledge, it is not used for the threshing itself, but valley of the deciding judgment, from chârats , to decide, to determine irrevocably (Isa 10:22; 1Ki 20:40), so that chârūts simply defines the name Jehoshaphat with greater precision.

כּי קרוב וגו (compare Joe 1:15; Joe 2:1) is used here to denote the immediate proximity of the judgment, which bursts at once, according to Joe 3:15.

Joe 3:9-14 Fulfilment of the judgment upon all the heathen predicted in Joe 3:2. Compare the similar prediction of judgment in Zec 14:2. The call is addressed to all nations to equip themselves for battle, and march into the valley of Jehoshaphat to war against the people of God, but in reality to be judged by the Lord through His heavenly heroes, whom He sends down thither.

Joe 3:9. “Proclaim ye this among the nations; sanctify a war, awaken the heroes, let all the men of war draw near and come up! Joe 3:10. Forge your coulters into swords, and your vine-sickles into spears: let the weak one say, A hero am I. Joe 3:11. Hasten and come, all ye nations round about, and assemble yourselves! Let thy heroes come down thither, O Jehovah!

Joe 3:12. The nations are to rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there shall I sit to judge all the heathen round about. ” The summons to prepare for war (Joe 3:9) is addressed, not to the worshippers of Jehovah or the Israelites scattered among the heathen (Cyr. , Calv. , Umbreit), but to the heathen nations, though not directly to the heroes and warriors among the heathen, but to heralds, who are to listen to the divine message, and convey it to the heathen nations.

This change belongs to the poetical drapery of thought, that at a sign from the Lord the heathen nations are to assemble together for war against Israel. קדּשׁ מלחמה does not mean “to declare war” (Hitzig), but to consecrate a war, i. e. , to prepare for war by sacrifices and religious rites of consecration (cf. 1Sa 7:8-9; Jer 6:4). העירוּ: waken up or arouse (not wake up) the heroes from their peaceful rest to battle.

With יגּשׁוּ the address passes over from the second person to the third, which Hitzig accounts for on the ground that the words state what the heralds are to say to the nations or heroes; but the continuance of the imperative kōttū in Joe 3:10 does not suit this. This transition is a very frequent one (cf. Isa 41:1; Isa 34:1), and may be very simply explained from the lively nature of the description.

עלה is here applied to the advance of hostile armies against a land or city. The nations are to summon up all their resources and all their strength for this war, because it will be a decisive one. They are to forge the tools of peaceful agriculture into weapons of war (compare Isa 2:4 and Mic 4:3, where the Messianic times of peace are depicted as the turning of weapons of war into instruments of agriculture).

Even the weak one is to rouse himself up to be a hero, “as is generally the case when a whole nation is seized with warlike enthusiasm” (Hitzig). This enthusiasm is expressed still further in the appeal in Joe 3:11 to assemble together as speedily as possible. The ἁπ. λεγ. עוּשׁ is related to חוּשׁ, to hasten; whereas no support can be found in the language to the meaning “assemble,” adopted by the lxx, Targ.

, etc. The expression כּל־הגּוים by no means necessitates our taking these words as a summons or challenge on the part of Joel to the heathen, as Hitzig does; for this can be very well interpreted as a summons, with which the nations call one another to battle, as the following ונקבּצוּ requires; and the assumption of Hitzig, Ewald, and others, that this form is the imperative for הקּבצוּ, cannot be sustained from Isa 43:9 and Jer 50:5.

It is not till Joe 3:11 that Joel steps in with a prayer addressed to the Lord, that He will send down His heavenly heroes to the place to which the heathen are flowing together. Hanchath an imper. hiph. , with pathach instead of tzere , on account of the guttural, from nâchath , to come down. The heroes of Jehovah are heavenly hosts, or angels, who execute His commands as gibbōrē khōăch (Psa 103:20, cf.

Psa 78:25). This prayer is answered thus by Jehovah in Joe 3:12 : “Let the nations rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there will He hold judgment upon them. ” יעורוּ corresponds to העירוּ in Joe 3:9; and at the close, “all the heathen round about” is deliberately repeated. Still there is no antithesis in this to “all nations” in Joe 3:2, as though here the judgment was simply to come upon the hostile nations in the neighbourhood of Judah, and not upon all the heathen universally (Hitzig).

For even in Joe 3:2 כל הגוים are simply all the heathen who have attacked the people of Jehovah - that is to say, all the nations round about Israel. Only these are not merely the neighbouring nations to Judah, but all heathen nations who have come into contact with the kingdom of God, i. e. , all the nations of the earth without exception, inasmuch as before the last judgment the gospel of the kingdom is to be preached in all the world for a testimony to all nations (Mat 24:14; Mar 13:10).

It is to the last decisive judgment, in which all the single judgments find their end, that the command of Jehovah to His strong heroes refers. Joe 3:13. “Put ye in the sickle; for the harvest is ripe: come, tread, for the win-press is full, the vats overflow: for their wickedness is great. ” The judgment is represented under the double figure of the reaping of the fields and the treading out of the grapes in the wine-press.

The angels are first of all summoned to reap the ripe corn (Isa 17:5; Rev 14:16), and then commanded to tread the wine-presses that are filled with grapes. The opposite opinion expressed by Hitzig, viz. , that the command to tread the wine-presses is preceded by the command to cut off the grapes, is supported partly by the erroneous assertion, that bâshal is not applied to the ripening of corn, and partly upon the arbitrary assumption that qâtsı̄r , a harvest, stands for bâtsı̄r , a vintage; and maggâl , a sickle (cf.

Jer 50:16), for mazmērâh , a vine-dresser’s bill. But bâshal does not mean “to boil,” either primarily or literally, but to be done, or to be ripe, like the Greek πέσσω, πέπτω, to ripen, to make soft, to boil (see at Exo 12:9), and hence in the piel both to boil and roast, and in the hiphil to make ripe of ripen (Gen 40:10), applied both to grapes and corn. It is impossible to infer from the fact that Isaiah (Isa 16:9) uses the word qâtsı̄r for the vintage, on account of the alliteration with qayits , that this is also the meaning of the word in Joel.

But we have a decisive proof in the resumption of this passage in Rev 14:15 and Rev 14:18, where the two figures (of the corn-harvest and the gathering of the grapes) are kept quite distinct, and the clause כּי בשׁל קציר is paraphrased and explained thus: “The time is come for thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. ” The ripeness of the corn is a figurative representation of ripeness for judgment.

Just as in the harvest - namely, at the threshing and winnowing connected with the harvest - the grains of corn are separated from the husk, the wheat being gathered into the barns, the husk blown away by the wind, and the straw burned; so will the good be separated from the wicked by the judgment, the former being gathered into the kingdom of God for the enjoyment of eternal life, - the latter, on the other hand, being given up to eternal death. The harvest field is the earth (ἡ γῆ, Rev 14:16), i.

e. , the inhabitants of the earth, the human race. The ripening began at the time of the appearance of Christ upon the earth (Joh 4:35; Mat 9:38). With the preaching of the gospel among all nations, the judgment of separation and decision (ἡ κρίσις, Joh 3:18-21) commenced; with the spread of the kingdom of Christ in the earth it passes over all nations; and it will be completed in the last judgment, on the return of Christ in glory at the end of this world.

Joel does not carry out the figure of the harvest any further, but simply presents the judgment under the similar figure of the treading of the grapes that have been gathered. רדוּ, not from yârad , to descend, but from râdâh , to trample under foot, tread the press that is filled with grapes. השׁיקוּ היקבים is used in Joe 2:24 to denote the most abundant harvest; here it is figuratively employed to denote the great mass of men who are ripe for the judgment, as the explanatory clause, for “their wicked (deed) is much,” or “their wickedness is great,” which recals Gen 6:5, clearly shows.

The treading of the wine-press does not express the idea of wading in blood, or the execution of a great massacre; but in Isa 63:3, as well as in Rev 14:20, it is a figure denoting an annihilating judgment upon the enemies of God and of His kingdom. The wine-press is “the wine-press of the wrath of God,” i. e. , “what the wine-press is to ordinary grapes, the wrath of God is to the grapes referred to here” (Hengstenberg on Rev 14:19).

The execution of this divine command is not expressly mentioned, but in Joe 3:14. the judgment is simply depicted thus: first of all we have a description of the streaming of the nations into the valley of judgment, and then of the appearance of Jehovah upon Zion in the terrible glory of the Judge of the world, and as the refuge of His people. Joe 3:14. “Tumult, tumult in the valley of decision: for the day of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision.

” Hămōnı̄m are noisy crowds, whom the prophet sees in the Spirit pouring into the valley of Jehoshaphat. The repetition of the word is expressive of the great multitude, as in 2Ki 3:16. עמק החרוּץ not valley of threshing; for though chârūts is used in Isa 28:27 and Isa 41:15 for the threshing-sledge, it is not used for the threshing itself, but valley of the deciding judgment, from chârats , to decide, to determine irrevocably (Isa 10:22; 1Ki 20:40), so that chârūts simply defines the name Jehoshaphat with greater precision.

כּי קרוב וגו (compare Joe 1:15; Joe 2:1) is used here to denote the immediate proximity of the judgment, which bursts at once, according to Joe 3:15.

Joe 3:9-14 Fulfilment of the judgment upon all the heathen predicted in Joe 3:2. Compare the similar prediction of judgment in Zec 14:2. The call is addressed to all nations to equip themselves for battle, and march into the valley of Jehoshaphat to war against the people of God, but in reality to be judged by the Lord through His heavenly heroes, whom He sends down thither.

Joe 3:9. “Proclaim ye this among the nations; sanctify a war, awaken the heroes, let all the men of war draw near and come up! Joe 3:10. Forge your coulters into swords, and your vine-sickles into spears: let the weak one say, A hero am I. Joe 3:11. Hasten and come, all ye nations round about, and assemble yourselves! Let thy heroes come down thither, O Jehovah!

Joe 3:12. The nations are to rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there shall I sit to judge all the heathen round about. ” The summons to prepare for war (Joe 3:9) is addressed, not to the worshippers of Jehovah or the Israelites scattered among the heathen (Cyr. , Calv. , Umbreit), but to the heathen nations, though not directly to the heroes and warriors among the heathen, but to heralds, who are to listen to the divine message, and convey it to the heathen nations.

This change belongs to the poetical drapery of thought, that at a sign from the Lord the heathen nations are to assemble together for war against Israel. קדּשׁ מלחמה does not mean “to declare war” (Hitzig), but to consecrate a war, i. e. , to prepare for war by sacrifices and religious rites of consecration (cf. 1Sa 7:8-9; Jer 6:4). העירוּ: waken up or arouse (not wake up) the heroes from their peaceful rest to battle.

With יגּשׁוּ the address passes over from the second person to the third, which Hitzig accounts for on the ground that the words state what the heralds are to say to the nations or heroes; but the continuance of the imperative kōttū in Joe 3:10 does not suit this. This transition is a very frequent one (cf. Isa 41:1; Isa 34:1), and may be very simply explained from the lively nature of the description.

עלה is here applied to the advance of hostile armies against a land or city. The nations are to summon up all their resources and all their strength for this war, because it will be a decisive one. They are to forge the tools of peaceful agriculture into weapons of war (compare Isa 2:4 and Mic 4:3, where the Messianic times of peace are depicted as the turning of weapons of war into instruments of agriculture).

Even the weak one is to rouse himself up to be a hero, “as is generally the case when a whole nation is seized with warlike enthusiasm” (Hitzig). This enthusiasm is expressed still further in the appeal in Joe 3:11 to assemble together as speedily as possible. The ἁπ. λεγ. עוּשׁ is related to חוּשׁ, to hasten; whereas no support can be found in the language to the meaning “assemble,” adopted by the lxx, Targ.

, etc. The expression כּל־הגּוים by no means necessitates our taking these words as a summons or challenge on the part of Joel to the heathen, as Hitzig does; for this can be very well interpreted as a summons, with which the nations call one another to battle, as the following ונקבּצוּ requires; and the assumption of Hitzig, Ewald, and others, that this form is the imperative for הקּבצוּ, cannot be sustained from Isa 43:9 and Jer 50:5.

It is not till Joe 3:11 that Joel steps in with a prayer addressed to the Lord, that He will send down His heavenly heroes to the place to which the heathen are flowing together. Hanchath an imper. hiph. , with pathach instead of tzere , on account of the guttural, from nâchath , to come down. The heroes of Jehovah are heavenly hosts, or angels, who execute His commands as gibbōrē khōăch (Psa 103:20, cf.

Psa 78:25). This prayer is answered thus by Jehovah in Joe 3:12 : “Let the nations rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there will He hold judgment upon them. ” יעורוּ corresponds to העירוּ in Joe 3:9; and at the close, “all the heathen round about” is deliberately repeated. Still there is no antithesis in this to “all nations” in Joe 3:2, as though here the judgment was simply to come upon the hostile nations in the neighbourhood of Judah, and not upon all the heathen universally (Hitzig).

For even in Joe 3:2 כל הגוים are simply all the heathen who have attacked the people of Jehovah - that is to say, all the nations round about Israel. Only these are not merely the neighbouring nations to Judah, but all heathen nations who have come into contact with the kingdom of God, i. e. , all the nations of the earth without exception, inasmuch as before the last judgment the gospel of the kingdom is to be preached in all the world for a testimony to all nations (Mat 24:14; Mar 13:10).

It is to the last decisive judgment, in which all the single judgments find their end, that the command of Jehovah to His strong heroes refers. Joe 3:13. “Put ye in the sickle; for the harvest is ripe: come, tread, for the win-press is full, the vats overflow: for their wickedness is great. ” The judgment is represented under the double figure of the reaping of the fields and the treading out of the grapes in the wine-press.

The angels are first of all summoned to reap the ripe corn (Isa 17:5; Rev 14:16), and then commanded to tread the wine-presses that are filled with grapes. The opposite opinion expressed by Hitzig, viz. , that the command to tread the wine-presses is preceded by the command to cut off the grapes, is supported partly by the erroneous assertion, that bâshal is not applied to the ripening of corn, and partly upon the arbitrary assumption that qâtsı̄r , a harvest, stands for bâtsı̄r , a vintage; and maggâl , a sickle (cf.

Jer 50:16), for mazmērâh , a vine-dresser’s bill. But bâshal does not mean “to boil,” either primarily or literally, but to be done, or to be ripe, like the Greek πέσσω, πέπτω, to ripen, to make soft, to boil (see at Exo 12:9), and hence in the piel both to boil and roast, and in the hiphil to make ripe of ripen (Gen 40:10), applied both to grapes and corn. It is impossible to infer from the fact that Isaiah (Isa 16:9) uses the word qâtsı̄r for the vintage, on account of the alliteration with qayits , that this is also the meaning of the word in Joel.

But we have a decisive proof in the resumption of this passage in Rev 14:15 and Rev 14:18, where the two figures (of the corn-harvest and the gathering of the grapes) are kept quite distinct, and the clause כּי בשׁל קציר is paraphrased and explained thus: “The time is come for thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. ” The ripeness of the corn is a figurative representation of ripeness for judgment.

Just as in the harvest - namely, at the threshing and winnowing connected with the harvest - the grains of corn are separated from the husk, the wheat being gathered into the barns, the husk blown away by the wind, and the straw burned; so will the good be separated from the wicked by the judgment, the former being gathered into the kingdom of God for the enjoyment of eternal life, - the latter, on the other hand, being given up to eternal death. The harvest field is the earth (ἡ γῆ, Rev 14:16), i.

e. , the inhabitants of the earth, the human race. The ripening began at the time of the appearance of Christ upon the earth (Joh 4:35; Mat 9:38). With the preaching of the gospel among all nations, the judgment of separation and decision (ἡ κρίσις, Joh 3:18-21) commenced; with the spread of the kingdom of Christ in the earth it passes over all nations; and it will be completed in the last judgment, on the return of Christ in glory at the end of this world.

Joel does not carry out the figure of the harvest any further, but simply presents the judgment under the similar figure of the treading of the grapes that have been gathered. רדוּ, not from yârad , to descend, but from râdâh , to trample under foot, tread the press that is filled with grapes. השׁיקוּ היקבים is used in Joe 2:24 to denote the most abundant harvest; here it is figuratively employed to denote the great mass of men who are ripe for the judgment, as the explanatory clause, for “their wicked (deed) is much,” or “their wickedness is great,” which recals Gen 6:5, clearly shows.

The treading of the wine-press does not express the idea of wading in blood, or the execution of a great massacre; but in Isa 63:3, as well as in Rev 14:20, it is a figure denoting an annihilating judgment upon the enemies of God and of His kingdom. The wine-press is “the wine-press of the wrath of God,” i. e. , “what the wine-press is to ordinary grapes, the wrath of God is to the grapes referred to here” (Hengstenberg on Rev 14:19).

The execution of this divine command is not expressly mentioned, but in Joe 3:14. the judgment is simply depicted thus: first of all we have a description of the streaming of the nations into the valley of judgment, and then of the appearance of Jehovah upon Zion in the terrible glory of the Judge of the world, and as the refuge of His people. Joe 3:14. “Tumult, tumult in the valley of decision: for the day of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision.

” Hămōnı̄m are noisy crowds, whom the prophet sees in the Spirit pouring into the valley of Jehoshaphat. The repetition of the word is expressive of the great multitude, as in 2Ki 3:16. עמק החרוּץ not valley of threshing; for though chârūts is used in Isa 28:27 and Isa 41:15 for the threshing-sledge, it is not used for the threshing itself, but valley of the deciding judgment, from chârats , to decide, to determine irrevocably (Isa 10:22; 1Ki 20:40), so that chârūts simply defines the name Jehoshaphat with greater precision.

כּי קרוב וגו (compare Joe 1:15; Joe 2:1) is used here to denote the immediate proximity of the judgment, which bursts at once, according to Joe 3:15.

Joe 3:9-14 Fulfilment of the judgment upon all the heathen predicted in Joe 3:2. Compare the similar prediction of judgment in Zec 14:2. The call is addressed to all nations to equip themselves for battle, and march into the valley of Jehoshaphat to war against the people of God, but in reality to be judged by the Lord through His heavenly heroes, whom He sends down thither.

Joe 3:9. “Proclaim ye this among the nations; sanctify a war, awaken the heroes, let all the men of war draw near and come up! Joe 3:10. Forge your coulters into swords, and your vine-sickles into spears: let the weak one say, A hero am I. Joe 3:11. Hasten and come, all ye nations round about, and assemble yourselves! Let thy heroes come down thither, O Jehovah!

Joe 3:12. The nations are to rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there shall I sit to judge all the heathen round about. ” The summons to prepare for war (Joe 3:9) is addressed, not to the worshippers of Jehovah or the Israelites scattered among the heathen (Cyr. , Calv. , Umbreit), but to the heathen nations, though not directly to the heroes and warriors among the heathen, but to heralds, who are to listen to the divine message, and convey it to the heathen nations.

This change belongs to the poetical drapery of thought, that at a sign from the Lord the heathen nations are to assemble together for war against Israel. קדּשׁ מלחמה does not mean “to declare war” (Hitzig), but to consecrate a war, i. e. , to prepare for war by sacrifices and religious rites of consecration (cf. 1Sa 7:8-9; Jer 6:4). העירוּ: waken up or arouse (not wake up) the heroes from their peaceful rest to battle.

With יגּשׁוּ the address passes over from the second person to the third, which Hitzig accounts for on the ground that the words state what the heralds are to say to the nations or heroes; but the continuance of the imperative kōttū in Joe 3:10 does not suit this. This transition is a very frequent one (cf. Isa 41:1; Isa 34:1), and may be very simply explained from the lively nature of the description.

עלה is here applied to the advance of hostile armies against a land or city. The nations are to summon up all their resources and all their strength for this war, because it will be a decisive one. They are to forge the tools of peaceful agriculture into weapons of war (compare Isa 2:4 and Mic 4:3, where the Messianic times of peace are depicted as the turning of weapons of war into instruments of agriculture).

Even the weak one is to rouse himself up to be a hero, “as is generally the case when a whole nation is seized with warlike enthusiasm” (Hitzig). This enthusiasm is expressed still further in the appeal in Joe 3:11 to assemble together as speedily as possible. The ἁπ. λεγ. עוּשׁ is related to חוּשׁ, to hasten; whereas no support can be found in the language to the meaning “assemble,” adopted by the lxx, Targ.

, etc. The expression כּל־הגּוים by no means necessitates our taking these words as a summons or challenge on the part of Joel to the heathen, as Hitzig does; for this can be very well interpreted as a summons, with which the nations call one another to battle, as the following ונקבּצוּ requires; and the assumption of Hitzig, Ewald, and others, that this form is the imperative for הקּבצוּ, cannot be sustained from Isa 43:9 and Jer 50:5.

It is not till Joe 3:11 that Joel steps in with a prayer addressed to the Lord, that He will send down His heavenly heroes to the place to which the heathen are flowing together. Hanchath an imper. hiph. , with pathach instead of tzere , on account of the guttural, from nâchath , to come down. The heroes of Jehovah are heavenly hosts, or angels, who execute His commands as gibbōrē khōăch (Psa 103:20, cf.

Psa 78:25). This prayer is answered thus by Jehovah in Joe 3:12 : “Let the nations rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there will He hold judgment upon them. ” יעורוּ corresponds to העירוּ in Joe 3:9; and at the close, “all the heathen round about” is deliberately repeated. Still there is no antithesis in this to “all nations” in Joe 3:2, as though here the judgment was simply to come upon the hostile nations in the neighbourhood of Judah, and not upon all the heathen universally (Hitzig).

For even in Joe 3:2 כל הגוים are simply all the heathen who have attacked the people of Jehovah - that is to say, all the nations round about Israel. Only these are not merely the neighbouring nations to Judah, but all heathen nations who have come into contact with the kingdom of God, i. e. , all the nations of the earth without exception, inasmuch as before the last judgment the gospel of the kingdom is to be preached in all the world for a testimony to all nations (Mat 24:14; Mar 13:10).

It is to the last decisive judgment, in which all the single judgments find their end, that the command of Jehovah to His strong heroes refers. Joe 3:13. “Put ye in the sickle; for the harvest is ripe: come, tread, for the win-press is full, the vats overflow: for their wickedness is great. ” The judgment is represented under the double figure of the reaping of the fields and the treading out of the grapes in the wine-press.

The angels are first of all summoned to reap the ripe corn (Isa 17:5; Rev 14:16), and then commanded to tread the wine-presses that are filled with grapes. The opposite opinion expressed by Hitzig, viz. , that the command to tread the wine-presses is preceded by the command to cut off the grapes, is supported partly by the erroneous assertion, that bâshal is not applied to the ripening of corn, and partly upon the arbitrary assumption that qâtsı̄r , a harvest, stands for bâtsı̄r , a vintage; and maggâl , a sickle (cf.

Jer 50:16), for mazmērâh , a vine-dresser’s bill. But bâshal does not mean “to boil,” either primarily or literally, but to be done, or to be ripe, like the Greek πέσσω, πέπτω, to ripen, to make soft, to boil (see at Exo 12:9), and hence in the piel both to boil and roast, and in the hiphil to make ripe of ripen (Gen 40:10), applied both to grapes and corn. It is impossible to infer from the fact that Isaiah (Isa 16:9) uses the word qâtsı̄r for the vintage, on account of the alliteration with qayits , that this is also the meaning of the word in Joel.

But we have a decisive proof in the resumption of this passage in Rev 14:15 and Rev 14:18, where the two figures (of the corn-harvest and the gathering of the grapes) are kept quite distinct, and the clause כּי בשׁל קציר is paraphrased and explained thus: “The time is come for thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. ” The ripeness of the corn is a figurative representation of ripeness for judgment.

Just as in the harvest - namely, at the threshing and winnowing connected with the harvest - the grains of corn are separated from the husk, the wheat being gathered into the barns, the husk blown away by the wind, and the straw burned; so will the good be separated from the wicked by the judgment, the former being gathered into the kingdom of God for the enjoyment of eternal life, - the latter, on the other hand, being given up to eternal death. The harvest field is the earth (ἡ γῆ, Rev 14:16), i.

e. , the inhabitants of the earth, the human race. The ripening began at the time of the appearance of Christ upon the earth (Joh 4:35; Mat 9:38). With the preaching of the gospel among all nations, the judgment of separation and decision (ἡ κρίσις, Joh 3:18-21) commenced; with the spread of the kingdom of Christ in the earth it passes over all nations; and it will be completed in the last judgment, on the return of Christ in glory at the end of this world.

Joel does not carry out the figure of the harvest any further, but simply presents the judgment under the similar figure of the treading of the grapes that have been gathered. רדוּ, not from yârad , to descend, but from râdâh , to trample under foot, tread the press that is filled with grapes. השׁיקוּ היקבים is used in Joe 2:24 to denote the most abundant harvest; here it is figuratively employed to denote the great mass of men who are ripe for the judgment, as the explanatory clause, for “their wicked (deed) is much,” or “their wickedness is great,” which recals Gen 6:5, clearly shows.

The treading of the wine-press does not express the idea of wading in blood, or the execution of a great massacre; but in Isa 63:3, as well as in Rev 14:20, it is a figure denoting an annihilating judgment upon the enemies of God and of His kingdom. The wine-press is “the wine-press of the wrath of God,” i. e. , “what the wine-press is to ordinary grapes, the wrath of God is to the grapes referred to here” (Hengstenberg on Rev 14:19).

The execution of this divine command is not expressly mentioned, but in Joe 3:14. the judgment is simply depicted thus: first of all we have a description of the streaming of the nations into the valley of judgment, and then of the appearance of Jehovah upon Zion in the terrible glory of the Judge of the world, and as the refuge of His people. Joe 3:14. “Tumult, tumult in the valley of decision: for the day of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision.

” Hămōnı̄m are noisy crowds, whom the prophet sees in the Spirit pouring into the valley of Jehoshaphat. The repetition of the word is expressive of the great multitude, as in 2Ki 3:16. עמק החרוּץ not valley of threshing; for though chârūts is used in Isa 28:27 and Isa 41:15 for the threshing-sledge, it is not used for the threshing itself, but valley of the deciding judgment, from chârats , to decide, to determine irrevocably (Isa 10:22; 1Ki 20:40), so that chârūts simply defines the name Jehoshaphat with greater precision.

כּי קרוב וגו (compare Joe 1:15; Joe 2:1) is used here to denote the immediate proximity of the judgment, which bursts at once, according to Joe 3:15.

Joe 3:9-14 Fulfilment of the judgment upon all the heathen predicted in Joe 3:2. Compare the similar prediction of judgment in Zec 14:2. The call is addressed to all nations to equip themselves for battle, and march into the valley of Jehoshaphat to war against the people of God, but in reality to be judged by the Lord through His heavenly heroes, whom He sends down thither.

Joe 3:9. “Proclaim ye this among the nations; sanctify a war, awaken the heroes, let all the men of war draw near and come up! Joe 3:10. Forge your coulters into swords, and your vine-sickles into spears: let the weak one say, A hero am I. Joe 3:11. Hasten and come, all ye nations round about, and assemble yourselves! Let thy heroes come down thither, O Jehovah!

Joe 3:12. The nations are to rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there shall I sit to judge all the heathen round about. ” The summons to prepare for war (Joe 3:9) is addressed, not to the worshippers of Jehovah or the Israelites scattered among the heathen (Cyr. , Calv. , Umbreit), but to the heathen nations, though not directly to the heroes and warriors among the heathen, but to heralds, who are to listen to the divine message, and convey it to the heathen nations.

This change belongs to the poetical drapery of thought, that at a sign from the Lord the heathen nations are to assemble together for war against Israel. קדּשׁ מלחמה does not mean “to declare war” (Hitzig), but to consecrate a war, i. e. , to prepare for war by sacrifices and religious rites of consecration (cf. 1Sa 7:8-9; Jer 6:4). העירוּ: waken up or arouse (not wake up) the heroes from their peaceful rest to battle.

With יגּשׁוּ the address passes over from the second person to the third, which Hitzig accounts for on the ground that the words state what the heralds are to say to the nations or heroes; but the continuance of the imperative kōttū in Joe 3:10 does not suit this. This transition is a very frequent one (cf. Isa 41:1; Isa 34:1), and may be very simply explained from the lively nature of the description.

עלה is here applied to the advance of hostile armies against a land or city. The nations are to summon up all their resources and all their strength for this war, because it will be a decisive one. They are to forge the tools of peaceful agriculture into weapons of war (compare Isa 2:4 and Mic 4:3, where the Messianic times of peace are depicted as the turning of weapons of war into instruments of agriculture).

Even the weak one is to rouse himself up to be a hero, “as is generally the case when a whole nation is seized with warlike enthusiasm” (Hitzig). This enthusiasm is expressed still further in the appeal in Joe 3:11 to assemble together as speedily as possible. The ἁπ. λεγ. עוּשׁ is related to חוּשׁ, to hasten; whereas no support can be found in the language to the meaning “assemble,” adopted by the lxx, Targ.

, etc. The expression כּל־הגּוים by no means necessitates our taking these words as a summons or challenge on the part of Joel to the heathen, as Hitzig does; for this can be very well interpreted as a summons, with which the nations call one another to battle, as the following ונקבּצוּ requires; and the assumption of Hitzig, Ewald, and others, that this form is the imperative for הקּבצוּ, cannot be sustained from Isa 43:9 and Jer 50:5.

It is not till Joe 3:11 that Joel steps in with a prayer addressed to the Lord, that He will send down His heavenly heroes to the place to which the heathen are flowing together. Hanchath an imper. hiph. , with pathach instead of tzere , on account of the guttural, from nâchath , to come down. The heroes of Jehovah are heavenly hosts, or angels, who execute His commands as gibbōrē khōăch (Psa 103:20, cf.

Psa 78:25). This prayer is answered thus by Jehovah in Joe 3:12 : “Let the nations rise up, and come into the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there will He hold judgment upon them. ” יעורוּ corresponds to העירוּ in Joe 3:9; and at the close, “all the heathen round about” is deliberately repeated. Still there is no antithesis in this to “all nations” in Joe 3:2, as though here the judgment was simply to come upon the hostile nations in the neighbourhood of Judah, and not upon all the heathen universally (Hitzig).

For even in Joe 3:2 כל הגוים are simply all the heathen who have attacked the people of Jehovah - that is to say, all the nations round about Israel. Only these are not merely the neighbouring nations to Judah, but all heathen nations who have come into contact with the kingdom of God, i. e. , all the nations of the earth without exception, inasmuch as before the last judgment the gospel of the kingdom is to be preached in all the world for a testimony to all nations (Mat 24:14; Mar 13:10).

It is to the last decisive judgment, in which all the single judgments find their end, that the command of Jehovah to His strong heroes refers. Joe 3:13. “Put ye in the sickle; for the harvest is ripe: come, tread, for the win-press is full, the vats overflow: for their wickedness is great. ” The judgment is represented under the double figure of the reaping of the fields and the treading out of the grapes in the wine-press.

The angels are first of all summoned to reap the ripe corn (Isa 17:5; Rev 14:16), and then commanded to tread the wine-presses that are filled with grapes. The opposite opinion expressed by Hitzig, viz. , that the command to tread the wine-presses is preceded by the command to cut off the grapes, is supported partly by the erroneous assertion, that bâshal is not applied to the ripening of corn, and partly upon the arbitrary assumption that qâtsı̄r , a harvest, stands for bâtsı̄r , a vintage; and maggâl , a sickle (cf.

Jer 50:16), for mazmērâh , a vine-dresser’s bill. But bâshal does not mean “to boil,” either primarily or literally, but to be done, or to be ripe, like the Greek πέσσω, πέπτω, to ripen, to make soft, to boil (see at Exo 12:9), and hence in the piel both to boil and roast, and in the hiphil to make ripe of ripen (Gen 40:10), applied both to grapes and corn. It is impossible to infer from the fact that Isaiah (Isa 16:9) uses the word qâtsı̄r for the vintage, on account of the alliteration with qayits , that this is also the meaning of the word in Joel.

But we have a decisive proof in the resumption of this passage in Rev 14:15 and Rev 14:18, where the two figures (of the corn-harvest and the gathering of the grapes) are kept quite distinct, and the clause כּי בשׁל קציר is paraphrased and explained thus: “The time is come for thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. ” The ripeness of the corn is a figurative representation of ripeness for judgment.

Just as in the harvest - namely, at the threshing and winnowing connected with the harvest - the grains of corn are separated from the husk, the wheat being gathered into the barns, the husk blown away by the wind, and the straw burned; so will the good be separated from the wicked by the judgment, the former being gathered into the kingdom of God for the enjoyment of eternal life, - the latter, on the other hand, being given up to eternal death. The harvest field is the earth (ἡ γῆ, Rev 14:16), i.

e. , the inhabitants of the earth, the human race. The ripening began at the time of the appearance of Christ upon the earth (Joh 4:35; Mat 9:38). With the preaching of the gospel among all nations, the judgment of separation and decision (ἡ κρίσις, Joh 3:18-21) commenced; with the spread of the kingdom of Christ in the earth it passes over all nations; and it will be completed in the last judgment, on the return of Christ in glory at the end of this world.

Joel does not carry out the figure of the harvest any further, but simply presents the judgment under the similar figure of the treading of the grapes that have been gathered. רדוּ, not from yârad , to descend, but from râdâh , to trample under foot, tread the press that is filled with grapes. השׁיקוּ היקבים is used in Joe 2:24 to denote the most abundant harvest; here it is figuratively employed to denote the great mass of men who are ripe for the judgment, as the explanatory clause, for “their wicked (deed) is much,” or “their wickedness is great,” which recals Gen 6:5, clearly shows.

The treading of the wine-press does not express the idea of wading in blood, or the execution of a great massacre; but in Isa 63:3, as well as in Rev 14:20, it is a figure denoting an annihilating judgment upon the enemies of God and of His kingdom. The wine-press is “the wine-press of the wrath of God,” i. e. , “what the wine-press is to ordinary grapes, the wrath of God is to the grapes referred to here” (Hengstenberg on Rev 14:19).

The execution of this divine command is not expressly mentioned, but in Joe 3:14. the judgment is simply depicted thus: first of all we have a description of the streaming of the nations into the valley of judgment, and then of the appearance of Jehovah upon Zion in the terrible glory of the Judge of the world, and as the refuge of His people. Joe 3:14. “Tumult, tumult in the valley of decision: for the day of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision.

” Hămōnı̄m are noisy crowds, whom the prophet sees in the Spirit pouring into the valley of Jehoshaphat. The repetition of the word is expressive of the great multitude, as in 2Ki 3:16. עמק החרוּץ not valley of threshing; for though chârūts is used in Isa 28:27 and Isa 41:15 for the threshing-sledge, it is not used for the threshing itself, but valley of the deciding judgment, from chârats , to decide, to determine irrevocably (Isa 10:22; 1Ki 20:40), so that chârūts simply defines the name Jehoshaphat with greater precision.

כּי קרוב וגו (compare Joe 1:15; Joe 2:1) is used here to denote the immediate proximity of the judgment, which bursts at once, according to Joe 3:15.

Joe 3:15-17 “Sun and moon have become black, and the stars have withdrawn their shining. Joe 3:16. And Jehovah roars out of Zion, and He thunders out of Jerusalem; and heaven and earth quake: but Jehovah is a refuge to His people, and a stronghold to the sons of Israel. Joe 3:17. And ye will perceive that I Jehovah am your God, dwelling upon Zion, my holy mountain: and Jerusalem will be a sanctuary, and strangers will not pass through it any more.

” On the forebodings of the judgment in Joe 3:15, see at Joe 2:10. Out of Zion, the place of His throne, will Jehovah cause His thunder-voice to sound, will roar like a lion which is rushing upon its prey (Hos 5:14; Amo 3:4), so that heaven and earth tremble in consequence. But it is only to His enemies that He is terrible; to His people, the true Israel, He is a refuge and strong tower.

From the fact that He only destroys His enemies, and protects His own people, the latter will learn that He is their God, and dwells upon Zion in His sanctuary, i. e. , that He there completes His kingdom, that He purifies Jerusalem of all foes, all the ungodly through the medium of the judgment, and makes it a holy place which cannot be trodden any more by strangers, by Gentiles, or by the unclean of either Gentiles or Israelites (Isa 35:8), but will be inhabited only by the righteous (Isa 60:21; Zec 14:21), who, as Rev 21:27 affirms, are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

For Zion or Jerusalem is of course not the Jerusalem of the earthly Palestine, but the sanctified and glorified city of the living God, in which the Lord will be eternally united with His redeemed, sanctified, and glorified church. We are forbidden to think of the earthly Jerusalem or the earthly Mount Zion, not only by the circumstance that the gathering of all the heathen nations takes place in the valley of Jehoshaphat, i.

e. , in a portion of the valley of the Kidron, which is a pure impossibility, but also by the description which follows of the glorification of Judah.

Joe 3:15-17 “Sun and moon have become black, and the stars have withdrawn their shining. Joe 3:16. And Jehovah roars out of Zion, and He thunders out of Jerusalem; and heaven and earth quake: but Jehovah is a refuge to His people, and a stronghold to the sons of Israel. Joe 3:17. And ye will perceive that I Jehovah am your God, dwelling upon Zion, my holy mountain: and Jerusalem will be a sanctuary, and strangers will not pass through it any more.

” On the forebodings of the judgment in Joe 3:15, see at Joe 2:10. Out of Zion, the place of His throne, will Jehovah cause His thunder-voice to sound, will roar like a lion which is rushing upon its prey (Hos 5:14; Amo 3:4), so that heaven and earth tremble in consequence. But it is only to His enemies that He is terrible; to His people, the true Israel, He is a refuge and strong tower.

From the fact that He only destroys His enemies, and protects His own people, the latter will learn that He is their God, and dwells upon Zion in His sanctuary, i. e. , that He there completes His kingdom, that He purifies Jerusalem of all foes, all the ungodly through the medium of the judgment, and makes it a holy place which cannot be trodden any more by strangers, by Gentiles, or by the unclean of either Gentiles or Israelites (Isa 35:8), but will be inhabited only by the righteous (Isa 60:21; Zec 14:21), who, as Rev 21:27 affirms, are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

For Zion or Jerusalem is of course not the Jerusalem of the earthly Palestine, but the sanctified and glorified city of the living God, in which the Lord will be eternally united with His redeemed, sanctified, and glorified church. We are forbidden to think of the earthly Jerusalem or the earthly Mount Zion, not only by the circumstance that the gathering of all the heathen nations takes place in the valley of Jehoshaphat, i.

e. , in a portion of the valley of the Kidron, which is a pure impossibility, but also by the description which follows of the glorification of Judah.

Joe 3:15-17 “Sun and moon have become black, and the stars have withdrawn their shining. Joe 3:16. And Jehovah roars out of Zion, and He thunders out of Jerusalem; and heaven and earth quake: but Jehovah is a refuge to His people, and a stronghold to the sons of Israel. Joe 3:17. And ye will perceive that I Jehovah am your God, dwelling upon Zion, my holy mountain: and Jerusalem will be a sanctuary, and strangers will not pass through it any more.

” On the forebodings of the judgment in Joe 3:15, see at Joe 2:10. Out of Zion, the place of His throne, will Jehovah cause His thunder-voice to sound, will roar like a lion which is rushing upon its prey (Hos 5:14; Amo 3:4), so that heaven and earth tremble in consequence. But it is only to His enemies that He is terrible; to His people, the true Israel, He is a refuge and strong tower.

From the fact that He only destroys His enemies, and protects His own people, the latter will learn that He is their God, and dwells upon Zion in His sanctuary, i. e. , that He there completes His kingdom, that He purifies Jerusalem of all foes, all the ungodly through the medium of the judgment, and makes it a holy place which cannot be trodden any more by strangers, by Gentiles, or by the unclean of either Gentiles or Israelites (Isa 35:8), but will be inhabited only by the righteous (Isa 60:21; Zec 14:21), who, as Rev 21:27 affirms, are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

For Zion or Jerusalem is of course not the Jerusalem of the earthly Palestine, but the sanctified and glorified city of the living God, in which the Lord will be eternally united with His redeemed, sanctified, and glorified church. We are forbidden to think of the earthly Jerusalem or the earthly Mount Zion, not only by the circumstance that the gathering of all the heathen nations takes place in the valley of Jehoshaphat, i.

e. , in a portion of the valley of the Kidron, which is a pure impossibility, but also by the description which follows of the glorification of Judah.

Joe 3:18-21 After the judgment upon all nations, the land of the Lord will overflow with streams of divine blessing; but the seat of the world-power will become a barren waste. Joe 3:18. “And it comes to pass in that day, the mountains will trickle down with new wine, and the hills flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah flow with water; and a fountain will issue from the house of Jehovah, and water the Acacia valley.

Joe 3:19. Egypt will become a desolation, and Edom a barren waste, for the sin upon the sons of Judah, that they have shed innocent blood in their land. Joe 3:20. But Judah, it will dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. Joe 3:21. And I shall expiate their blood that I have not expiated: and Jehovah dwelleth upon Zion. ” The end of the ways of the Lord is eternal blessing for His people, whilst the enemies of His kingdom fall victims to the curse.

This thought is expressed in figures taken from the state of the covenant land of the Old Testament, and those of the bordering kingdoms of Egypt and Edom which were hostile to Israel. If we bear this in mind, we shall not fall into Volck’s error, of seeking in this description for a clear statement as to the transfiguration of the land of Israel during the thousand years’ reign, whilst the rest of the earth is not yet glorified; for it is evident from Joe 3:18, as compared with the parallel passages, viz.

, Zec 14:6. and Eze 47:1-12, that this passage does not teach the earthly glorification of Palestine, and desolation of Egypt and Idumaea, but that Judah and Jerusalem are types of the kingdom of God, whilst Egypt and Edom are types of the world-powers that are at enmity against God; in other words, that this description is not to be understood literally, but spiritually.

“In that day,” viz. , the period following the final judgment upon the heathen, the mountains and hills of Judah, i. e. , the least fruitful portions of the Old Testament kingdom of God in the time of the prophet, will overflow with new wine and milk, and all the brooks of water be filled, i. e. , no more dry up in the hot season of the year (Joe 1:20). Thus will the fruitfulness of Canaan, the land of the Lord, flowing with milk and honey, come forth in all its potency.

Even the unfruitful acacia valley will be watered by a spring issuing from the house of Jehovah, and turned into a fruitful land. The valley of Shittim is the barren valley of the Jordan, above the Dead Sea. The name Shittim , acacia, is taken from the last encampment of the Israelites in the steppes of Moab, before their entrance into Canaan (Num 25:1; Jos 3:1), and was chosen by the prophet to denote a very dry valley, as the acacia grows in a dry soil (cf.

Celsii, Hierob. i. p. 500ff.) The spring which waters this valley, and proceeds from the house of Jehovah, and the living water that flows from Jerusalem, according to Zec 14:8, are of course not earthly streams that are constantly flowing, as distinguished from the streams caused by rain and snow, which very soon dry up again, but spiritual waters of life (Joh 4:10, Joh 4:14; Joh 7:38); and, in fact, as a comparison of Eze 47:7-12 with Rev 22:1-2 clearly shows, the “river of the water of life, clear as a crystal,” which in the New Jerusalem coming down from God upon the earth (Rev 21:10) proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, and on both sides of which there grows the tree of life, that bears its fruit twelve times a-year, or every month, and the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations.

The partially verbal agreement between the description of this river of water in Rev 22:2, and that in Eze 47:12, overthrows the millenarian view, that the glorification of Judah and Jerusalem, predicted by Joel, Zechariah, and Ezekiel, will be a partial glorification of the earth, viz. , of the Holy Land, which takes place before the creation of the new heaven and the new earth.

Joe 3:18-21 After the judgment upon all nations, the land of the Lord will overflow with streams of divine blessing; but the seat of the world-power will become a barren waste. Joe 3:18. “And it comes to pass in that day, the mountains will trickle down with new wine, and the hills flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah flow with water; and a fountain will issue from the house of Jehovah, and water the Acacia valley.

Joe 3:19. Egypt will become a desolation, and Edom a barren waste, for the sin upon the sons of Judah, that they have shed innocent blood in their land. Joe 3:20. But Judah, it will dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. Joe 3:21. And I shall expiate their blood that I have not expiated: and Jehovah dwelleth upon Zion. ” The end of the ways of the Lord is eternal blessing for His people, whilst the enemies of His kingdom fall victims to the curse.

This thought is expressed in figures taken from the state of the covenant land of the Old Testament, and those of the bordering kingdoms of Egypt and Edom which were hostile to Israel. If we bear this in mind, we shall not fall into Volck’s error, of seeking in this description for a clear statement as to the transfiguration of the land of Israel during the thousand years’ reign, whilst the rest of the earth is not yet glorified; for it is evident from Joe 3:18, as compared with the parallel passages, viz.

, Zec 14:6. and Eze 47:1-12, that this passage does not teach the earthly glorification of Palestine, and desolation of Egypt and Idumaea, but that Judah and Jerusalem are types of the kingdom of God, whilst Egypt and Edom are types of the world-powers that are at enmity against God; in other words, that this description is not to be understood literally, but spiritually.

“In that day,” viz. , the period following the final judgment upon the heathen, the mountains and hills of Judah, i. e. , the least fruitful portions of the Old Testament kingdom of God in the time of the prophet, will overflow with new wine and milk, and all the brooks of water be filled, i. e. , no more dry up in the hot season of the year (Joe 1:20). Thus will the fruitfulness of Canaan, the land of the Lord, flowing with milk and honey, come forth in all its potency.

Even the unfruitful acacia valley will be watered by a spring issuing from the house of Jehovah, and turned into a fruitful land. The valley of Shittim is the barren valley of the Jordan, above the Dead Sea. The name Shittim , acacia, is taken from the last encampment of the Israelites in the steppes of Moab, before their entrance into Canaan (Num 25:1; Jos 3:1), and was chosen by the prophet to denote a very dry valley, as the acacia grows in a dry soil (cf.

Celsii, Hierob. i. p. 500ff.) The spring which waters this valley, and proceeds from the house of Jehovah, and the living water that flows from Jerusalem, according to Zec 14:8, are of course not earthly streams that are constantly flowing, as distinguished from the streams caused by rain and snow, which very soon dry up again, but spiritual waters of life (Joh 4:10, Joh 4:14; Joh 7:38); and, in fact, as a comparison of Eze 47:7-12 with Rev 22:1-2 clearly shows, the “river of the water of life, clear as a crystal,” which in the New Jerusalem coming down from God upon the earth (Rev 21:10) proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, and on both sides of which there grows the tree of life, that bears its fruit twelve times a-year, or every month, and the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations.

The partially verbal agreement between the description of this river of water in Rev 22:2, and that in Eze 47:12, overthrows the millenarian view, that the glorification of Judah and Jerusalem, predicted by Joel, Zechariah, and Ezekiel, will be a partial glorification of the earth, viz. , of the Holy Land, which takes place before the creation of the new heaven and the new earth.

Joe 3:18-21 After the judgment upon all nations, the land of the Lord will overflow with streams of divine blessing; but the seat of the world-power will become a barren waste. Joe 3:18. “And it comes to pass in that day, the mountains will trickle down with new wine, and the hills flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah flow with water; and a fountain will issue from the house of Jehovah, and water the Acacia valley.

Joe 3:19. Egypt will become a desolation, and Edom a barren waste, for the sin upon the sons of Judah, that they have shed innocent blood in their land. Joe 3:20. But Judah, it will dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. Joe 3:21. And I shall expiate their blood that I have not expiated: and Jehovah dwelleth upon Zion. ” The end of the ways of the Lord is eternal blessing for His people, whilst the enemies of His kingdom fall victims to the curse.

This thought is expressed in figures taken from the state of the covenant land of the Old Testament, and those of the bordering kingdoms of Egypt and Edom which were hostile to Israel. If we bear this in mind, we shall not fall into Volck’s error, of seeking in this description for a clear statement as to the transfiguration of the land of Israel during the thousand years’ reign, whilst the rest of the earth is not yet glorified; for it is evident from Joe 3:18, as compared with the parallel passages, viz.

, Zec 14:6. and Eze 47:1-12, that this passage does not teach the earthly glorification of Palestine, and desolation of Egypt and Idumaea, but that Judah and Jerusalem are types of the kingdom of God, whilst Egypt and Edom are types of the world-powers that are at enmity against God; in other words, that this description is not to be understood literally, but spiritually.

“In that day,” viz. , the period following the final judgment upon the heathen, the mountains and hills of Judah, i. e. , the least fruitful portions of the Old Testament kingdom of God in the time of the prophet, will overflow with new wine and milk, and all the brooks of water be filled, i. e. , no more dry up in the hot season of the year (Joe 1:20). Thus will the fruitfulness of Canaan, the land of the Lord, flowing with milk and honey, come forth in all its potency.

Even the unfruitful acacia valley will be watered by a spring issuing from the house of Jehovah, and turned into a fruitful land. The valley of Shittim is the barren valley of the Jordan, above the Dead Sea. The name Shittim , acacia, is taken from the last encampment of the Israelites in the steppes of Moab, before their entrance into Canaan (Num 25:1; Jos 3:1), and was chosen by the prophet to denote a very dry valley, as the acacia grows in a dry soil (cf.

Celsii, Hierob. i. p. 500ff.) The spring which waters this valley, and proceeds from the house of Jehovah, and the living water that flows from Jerusalem, according to Zec 14:8, are of course not earthly streams that are constantly flowing, as distinguished from the streams caused by rain and snow, which very soon dry up again, but spiritual waters of life (Joh 4:10, Joh 4:14; Joh 7:38); and, in fact, as a comparison of Eze 47:7-12 with Rev 22:1-2 clearly shows, the “river of the water of life, clear as a crystal,” which in the New Jerusalem coming down from God upon the earth (Rev 21:10) proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, and on both sides of which there grows the tree of life, that bears its fruit twelve times a-year, or every month, and the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations.

The partially verbal agreement between the description of this river of water in Rev 22:2, and that in Eze 47:12, overthrows the millenarian view, that the glorification of Judah and Jerusalem, predicted by Joel, Zechariah, and Ezekiel, will be a partial glorification of the earth, viz. , of the Holy Land, which takes place before the creation of the new heaven and the new earth.

Joe 3:18-21 After the judgment upon all nations, the land of the Lord will overflow with streams of divine blessing; but the seat of the world-power will become a barren waste. Joe 3:18. “And it comes to pass in that day, the mountains will trickle down with new wine, and the hills flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah flow with water; and a fountain will issue from the house of Jehovah, and water the Acacia valley.

Joe 3:19. Egypt will become a desolation, and Edom a barren waste, for the sin upon the sons of Judah, that they have shed innocent blood in their land. Joe 3:20. But Judah, it will dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. Joe 3:21. And I shall expiate their blood that I have not expiated: and Jehovah dwelleth upon Zion. ” The end of the ways of the Lord is eternal blessing for His people, whilst the enemies of His kingdom fall victims to the curse.

This thought is expressed in figures taken from the state of the covenant land of the Old Testament, and those of the bordering kingdoms of Egypt and Edom which were hostile to Israel. If we bear this in mind, we shall not fall into Volck’s error, of seeking in this description for a clear statement as to the transfiguration of the land of Israel during the thousand years’ reign, whilst the rest of the earth is not yet glorified; for it is evident from Joe 3:18, as compared with the parallel passages, viz.

, Zec 14:6. and Eze 47:1-12, that this passage does not teach the earthly glorification of Palestine, and desolation of Egypt and Idumaea, but that Judah and Jerusalem are types of the kingdom of God, whilst Egypt and Edom are types of the world-powers that are at enmity against God; in other words, that this description is not to be understood literally, but spiritually.

“In that day,” viz. , the period following the final judgment upon the heathen, the mountains and hills of Judah, i. e. , the least fruitful portions of the Old Testament kingdom of God in the time of the prophet, will overflow with new wine and milk, and all the brooks of water be filled, i. e. , no more dry up in the hot season of the year (Joe 1:20). Thus will the fruitfulness of Canaan, the land of the Lord, flowing with milk and honey, come forth in all its potency.

Even the unfruitful acacia valley will be watered by a spring issuing from the house of Jehovah, and turned into a fruitful land. The valley of Shittim is the barren valley of the Jordan, above the Dead Sea. The name Shittim , acacia, is taken from the last encampment of the Israelites in the steppes of Moab, before their entrance into Canaan (Num 25:1; Jos 3:1), and was chosen by the prophet to denote a very dry valley, as the acacia grows in a dry soil (cf.

Celsii, Hierob. i. p. 500ff.) The spring which waters this valley, and proceeds from the house of Jehovah, and the living water that flows from Jerusalem, according to Zec 14:8, are of course not earthly streams that are constantly flowing, as distinguished from the streams caused by rain and snow, which very soon dry up again, but spiritual waters of life (Joh 4:10, Joh 4:14; Joh 7:38); and, in fact, as a comparison of Eze 47:7-12 with Rev 22:1-2 clearly shows, the “river of the water of life, clear as a crystal,” which in the New Jerusalem coming down from God upon the earth (Rev 21:10) proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, and on both sides of which there grows the tree of life, that bears its fruit twelve times a-year, or every month, and the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations.

The partially verbal agreement between the description of this river of water in Rev 22:2, and that in Eze 47:12, overthrows the millenarian view, that the glorification of Judah and Jerusalem, predicted by Joel, Zechariah, and Ezekiel, will be a partial glorification of the earth, viz. , of the Holy Land, which takes place before the creation of the new heaven and the new earth.

The Prophet. - Amos (עמוס, i. e. , Bearer or Burden), according to the heading to his book, was “among the shepherds ( nōqedı̄m ) of Tekoah” when the Lord called him to be a prophet; that is to say, he was a native of Tekoah, a town situated on the borders of the desert of Judah, two hours to the south of Bethlehem, the ruins of which have been preserved under the ancient name (see at Jos 15:59, lxx), and lived with the shepherds who fed their sheep in the steppe to the east of Tekoah; of course not as a rich owner of flocks, but simply as a shepherd.

For even though nōqēd is applied to the Moabitish king in 2Ki 3:4 as a rich owner of a choice breed of sheep and goats, the word properly signifies only a rearer of sheep, i. e. , not merely the owner, but the shepherd of choice sheep, as Bochart ( Hieroz. i. p. 483, ed. Ros.) has proved from the Arabic. But Amos himself affirms, in Amo 7:14, that he was a simple shepherd.

He there replies to the priest at Bethel, who wanted to prevent him from prophesying in the kingdom of Israel: “I am not a prophet, nor yet a prophet’s pupil, but a herdman ( bōqēd ) am I, and bōlēs shiqmı̄m , a gatherer of sycamores” (see at Amo 7:14), - i. e. , one who fed upon this fruit, which resembles figs, and is described by Pliny ( hist. n. 13, 14), as praedulcis , but which, according to Strabo, xvii.

823 (ἄτιμος κατὰ τὴν γεῦσιν), was very lightly esteemed as food, and also, according to Dioscor. , was ἄτιμος καὶ κακοστόμαχος, and which is only used in Egypt as the food of the common people (Norden, Reise , p. 118). Consequently we have to regard Amos as a shepherd living in indigent circumstances, not as a prosperous man possessing both a flock of sheep and a sycamore plantation, which many commentators, following the Chaldee and the Rabbins, have made him out to be.

Without having dedicated himself to the calling of a prophet, and without even being trained in the schools of the prophets, he was called by the Lord away from the flock to be a prophet, to prophesy concerning Israel (Amo 7:14-15), under the Judaean king Uzziah and the Israelitish king Jeroboam II, i. e. , within the twenty-six years of the contemporaneous rule of these two kings, or between 810 and 783 b.

c. Amos therefore commenced his prophetic labours about the same time as Hosea, probably a few years earlier, and prophesied in Bethel, the chief seat of the Israelitish image-worship (Amo 7:10). We cannot fix with any greater exactness either the time of his appearing or the duration of his ministry; for the notice in Amo 1:1, “two years before the earthquake,” furnishes no chronological datum, because the time of the earthquake is unknown.

It is never mentioned in the historical books of the Old Testament, though it can hardly be any other than the terrible earthquake in the time of Uzziah, which the people had not forgotten even after the captivity, inasmuch as Zechariah was able to recal the flight that took place on that occasion (Zec 14:5). As Amos has not given the date of the earthquake, his evident intention was not to fix the time when his ministry commenced, or when his book was composed, but simply to point to the internal connection between this event and his own prophetic mission.

According to the teaching of Scripture, the earth quakes when the Lord comes to judgment upon the nations (see at Amo 8:8). The earthquake which shook Jerusalem two years after the appearance of Amos as the prophet, was a harbinger of the judgment threatened by Him against the two kingdoms of Israel and the surrounding nations, - a practical declaration on the part of God that He would verify the word of His servant; and the allusion to this divine sign on the part of the prophet was an admonition to Israel to lay to heart the word of the Lord which he had announced to them.

So far as the explanation and importance of his prophecies were concerned, it was enough to mention the kings of Judah and Israel in whose reigns he prophesied. Under these kings the two kingdoms stood at the summit of their prosperity. Uzziah had completely subdued the Edomites, had subjugated the Philistines, and had even made the Ammonites tributary. He had also fortified Jerusalem strongly, and had raised a powerful army; so that his name reached as far as Egypt (2 Chronicles 26).

And Jeroboam had completely overcome the Syrians, and restored the original borders of the kingdom from the country of Hamath to the Dead Sea (2Ki 14:25-28). After the power of the Syrians had been broken, Israel had no longer any foe to fear, for Assyria had not yet arisen as a conquering power. The supposition that Calneh or Ctesiphon is represented in Amo 6:2 as having already been taken (by the Assyrians), rests upon an incorrect interpretation, and is just as erroneous as the inference, also drawn from the same passage, that Hamath was conquered and Gath destroyed.

Amos does not mention the Assyrians at all; although in Amo 1:5 he threatens the Syrians with transportation to Kir, and in Amo 5:27 predicts that the Israelites will be carried into captivity beyond Damascus. In the existing state of things, the idea of the approaching fall or destruction of the kingdom of Israel was, according to human judgment, a very improbable one indeed.

The inhabitants of Samaria and Zion felt themselves perfectly secure in the consciousness of their might (Amo 6:1). The rulers of the kingdom trusted in the strength of their military resources (Amo 6:13), and were only concerned to increase their wealth by oppressing the poor, and to revel in earthly luxuries and pleasures (Amo 2:6-8; Amo 5:11-12; Amo 6:4-6); so that the prophet denounces woes upon those who are in security upon Zion and without care upon the mountain of Samaria (Amo 6:1), and utters the threat that the Lord will cause the sun to set at noon, and bring darkness over the land in broad daylight (Amo 8:9).

It was at such a time as this that the plain shepherd of Tekoah was sent to Bethel, into the kingdom of the ten tribes, to announce to the careless sinners the approach of the divine judgment, and the destruction of the kingdom. And whilst it was in itself a strange event for a prophet to be sent out of Judah into the kingdom of the ten tribes, - so strange, in fact, that in all probability it had never occurred since the kingdom had been founded, or at any rate, that no second instance of the kind is recorded, from the time when the man of God was sent out of Judah to Bethel in the reign of Jeroboam I (1 Kings 13), down to the time of Amos himself-it must have attracted universal attention, for a man to rise up who belonged to the rank of a shepherd, who had had no training at all for a prophet’s vocation, but who nevertheless proved, by the demonstration of the Spirit, that he was a prophet indeed, and who foretold, in the strength of God, what destruction awaited the covenant people, before there was the slightest human probability of any such catastrophe.

The prophet’s style of composition does indeed betray the former shepherd in the use of certain words, which evidently belonged to the dialect of the common people, - e. g. , מעיק for מציק (Amo 2:13), בּושׁס for בּוסס (Amo 5:11), מתאב for מתעב rof מ (Amo 6:8), מסרף for משׂרף (Amo 6:10), ישׂחק for יצחק (Amo 7:9, Amo 7:16), נשׁקה for נשׁקעה (Amo 8:8), and in many figures and similes drawn from nature and rural life; but for the rest, it indicates a close acquaintance on the part of the prophet with the Mosaic law and the history of his nation, and also considerable rhetorical power, wealth and depth of thought, vivacity and vigour, more especially in the use of bold antitheses, and a truly poetical roll, which rises by no means unfrequently into actual rhythm; so that Lowth has already expressed the following opinion concerning him ( De poesi sacr.

ed. Mich. p. 433): “Aequus judex, de re non de homine quaesiturus, censebit, credo, pastorem nostrum μηφὲν ὑστερηκέναι τῶν ὑπερλίαν προφητῶν sensuum elatione et magnificentia spiritus prope summis parem, ita etiam dictionis splendore et compositionis elegantia vix quoquam inferiorem. ” Beyond these facts, which we gather from the prophet’s won writings, nothing further is known of the circumstances connected with his life.

After fulfilling his mission, he probably returned to Judah, his native land, where his prophecies were most likely first committed to writing. The apocryphal accounts of his death, in Pseud. -Epiphanius, c. 12, and Pseudo-Doroth. (see Carpzov, p. 319), have no historical value whatever. 2. The Book. - Although Amos was sent by the Lord to Bethel, to prophesy to the people of Israel there, he does not restrict himself in his prophecy to the kingdom of the ten tribes, but, like his younger contemporary Hosea, notices the kingdom of Judah as well, and even the surrounding nations, that were hostile to the covenant nation.

His book is not a mere collection of the addresses delivered in Bethel, but a carefully planned, complete work, in which Amos, after the occurrence of the earthquake in the time of Uzziah, gathered together all the essential contents of the prophecies he had previously uttered at Bethel. It consists of a lengthy introduction (Amo 1:1-15, 2) and two parts, viz.

, simple prophetic addresses (ch. 4-6), and visions with short explanations (ch. 7). In the introduction the prophet proclaims, in the following manner, the judgment about to fall upon Damascus, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Judah, and Israel. The storm of the Lord, which bursts upon all these kingdoms, remains suspended over the kingdom of Israel, which is mentioned last.

This is evident from the fact, that the sin of Israel is depicted more fully than that of the other nations; and the threatening of judgment is couched in such general terms, that it can only be regarded as a provisional announcement, or as the introduction to the body of the book by which it is followed. The first part contains an extended address, divided into three sections by the recurrence of שׁמעוּ (hear ye) in Amo 3:1; Amo 4:1, and Amo 5:1.

The address consists of a “great warning to repent,” in which the prophet holds up before the sinful Israelites, especially the rulers of the kingdom, the arts of injustice and wickedness that are current among them, and proclaims a judgment which embraces the destruction of the palaces and holy places, the overthrow of the kingdom, and the transportation of the people. In Amo 3:1-15 the sin and punishment are described in the most general form.

In Amo 4:1-13 the prophet sweeps away from the self-secure sinners the false ground of confidence afforded by their own worship, recals to their mind the judgments with which God has already visited them, and summons them to stand before God as their judge. In ch. 5 and Amo 6:1-14, after a mournful elegy concerning the fall of the house of Israel (Amo 5:1-3), he points out to the penitent the way to life coupled with the repeated summons to seek the Lord, and that which is good (Amo 5:4, Amo 5:6, Amo 5:14); and then, in the form of a woe, for which a double reason is assigned (Amo 5:18; Amo 6:1), he takes away all hope of deliverance from the impenitent and hardened.

Throughout the whole of this address Amos prophesies chiefly to the ten tribes, whom he repeatedly addresses, predicting ruin and exile. At the same time, he not only addresses his words in the introduction (Amo 3:1-2) to all Israel of the twelve tribes, whom Jehovah brought out of Egypt, but he also pronounces the last woe (Amo 6:1) upon the secure ones on Zion, and the careless ones on the mountain of Samaria; so that his prophecy also applies to the kingdom of Judah, and sets before it the same fate as that of the kingdom of the ten tribes, if it should fall into the same sin.

The second part contains five visions, and at the close the proclamation of salvation. the first two visions (Amo 7:1-3 and Amo 7:4-6) threaten judgments; the next two (Amo 7:7-9; Amo 8:1-3) point out the impossibility of averting the judgment, and the ripeness of the people for it. Between these, viz. , in Amo 7:10-17, the conversation between the prophet and the chief priest at Bethel is related.

The substance of the fourth vision is carried out still further, in a simple prophetic address (Amo 8:4-14). Lastly, the fifth vision (Amo 9:1) shows the overthrow and ruin of the whole of Israel, and is also still further expanded in a plain address (Amo 9:2-10). To this there is appended the promise of the restoration of the fallen kingdom of God, of its extension through the adoption of the Gentiles, and of its eternal glorification (Amo 9:11-15).

This conclusion corresponds to the introduction (Amo 1:1-15 and 2). Like all the nations that rise up in hostility to the kingdom of God, even Judah and Israel shall fall victims to the judgment, on account of their unrighteousness and idolatry, in order that the kingdom of God may be purified from its dross, be exalted to glory, and so be made perfect. This is the fundamental thought of the writings of Amos, who was called by the Lord to preach this truth to the nation of Israel.

And just as the close of his book points back to the introduction (Amo 1:1-15 and 2), so also do the visions of the second part correspond to the addresses of the first, embodying the substance of the addresses in significant symbols. The parallel between the fifth vision and the elegy struck up in Amo 5:1 is very conspicuous; and it is also impossible to overlook the material agreement between the first and second visions and the enumeration in Amo 4:6-11, of the divine visitations that had already fallen upon Israel; whilst the third and fourth visions set clearly before the eye the irrevocable character of the judgments with which careless and wanton sinners are threatened in ch.

3-6. There is evidently no foundation for the assumption that the second part contains “the true kernel of his work,” namely, “the addresses which Amos originally delivered at Bethel;” and that the first part, together with the introduction (ch. 1-6) and the Messianic conclusion (Amo 9:11-15), is purely a written description, composed by Amos after his return from Bethel to Judah, to give a further expansion to his original utterances (Ewald, Baur).

This by no means follows, either from the fact that the account of what the prophet experienced at Bethel is inserted in the series of visions, as it moves on step by step, and that the place in which it occurs (viz. , ch. 7) is evidently its original position, or from the circumstance that Amos commences his work with a saying of Joel (compare Amo 1:2 with Joe 3:16), and evidently refers to Joel (Joe 3:18) even in the promise at the close (Amo 9:13).

For the position of this account in ch. 7 proves nothing further than that Amos related those visions in Bethel; and the allusion to Joel simply presupposes an acquaintance with the predictions of this prophet. If there were no previous addresses, the visions in ch. 7 and 8 would have nothing to explain their occurrence, and would also be lacking in the requisite clearness.

Moreover, the work of Amos in Bethel cannot possibly be limited to ch. 7-9. And lastly, the addresses in ch. 4-6 are throughout so individual, so full of life, and so impressive, that they clearly reflect the original oral delivery, even though it may be nothing more than the essential substance of what was orally delivered, that has been given here. Only Amo 1:1-15 and 2 appears to have been really conceived in the form of a written composition, and placed at the head of the book at the time when it was first compiled, although certain thoughts that had been orally expressed may lie at the foundation even there.

For the exegetical writings upon Amos, see my Lehrbuch der Einleitung , pp. 284-5. Starting from the saying of Joel (Joe 3:16), “Jehovah will roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem,” Amos announces the wrath of the Lord, which will discharge itself upon Damascus (Amo 1:3-5), Philistia (Amo 1:6-8), Tyre (Amo 1:9-10), Edom (Amo 1:11-12), Ammon (Amo 1:13-15), Moab (Amo 2:1-3), Judah (Amo 2:4-5), and Israel (Amo 2:6-16).

The announcement of this judgment maintains a certain uniformity throughout; every one of these nations being threatened with the destruction of the kingdom, or with ruin and exile, “for three or four transgressions;” and the threat, as Rückert has well expressed it, “rolling like a storm, in strophe after strophe, over all the surrounding kingdoms,” touching Judah as it passes along, and eventually resting over Israel. The six heathen nations mentioned, three of which are related to the covenant nation, represent all the Gentile nations, which rise up in hostility to the people or kingdom of God.

For the sins on account of which they are to be punished, are not certain general breaches of morality, but crimes which they have committed against the people of God; and in the case of Judah, contempt of the commandments of the Lord, and idolatry. The whole section, not merely Amos 1:2-2:5, but also Amo 2:6-16, has an introductory character. Whilst, on the one hand, the extension of the prediction of judgment to the Gentile nations indicates the necessity and universality of the judgment, which is sent to promote the interests of the kingdom of God, and preaches the truth that every one will be judged according to his attitude towards the living God; on the other hand, the place assigned to the Gentile nations, viz.

, before the covenant nation, not only sharpened the conscience, but taught this lesson, that if even the nations which had only sinned indirectly against the living God were visited with severe punishment, those to whom God had so gloriously revealed Himself (Amo 2:9-11; Amo 3:1) would be punished still more surely for their apostasy (Amo 3:2). It is with this design that Judah is also mentioned along with Israel, and in fact before it.

“The intention was to impress this truth most strongly upon the people of the ten tribes, that not even the possession of such glorious prerogatives as the temple and the throne of David could avert the merited punishment. If this be the energy of the justice of God, what have we to look for? ” (Hengstenberg). Amo 1:1-2 Amo 1:1 contains the heading, which has already been discussed in the Introduction; and אשׁר חזה ( “which he saw” ) refers to דּברי עמוס ( the words of Amos ).

Amo 1:2 forms the Introduction, which is attached to the heading by ויּאמר, and announces a revelation of the wrath of God upon Israel, or a theocratic judgment. Amo 1:2. “Jehovah roars out of Zion, and He utters His voice from Jerusalem; and the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the head of Carmel withers. ” The voice of Jehovah is the thunder, the earthly substratum in which the Lord manifests His coming to judgment (see at Joe 3:16).

By the adoption of the first half of the verse word for word from Joel, Amos connects his prophecy with that of his predecessor, not so much with the intention of confirming the latter, as for the purpose of alarming the sinners who were at east in their security, and overthrowing the delusive notion that the judgment of God would only fall upon the heathen world. This delusion he meets with the declaration, that at the threatening of the wrath of God the pastures of the shepherds, i.

e. , the pasture-ground of the land of Israel (cf. Joe 1:19), and the head of the forest-crowned Carmel, will fade and wither. Carmel is the oft-recurring promontory at the mouth of the Kishon on the Mediterranean (see the comm. on Jos 19:26 and 1Ki 18:19), and not the place called Carmel on the mountains of Judah (Jos 15:55), to which the term ראשׁ (head) is inapplicable (vid.

, Amo 9:3 and Mic 7:14). Shepherds’ pastures and Carmel individualized the land of Israel in a manner that was very natural to Amos the shepherd. With this introduction, Amos announces the theme of his prophecies. And if, instead of proceeding at once to describe still further the judgment that threatens the kingdom of Israel, he first of all enumerates the surrounding nations, including Judah, as objects of the manifestation of the wrath of God, this enumeration cannot have any other object than the one described in our survey of the contents of the book.

The enumeration opens with the kingdoms of Aram, Philistia, and Tyre (Phoenicia), which were not related to Israel by any ties of kinship whatever.

The Prophet. - Amos (עמוס, i. e. , Bearer or Burden), according to the heading to his book, was “among the shepherds ( nōqedı̄m ) of Tekoah” when the Lord called him to be a prophet; that is to say, he was a native of Tekoah, a town situated on the borders of the desert of Judah, two hours to the south of Bethlehem, the ruins of which have been preserved under the ancient name (see at Jos 15:59, lxx), and lived with the shepherds who fed their sheep in the steppe to the east of Tekoah; of course not as a rich owner of flocks, but simply as a shepherd.

For even though nōqēd is applied to the Moabitish king in 2Ki 3:4 as a rich owner of a choice breed of sheep and goats, the word properly signifies only a rearer of sheep, i. e. , not merely the owner, but the shepherd of choice sheep, as Bochart ( Hieroz. i. p. 483, ed. Ros.) has proved from the Arabic. But Amos himself affirms, in Amo 7:14, that he was a simple shepherd.

He there replies to the priest at Bethel, who wanted to prevent him from prophesying in the kingdom of Israel: “I am not a prophet, nor yet a prophet’s pupil, but a herdman ( bōqēd ) am I, and bōlēs shiqmı̄m , a gatherer of sycamores” (see at Amo 7:14), - i. e. , one who fed upon this fruit, which resembles figs, and is described by Pliny ( hist. n. 13, 14), as praedulcis , but which, according to Strabo, xvii.

823 (ἄτιμος κατὰ τὴν γεῦσιν), was very lightly esteemed as food, and also, according to Dioscor. , was ἄτιμος καὶ κακοστόμαχος, and which is only used in Egypt as the food of the common people (Norden, Reise , p. 118). Consequently we have to regard Amos as a shepherd living in indigent circumstances, not as a prosperous man possessing both a flock of sheep and a sycamore plantation, which many commentators, following the Chaldee and the Rabbins, have made him out to be.

Without having dedicated himself to the calling of a prophet, and without even being trained in the schools of the prophets, he was called by the Lord away from the flock to be a prophet, to prophesy concerning Israel (Amo 7:14-15), under the Judaean king Uzziah and the Israelitish king Jeroboam II, i. e. , within the twenty-six years of the contemporaneous rule of these two kings, or between 810 and 783 b.

c. Amos therefore commenced his prophetic labours about the same time as Hosea, probably a few years earlier, and prophesied in Bethel, the chief seat of the Israelitish image-worship (Amo 7:10). We cannot fix with any greater exactness either the time of his appearing or the duration of his ministry; for the notice in Amo 1:1, “two years before the earthquake,” furnishes no chronological datum, because the time of the earthquake is unknown.

It is never mentioned in the historical books of the Old Testament, though it can hardly be any other than the terrible earthquake in the time of Uzziah, which the people had not forgotten even after the captivity, inasmuch as Zechariah was able to recal the flight that took place on that occasion (Zec 14:5). As Amos has not given the date of the earthquake, his evident intention was not to fix the time when his ministry commenced, or when his book was composed, but simply to point to the internal connection between this event and his own prophetic mission.

According to the teaching of Scripture, the earth quakes when the Lord comes to judgment upon the nations (see at Amo 8:8). The earthquake which shook Jerusalem two years after the appearance of Amos as the prophet, was a harbinger of the judgment threatened by Him against the two kingdoms of Israel and the surrounding nations, - a practical declaration on the part of God that He would verify the word of His servant; and the allusion to this divine sign on the part of the prophet was an admonition to Israel to lay to heart the word of the Lord which he had announced to them.

So far as the explanation and importance of his prophecies were concerned, it was enough to mention the kings of Judah and Israel in whose reigns he prophesied. Under these kings the two kingdoms stood at the summit of their prosperity. Uzziah had completely subdued the Edomites, had subjugated the Philistines, and had even made the Ammonites tributary. He had also fortified Jerusalem strongly, and had raised a powerful army; so that his name reached as far as Egypt (2 Chronicles 26).

And Jeroboam had completely overcome the Syrians, and restored the original borders of the kingdom from the country of Hamath to the Dead Sea (2Ki 14:25-28). After the power of the Syrians had been broken, Israel had no longer any foe to fear, for Assyria had not yet arisen as a conquering power. The supposition that Calneh or Ctesiphon is represented in Amo 6:2 as having already been taken (by the Assyrians), rests upon an incorrect interpretation, and is just as erroneous as the inference, also drawn from the same passage, that Hamath was conquered and Gath destroyed.

Amos does not mention the Assyrians at all; although in Amo 1:5 he threatens the Syrians with transportation to Kir, and in Amo 5:27 predicts that the Israelites will be carried into captivity beyond Damascus. In the existing state of things, the idea of the approaching fall or destruction of the kingdom of Israel was, according to human judgment, a very improbable one indeed.

The inhabitants of Samaria and Zion felt themselves perfectly secure in the consciousness of their might (Amo 6:1). The rulers of the kingdom trusted in the strength of their military resources (Amo 6:13), and were only concerned to increase their wealth by oppressing the poor, and to revel in earthly luxuries and pleasures (Amo 2:6-8; Amo 5:11-12; Amo 6:4-6); so that the prophet denounces woes upon those who are in security upon Zion and without care upon the mountain of Samaria (Amo 6:1), and utters the threat that the Lord will cause the sun to set at noon, and bring darkness over the land in broad daylight (Amo 8:9).

It was at such a time as this that the plain shepherd of Tekoah was sent to Bethel, into the kingdom of the ten tribes, to announce to the careless sinners the approach of the divine judgment, and the destruction of the kingdom. And whilst it was in itself a strange event for a prophet to be sent out of Judah into the kingdom of the ten tribes, - so strange, in fact, that in all probability it had never occurred since the kingdom had been founded, or at any rate, that no second instance of the kind is recorded, from the time when the man of God was sent out of Judah to Bethel in the reign of Jeroboam I (1 Kings 13), down to the time of Amos himself-it must have attracted universal attention, for a man to rise up who belonged to the rank of a shepherd, who had had no training at all for a prophet’s vocation, but who nevertheless proved, by the demonstration of the Spirit, that he was a prophet indeed, and who foretold, in the strength of God, what destruction awaited the covenant people, before there was the slightest human probability of any such catastrophe.

The prophet’s style of composition does indeed betray the former shepherd in the use of certain words, which evidently belonged to the dialect of the common people, - e. g. , מעיק for מציק (Amo 2:13), בּושׁס for בּוסס (Amo 5:11), מתאב for מתעב rof מ (Amo 6:8), מסרף for משׂרף (Amo 6:10), ישׂחק for יצחק (Amo 7:9, Amo 7:16), נשׁקה for נשׁקעה (Amo 8:8), and in many figures and similes drawn from nature and rural life; but for the rest, it indicates a close acquaintance on the part of the prophet with the Mosaic law and the history of his nation, and also considerable rhetorical power, wealth and depth of thought, vivacity and vigour, more especially in the use of bold antitheses, and a truly poetical roll, which rises by no means unfrequently into actual rhythm; so that Lowth has already expressed the following opinion concerning him ( De poesi sacr.

ed. Mich. p. 433): “Aequus judex, de re non de homine quaesiturus, censebit, credo, pastorem nostrum μηφὲν ὑστερηκέναι τῶν ὑπερλίαν προφητῶν sensuum elatione et magnificentia spiritus prope summis parem, ita etiam dictionis splendore et compositionis elegantia vix quoquam inferiorem. ” Beyond these facts, which we gather from the prophet’s won writings, nothing further is known of the circumstances connected with his life.

After fulfilling his mission, he probably returned to Judah, his native land, where his prophecies were most likely first committed to writing. The apocryphal accounts of his death, in Pseud. -Epiphanius, c. 12, and Pseudo-Doroth. (see Carpzov, p. 319), have no historical value whatever. 2. The Book. - Although Amos was sent by the Lord to Bethel, to prophesy to the people of Israel there, he does not restrict himself in his prophecy to the kingdom of the ten tribes, but, like his younger contemporary Hosea, notices the kingdom of Judah as well, and even the surrounding nations, that were hostile to the covenant nation.

His book is not a mere collection of the addresses delivered in Bethel, but a carefully planned, complete work, in which Amos, after the occurrence of the earthquake in the time of Uzziah, gathered together all the essential contents of the prophecies he had previously uttered at Bethel. It consists of a lengthy introduction (Amo 1:1-15, 2) and two parts, viz.

, simple prophetic addresses (ch. 4-6), and visions with short explanations (ch. 7). In the introduction the prophet proclaims, in the following manner, the judgment about to fall upon Damascus, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Judah, and Israel. The storm of the Lord, which bursts upon all these kingdoms, remains suspended over the kingdom of Israel, which is mentioned last.

This is evident from the fact, that the sin of Israel is depicted more fully than that of the other nations; and the threatening of judgment is couched in such general terms, that it can only be regarded as a provisional announcement, or as the introduction to the body of the book by which it is followed. The first part contains an extended address, divided into three sections by the recurrence of שׁמעוּ (hear ye) in Amo 3:1; Amo 4:1, and Amo 5:1.

The address consists of a “great warning to repent,” in which the prophet holds up before the sinful Israelites, especially the rulers of the kingdom, the arts of injustice and wickedness that are current among them, and proclaims a judgment which embraces the destruction of the palaces and holy places, the overthrow of the kingdom, and the transportation of the people. In Amo 3:1-15 the sin and punishment are described in the most general form.

In Amo 4:1-13 the prophet sweeps away from the self-secure sinners the false ground of confidence afforded by their own worship, recals to their mind the judgments with which God has already visited them, and summons them to stand before God as their judge. In ch. 5 and Amo 6:1-14, after a mournful elegy concerning the fall of the house of Israel (Amo 5:1-3), he points out to the penitent the way to life coupled with the repeated summons to seek the Lord, and that which is good (Amo 5:4, Amo 5:6, Amo 5:14); and then, in the form of a woe, for which a double reason is assigned (Amo 5:18; Amo 6:1), he takes away all hope of deliverance from the impenitent and hardened.

Throughout the whole of this address Amos prophesies chiefly to the ten tribes, whom he repeatedly addresses, predicting ruin and exile. At the same time, he not only addresses his words in the introduction (Amo 3:1-2) to all Israel of the twelve tribes, whom Jehovah brought out of Egypt, but he also pronounces the last woe (Amo 6:1) upon the secure ones on Zion, and the careless ones on the mountain of Samaria; so that his prophecy also applies to the kingdom of Judah, and sets before it the same fate as that of the kingdom of the ten tribes, if it should fall into the same sin.

The second part contains five visions, and at the close the proclamation of salvation. the first two visions (Amo 7:1-3 and Amo 7:4-6) threaten judgments; the next two (Amo 7:7-9; Amo 8:1-3) point out the impossibility of averting the judgment, and the ripeness of the people for it. Between these, viz. , in Amo 7:10-17, the conversation between the prophet and the chief priest at Bethel is related.

The substance of the fourth vision is carried out still further, in a simple prophetic address (Amo 8:4-14). Lastly, the fifth vision (Amo 9:1) shows the overthrow and ruin of the whole of Israel, and is also still further expanded in a plain address (Amo 9:2-10). To this there is appended the promise of the restoration of the fallen kingdom of God, of its extension through the adoption of the Gentiles, and of its eternal glorification (Amo 9:11-15).

This conclusion corresponds to the introduction (Amo 1:1-15 and 2). Like all the nations that rise up in hostility to the kingdom of God, even Judah and Israel shall fall victims to the judgment, on account of their unrighteousness and idolatry, in order that the kingdom of God may be purified from its dross, be exalted to glory, and so be made perfect. This is the fundamental thought of the writings of Amos, who was called by the Lord to preach this truth to the nation of Israel.

And just as the close of his book points back to the introduction (Amo 1:1-15 and 2), so also do the visions of the second part correspond to the addresses of the first, embodying the substance of the addresses in significant symbols. The parallel between the fifth vision and the elegy struck up in Amo 5:1 is very conspicuous; and it is also impossible to overlook the material agreement between the first and second visions and the enumeration in Amo 4:6-11, of the divine visitations that had already fallen upon Israel; whilst the third and fourth visions set clearly before the eye the irrevocable character of the judgments with which careless and wanton sinners are threatened in ch.

3-6. There is evidently no foundation for the assumption that the second part contains “the true kernel of his work,” namely, “the addresses which Amos originally delivered at Bethel;” and that the first part, together with the introduction (ch. 1-6) and the Messianic conclusion (Amo 9:11-15), is purely a written description, composed by Amos after his return from Bethel to Judah, to give a further expansion to his original utterances (Ewald, Baur).

This by no means follows, either from the fact that the account of what the prophet experienced at Bethel is inserted in the series of visions, as it moves on step by step, and that the place in which it occurs (viz. , ch. 7) is evidently its original position, or from the circumstance that Amos commences his work with a saying of Joel (compare Amo 1:2 with Joe 3:16), and evidently refers to Joel (Joe 3:18) even in the promise at the close (Amo 9:13).

For the position of this account in ch. 7 proves nothing further than that Amos related those visions in Bethel; and the allusion to Joel simply presupposes an acquaintance with the predictions of this prophet. If there were no previous addresses, the visions in ch. 7 and 8 would have nothing to explain their occurrence, and would also be lacking in the requisite clearness.

Moreover, the work of Amos in Bethel cannot possibly be limited to ch. 7-9. And lastly, the addresses in ch. 4-6 are throughout so individual, so full of life, and so impressive, that they clearly reflect the original oral delivery, even though it may be nothing more than the essential substance of what was orally delivered, that has been given here. Only Amo 1:1-15 and 2 appears to have been really conceived in the form of a written composition, and placed at the head of the book at the time when it was first compiled, although certain thoughts that had been orally expressed may lie at the foundation even there.

For the exegetical writings upon Amos, see my Lehrbuch der Einleitung , pp. 284-5. Starting from the saying of Joel (Joe 3:16), “Jehovah will roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem,” Amos announces the wrath of the Lord, which will discharge itself upon Damascus (Amo 1:3-5), Philistia (Amo 1:6-8), Tyre (Amo 1:9-10), Edom (Amo 1:11-12), Ammon (Amo 1:13-15), Moab (Amo 2:1-3), Judah (Amo 2:4-5), and Israel (Amo 2:6-16).

The announcement of this judgment maintains a certain uniformity throughout; every one of these nations being threatened with the destruction of the kingdom, or with ruin and exile, “for three or four transgressions;” and the threat, as Rückert has well expressed it, “rolling like a storm, in strophe after strophe, over all the surrounding kingdoms,” touching Judah as it passes along, and eventually resting over Israel. The six heathen nations mentioned, three of which are related to the covenant nation, represent all the Gentile nations, which rise up in hostility to the people or kingdom of God.

For the sins on account of which they are to be punished, are not certain general breaches of morality, but crimes which they have committed against the people of God; and in the case of Judah, contempt of the commandments of the Lord, and idolatry. The whole section, not merely Amos 1:2-2:5, but also Amo 2:6-16, has an introductory character. Whilst, on the one hand, the extension of the prediction of judgment to the Gentile nations indicates the necessity and universality of the judgment, which is sent to promote the interests of the kingdom of God, and preaches the truth that every one will be judged according to his attitude towards the living God; on the other hand, the place assigned to the Gentile nations, viz.

, before the covenant nation, not only sharpened the conscience, but taught this lesson, that if even the nations which had only sinned indirectly against the living God were visited with severe punishment, those to whom God had so gloriously revealed Himself (Amo 2:9-11; Amo 3:1) would be punished still more surely for their apostasy (Amo 3:2). It is with this design that Judah is also mentioned along with Israel, and in fact before it.

“The intention was to impress this truth most strongly upon the people of the ten tribes, that not even the possession of such glorious prerogatives as the temple and the throne of David could avert the merited punishment. If this be the energy of the justice of God, what have we to look for? ” (Hengstenberg). Amo 1:1-2 Amo 1:1 contains the heading, which has already been discussed in the Introduction; and אשׁר חזה ( “which he saw” ) refers to דּברי עמוס ( the words of Amos ).

Amo 1:2 forms the Introduction, which is attached to the heading by ויּאמר, and announces a revelation of the wrath of God upon Israel, or a theocratic judgment. Amo 1:2. “Jehovah roars out of Zion, and He utters His voice from Jerusalem; and the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the head of Carmel withers. ” The voice of Jehovah is the thunder, the earthly substratum in which the Lord manifests His coming to judgment (see at Joe 3:16).

By the adoption of the first half of the verse word for word from Joel, Amos connects his prophecy with that of his predecessor, not so much with the intention of confirming the latter, as for the purpose of alarming the sinners who were at east in their security, and overthrowing the delusive notion that the judgment of God would only fall upon the heathen world. This delusion he meets with the declaration, that at the threatening of the wrath of God the pastures of the shepherds, i.

e. , the pasture-ground of the land of Israel (cf. Joe 1:19), and the head of the forest-crowned Carmel, will fade and wither. Carmel is the oft-recurring promontory at the mouth of the Kishon on the Mediterranean (see the comm. on Jos 19:26 and 1Ki 18:19), and not the place called Carmel on the mountains of Judah (Jos 15:55), to which the term ראשׁ (head) is inapplicable (vid.

, Amo 9:3 and Mic 7:14). Shepherds’ pastures and Carmel individualized the land of Israel in a manner that was very natural to Amos the shepherd. With this introduction, Amos announces the theme of his prophecies. And if, instead of proceeding at once to describe still further the judgment that threatens the kingdom of Israel, he first of all enumerates the surrounding nations, including Judah, as objects of the manifestation of the wrath of God, this enumeration cannot have any other object than the one described in our survey of the contents of the book.

The enumeration opens with the kingdoms of Aram, Philistia, and Tyre (Phoenicia), which were not related to Israel by any ties of kinship whatever.

Amo 1:3-5 Aram-Damascus. - Amo 1:3. “Thus saith Jehovah, For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I shall not reverse it, because they have threshed Gilead with iron rollers, Amo 1:4. I send fire into the house of Hazael, and it will eat the palaces of Ben-hadad, Amo 1:5. And break in pieces the bolt of Damascus, and root out the inhabitant from the valley of Aven, and the sceptre-holder out of Beth-eden: and the people of Aram will wander into captivity to Kir, saith Jehovah.

” In the formula, which is repeated in the case of every people, “for three transgressions, and for four,” the numbers merely serve to denote the multiplicity of the sins, the exact number of which has no bearing upon the matter. “The number four is added to the number three, to characterize the latter as simply set down at pleasure; in other words, it is as much as to say that the number is not exactly three or four, but probably a still larger number” (Hitzig).

The expression, therefore, denotes not a small but a large number of crimes, or “ungodliness in its worst form” (Luther; see at Hos 6:2). That these numbers are to be understood in this way, and not to be taken in a literal sense, is unquestionably evident from the fact, that nit he more precise account of the sins which follows, as a rule, only one especially grievous crime is mentioned by way of example.

לא אשׁיבנּוּ (I will not reverse it) is inserted before the more minute description of the crimes, to show that the threat is irrevocable. השׁיב signifies to turn, i. e. , to make a thing go back, to withdraw it, as in Num 23:20; Isa 43:13. The suffix attached to אשׁיבנּוּ refers neither to qōlō (his voice), nor “to the idea of דּבר which is implied in כּה אמר (thus saith), or the substance of the threatening thunder-voice” (Baur); for hēshı̄bh dâbhâr signifies to give an answer, and never to make a word ineffectual.

The reference is to the punishment threatened afterwards, where the masculine stands in the place of the neuter. Consequently the close of the verse contains the epexegesis of the first clause, and Amo 1:4 and Amo 1:5 follow with the explanation of לא אשׁיבנו (I will not turn it). The threshing of the Gileadites with iron threshing-machines is mentioned as the principal transgression of the Syrian kingdom, which is here named after the capital Damascus (see at 2Sa 8:6).

This took place at the conquest of the Israelitish land to the east of the Jordan by Hazael during the reign of Jehu (2Ki 10:32-33, cf. 2Ki 13:7), when the conquerors acted so cruelly towards the Gileadites, that they even crushed the prisoners to pieces with iron threshing-machines, according to a barbarous war-custom that is met with elsewhere (see at 2Sa 12:31).

Chârūts (= chârı̄ts , 2Sa 12:31), lit. , sharpened, is a poetical term applied to the threshing-roller, or threshing-cart ( mōrag chârūts , Isa 41:15). According to Jerome, it was “a kind of cart with toothed iron wheels underneath, which was driven about to crush the straw in the threshing-floors after the grain had been beaten out. ” The threat is individualized historically thus: in the case of the capital, the burning of the palaces is predicted; and in that of two other places, the destruction of the people and their rulers; so that both of them apply to both, or rather to the whole kingdom.

The palaces of Hazael and Benhadad are to be sought for in Damascus, the capital of the kingdom (Jer 49:27). Hazael was the murderer of Benhadad I, to whom the prophet Elisha foretold that he would reign over Syria, and predicted the cruelties that he would practise towards Israel (2Ki 8:7.) Benhadad is generally regarded as his son; but the plural “palaces” leads us rather to think of both the first and second Benhadad, and this is favoured by the circumstance that it was only during his father’s reign that Benhadad II oppressed Israel, whereas after his death, and when he himself ascended the throne, the conquered provinces were wrested from him by Joash king of Israel (2Ki 13:22-25).

The breaking of the bar (the bolt of the gate) denotes the conquest of the capital; and the cutting off of the inhabitants of Biq‛ath - Aven indicates the slaughter connected with the capture of the towns, and not their deportation; for hikhrı̄th means to exterminate, so that gâlâh (captivity) in the last clause applies to the remainder of the population that had not been slain in war. In the parallel clause תּומך שׁבם, the sceptre-holder, i.

e. , the ruler (either the king or his deputy), corresponds to yōshēbh (the inhabitant); and the thought expressed is, that both prince and people, both high and low, shall perish. The two places, Valley-Aven and Beth-Eden , cannot be discovered with any certainty; but at any rate they were capitals, and possibly they may have been the seat of royal palaces as well as Damascus, which was the first capital of the kingdom.

בּקעת און, valley of nothingness, or of idols, is supposed by Ewald and Hitzig to be a name given to Heliopolis or Baalbek, after the analogy of Beth-aven = Bethel (see at Hos 5:8). They base their opinion upon the Alex. rendering ἐκ πεδίου Ὦν, taken in connection with the Alex. interpretation of the Egyptian On (Gen 41:45) as Heliopolis. But as the lxx have interpreted אן by Heliopolis in the book of Genesis, whereas here they have merely reproduced the Hebrew letters און by Ὦν, as they have in other places as well (e.

g. , Hos 4:15; Hos 5:8; Hos 10:5, Hos 10:8), where Heliopolis cannot for a moment be thought of, the πέδιον Ὦν of the lxx furnishes no evidence in favour of Heliopolis, still less does it warrant an alteration of the Hebrew pointing (into און). Even the Chaldee and Syriac have taken בּקעת און as a proper name, and Ephraem Syrus speaks of it as “a place in the neighbourhood of Damascus, distinguished for idol-chapels.

” The supposition that it is a city is also favoured by the analogy of the other threatenings, in which, for the most part, cities only are mentioned. Others understand by it the valley near Damascus, or the present Bekaa between Lebanon and Antilibanus, in which Heliopolis was always the most distinguished city, and Robinson has pronounced in favour of this ( Bibl.

Res. p. 677). Bēth - ‛Eden , i. e. , house of delight, is not to be sought for in the present village of Eden, on the eastern slope of Lebanon, near to the cedar forest of Bshirrai, as the Arabic name of this village 'hdn has nothing in common with the Hebrew עדן (see at 2Ki 19:12); but it is the Παράδεισος of the Greeks, which Ptolemy places ten degrees south and five degrees east of Laodicea, and which Robinson imagines that he has found in Old Jusieh, not far from Ribleh, a place belonging to the times before the Saracens, with very extensive ruins (see Bibl.

Researches , pp. 542-6, and 556). The rest of the population of Aram would be carried away to Kir , i. e. , to the country on the banks of the river Kur , from which, according to Amo 9:7, the Syrians originally emigrated. This prediction was fulfilled when the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser conquered Damascus in the time of Ahaz, and broke up the kingdom of Syria (2Ki 16:9).

The closing words, 'âmar Yehōvâh (saith the Lord), serve to add strength to the threat, and therefore recur in Amo 1:8, Amo 1:15, and Amo 2:3.