Commentarius In Amos Prophetam

COMMENTARY ON THE PROPHET AMOS.

With the exposition of Saint Joel, as far as our capacity allowed, brought to completion with God's help, we are called, by the very sequence of our task, to the gentle prophet who is called Amos, a man who glories no less in the lowliness of his lineage than in the eminence of his virtue. For, supported by no distinctions of his parents, he obtained by his own merits alone to be placed in the number of the prophets—of the prophets, I say, who furnished not only the teaching of the Synagogue but also the foundation of the Church, as the teacher of the Gentiles bears witness, who commends the Church as built upon the doctrine of the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2). Therefore to that company, radiant with the light of the stars, he advanced, though with no assistance from illustrious birth, yet by the progress of his character, as we have said, and of his whole holy life; and he was abundantly ready to prove by his own example, even had he taught nothing in speech, that for grasping the true glory of blessedness, devotion and piety of mind sufficed, since neither poverty nor obscurity could furnish him with an impediment. And since we have learned how great he merited to be, let us hear what he taught.

CHAPTER ONE.

Verse 1. — The words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Tekoa: which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake, and he said. It must first be noted that the times of this prophet are the same as those of the preceding prophets, namely Hosea and Joel, since at that very time impiety was still prevailing to the utmost among the ten tribes, which are called Israel, and, as it were, with the eyes of discernment entirely gouged out, the people loved the darkness with which they had clothed themselves, so that they paid no regard at all to either saving admonitions or severe blows, but, joining shamelessness to impiety, they seemed to embrace their sins and their miseries alike. Since therefore our Lord, girding Himself for the office of vengeance, foretold this very thing in various ways—inasmuch as His intent was to move them to correction rather than to punishment—He foretells what He knows He will bring upon them. Two years, He says, before the land was shaken by a prodigious quaking; that this happened, although the history of the Kings does not disclose it, we are nonetheless satisfied to have on the authority of the prophet himself; nor do we doubt that the commotion of the lands, the herald of coming calamity, came first. Therefore, through the intervals of time interposed, which deferred the vengeance to a later date, the people is admonished to think of amendment, and by the very display of terror, lest they begin to experience the full weight of that terror.

But this dispensation, since it profits them nothing, leaves them deprived not only of security but even of excuse. The preacher himself, however, who is exalted by the greatness of his revelations, must be observed in his lowliness; for that dignity by which he became illustrious he attained by the testimony of his character alone, not of his birth, as others did (whose ancestors, that is, are set forth in their titles), yet he did not conceal the lowly diligence by which he was a herdsman, but signified that he had always occupied himself in feeding flocks in Tekoa. Now Tekoa is said to be a small village, in which a multitude of shepherds dwells, separated from the city of Bethlehem by seven miles, after which a vast wilderness already stretches all the way to the Ocean. Therefore, among shepherds who frequent uncultivated places but places suited to flocks, he commends himself as having been raised, lest by occasion of his new office he should seem puffed up and think anything too highly of himself. This purpose of earnest frugality he also unfolded in the course of the work, saying: I was not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd gathering fruit from the brambles: and the Lord took me and sent me to prophesy. This, moreover, is the virtue of modesty which the Teacher of the Gentiles also showed when he says: Lest I be exalted by the greatness of revelations, there was given to me a thorn in my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me. For this I besought the Lord three times, that it might depart from me, and he said to me: My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12).

Therefore it was made clear to the prophetic eyes that that shaking of the earth was of force to signify the convulsion of empire, and that the roar of the Lord in his anger is referred to this.

Verse 2. — And from Jerusalem, he says, he will give your voice — that voice, namely, which was suited to his wrath, not that he raged by nature. Therefore the trembling of the world declares the eternal judge, whose vehemence was so great that at once the greenness of the grass and, not only for men but even for the flocks, their food was withdrawn; for he called the lovely pastures of the shepherds "beautiful," and he willed that the dried summit of Carmel be of force for the same signification. For shepherds are accustomed to seek summer pasturage especially on the summits of hills; declaring that all these things would be dried up by that shaking of the earth, he seems also to have touched on something that has happened by natural opinion. For many who have been curious investigators of such matters in these affairs opine that dryness proves the causes of earthquakes, and they attempt to prove it by examples and to persuade it by arguments. But it is not necessary now to unfold these to you, yet I have briefly noted this, because the shaking, scarcely begun, brought a twofold blow.

But whether that great shaking created dryness, as it were, by the channels of the fountains being thrown into confusion, this looks to the power of the Creator, at whose nod the elements serve; or whether, going before, the failure of moisture first made the earth dry up and afterwards also made it tremble, and so, with the pastures perishing, the hardships of drought were laid open: nonetheless it shows the same power of the judge, who, as by his loving-kindness he holds together what he created, so by the same, when there is need, he throws it into confusion in his indignation. By tropology, however, we could think that by the name of shepherds the chiefs and kings of different nations are indicated, and the summit of Carmel that power which they held while they lived prosperously, especially since the discourse of this prophet is also directed to different nations; but the former explanation is both simpler and more suited to the histories, if we say that different kinds of afflictions pressed upon the profane, but now let us see what the avenger of my bed cries out.

Verses 3–5. — "For three crimes of Damascus, and for four I will not turn him away, because they threshed Gilead with iron carts. And I will send fire into the house of Azahel, and it will devour the houses of Benadab. And I will break the bar of Damascus, and I will destroy the inhabitant from the fields of the idol, and the one holding the scepter from the house of pleasure and luxury, and the people of Syria will be transferred to Cyrene, says the Lord." We know, says the Apostle, that whatever the law says, it says to those who are in the law (Rom. 3:19). Since therefore it was also the prophets' purpose to reprove the crimes of the people living under the law, and blessed Amos was insisting especially on the ten tribes who are called Israel, yet by a dispensation and by reason of a manifold counsel our God made mention also of other nations, which he settles by the reckoning of fair judgment; just as also the people of the Jews, arrogant from the very fact that they had much against the merits of their life, because they lived set apart from the rest. For when they hear that neighboring nations also are called to examination no less diligently than their own tribes, they understand assuredly that there is one founder and Lord of all nations. In that very thing, therefore, in which the grief of the Israelites is avenged upon the neighboring nations, their pride is at once brought down, so that they may finally perceive that God is not only of the Jews but also of the Gentiles: since the zeal of no people is stripped bare by the prices of weak consolation or vengeance.

Finally he shows how much more inclined he is to spare, who rises to anger with such great difficulty that a single fault never moves him in turn, unless three or four have come together. Yet this number is taught to have been taken for an infinite quantity, so that it signifies not truly four crimes but many. Moreover he marks that he has the same zeal for forgiving even toward other nations, since he excuses his own stirring by the likeness of another's iniquity. "For three crimes of Damascus," he says, "and for four I will not turn him away, because they threshed Gilead with iron carts." He acted, he says, by the justice coeternal with my throne, that I should at last assume the office of the judge, and by the horror of it teach myself at once the manifold and shameless cruelty, the state of the guilty being turned to sorrow. For not once only, nor a second time, has the people of Damascus laid waste the fields of Israel, but very often. But Gilead he crushed with iron carts and threshing sledges, so that he thought it a pleasing spectacle that, like ears of grain and stalks, the limbs of the inhabitants should be ground everywhere across the fields.

Therefore, because I could not and ought not to endure this savagery unpunished for so long, I will send fire into the house of Azahel, king of Damascus, and it will devour the houses of Benadab, who succeeded his father Azahel in the kingdom; and I will break the bar of Damascus and destroy the inhabitant from the plains of the idol, and the one holding the scepter from the house of pleasure—that is, I will involve the profane inhabitants of those places, or the chief men and nobles, who spent all their time in pleasures, in the evils of captivity. And so that they may not be ignorant of that captivity, or presume on the hope of return, when they see their own buildings have fallen in ruin, they themselves will be led to the fields of Cyrene. But in the book of Kings we have read that these kings whom the prophet mentions—that is, Azahel and Benadab—harassed the ten tribes with how frequent an incursion, and brought them to the extremes of misery. Therefore, lest that victory should seem to have fallen to the Syrians prosperously, he makes it the cause there of the calamities and punishments which are described. But now let us proceed to the rest.

Verses 6–8. — These things says the Lord: For three crimes of Gaza, and for four I will not turn him away; because he carried away a perfect captivity, to shut it up in Idumaea. And I will send fire upon the wall of Gaza, and it shall devour her houses, and I will destroy the inhabitant from Azotus, and the one holding the scepter from Ascalon; and I will turn my hand against Accaron, and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish, says the Lord. In the same order of narration which he had also kept above against Damascus, he enumerates the crimes and punishments of the city of Gaza as well; and he assumes, as it were, the appearance of one inquiring whether he ought to maintain such long patience toward men so clinging to crimes that they would think they had perpetrated nothing cruelly unless they had doubled it three and four times, and had maintained a wondrous ambition in wrongdoing; and that they not only fed upon their own crimes but also upon those of others. For he took care that the Idumaeans, that is, the descendants of Esau, whom history records to have been the brother of the blessed Jacob (Genesis 23), should exact penalties from the people of the Jews. These men, then, says the prophet, who from parricidal hatred disagreed with us, though he was joined by blood, was using the aid of the Gazaeans, nor did that fierce nation bestow its own advantage, my blood, upon foreign hatreds: raging against me only so far as the parricides deemed sufficient.

But how he will wipe out this profession of malice, he shows: And I will send fire upon the wall of Gaza, and it shall devour her houses, and I will destroy the inhabitant from Azotus, and the one holding the scepter from Ascalon, and I will turn my hand against Accaron, and the rest of the Philistines shall perish, says the Lord. By occasion of one city he has run through the names of other towns as well, about which we frequently read in the history of the Kings that they had almost continuous conflicts with the people of the Jews. These are moreover those who, after the army of the Jews was slain, carried off the Ark of the Testament as if captive to the shrine of the idol whose name was Dagon (1 Kings 3 and following). Yet after he had shown its power both by the shattering of the statue of Dagon and by the calamity of the people that followed, they sent it back with the rites due to it; nor indeed did they receive the worship of God through such miracles, but they persisted in their monstrous ways and rites. These, then, raging against the people of God with unceasing hatred, whenever they could not wage war in their own name, joined their forces and arms with greater enemies; especially at that time when the Assyrians burst into the territories of the Jews, the prophet complains that he was worn down by them, as we are discussing, and shows that all the nations by which the Jews were surrounded labored for their destruction as if with rival zeal.

Therefore, in their time of adversity, you too added heaps of evils, and the misery of those near to them did not stir in you a nearer affection—that is, of mercy—but rather of cruelty; you will learn the magnitude of your crime, since you were unwilling to consider it by reason, at least by the vengeance that hangs over you. For the fire of assault, once sent in, will devour not only roofs but even groves—that is, consuming ornaments and defenses alike. And so it will destroy your inhabitants in slaughter, that no exception may be found even among the nobles holding scepters, who were truly supported either by power or distinguished by the delights and pleasure of this life, so that they could even be called kings; but I will stretch out the hand of my hostility over all, so that even the remnants of the Philistines may be consumed, and one devastation may rage from the highest to the lowest. This is also what the preceding prophet signified, accusing Tyre and Sidon and all the borders of the Palestinians, because they had carried off silver and gold and all things precious from the territories of Israel, and had sold the sons of the people, born into freedom, to Greek and barbarian merchants, so that, carried far from their ancestral regions, they might endure exile and slavery together.

Verses 9–10. — Thus says the Lord: For three crimes of Tyre, and for four I will not turn him away, because they shut up a complete captivity in Idumaea, and did not remember the covenant of brothers. And I will send fire upon the wall of Tyre, and it shall devour her houses. He accuses Tyre of the same crime that he had recently charged against Gaza—namely, that she hastened to shut up not some brief portion but a complete captivity in Idumaea, so as to fill the Idumaean people with the perils of the Jews, out of hatred, that is, of a hostile brother. Therefore vengeance will come, which will both fashion and surpass the form of your crime: for you, as it were, stirred up burning envy to the destruction of your brothers with your goads, and you did not remember—that is, you were utterly unwilling to consider—that covenant which nature itself established between brothers, whose praise in loving would not be so great as the crime of hating them; but as though they were utter strangers, and known to them neither by speech nor by reputation, you stirred them up not only to quarrels but even to battles. Accordingly, burning vengeance will duly seize upon you, and the vast pleasures in which you had exulted, made infamous, will be changed into horrible filth; and it will bring such devastation that both the foundations and the summits of the lofty tower and wall shall be ashes.

Verses 11–12. — Thus says the Lord: For three crimes of Edom, and for four I will not turn him away, because he pursued his brother with the sword, and would not show him mercy, and held back his fury, and kept his indignation to the end. I will send fire upon Teman, and it shall devour the dwellings of Bosra. He follows the order of the discourse he has begun, and brings various nations under reproof, which he knew to be joined to the Jews no less by crimes than by borders. Rightly, moreover, after Tyre he places the Idumaeans, because they too burned with parricidal wickedness against the Jews. For what he had declared in the case of Tyre to be punishable—namely, that they had aided the raging Idumaeans with their counsels, so that they might more easily feed on the miseries of brothers—consequently he now reproves the Edomites themselves for the same crimes, and appoints them for vengeance; lest he who had declared to their allies that the penalties of their faults must be repaid should seem to have spared those who were the authors of the crime. He says, therefore, that since the people had offended not once but often with a parricidal spirit, even if the fault would surely deserve pardon, it demanded unceasing deadly vengeance. For he pursued his brother not with quarreling but with the sword, and forgot the mercy of kinship which brotherhood demanded.

Nor, content to have raged in a kind of outburst of indignation, he says, did he spend a long time in wickedness. But he added great weight to the accusation by saying: And he held his fury beyond measure, and kept his indignation even to the end. For he not only departed from the customs of brothers by pursuing his brother in battles, but he did not even keep the custom of those whom he incited to bloody contests with the torches of his indignation. For he raged in such a way as if about to cease quickly; he persevered in hatred in such a way as if moved more by justice than by fury. Justly, therefore, he will suffer the fire that is to abide with him even to the consummation: so that both cities and fortresses, just as they had been defiled by the same crimes, may likewise be altered by the same calamities. But by many names—that is, Edom and Teman and Bozrah—he indicates one people, namely Esau, who had Bozrah as their capital city by name. He says, then, that these are to be conquered both by battle and by siege, and are to suffer savage treatment at the will of the conquerors, and are to perish by slaughters and burnings: all of which are taught to have been brought upon them partly by the Chaldeans, partly by the Maccabees.

Verses 13–15. — Thus says the Lord: For three crimes of the children of Ammon, and for four I will not turn him away, because he cut open the pregnant women of Galaad, to enlarge his border. And I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabba, and it shall devour her houses with wailing in the day of battle, and in a whirlwind in the day of tumult. And Melchom shall go into captivity, he and his princes together, says the Lord. Nor are these peoples—namely Ammon and Moab, who came from the stock of Lot—freed from their parricidal envy of the Israelites; thus indeed are neighbors unmasked, who nevertheless, not enduring their former glory, left no occasion for harming Galaad. Finally, the region which beyond the Jordan the two and a half tribes had received, as the Scripture relates, the Ammonites, hastening to invade it as bordering on their own, did not, he says, abstain from the slaughter of pregnant women, desiring evidently to kill the very offspring of the Jews, so that, with the inhabitant consumed, the whole region of the Galaadites might be joined to their territories. I will repay, therefore, he says, even to this people what it deserves: and I will cause the buildings of the hostile Rabba, which was its metropolis, to grow old. By which whirlwind of war they shall indeed be so dismayed that they may seem to die beforehand; and not only its princes, but also Melchom, that is, the idol by whose divinity they believed they were to be protected, shall be carried off into the mockery of captivity.

CHAPTER II.

Verses 1–3. — Thus says the Lord: For three crimes of Moab, and for four I will not turn him away: because he burned the bones of the king of Idumaea even to ashes. And I will send fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the cities of Carioth, and Moab shall die amid shouting and the blare of the trumpet. And I will destroy the judge from among them, and all their princes I will slay with him, says the Lord. It must be noted that, whereas he had charged against all the nations he enumerated the insults and dangers they had heaped upon Israel, he now lays to the charge of the people of Moab that they were savage against the king of Idumaea; and he accuses them of having raged so fiercely that, not content to wage war against him while he lived, they displayed their hatred even around his funeral. By this, surely, the arrogance of the Jews also, who believed that they alone belonged to the Lord, was repressed; and to the Gentiles was set before them either the solace of hope or the light of understanding: that they might perceive that they stand under the one providence and governance of their Creator, who would avenge not only the wrongs of the Jews but also those of other nations.

Verses 4–5. — Thus says the Lord: For three crimes of Judah, and for four I will not turn him away, because he has cast off the law of the Lord, and has not kept his commandments. For their idols have deceived them, after which their fathers went. And I will send fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the cities of Jerusalem. When he had set the savage deeds of various nations before them, he came to Judah, and charged him with the crime of a religion dissembled, declaring the necessary conversion under the same form of deliberation with which he had begun—namely, that those who had obstinately pursued all manner of base and profane things would undergo sorrows in place of joys. But we ought not to think that he judged those peoples, whose crimes he had just run through, to be commendable in the matter of religion, concerning which he thought nothing was to be charged against them; but since their profanity had been a thousand times confessed, as they had always been given over to the worship of idols, and could not have a fitting judgment concerning the piety of rites, he would by no means charge them with the crime of a dissembled religion—but rather with those wounds of morals which even those placed outside the true religion could discern and avoid. But against Judah he charged first that which was more dreadful than the other outrages, and from which stock other crimes also might deservedly spring. They have cast off, he says, the law of the Lord, through which alone they were conspicuous in the whole world; and not content to have cast it off, they passed over also to the worship of idols.

They therefore receive the recompense they deserve, so that hostile fire may consume Judah, that is, and Jerusalem, which was fulfilled when the Babylonian prevailed.

Verse 6. — Thus says the Lord: For three crimes of Israel, and for four I will not turn him away, because they have sold the just man for silver, and the poor man for shoes. The Ten Tribes, whom he names as Jerusalem, he accuses of offenses of conduct, not as he does Judah, but as he does the other nations: clearly to show that they had clung to profanity to such a degree that in this respect they would neither blush nor fear to be reproved. He therefore accuses the wounds of their conduct, not because they were graver than those of their rites, but either because they were plainly seen in the fruits of their foul religion, or because in that portion of their deeds as well they were shown to be worse than the other nations. No longer, then, he says, will my censure tolerate them remaining in that state in which the shameless man, never breathing toward better things, persists; but a change from prosperity to adversity will come upon them, so that what they were unwilling to learn when warned, they may begin to know when condemned: namely, that I take care for the poor, and that those who are deprived of the riches of this world are not deprived of the defense of my providence. Let only the care of uprightness flourish among them, and that very moderation, by which they were more lowly than the rest, will render them accepted and dear to me.

I said this because the people of Israel neglected to regard the righteous and the poor man, who relies on a twofold support before me; but always hostile to my judgments, they trampled the poor, and counted the ornaments of the world as worthless, like the coverings of the feet, that is, sinning with such prosperity either in duties or in business, so that, enticed not only by brief gains for the most part, but often also fed by the free punishments of the tasted, thinking it a certain pleasure if they trampled underfoot the very heads of humble men mixed with dust—that is, the pride of the wicked avoiding the holiness of innocence. But what he says, "They turn aside the way of the humble," can be understood in two ways: either they turn away from it and follow a life's path far different, or certainly in judgments they defile the just cause of the needy by fraud; such is that passage in the psalm: "If you saw a thief, you ran together with him, and with adulterers you placed your portion. You sat and spoke against your brother, and against the son of your mother you craftily set a stumbling block." But the guilt of those who sin is exaggerated in their sense, because, pursuing with devoted effort the things that were deadly, they are shown not only to neglect but even to hate justice. The prophet then proceeds to recall various crimes; for after injustice and pride come the sins of lust. "The son," he says, "and his father went in to one girl, so that they might violate my holy name.

He shows to what heaps the habit of transgressors proceeds. First, he says, you denied justice to your citizens in judgments and compassion in calamities; it followed immediately that not even the laws of nature itself remained among you, but coming from shameful deeds to incest, sons with their fathers rushed upon harlots, so that they showed no reverence, as previously to citizens, so thereafter not even to parents. By this deed of yours, indeed, my holy name also was violated, since the Gentiles, of course, conversing among themselves, said, What kind of God is that, whose people who are said to be his own appear so deformed?

Vers. — And upon garments taken in pledge they lay down beside every altar, and they drank the wine of the condemned in the house of their God. It was indeed consistent that the worshippers of idols should persist in manifold filthiness; yet here the prophet, in all the things he argues, takes care to express this, that they opposed the divine precepts as if by deliberate design, through which they tore apart every kind of the precepts. Therefore, enumerating everything that is forbidden in the law, he also declares that they lay upon garments taken in pledge. And he carefully added beside every altar, because their impiety had multiplied altars. And therefore they drank the wine of the condemned, that is, they feasted in the temples on that money which they had received from the prices of innocent people, namely those of whom he said a little earlier that they had sold the righteous man for silver, and the poor man for shoes.

Verses 9–10. — But I exterminated the Amorite from before their face, whose height was the height of cedars, and he himself was strong as an oak; and I crushed his fruit above and his roots beneath. I am he who made you go up from the land of Egypt, and I led you through the desert for forty years, that you might possess the land of the Amorite. He keeps to his custom, so that by provoking the deed of the ungrateful he may call to mind the benefits previously given. And therefore, after he has run through their depraved and profane pursuits, to which they were devoted, he also introduced mention of the good things which forgetfulness had taken hold of them regarding. As if he were saying that it had been enough that he who expelled the ancient nations, stronger in strength and powers, so that a dwelling place might be prepared for these, had been deceived, since these consider it a glorious contest if they both emulate and surpass the crimes of those men. But I exterminated the Amorite, whose height was like that of the cedar, and he himself was strong as an oak; I crushed his fruit above and his roots beneath. He says that the forest of the nations, already very strong through long age, thus threatening with lofty tops and resting on deep roots, was diligently cut down, as if by the measuring out of camps, so that they might not feel even the light impediments of a dwelling. Whatever strength therefore they had, I cut off from the root, so that the forests of the natives, which our sentence was removing, might by no means sprout forth any further, but the joys of the victory conferred might be followed by accumulated security. Why not?

when I had also conferred benefits upon them even in ancient times? For when they were oppressed by Egyptian slavery, I raised them to the heights of freedom; and through trackless wildernesses for forty years, supplying food and drink by miracles, I led them around, so that the possession of the blessed land, which had been decreed, might taste the sweeter to them the later it had come; and at the same time that they might recognize that the life of man consists not in the fertility of trees, but in the governing providence of God. And yet, not content to have conferred only the instruments of the present life, I made you conspicuous also through spiritual ornaments, raising up, he says, from your sons prophets, and from your young men Nazirites, that is, those who, being strong both in peculiar devotion and in sacred illumination, had for some a certain knowledge of visions, for others a glorious contention of sins. But all these things you not only esteemed cheaply, but even utterly rejected, daring to command the prophets not to prophesy, and to press wine upon the Nazirites, with which we might be made drunk.

Verses 13-16. — Behold, I will creak beneath you as a cart creaks when loaded with hay, and flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not retain his strength, and the mighty shall not save his life; and he who holds the bow shall not stand, and the swift of foot shall not be saved, and the rider on horseback shall not save his life; and the stout of heart among the warriors shall flee naked in that day, says the Lord. It is familiar to the sacred Scriptures that they employ images even from insignificant things, perhaps taken up for this purpose which experience has desired, but in such a way that the mystical sense in them consists in the middle. Whence even now, because the just judge was enduring a people long sinning, he declared himself burdened like a cart, but one whose load had come to be of cheap material. Therefore what he says, I will creak beneath you as a cart loaded with hay, he did not intend it to be understood that a cart full of hay seems to creak in one way and one full of silver in another; but because he was adapting to himself the likeness of a creaking cart, he mingled the sense with skill, as if he were saying: if a cart had any faculty of discerning what it carried, it would doubtless creak more indignantly if it carried cheap things than if it carried precious things. So therefore, as the Apostle teaches, upon the foundation of religion, according to the diversity of merits: some heap up gold, silver, and precious stones, others hay, wood, and stubble (1 Cor.

3.) With good reason our God declares that he experiences a greater burden in tolerating the sins of those in whom he can find nothing of precious pursuits, but who have all come to vile hay, which is easily consumed by fire. When I groan, that is, when I roar, immediately your arrogance or your confidence will perish. For speed will not withdraw anyone from destruction, strength will not protect the warrior, and finally neither the line of foot-soldiers nor the squadrons of horsemen will delay the divine sentence; but those who were renowned in the art of war will wish, once their coverings are lost, to hide, so that even naked they may use hiding places to preserve their life. We confirm that all these evils come from hostile victory, by yearly disasters rather than by yearly records. In this place, indeed, the Jews follow a certain opinion, namely that the persons were marked by the different equipment of different leaders; since we consider this of no great weight, let us pass on to other matters.

CHAPTER III.

Verses 1–2. Hear the word that the Lord has spoken concerning you, children of Israel, concerning every family of yours, saying: Only you have I known out of all the families of the earth; therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities. Surely, he says, you especially rejoice in this distinction, that to no people in the whole world except to you alone did I, who am the creator of the world, make myself known; and though I formed all nations with the same loving-kindness as you, yet I chose to be called and to be the God of you alone, and I anticipated all the offices of your devotion with gifts and miracles, consuming the kingdoms of the Egyptians and then of the Palestinians in your honor, so that in you a glorious exodus and a wealthy possession might be proved; nor was I content to have conferred joys by driving out slavery alone, but I also added the lights of spiritual teaching, showing certainly through all these things that I had chosen you out of all nations, and that I would instruct even you with sacred formations, so that those who had received many things without merits might recognize how they should also merit them. But this generosity did not make me a more negligent judge of your conduct; rather, I punish your misdeeds all the more for this, that I set you before all nations. For it follows that those things which are valued more highly are examined with greater diligence.

This adornment, then, of your nation—whether won by my indulgence or by the virtues of your forefathers—allows no fault to be left unpunished, because nobility that has been granted grows cheap if it is not taken away from the unworthy. And so it is not impunity for crimes, but the keeping of the commandments, that commends the nobility that has been acquired. But let us look at the rest as well.

Verses 3–8. Will two walk together unless they have agreed? Will a lion roar in the thicket unless it has prey? Will a lion's cub give its voice from its den unless it has seized something? Will a bird fall into a snare on the earth without a fowler? Will a snare be taken up from the earth before it has caught something? If a trumpet sounds in the city, will the people not be afraid? If there will be evil in a city, which the Lord has not done? For the Lord God will not do a thing unless he has revealed his secret to his servants. The lion will roar; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who will not prophesy? There have been various opinions of certain persons on this passage, but not sufficiently in harmony with the sense of the examples, which will now be set out by us with the necessary distinction. For the discourse that has been undertaken touches on different meanings; and indeed the first verse teaches that the rejection of the ungrateful nation was necessary, that is, just—the nation which he had declared to be chosen, namely, as one out of all the nations. Since that nation, therefore, by its pursuits turned to perversity, had kindled the anger of the judge, having been rejected and given over to destruction, he explains why such a separation had come about.

Will two walk together,” he says, “unless they have agreed?” That is: Why do you marvel that you have been stripped of the defense of our company, when a just companionship of travelers cannot long endure except among those who are of one mind? You, therefore, who chose to hold wills contrary to my laws, must consequently perceive that you were stripped of the aid of my company, because you began to walk apart from my paths. I will not be content to have merely deserted you, nor will our indignation be closed by this, but I will turn from your leader into a raging lion, whom, as he roams through the vast lairs, not levity but prey seen from afar stirs to roaring; and when he has indeed been the victor of what he desired and has carried the destined hunt back to his den, he will make those very caves resound with his roaring, and never, empty of this kind, does he murmur unless he has always obtained the prey. By these two verses he expressed the bearing of one who knows. Then follows: “Will a bird fall into the snare on the earth without a fowler? Will the snare be taken from the earth before it has caught something?” Having completed the parts of the avenger, he addresses those on whom vengeance is taken, whom he judges are to be crushed with such ease that they seem like a bird that has entered the snare. “Will a bird,” he says, “fall into the snare on the earth without a fowler?” as if he were saying: Even if all alike were silent.

The prophet—the very voice of the facts could instruct you well enough; that these calamities could not have come upon you of their own accord or by some chance to your destruction, unless the hand of the fowler, that is, of the judge, had brought them. By the prophet's denunciation, therefore, they are taught that they have been exposed like a snare, so that whoever abandon the path of justice fall into them. Let no delay, then, for the most part, console you by intervening. For the snare that has been set—that is, the sentences published by the mouth of the prophets—will not be taken away unless they have filled the hand of their capture. If the trumpet sounds in the city, will the people not be afraid? And will there be evil in the city that the Lord has not done? For the Lord God will not do a word unless he has revealed his secret to his servants the prophets. He has published your exposition as agreeing with itself through the things subjoined—namely, the snare, the trumpet, and the evil, that is, the affliction by which the cities of the sacrilegious would perish, unless it had been stirred up by divine indignation. Yet here at the same time he commends both the purpose of his mercy, by which he intended to spare if it were permitted through them, and the reverence of the sacred examination: which he shows cannot be despised with impunity; but evil, as often elsewhere, he names not sins but torments, by which, namely, the guilty are tortured, not the innocent defiled. Because the Lord will not do a word unless he has revealed his secret to his servants the prophets.

The dignity of the saints has been commended most fittingly, now that the contempt of the guilty has been made public; for otherwise the very fact that they seemed cheaply esteemed (since they were to be overwhelmed by so many punishments) would be attributed to the condition of nature rather than to the hatred born of wicked conduct. And by a dispensation, both things have been set forth, whatever would serve to the honor of men, that is, of the prophets, who, standing indeed in the same nature as all others, nevertheless so shone forth by the prizes of their conduct that God could say of them: Nor will I be mindful of their names by my lips (Ps. 15); but of the others, that he will do nothing unless he has first brought it to their knowledge. Just as, then, he says, no calamity will arise in these cities unless the divine sentence has stirred it up, so no punishment will be brought upon you unless it has first been made known to the conscience of the saints. But I have compressed what he had done into a shorter summary: The lion, he says, will roar, who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken, who will not prophesy? Therefore, since above he had expressed his indignation under the image of a lion, he then completed what he had signified, saying: The lion will roar, that is, with God threatening and making public the punishment that impends, who among mortals is there whom fear does not dissolve? But now let us see what is the kind and the pomp of the threats.

Verses 9–10. — Make it heard in the houses of Azotus and in the houses of the land of Egypt; and say: Gather yourselves upon the mountains of Samaria, and see the many follies in the midst of her, and those who suffer calumny in her inner chambers. And they did not know to do right, says the Lord, treasuring up iniquity and plunder in their houses. The divine word keeps its own custom: that it assigns with what great difficulty it is moved to vengeance. Therefore even now, after it has unfolded the figure of terror, it repeats and rehandles its complaints, and commands the neighboring peoples to be summoned, so that they may see with what filth that people once of God lies foul, and rages with crimes. To the Allophyloi, it says, and to the Egyptians announce that they should gather as if for a spectacle on the mountains of Samaria, that is, from their height they may look down upon the valleys and cities, and consider that there is no outrage, no crime which—I do not say approaches their pursuits—but stands in their midst as if founded in a settled seat. For if you turn your eyes to those who are oppressed by calumny, you will find the gates of the cities in which they were accustomed to judge, and the inner chambers crowded, so that no other voice but that of the wretched seems to be heard. For all who had undertaken the office of judging fell into such great forgetfulness of what is right, whether through greed or through pride, that they seem not only not to love right things, but not even to know them.

Let no one, then, hold my severity against me, since I showed such long patience to my offending servants that even my censure came to be forgotten by them. You, I say, the nations whom I had crushed for the deliverance and glory of these men—you, I say, assemble again, so that with you yourselves as witnesses both the greatness of my forbearance and the impiety of Ephraim may be laid bare.

Verse 11. — Therefore thus says the Lord God: The land shall be troubled and compassed about, and your strength shall be taken from you, and your houses shall be plundered. Often, as I have said, he has complained of their crimes and shameful deeds, so that he might at last pronounce sentence, and he answers according to that sense which he had set forth in the beginning, under the elaboration: that is, For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn him away. Since, therefore, by the demand of justice, a turning was decreed for Israel and Judah—namely, that they should be brought down from glad things into sorrow, yet not perish by slaughter—hear in what manner the destroyer will rage.

Verse 12.— As when a shepherd snatches two legs or the tip of an ear from a lion's mouth, so shall the children of Israel who dwell in Samaria be snatched, on the edge of the bed and on the couch of Damascus. Because our God, with the purpose of correcting, was chastising the Israelites, as the prophets also affirm the same, so too he was indicating it by the utterances of his dispensations. For while beloved profanity always made them hateful, the Almighty nonetheless varied their condition: now afflicting them with sorrows, now cherishing them with prosperities. The Syrian, therefore, who was nearer, that is, the inhabitant of Damascus, as the history of Kings sets forth, was harassing the ten tribes with frequent incursions: so that at one time the Samaritans came to such want through a long siege that mothers fed on the flesh of their sons, and in the whole army scarcely ten horses could be found. But when blessed Elisha had commanded King Joram that on the next day in the gates of Samaria the greatest abundance of provisions would be seen, so great a change was suddenly brought about that, when the Syrians who were besieging fled, not only did the Israelites escape, but they even received, as it were, the richest spoils of a triumph (4 Kings 6 and following). And we read that by this kind of thing salvation and joys frequently came to them. Therefore our God, sparing in vengeance and rich in mercy, announces that although he has assumed the office of the judge, he has not abandoned the office of the shepherd.

Moreover, he would deign to pluck out their remnants from the bed of Damascus, by which they were held as if by cords and fevers, and through that very neighborhood I was bearing a most lingering disease: and to draw out, as from the jaws of lions—that is, the members of the people who had been torn apart—from the kings.

Verses 13–14. — Hear, and testify in the house of Jacob, says the Lord God of hosts. Because in the day when I begin to visit the transgressions of Israel, I will visit upon him, and upon the altars of Bethel: and the horns of the altar shall be cut off, and shall fall to the ground. As regards the context of the reading, he promises hostile devastation, and says that the horns of the altar, which Jeroboam had set up in Bethel, are to be crushed. For it is read that of the two calves he placed one in Dan and the other in Bethel. Therefore the sense in the present passage is of this kind: that although I do not permit you to be destroyed by slaughter, but am prepared to draw out the remnants of your nation from captivity, and the neighboring enemy, namely the ruler of Damascus, does not consume you: yet that which you do I will not allow to pass unpunished. But it could be said that under the name of Jacob he wished Judah to be understood, were it not that the progress of the discourse marks out and expresses Israel more, that is, the ten Tribes. Now concerning this destruction of the altar, we also read in the books of Kings: that the prophet had already come to Jeroboam, who had fashioned the calves, and promised this to him as he was sacrificing under a threat.

When he had ordered him to be seized with an outstretched hand, he immediately perceived the prophet's power as his right hand withered, and at once, broken down in pieces, he indeed recovered the use of his hand; but he heard that Josiah would arise, who would avenge that sacrilege (3 Kings 13). Therefore the things which long periods of time—whether the chastisement of the people or the long captivity—finally encompassed, are likewise indicated to us by the present prophecy, things that are to be inflicted at different times.

Verse 15. — And I will strike, he says, the winter house together with the summer house, and the houses of ivory shall perish, and many buildings shall be scattered, says the Lord. Not stirring up some one vice of profane groaning, he also touches upon the sins of avarice and luxury, and therefore he complains that they built for themselves, as it were, instruments of luxury—various dwellings suited to the pleasure of the different seasons of the year—since, though entangled in manifold faults, they gave no thought at all to setting things right or amending them, but, anxious only for the pleasantness to be pursued, they had prepared some houses for their activities, others for the cold, and these too were to be taken away alike in the time of vengeance, and their various undertakings to be consumed by hostile fire.

CHAPTER IV.

Verses 1-3. — Hear this word, you fat cows, who are on the mountain of Samaria: who do violence to the needy, and crush the poor: who say to your lords, Bring, and let us drink. The Lord God has sworn in his sanctuary, that behold, days are coming upon you, and they will lift you up with poles, and your remnants in boiling pots. And through the openings you will go out, one against another, and you will be cast out to Armon, says the Lord. Although the profanity of the whole nation was to be rebuked, nevertheless, because he was directing his rebuke especially at the rich and wealthy, who used not single houses but upper rooms changed according to the season, and refined them with the sheen of ivory, he rightly assigns them also the name of fat cows, because their voice was to be devoted to lowings, and their belly was their God, and their glory in their own shame. This also can fittingly be added, that they are said to be called by this name not only because of their vices, but because of the very kind of their impiety: so that those who had received calves to be worshiped might be designated by the name of cows. But they are marked as fat, according to that which blessed David accuses: They came forth as if from fat; their iniquities passed into the affection of the heart: they thought and spoke wickedness, they spoke iniquity on high (Ps. 72).

Therefore, stationed on the mountain of Samaria, that is, in the royal city, and swollen with courtly familiarity, you were crushing the poor, so that from their spoils you might seek the instruments of your luxury. But what he says: who say to your lords, Bring and let us drink, must be understood thus: either that they called their lords idols, from whom, of course, they earnestly begged an abundance of things, since they had placed all their happiness in untimely and lavish banquets; or certainly that the lesser sort, and those who placed the works of their crimes before the nobles, sought from them a reward, in whose gain they often sinned, so that drink might not fail them. But what do they obtain in return for this wantonness? The Lord, he says, has sworn in his holy one, that is, he has decreed, by the holiness of his judgment that knows not violation, that the time will come, indeed is already at hand, when your flesh will be lifted on spits, and the remnants in boiling pots. But he has transferred the likeness from cows, which are served to banqueters, whether barbarians or soldiers. And because by their name he had marked the profane among them, he now declares that they are to be subjected to destruction. He has therefore used spits here for skewers, that is, for pointed irons, on which the flesh of cows, having been inserted, is for the most part roasted by the vapor of coals; but understand the remnants as either the intestines, or those portions which, being more finely chopped, are boiled in pots rather than on skewers.

And because he had said that, forgetful of all honor and of fear of him, they even measured the prices of their crimes by the gluttony of the belly, he consequently added that they themselves, seized by the fire of captivity, would be exposed to enemies raging and, as it were, about to devour them. And through the breaches you will go out, one against another, and you will be cast out into Armon, says the Lord. In the preceding verses he had completed the metaphor taken from the cows and the banquet; but at the end he returns to simple judgment, and says that they must be dragged out through broken walls, which indicates the overthrow of the city. But "one against another," according to the Hebrew idiom, shows the captives meeting one another in turn, or following one another, who, with the Assyrian conquering, are carried off to the mountains of Armenia. But let us see the rest as well.

Verses 4–6. — Come to Bethel, and act impiously; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression; and bring your victims in the morning, your tithes for three days.

And offer praise from leaven, and call voluntary oblations, and proclaim it; for so you wished, children of Israel, says the Lord God. Therefore I also gave you stupor of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in all your places; and you have not returned to me, says the Lord. That this was the chief, indeed the only, reason for proclaiming through the prophets the calamities that threatened sinners, so that fear might produce correction in them, the whole texture of the rebuke itself shows; and since by their shamelessness in sinning they resisted this purpose of a judge more inclined to indulgence, a kind of contest seemed to exist between God and men. But since the struggle was not equal—he decreeing this, while they underwent what was bitter—he at once sometimes addresses them in mockery, reproaching them with the very contest they had waged. Come, he says, to Bethel, and act impiously. In the imperative mood, but through irony and insult, he declares the things by which they are offended, a figure that is also employed in liberal studies.

Therefore he mockingly throws this in the face of profaned Israel, that they should press on in the pursuits they have chosen, and should not cease to frequent Bethel and Gilgal, cities which, as the preceding prophets also indicated, swarmed with idols, but should heap up increase through their transgressions; and they hated the morning victims, and they serve the offering of victims, and they place leavened breads upon the altar, which (so to speak) were called of praise, or of voluntary offering. All this must be understood thus: that the orders and rites of ceremonies which they had received from the sacred law they had handed over to idols, inasmuch as they had decreed that these were to be venerated in place of God; but just as they had implously transferred these same observances to idols, so too they frequently varied them at their own license. Hence he reproaches both things alike, namely, that they had either handed over the legal institutions to idols, to which they had fallen away, or had corrupted them according to their own will; either of which was of equal force toward the same impiety—namely, either to transfer to impious shrines those observances which God had commanded to be rendered to himself, or certainly, as if with the arrogance and mind of one correcting, to change something from among the things that had been instituted. Finally, exaggerating this crime of a proud mind, he says: For so you wished, children of Israel, says the Lord God. Persist, therefore, he says, in the pursuits you have chosen, so that wages worthy of them may accompany you, a taste of which you have already received for the greatest part.

For I gave you stupor of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in all your places; and you have not returned to me, says the Lord. But he placed the lack of bread after the stupor of teeth so that the sense might be this: that their teeth seemed to have been brought to forgetfulness of their work, and had grown unaccustomed to cut or grind food, and over a long interval of time endured a certain stupor. Yet when so harsh a chastisement had struck you, you have not returned to me, says the Lord. By this verse he indicated two things at once: both their stubbornness in sinning and his kindness in counseling—he who had brought those blows, surely not to punish but to correct. But resisting this counsel unhappily, they entered into a certain contest, as we said above; and therefore let us hear what he adds.

Verses 7–8. — I also withheld rain from you, when there were still three months remaining until the harvest; and I rained upon one city, and upon another city I did not rain: one part was rained upon, and the part upon which I did not rain withered.

so that they came, three cities to another city, to drink water, and were not satisfied; and you did not return to me, says the Lord. Showing above that the abundance of crops had perished by a sudden plague, and that, since no correction had followed, he had offered even clearer testimonies of his indignation, and that at the first sprouting of the herbs he had choked the shoots by the withholding of rains, he consequently added that he had by no means withdrawn the consolations of showers from all in common, lest they should attribute what had happened to chance rather than to indignation. But so that you might perceive, he says, that the drought was brought about by judgment, I rained upon one city, and upon another city I did not rain, so that at the same time, O people, with consolation denied to you, you might be stung by your neighbor's example. So great also was the scantiness of the rain that it did not satisfy even the thirsty spots of those places which it seemed to have sprinkled. Yet you, who ran to the expectation of rain like cattle, were unwilling to return to me by the amendment of your will; and by this it came about that both calamities were fixed upon you and my dispensations were rendered most unfruitful for me.

Verse 9. — I struck you with blight and with mildew; the multitude of your fruits and of your vineyards, your olive groves and your fig groves the locust devoured; and you did not return to me, says the Lord. This accumulation of your iniquities will rightly be reckoned, because although I have so many times taken up the work of severity, I have yet advanced nothing toward your correction. Therefore, for benefits, whatever hardships you have drained, I enumerate, and I confess that I have been, as it were, forgetful of my kindness, while I strive to overcome your pernicious obstinacy in sinning. Therefore I did not delay to double the plagues, indeed even to multiply them, and, when men were deprived of the support of crops, I also withdrew the consolations of fruits and of gardens: so that, just as a long drought consumed the hope of the harvest, so also the goods of autumn and of winter, either a pestilential breeze or the frequent locust consumed: and you did not return to me, says the Lord.

Verse 10. — I sent death upon you in the way of Egypt, I struck your young men with the sword, even to the captivity of your horses: and I made the stench of your camps rise into your nostrils: and you did not return to me, says the Lord. That he has brought in the mention of Egypt can be understood in two ways. For since that people, who are reported to have been six hundred thousand, from twenty years old and above, apart from Joshua and Caleb, is led in the wilderness to be destroyed, God here says that they fell in the manner of the departure from Egypt, whom he declares must be blotted out by slaughter.

Or certainly, because with the Assyrians threatening, the Israelite—as blessed Hosea teaches—sought help from the Egyptians, and yet obtained no remedy at all; consequently the prophetic word announces that a death was sent upon them by the way of Egypt, through which, of course, not allied arms but a more wrathful enemy broke in upon them. To this sense the following words better correspond, namely, that he judges both the young men and the horses in the camp to have been corrupted by siege, or shattered by captivity. But when, he says, the rot of the camp afflicted you who were shut in, and you saw that the evils of captivity were immediately to be brought upon you, not even so did you return to me, says the Lord. Therefore, in what way do you think I bear it that the whole fruit of these chastisements has perished for me through you?

Verse 11. — I overthrew you, I say, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a brand snatched from the fire; and you did not return to me, says the Lord (Hosea 14). Who is wise, and knows these things? Then he will understand the mercies of the Lord, which indeed he does not cease to commend in all his dispensations; whence he shows them to abound and overflow even in the present passages, although certainly the discourse proceeds with a great circuit of severity, so that he teaches that the plagues which he inflicted seem to him much heavier than to those who suffer them. I overthrew you, he says, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

That this certainly did not happen to the Israelite peoples, even the hope of the promised liberation affirms; and so the sense becomes as follows. Since such great calamities as I have brought upon you have raged against your blood, that they seem to me, who have not myself suffered greater things, to be Sodomite: for according to the measure of kinship, because I had taken you for my own, this heaping up of woes is to be equated with those fires by which the obscene multitude burned together with their roofs and lands. For although I have granted you the hope of recovering liberty, yet you seem to me rather like some half-burnt brand drawn out of the fires than as standing in green firmness.

Vers. 12-13. — Therefore these things I will do to you, Israel; but after I have done this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel. For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man his word, who makes the morning mist, and walks upon the high places of the earth: the Lord God of hosts is his name. And because, he says, you have determined with my goodwill to strive with shameless obstinacy, and you impose upon me the necessity of exercising severity, I will do to you what the very order of chastisements demands. For it is not fitting that your shamelessness should seem to have had more strength than our judgment, and that these things should cease as if exhausted before either your iniquity is ended, or your life.

As far as it depends on me, I will continue my purpose of healing; but it will rest with you whether that manifold chastisement advances toward amendment, or rather, as he says, toward vengeance. Since, therefore, I recently recounted those troubles—namely, the scarcity of crops and rains, but the abundance of locusts and caterpillars, with the blight consuming whatever green remained, the plague destroying the year's sprouts and the bodies, and finally the evils of hostile siege, turning the whole camp into corruption, and the sword raging at home and abroad (which things, he says, I certainly, through compassionate mercy, compared to that destruction by which Sodom perished, so that captivity would seem about to render your remnants like the likeness of burned towers)—since, I say, all these things were ineffective for correction, I will do this to you, under the same tenor of purpose, namely, that with your pernicious impiety driven out, you may take up the disposition of amendment. And therefore, after you see that which I denounce brought upon you, arise to meet your Lord, made one of better hope, and do not, struck by a part of the sentence, either despair of salvation or fear to appear in the eyes of the judge. For your account is with him who by no means desires the death of the dying man, but who even comes to the aid of those condemned, if he sees them repent of their offenses. Some take this place where he says.

For this reason, some have thought that the words "Therefore this will I do to you" should be understood as though they said deliberately that the appearance of a threat was concealed, so that whatever the hearer could suspect to be most savage, he would also believe had been promised. But it can be observed that the matter was not promised by the suspicions of terrified men; rather, what he said he would do, he made public a little later. For after inserting those things that pertained to the Creator's power, it is added as it were with a repetition:

CHAPTER V

Verse 4 (2). — Hear this word, which I take up over you as a lament: The house of Israel has fallen, and it shall not rise again. The virgin of Israel has been cast down upon her own land, and there is none to raise her up. And thus the order of the senses is woven together, so that in his own manner our God has diligently set forth the causes of the captivity that was brought upon them, which he seems, as it were, to have fulfilled unwillingly. But let us return to the order of the reading. After he therefore said, "This will I do to you, Israel." And after this I have done to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel: For behold, he says, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man his word, who makes the morning mist and walks upon the high places of the earth. The Lord of hosts is his name. To arouse reverence for the judge in the hearts of the guilty, he inserts the works of the Creator, so that either the prudent hearer may understand the censor's disposition toward him, or may not doubt the effect of vengeance, seeing that he threatens him by whose power the whole universe subsists.

That is: O Israel, consider who it is that wipes away your merits—namely, he through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made (John 1); he who formed and separated the elements by his command; he who gave to the stars that they should shine, to the valleys that they should sink down, to the plains that they should lie flat, to the mountains that they should rise up; he who commanded the breathable air, by which the void between heaven and earth is filled, now to thicken into cloud, now to be stirred into winds; by whose providence new works are declared through the varied services of the elements; who, though he is so great in the eminence of his power, nevertheless deigns to impart his utterance—that is, his law—to man. And among the miracles of his governance, by which he brings it about that mists are exhaled from the earth where the morning sun has breathed upon them, until by the lingering of that same vapor we are either compressed or altogether dried up; indeed, when it is fitting, that they, condensed into clouds, be drawn to the higher regions, and, restored higher than all the mountains, pour out the waters of the rains they have conceived upon the lands beneath them; and thus mark out for themselves the imprinted traces of his governance—he, I say, the maker of the elements, whose name is the Lord of Hosts, that is, whose power is such that the hosts of angels serve his nod and acknowledge him as their king and creator—he, I say, contends with you in such kindness as to announce the torments to be inflicted upon you, if perhaps, with a feeling of repentance stirred up in your minds, even a late amendment may snatch the guilty from vengeance.

Because you corrupt this remedy with stubborn depravity, receive the voice of our lamentation, whose warnings you have always rejected—the voice, I say, with which we follow your final end. She has fallen, she has fallen; she will not rise again. The virgin of Israel has been cast down upon her own land; there is no one to raise her up. That is, that nation descending from the illustrious stock of Israel, which either deserved to be called a virgin before—since no profanity had violated her purity, by which she had been taken into the fellowship of her own ruler—or which had been accustomed to be so called, since no captivity had seized her felicity, flourishing in unbroken integrity—she now, exposed to the trampling of the conqueror, endures both disgrace and torments. Nor does she claim any consolation for the removal of her calamity; a stranger in her own land, she has lain down like a woman subjected to defilements, and with miseries pressing her down she has come to the graves, and there is no one who can bring help and lift up the fallen one, whom the judgment of the Almighty has crushed. Therefore, from that verse in which he says, “Forming the mountains and creating the wind,” up to the present place, it can be understood as spoken in the person of the prophet, that is, discoursing on the power of God.

But the fact that he says Israel has thus fallen to its own land so as not to rise again—since both the preceding and the following sentences promise at some time the consolations of miseries to be dissolved, and in the very time of punishment they threaten a diminution of the people rather than their destruction—we ought to understand it in this way: either that, in the affection of one grieving, he reckoned the disasters brought upon them more heavily, and so called those utterly destroyed whom he saw for the greater part crushed; or certainly that, in the persons of those whom the captivity was consuming, they perished utterly, and he indicated that the nation of Israel could not be raised up by anyone.

Verse 3. — Because these things says the Lord God: The city from which went out a thousand shall leave a hundred in it; and from which went out a hundred, there shall leave ten in it in the house of Israel. The miseries of captivity did not rush in suddenly, but over many periods, as correction was experienced, the people was chastised. The history of the kings declares this; and therefore our God addresses them by the prophets with a varied voice, now announcing destruction and saying it is fixed, now promising prosperity if they amend. So you should not suspect that there is any discrepancy in the sayings, as though they were compressed into one time; but you will find that the sentences, brought forth over long periods and distributed to their proper occasions, hold their consistency in all things: and as evils gradually increased, the kingdom of the profane people was diminished, until it came to the ruin of the final captivity.

In those cities and regions, therefore, which were still being laid waste while the metropolis, that is Samaria, as it were still stood, let us understand that a tithe of the nation was made, so that with the noble parts perishing, what was the outermost might remain. And because this tithe had been brought in for this purpose, that just as it gave others over to a just destruction, so it might correct others by the example of those perishing, the exhortation of the very judge sounded forth at once.

Verses 4-6. — Because thus says the Lord to the house of Israel, Seek me, and you shall live. And do not seek Bethel, and do not enter into Gilgal, and you shall not pass over into Beersheba, because Gilgal shall be led captive, and Bethel shall be useless. Seek the Lord, and live, lest perhaps the house of Joseph be burned with fire, and it shall devour, and there shall be none to extinguish Bethel. Because that which you ought to have learned from the law and from piety, O you Israel—namely, that you should cling to your one Maker with the continual office of devotion, who would make you blessed when favorable and most wretched when angered—at last savage dangers have taught: even now assume the zeal of a penitent, and if you wish to live, think on the correction of your deeds. Seek me, therefore, whom you left behind while serving profanity: seek me, I say, ready to be found, and finding me meeting you as soon as you begin to seek: because everyone who asks receives, who seeks finds, and to the one knocking it shall be opened.

Do not add dissimulation of our inquiry to your sacrileges, lest you be exposed as more hideous for neglecting the remedies offered than for violating the precepts that had been promulgated. Seek me, and you shall live. Do not seek Bethel and Gilgal and Beersheba; but these cities, as the history of the Kings sets forth, were enslaved both to the calves that Jeroboam had made and to the remaining idols (3 Kings 12). The Lord, therefore, in counseling, declares that they should cease to frequent those things which profanity had made abominable, lest they perish together with them, as with things destined to destruction. Seek therefore the Lord, by the way in which he does not will the death of the one who warns; and seeking, return to him, and you shall live, lest you begin to be burned up when the fire of the profane is sent upon their roofs. But let us see also the remaining things.

Vers. 7, 8. — You who turn judgment into wormwood, and abandon justice in the land. Who makes Arcturus and Orion, and turns darkness into morning, and changes day into night: who calls the waters of the sea, and pours them out upon the face of the earth, the Lord is his name. In the same order as above, in order to explain the power of the judge, he warned that the same one was the creator, and showing his purpose, who as far as in him lies would have counseled all (since his goodness alone had provided for them the cause of existing), he says: that his judgment, which would be sweet to the innocent, these men had made most bitter to themselves like wormwood.

Therefore, what he says, "You who turn judgment into wormwood," we ought to understand either in this way: that he laments that they have turned the divine judgment—which by their own merits they have forced to become deadly against them—into bitterness; or certainly he means that the very examination of human reason has been corrupted into bitterness, namely by the worship of idols, by preferring them to the sacred rites which they had received through Moses. Then follows, "And you leave justice in the land," which we could refer to the fault of their own choice, which had left the standard of judging as though something to be trampled underfoot, unless in the verses that follow he showed what he called justice. For he says, "Who makes Arcturus and Orion, who turns darkness into morning." Justice, then, he called our God himself, who is rightly named both power and wisdom (1 Cor 1:24); and having complained that he has been abandoned, that is, despised, by the profane, he enumerates his works by which the world is governed—evidently so as to heap up the crimes of those who did not fear to provoke a God of such great majesty. But the fact that he introduced those names of the stars which appear to have been imposed by the Gentiles (although other translators have said only "the stars"), we could accordingly take to mean that the prophet used the familiar terms for the distinguishing of the stars, not for the confirmation of fables—according to that which the Apostle also by no means disdained to adopt the sayings of the poets (Acts 17). It should also be noted that, when the description...

he wished to embrace the forms of the ethereal order, he expressed the four regions of the stars, which are also called Climates, by the names of the stars: that is, by Arcturus designating the North, and by Orion the South, which lies opposite; and by the succession of day and night signifying the rising and setting of the Sun. Here, having admirably marveled at the power of the Creator, he says that He turns the darkness itself into morning; for thus the globe of the Sun, when it has unrolled its courses, pours itself over the lands with sudden splendor, so that it seems not to have driven away the darkness it found, but rather to have changed it into light. He who calls the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the earth, the Lord is His name. Most elegantly and most learnedly, when he was speaking of the offices of the elements, which pertain to the institution and governance of the Creator, he said that He indeed does all things, whose power both formed those same orders and preserves them; yet he shows that by the ministry of a particular star it merits for creating crops: namely, the Sun, which by its departure prepares the night for us, and by its return the day.

Therefore, since his discourse had touched on the description of natural things, he added also that either the moisture exhaled from the earth, or the waters drawn up from the sea's depths, are carried aloft by that same vapor, and again, suspended from the clouds, those things which by their own weight could not go to the heights of heaven, lay down their bitter saltness through a transference, and thus at last are given back to the thirsty lands; and so, with contraries mixed together for the nourishing of crops—namely, moisture and vapor—a wondrous abundance would come about; a matter, certainly, of such great magnitude that no one could explain it except he who alone is shown by the right of creation to be the Lord of all things. But let us look at the rest as well.

Verse 9. — Who laughs to scorn the vastness upon the strong, and brings desolation upon the powerful. For which task the preceding description of his power was being prepared, he consequently revealed, that is, so that he might stir up fear in the hearts of his hearers, and they might understand how great a heap of calamities hung over those with whom a judge of such great power was angry. He, it says, who is the creator of all things, proceeds to blot out each one's merits; and although no one can withstand his strength, nevertheless he laughs to scorn the torments of the guilty, who seemed to themselves to be powerful—those, namely, whom he will crush with such ease that he indicates his indignation by a laugh rather than by a shout. Why not, when all things serve his nod, and in accordance with the diversity of merits, whether adverse or prosperous things follow upon obedience to his command?

Therefore he smiles at the vastness of destruction upon those who seemed powerful to themselves, and who were accustomed to say: We will magnify our tongue: our lips are our own: who is our God? Against such men, he says, who most profanely arrogate to themselves their prosperous strength, the eternal avenger, he says, smiles at the torments of affliction, and declares his indignation by the usurpation of such a countenance, which differs from the time. Hence he calls the strong and powerful Israelites, either out of envy of pride, or out of pious remembrance of ancient felicity: whom he has already denounced, both as for the most part consumed, and as about to be transferred into imminent captivity.

Vers. 10. 11. — They hated him who rebuked in the gate, and they abominated him who spoke perfectly. Therefore, because you plundered the poor, and took away from him the chosen prey as spoil; you shall build houses of squared stone, and you shall not dwell in them: you shall plant most beloved vineyards, and you shall not drink their wine. The arrangement of the prophetic speech is preserved, namely, that after they have paid the penalties denounced, the cause of that severity itself is immediately subjoined, lest the Lord of such great mercy should seem to have done anything out of indignation rather than out of retribution: and at the same time that he may show with how great kindness he consumes the poor, when he connects their insults and robberies with the violation of religion.

By this I am convinced that it follows that there is no civil care for justice in the minds of the shameless, no feeling of humanity; but, as if stirred by the wind of fury, they rage against their own companions, and with professed savagery they tear apart even the poor. Hence those who had fallen away to the worship of idols with sacrilegious mind abstained from no crimes at all, but were as pestilent to their companions and fellow citizens as they were ungrateful to the Lord himself, whom they turned away from. But what he says, that in the gates those who rebuked them they pursued with hatred, he shows to be according to the custom of the Jewish institution, which had been so ordered that arbiters of disputes should sit in the gates of any cities, so that no one who had need of their examination should labor under any question, but at the very entrance should find those before whom he might be tried. But let us not think that this custom, which had been established through the blessed Moses in the sacerdotal commonwealth, remained among the Israelites, especially those now living under the power of profane kings; but that he shows that they, along with rites, violated even civil laws, and took up hatred of the virtues together with those who preached them; and if anyone wished to exhort them to correction and holiness, he immediately perished, with hatreds conspiring together. But why they opposed the admonitions of the censors he shows. You were plundering, he says, the poor man, and you were taking away the chosen prey from him.

Therefore, so that you may proceed without any hindrance from fear or from shame, you have come to hate sober-minded counselors through the losses and insults of the poor. But it must be noted that he says they carried off choice plunder from the poor, when surely one of two things is reckoned to follow: either those whom he calls poor did not possess great things to lose, or we would rightly be called wealthy if a plunderer carried off from them things of great value. It must be understood, then, that either he called them poor because they had been reduced from wealth to want by their plundering, or certainly, looking rather to the feeling of the possessors than to the weight of the losses, he said that even small things, yet precious to the poor by their very scantness, were taken away by savage greed. As testimony to this matter, let us recall at least the one example of the vineyard of the holy man Naboth—small in extent indeed, but most dear to its owner and precious by its very pleasantness—which Ahab, a most foolish king, coveted. And when he had ordered the owner concerning its sale, Naboth answered that he could not despise his paternal inheritance, nor, if it were permitted, wish to be deprived of it. Then the king, goaded by the urging of his most profane wife, added the crime of cruelty to his avarice, and after killing Naboth he seized the vineyard he had coveted (3 Kings 21). So, then, they were carrying off by bloody daring choice plunder—things which, to be sure, their owners esteemed as nothing more precious—and let us hear what he denounces against them for these deeds.

Because you plundered the poor, you will build houses of squared stone, and you will not dwell in them. You will plant most beloved vineyards, and you will not drink their wine. [Verse 12.] Because I have known your many crimes and your strong sins. This, surely, was what the boldness of your plunderings held, so that the instruments of luxury might be supplied, and you might cultivate your dwellings at great expense, as though they were to be both a fortification and a pleasure. But two things will happen to you alike: that you may indeed build, but be unable to dwell in them; and that you may be tormented both by the labor of the work and by its loss, and in this you may feel compounded grief, that you fall from dwellings not makeshift but elegant, and that you cannot rightly complain of calamity or, amid your groans, hope for divine help, since the crowd of your faults resists their prayer. For what wonder is it, when I see that they have at once poured out crueler deeds both against citizens and against neighbors? But all these things, as the history reports, those ten tribes of Samaria suffered, often from neighboring enemies, but most of all from the Assyrians. Judah, however, when the Babylonian was laying waste, shared in the same destructions. Therefore, when you have been deprived of your most spacious and most elegant houses, and of fertile vineyards, and—what is more—planted by your own labor, with captivity also added, reckon this to your sins, which you have committed as the greatest.

Verse 13. — Enemies of the just, accepting bribes, and oppressing the poor in the gate. Therefore the prudent man in that time will be silent, because the time is evil. Through various particulars he exaggerates the corrupt state of the city. And just as he said above that they had despised those who urged them to justice, indeed had even struck them down, so consequently he calls these same men enemies of the just. This can certainly be understood in two ways: either that "of the just" is, as it were, the genitive singular, and they are declared enemies of justice—that is, I do not accuse you as negligent of justice, but as haters of it; from which the deadly perversity of your pursuits descends by this inclination, when, joining shamelessness to iniquity, you do not even wish what you do to lie hidden, but in the gate of the city, that is, in the places of judgment, with the people looking on, you estimate causes not at all by their merits but by their prices, and you assist the iniquity of the wealthy at the expense of the poor's resources; or else "enemies of the just" should be believed to be called by the nominative plural, so that, after many great crimes have been enumerated, he has brought in, as if moved, that they were enemies of the just—that is, that they showed themselves adversaries of religion and of God, as it were legitimate ones. It is indeed a familiar expression of the old man, who were accustomed to call both "the just armies" and "the just provinces," that is, great ones. But let us also look at the rest.

Verse 13. — Therefore, he says, the prudent man in that time will be silent, because the time is evil. He has changed the tense in the word "time"; for in recounting either the past or the present deeds of the people, he would more consistently have said, "he was silent in that time," instead of which he says "he will be silent." Since, then, he had declared that they had undertaken a war against the just man—that is, against the lawful man—contrary to honesty and religion: deservedly, he says, the mouths of those who recalled them to justice fell silent, and every prudent man grew still with groaning and grief, considering, surely, that no place remained for saving doctrine, and that he ought therefore to consult his own safety by keeping silent, since he now advances nothing by disputing. But he allows the prudent to be driven into silence by public horror, of whom he had said above: They hated him who reproves in the gate, and they abominated him who speaks perfectly. Since, then, the audacity of the profane multitudes has so conspired that it persecutes the truth and piety of doctrine as though war had been declared, every prudent teacher will indeed weep, but he will be silent: seeing that, like deaf asps, they have stopped their ears, so that nothing from the saving songs can penetrate to them. This very point seems to raise a question, which must be cleared up with a brief explanation. For the prudence of the teacher is praised when he withdraws himself to safety by keeping silent, if adversity has blown in from the side of the hearers. And yet the Teacher of the Gentiles commands, rebukes, and implores in season (2 Tim.

4.), and nearly all of sacred Scripture commends this perseverance. A distinction must therefore be applied, which can claim concord for the commandments. As long as the people, even if through negligence committing many offenses, nevertheless stands under the profession of learning, the legitimate teacher ought by no means to fear the secret offenses of certain persons; but rather he ought to provide for the edification of all who have gathered to hear, since he who has heard that the money entrusted to him is to be believed to be invested, will also expect the one who will come to demand back both the principal and the interest. But if there has been so great a change for the worse that the impiety of the people withdraws its neck from discipleship itself, and, enduring the itch of their ears, they acquiesce only in foolish fables: then plainly silence is already necessary for the leaders, saying with the prophet, I was mute, and I was humbled, and I was silent from good things, and my sorrow was renewed (Ps. 38).

Verses 14–15. Seek good, and not evil, that you may live, and the Lord God of hosts will be with you, as you have said. Hate evil and love good, and establish judgment in the gate; perhaps the Lord God of hosts may be merciful to the remnant of Joseph. These verses seem to have been inserted in the person of the prophet, who takes pity—that is, warning the Israelites even when they are already placed at the very brink of destruction, so that they may join together in vows and zeal for correction, in case the God of hosts, whose clemency is as great as his power, may be appeased by such amendments and may refrain at least from wiping out the remnants of a crushed nation. He then adds what is connected to the preceding context.

Verses 16–17. Therefore thus says the Lord God, the ruler of hosts: In every street there will be lamentation, and in all the places outside they will say, Woe, woe; and they will call the farmer to mourning, and to lamentation those who know how to wail. And in all the vineyards there will be lamentation, because I will pass through the midst of you, says the Lord. Setting aside those verses, which we said were brought in in the person of the prophet taking pity, the order of the invective runs on: so that after that which he said—the just are enemies, receiving gifts, and oppressing the poor in the gate, therefore the prudent man will be silent in that time, because the time is evil—there may seem to be connectedly added: Therefore thus says the Lord God, and the rest which follow: namely, that lamentations are to be heard in all the streets.

And in all places, he says, that are outside, it shall be said, "Woe, woe"; for whereas he had said that there would be lamentation in the streets, he added that the things outside are also to be mingled with similar weeping, so that he would not seem to threaten only cities. And so it shall be said over the whole region, "Woe, woe"; and both the vineyards and the fields and the mountains shall resound with pitiable lamentations. Because I will pass through the midst of you, says the Lord. For a long time, he says, I kept myself as it were hidden and did not see at all what you were doing, so that you experienced nothing; for you thought nothing of amendment throughout such long delays. Now at last I will enter into your region, defiled by sacrileges, as an avenger, whom you can no longer mock. But he says that he will pass through, so as to bring to mind the memory of that time when either Egypt or Sodom is read to have perished, consuming the firstborn of Egypt or the dwellings of Sodom. In this manner, therefore, I will pass through, so as to exact the vengeance that your merits demand. Whence also in the blessed Hosea, when he was discussing the mitigation of the sentence, he says: For I am God, and not man, the Holy One in the midst of you, and I will not enter into the city (Hosea 11:9). What therefore he had promised there in mercy that he would not do, this now in anger he promises he will do, that is, he will pass through the midst of the people with a mind bent on vengeance. But when the heap of these calamities has rushed in, the farmers will gather not for cultivation but for lamentation, summoning with them those who know how to mourn.

This was brought in according to the custom of that region, which also prevailed among other nations; for there were funeral songs, to whose rhythm, while others led the singing, the crowd resounded in response. Therefore, as if to express the lawful funeral of the people, he declares that those skilled in lamentation are to be summoned.

Verses 18–20. — Woe to those who desire the day of the Lord; what is it to you? The day of the Lord is darkness and not light. As if a man should flee from the face of a lion, and a bear meet him; and he should enter the house, and lean his hand on the wall, and a serpent bite him. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light: and gloom, and no splendor in it? The Teacher of the Gentiles, showing the counsel and purpose of divine piety, says: The goodness of God leads you to repentance; but according to your hardness and impenitent heart, you treasure up for yourself wrath on the day of wrath (Rom. 2:5), so that by that very delay you may receive accumulated vengeance. With this purpose, then, of giving counsel, the prophetic threat resounded through the ages of many kings: and the vehemence of terror went before the calamities to be described, so as to stir up in the hearts of hearers the affection of fear and correction; but those who had grown accustomed to abusing remedies drew the delay of punishments and deaths into an argument for falsehood, saying, namely, that the prophets, by commemorating the day of the Lord, were stirring up empty fears.

Therefore, among the other things which they were saying wantonly and shamelessly, they were also saying this mockingly: namely, that they desired the day of the Lord and wished it to be revealed at last—not that they sought it with true desires, but because, if it never came, the falsehood of the threatening prophets would be exposed. Accordingly, the judgment of sacred truth, conscious of itself, declares to the sacrilegious that a manifold affliction follows upon that profession of the desired day, and that that time will answer them not with good proofs but with hard wages, and such storms of calamities will arise that a bitterer crisis will always meet them there, wherever the wretched think they must flee for refuge. That day (he says) will be so squalid with the darkness of anguish that it will leave no light of counsel, but they will run about from destruction into destruction, with dread driving on the most wretched: so that if one fleeing a pursuing lion meets raging bears, and having endured the increase of sudden terror, bursts into some house to hide, and when he has put his hand to the wall so that after such great consternation he may rest a little, he incurs the bite of a serpent in the hole of his hiding place; and so, with the venom gliding into his vitals, he perishes. Is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light: and gloom and not splendor in it? I declare that that night is not only dark but also gloomy, in which, namely, the light of security is dimmed, and no stars of consolations shine beneath.

Verses 21–24. — I have hated and cast away your feast days, and I have not received the odor of your assemblies. Even if you offer me whole burnt offerings, I will not accept your gifts, and I will not look upon the vows of your fatlings. Take away from me the tumult of your songs, and I will not hear the songs of your lyre. And judgment shall be revealed like water, and justice like a mighty torrent. Although in arguing against Israel, that is, the ten tribes, he has lingered over the greater part of his discourse, nevertheless he also touches upon the sins of Judah. Indeed, even near the beginning of the work, when he had made mention of the various nations, he came to Judah and said: For three crimes of Judah and for four I will not turn him away, because he has cast off the law of the Lord and has not kept his commandments. For their idols deceived them, after which their fathers went: and I will send fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the houses of Jerusalem. Although, therefore, he had pressed more vehemently upon Israel, nevertheless, after his discourse came to set forth the day of the Lord, that is, the time of vengeance, and he strove to unfold its severity through various images—a terrible array of punishment that threatened the peoples of Judah no less than those of Samaria—he also showed that the consolations of ceremonies, which, with Israel profaned, Judah still seemed to celebrate, were rather enfeebled and cast away; that is, by the occasion of censure to be commended, before which, among the losses of morals, propitiations of this kind would avail nothing, he declared himself to be an equitable judge for both tribes.

Therefore by the delay of the sentence he denounces even Judah together with Israel, because he loathes their assemblies and offerings, and despises the vows in which they are accustomed to sacrifice fat victims; and he is so offended by the songs in which they sing praises to God that he declares he perceives rather a tumult than an assembly. Indeed, all these offices of religion are then pleasing to God, then acceptable, when they are offered together with good morals. But if those who are enslaved to sacrileges and iniquities usurp them, they will profit nothing toward obtaining salvation, so that their prayer becomes sin (Ps. 108). Therefore, when all these consolations have been convicted and driven away, the judgment of God will be revealed like water; and lest this be obscure, he added: and justice like a mighty torrent. The flood of the calamity that has been sent in will surely sweep them away, and like a deluge it will extinguish them. For he eagerly expresses by various images the power and knowledge of the one who avenges: which, just as it can be softened by tears before it rushes in, so when it has fallen, it will not be able to be evaded.

Verses 25–27. — Did you offer me victims and sacrifice in the desert for forty years, house of Israel? And you carried the tabernacles of Moloch and the image of your idols, the star of your god, which you made for yourselves. And I will make you migrate beyond Damascus, says the Lord, God of hosts is his name. The blessed Stephen also remembered this passage at the time of his glorious passion. For when, surrounded by the bands of raging Jews, he was disputing about the mystery of our Redeemer foretold by the holy prophets, he said: God turned and handed them over to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the Prophets: Did you offer me victims or sacrifices for forty years, house of Israel, and did you take up the tabernacles of Moloch and the star of your god Rempha, the figures which you made for yourselves to worship them, and I will transfer you beyond Babylon. But although this passage itself seems to have an obvious point—namely, a censure rebuking the iniquitous people—yet it so scatters its statements as belonging to different times that it has poured out scarcely a little obscurity. In fact, Jerome in this place received so wretched an opinion as to say that for the forty years which they are reported to have spent in the wilderness they seem to have served not God but idols, although history records nothing of the kind, but only that while Moses delayed they melted down the head of a calf, which nevertheless at once, at his command, they crushed.

Not therefore were they offering the legal ceremonies to the stars or to angels, whose rite and order our Author composed with His own mouth, and commanded that all things be offered to Him alone. According to the custom of the Scriptures, then, the times are indeed different; but the speech of the one rebuking joined like things together, to show that in their present sacrileges they were imitating their profane parents, who, having impiously demanded that gods be made for themselves, fell in the vast wilderness. What wonder, then, he says, if these too are driven from their own borders beyond Damascus—namely, to perish in Babylon and beyond? For what he set down as the star of your god is called in Hebrew by the name of a star, that is, of Lucifer, whom the Saracens are reported to worship even to this day. Yet Scripture records nothing of this kind concerning him—namely, at the time when the head of the idol was fashioned, doubtless in the likeness of the Egyptian bull, which they call Apis, because they had determined to serve the stars as well. But we read that through the imitation of Egyptian superstition they were also joined to other nations, as though nothing so profited them that they should not be reckoned to have venerated and worshipped it through the adoption of a single idol.

But the connection in meaning is made if, with the things that had been interposed set aside, that refers back to what he had said, Woe to those who desire the day of the Lord, namely what he says: Did you offer me victims and sacrifice in the desert? That is, your profanity so abuses my long-suffering and benevolence, which defers vengeance for long periods, that you argue that that destruction will never come, which has not yet come, though it has often been promised: as if examples were lacking by which you might recognize that it is mine, since to those who are destined for destruction I surely grant a long time for repentance. But to pass over the rest, at least look at this: that when the people, led out of Egypt, had come to Mount Sinai, and standing amid miracles worthy of my powers, had nevertheless returned to the worship of the idols which it had left behind, it deserved to be destined for destruction. Yet I, angered by neither their sacrifices nor their gifts, granted a period of forty years, nor did I promise that my wrath would rage suddenly against the guilty. Moreover, I consumed the hosts, already gradually condemned by the sentence, and thus neither did the length of time granted frustrate what had been declared, nor did the horror of the crime hasten the vengeance once kindled. Why then should you doubt that what you see has already happened will happen? That is, for this reason calamities to come are announced to you, and yet they are not brought upon you quickly, so that a space for amendment may be provided, not so that the vengeance may vanish, against which no length of time will be able to prevail.

But because you shamelessly abuse the goodness of God, the end of those fathers whom you have imitated in sacrilege will follow: just as their corpses fell in the vast wilderness, so you also, driven from the lands of your fathers, will die in a barbarian region.

BOOK TWO.

CHAPTER VI.

Verse 1. Woe to you who are wealthy in Zion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria: leaders, the heads of the peoples, who enter the house of Israel with pomp. That pride was always hateful to God, Scripture frequently declares, inasmuch as it was the beginning of such sin that it changed angels into demons. Whence also blessed David anxiously prays that he may not be trampled underfoot by the proud; for there, he says, all who work iniquity have fallen (Ps. 35). Here, however, he keeps the order of the prophets in his rebuke, so as to show that pride is, as it were, the fruit of impiety, in which tenor the Apostle's discourse also seems to have begun: for when he said that they had served creatures, having abandoned the Creator, he then subjoined an enumeration of crimes and shameful deeds, declaring that they overflowed with abominable acts for this reason, that they had violated the laws of piety toward God. Woe, he says, therefore to you who are wealthy in Zion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria—not that we judge the sins of the poor more lightly, but a greater guilt of crimes assails you, whom a greater wealth extends.

For the more conspicuous you are in honor and wealth, the more it befitted you to have greater zeal for religion; but as it is, you strive to be rich no less in impiety than in money. Therefore grievous lamentations will seize you, because according to the divine sentence, some mercy can be granted to the small, but the mighty shall mightily suffer torments. Amid such miseries of the regions, then, which she experiences either from lost strength or from calamities already rushing in, you trust in the garrisons and fortifications of places—namely, that you will be safe in Zion and Samaria against the wrath of the judge, supposing this. Woe to you who are wealthy in Zion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria: the chief men, the heads of the peoples, who enter pompously into the house of Israel. For never have you displayed your wealth more than in the time of adversity, nor shown how great a luxury ambition had filled you with, who, though the empire of the nation has now for the greater part been consumed, still within besieged cities swell with opulence and flow abroad in luxury.

Verse 2. Pass over to Chalanne, and see, and go from there to great Emath, and descend to Geth of the Palestinians, and to the best of their kingdoms, if their boundary is broader than your boundary. He aptly brought in mention of foreign nations, and by the occasion of another discourse he showed that the Creator of things assigned both to others the regions they inhabited and the kingdoms in which they flourished: those peoples, indeed, did not desire more, but these are taught to be both ungrateful and profane, who had been so pestilent to their cities that those whom they had earlier corrupted by their examples, they afterward trampled underfoot with the arrogance of plunder. But the form of divine judgment is to be noted, in which the merits of the afflicters are weighed not according to the qualities of the afflicted (so that if those who are crushed were not guilty, even the injury of those who oppress them might seem excusable), but they are accused as if they had violated saints. For they do not leap upon others out of hatred of another's wickedness, but by the impulse of their own iniquity: bearing the mind of robbers, not of censors; and to express their iniquity, the moderation and a certain uprightness of the profane and neighboring nations is set before them. Pass over, he says, to Chalanne, to great Emath, to Geth of the Palestinians, and carefully inspect whether they have received lands broader than yours which they inhabited: they are so content with their lot that they seem to desire nothing else. This reproach, indeed, as it accuses those men of greed, so it desires to be explained.

For it seems inconsistent that, after he charged them with the crime of wealth and luxury, he should bring forward as proof those who appeared to inhabit narrower lands. For it could be objected that these men had more boastfulness for this reason, because they had gathered greater riches from the revenues of the region conferred on them, and the comparison introduced would retain no force for reproach, since what the very sequence of events had demanded was happening. What sense, then, is there here, where the words fail us? Surely this: that he convicts the sacrilegious peoples of having parricidal hearts, which another prophet, that is, the blessed Hosea, clearly shows when he said: In the days of desolation she showed faith; the princes of Judah have become like those who remove a boundary, that is, when the ten tribes had been transferred, with the Assyrian victorious. The people of Judah, estranged from mercy and compunction, rejoiced that a widening of their boundaries had fallen to them. With this in view, therefore, the prophet now demonstrates that the impious princes exulted not only over Judah but also over Israel itself, which was the first to be subjected to captivity: because, when the common inhabitants and natives of the region had been consumed by various disasters, while these men were, as it were, delivered within the walls of cities, a broader possession had come to them. Yet he levels this charge more against the tribe of Judah, for in what follows he calls that tribe by name. Deservedly, therefore, he condemned both their enemies and their gifts, and also the neighboring peoples with their praised frugality. But let us see the rest as well.

Verses 3–6. — You who are set apart for the evil day, and draw near to the throne of iniquity. You who sleep on beds of ivory, and luxuriate on your couches: you who eat the lamb from the flock, and the calves from the midst of the herd. You who sing to the voice of the psaltery: like David, they thought they had instruments of song. Drinking wine in bowls and anointed with the finest ointment, and they felt nothing over the affliction of Joseph. Of those whom he had called above the leading men, who enter the house in pomp, glorying in their riches and feasts, and grinding down the heads of the humble, rejoicing even in the captivity of their brother, he accordingly ran through their feasts and pleasures. Woe, he says, to you who are set apart for the evil day, to whom indeed the time of vengeance hangs over, to which you are so devoted that you appear to have been chosen precisely for this. But as for what he says, and draw near to the throne of iniquity, we ought to understand it either in this way, that this connective word which is placed before, that is, "you draw near," has the force of a rational conjunction, that is, "because": so that the sense is, that those set apart for the evil day are those who have drawn near to the throne of iniquity, namely, to be punished for this reason, because they exercised unjust judgments against others; or certainly he calls it the throne of iniquity by which injustice, once examined, will be condemned: just as we call it the judgment of money and of murder, not because embezzlements or homicides are perpetrated by it, but because by its examination they are punished.

But living in such depths of wickedness, you think so little of any zeal for repentance that you pursue every kind of luxury and every instrument of extravagance; nor are you content to have given whole days to amusement, but you recline on ivory couches and soft coverings, so that bodies pampered with silk may suffice for the work of obscenity; and you season even your banquets with the pleasure of the ears. For while you consume the choice lambs and calves from the flocks and herds, and drain the wine even to drunkenness, the psaltery and lyres easily resound; and to these shameful deeds you add insults to antiquity, saying, namely, that you have the instruments that were at the disposal of the most blessed David. Nor do you wretched men consider how much difference there is between your pursuits, how much between your merits and his. For David sang the praises of the Creator, the laws of virtue, and the remedies for passion with sacred song; but you, on the contrary, make the incentives of luxury resound, to the injury of the Creator, whose law is despised. He delighted in sober feasts and was fortified by prophetic ointments; but you are soaked in drunkenness and debauchery, even in common oil, and in what is corrupted by artifice. Finally, he, full of the affection of mercy, followed with tears and prayers the calamities that were to come upon his people many ages later. But you look upon those same calamities, already brought on and already raging, with such dry eyes that you rejoice in a parricidal manner that they have come.

Therefore, when he says, "they felt no sorrow over the ruin of Joseph," he refers it to the compassion that he knew was accustomed to arise in the hearts of those who either loved or pitied; and that hardness of heart is also accused by that psalm in the person of the righteous: "I sought for one who might grieve with me, and there was none; and for comforters, and I found none" (Ps. 68). So then, when captivity seized Joseph, that is, the ten tribes, Judah felt no affection of mercy, none of compassion. Why not, when he rather thought that a time for increasing wealth had been offered, if he joined his brothers' fields to his own borders? But what such a vow and such a purpose may receive, let us hear.

Verse 7. — "Therefore," he says, "now they shall migrate at the head of those who migrate, and the faction of the wanton shall be taken away," that is, they will straightway confess the vanity of their hopes, when that captivity, which had been delayed a little while, has overtaken them too. For they shall be driven out from their own borders at the head of those who migrate, that is, these who had believed they would be safe shall be exiled among the first; and so the crowds of the luxurious shall be scattered.

Verses 8–9. The Lord God has sworn by his soul, says the Lord God of hosts: I detest the pride of Jacob, and I hate his houses, and I will deliver up the city with its inhabitants. But if ten men are left in one house, they too shall be warned. To show how deeply he shuddered at the contempt shown for the captivity of his brother, he swore in words that announced vengeance. But when the prophet says that God swore by his soul, understand that this was said in our manner, to those to whom he was speaking: since we reckon nothing more precious or sweeter than our soul, he too—not as though he were some living being composed of soul and members, but as one who has signified his majesty and his life by the name of "soul"—swore that he detests the houses of Jacob and that he would bring them under such great calamities that populous families would be consumed by such constant deaths, and there would not remain among them one who could bury the dead. By naming Jacob, he indicated Judah and Israel alike, since he had just before mingled them together in calamity. So when many houses have come to such desolation that they find no one to bury the dead, neighbors will come and care for the tombs of their kin; and they will not lay them to rest in honored sepulchers according to custom, but will burn them in a common fire; and the neighbors themselves, whom we have mentioned, entering in, will search lest anyone lie hidden in the inner rooms or remain, and they will speak with one another:

Verses 10–12. And he will say to him: Be silent, and do not remember the name of the Lord. For behold, the Lord will command, and he will strike the greater house into ruins, and the smaller house into rents. What is it that he says: Be silent, and do not remember the name of the Lord—when surely the magnitude of the misery could bend even stubborn hearts to the remembrance of their judge and creator, and on that account it would be said more fittingly: Let us remember the name of the Lord, whose indignation has laid us waste with so manifold a calamity. Let us therefore gather from the preceding passages the meaning that lies hidden in this place: Woe, he says, to those who desire the day of the Lord; what is it to you? The day of the Lord is darkness for you, and not light—not that they could seek out the time of their own condemnation, but because, as we have explained, abusing the delay of vengeance, they were defaming the prophets themselves with lies, as though they were threatening those evils which would come to pass in no age. Therefore he now says that when the captivity long promised has seized the troops of the guilty, and that day, that is, the time, has arrived which they had boasted that they desired in mockery, such great terror of the divine name will fill them that they will speak to one another, that no one may dare to remember the name of the Lord, whose severity, when offended, has appeared so great that the commotion is thought to be stirred up even by the naming of him. For behold, the Lord will command, and he will strike the greater house into ruins, and the smaller house into rents.

A little earlier, by the name of Jacob, and of Judah and Israel—that is, all the tribes together which had been divided among themselves—we said that they were indicated. The present verse therefore completes this, since it announces that both the greater house and the smaller house are to be struck down by divisions and ruins; but with different words it seems to show one thing, that is, the overthrow of the houses. For since divisions of walls usually precede ruin, he has marked both as about to fall by collapse and division; but he has called the greater house, according to the number of the tribes, Israel, and the smaller, Judah, and he announces that both of them, as they are polluted by similar iniquity, will likewise perish by a similar calamity.

Verse 13. — Can horses run upon the rocks, or can one plow with oxen? Since you have turned judgment into bitterness, and the fruit of justice into wormwood. This is a most pleasing meaning, and one that is covered by a kind of eloquence.

For by allegorical words he reproaches the people for the vices in which they were foul: for here he did not signify four-footed beasts simply, or horses, or buffaloes, but he magnifies the pride of a wanton nation; for already the sweetness of judgments had turned into bitterness in crushing the innocent, and it had arrogated so much to itself from its own strength that it thought it could be struck down by no misfortunes: since it had acquired so much wealth for itself that, like buffaloes—namely, those that never submit their necks to the plow—it enjoyed continual freedom; nor did it run through difficult roads like horses, as a horse under the reins, but through fields and meadows. Therefore, he says, it is certain that neither does a buffalo bear yokes, nor does a horse advance of its own will through rocks: but you, who rejoice that you have shaken off yokes and burst reins, and seemed to yourselves in luxury, in strength and freedom to be buffaloes, prove by your deeds what you have drawn in with your hopes, that is, that you are subject to no commands. But since this falls out quite to the contrary, and at the will of enemies you enter even through the harshest roads, and with broken neck you endure heavy labors, confess that neither are you horses, nor buffaloes, nor that you have acquired any protection and strength, either in your wealth or in your minds.

Verses 14–15. — You who rejoice in nothing: who say, Have we not taken horns for ourselves in our own strength? For behold, I will raise up against you, O house of Israel, says the Lord God of hosts, a nation: and they shall crush you from the entrance of Hamath to the torrent of the desert. He has entirely supported the preceding exposition—namely, that their belief that they were strong and free like buffaloes and horses came not from any consciousness of real strength, but from their own opinion and the vanity of their hope. For you have rejoiced, he says, in nothing, saying among yourselves: Have we not taken horns for ourselves in our own strength?—we who clearly seemed to display the likeness of buffaloes. Therefore you have claimed so much for yourselves on the basis of your own powers that you thought you could despise the commandments as mere mud. A strong army will come against you, and it will devastate you first, O Israel, by the power of the conquerors: from the entrance of Hamath, that is, from Antioch, all the way to the torrent of the desert—that is, the region that borders the wilderness. It will lay waste all your territories, you see, with hostile cruelty; and you, O Judah, though you remain for a short delay, it will nonetheless strike and overwhelm with a fire close at hand.

CHAPTER VII.

Verses 1–3. — This the Lord God showed me, and behold, the fashioner of the locust at the beginning of the sprouting of the latter rain, and behold, the latter rain after the shearing of the flock. And it came to pass when it had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, Lord God, be propitious, I beseech you, who shall raise up Jacob, for he is small? The Lord was moved to pity concerning this: It shall not be, said the Lord. He weaves his discourse in the prophetic manner; rather, he shows what kinds of revelations the prophets were accustomed to behold in the spirit (whence they were also called seers), that is, that those brief images of future things appeared to them under various forms, but such that they already grasped their meaning; and thus they were moved to various affections, pertaining either to censure, no doubt, or to mercy. After therefore he announced the one roused up against the nation, which would bring destruction upon them, lest the very brevity of the judgment should not sufficiently move the hearer, he lingers over explaining the images he had seen, and through their occasion shows how earnestly he prayed on their behalf, lest anyone should think he announced those calamities with the mind of one insulting them or feeling no grief. Hear therefore, he says, into what spectacles of images our God has led me. There stood one who after the manner of a potter fashioned locusts, that is, formed swarms, and assigned to them, exceeding in number, that they should feed on all the produce of the fields and all the sprouts, as if with untiring bites.

But what he says, "at the beginning of the sprouting of the latter rain," he shows to apply to the increase of the plague: that is, so that a severe drought may seem to occupy the seasons of the timely rain, and the farmers, worn out and harassed by a long waiting for the rains, may have begun to have the consolations of the light-bringer, and so may have hastily sown their desperate seeds; but when even those seeds, scarcely and very slowly buried, had begun to sprout, before they could rise into stalks and ears, they perished, with the locusts feeding on them: yet so that this evil might not temper their hope, even a slight one, another latter rain came after the locust. For behold, he says, the latter rain after the shearer of the flock: that is, it would consume those sprouts which the locusts had shorn, right down to the roots, by the one that followed; and since he has here kept silent its name, let us gather from the earlier prophecy what it signified. For blessed Joel says, "What the caterpillar left, the locust ate; and what the locust left, the bruchus ate; and what the bruchus left, the blight ate." Therefore the prophet Amos also indicated the bruchus by the latter rain that follows upon the remnants of the shearer.

But the fact that he sees the maker of the locust, when he could have shown himself as one who calls forth a creature already existing, serves precisely this purpose: that the countless multitude of those living things be made public—not, of course, that as many swarms as could be found in the world be gathered, but that by the power of the judge, who is also the creator of the universe, new ones be licked into being; since the completed devastation had disclosed the cause of their first formation, and the consumption of food had shown the multitude of those that warn. I cried out, he says: Lord God, be merciful, I beseech you: who will raise up Jacob, for he is small? That is, if through your indignation our people comes to such smallness as these figures promise, who will be able to raise it up further, once you have consumed it with such devastation? The Lord took pity concerning this. It shall not be, said the Lord—that is, the change of sentence that followed taught that my entreaty had been effective. For God, being ready to show mercy, removed that plague whose magnitude he saw I had dreaded, and answered that what I had supplicated should not happen would not happen. But something else, which he judged to be milder, he brought in.

Verse 4. — For this he showed me: behold, the Lord God will call judgment to fire, and it will devour the great abyss, and it will consume the portion as well. Unless we grasp what is said prudently and carefully, no small absurdity will be exposed in our understanding. For indeed, after those losses which the grazing locust and the following grub had inflicted, a gentler plague of fire is brought in, although it is not at all doubtful that the calamity wrought by the unleashed burning is much greater than all that cropping of the shoots brought. How then does the prophet say that God took pity, and, as it were, bent by tears, called judgment to fire—that is, assigned to the flames those who were guilty, from whom he had driven away the danger of want? It must therefore be observed that here by the name of fire he wished to indicate the fleeting passage of flame, which, although by its violence it scorches whatever it touches, nevertheless, as long as it does not linger on what it has breathed upon, neither descends into the depths nor consumes the strong things it seemed to have seized. Therefore, by the images of locusts or grubs settling upon the work they had undertaken, he wished to show the destruction of the doomed nation. When the prophet had seen this in the spirit, he was struck with dismay and interceded on behalf of the people out of affection, and out of the reverence owed to the judge; and he obtained that the harshness of that sentence be changed.

But since the people's inveterate profaneness did not allow full pardon to be granted, a punishment of this kind follows, which, even if it consumes a great part of what has been sent upon them, nevertheless allows the remnants to remain. For thus he says: Behold, the Lord God will call judgment to fire, and it will devour the great abyss, and it will consume the portion as well. But the prophet, having been encouraged by the effect of his first supplication, dares also to withstand this denunciation, and says that Israel is small, that is, that its forces, though diminished, are to be destroyed by slaughter, if he who judges should himself, as an avenger, kindle the wrath of the enemies. But some have thought that the Assyrians were signified by the image of the locust, and the Babylonians by the image of fire, not seeing that this would be contrary to history. For the prophet says that the plagues of both the locust and the fire were removed by his prayers, and that the Lord answered him when he supplicated concerning each: It will not be this, that is, This devastation will by no means rush upon them. But the Assyrian and the Babylonian, enemies and mighty in victories, laid waste both Israel and Judah with grievous slaughter. Here, therefore, our God sets forth through the prophet, who was the spectator of the effects of the images, both that the people of the Jews deserved a destruction much more grievous than they endured, and that the heavenly arbiter could destroy them by slaughter, if he had wished either to multiply the number of the enemies or to kindle their indignation; and that he suffered a certain necessity of afflicting that nation, which he did not wish to perish utterly.

Verses 7–9. — But when he had removed these two kinds of imminent dangers, he shows me this, he says, the Lord. And behold, the Lord standing upon a plastered wall, and in his hand the trowel of a mason. And the Lord said to me: What do you see, Amos? And I said, The trowel of a mason. And the Lord said to me: Behold, I will place the trowel in the midst of my people Israel: I will no longer add to pass over him. And they shall demolish the high places of the idol, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid desolate: and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam by the sword. A great part of God's dispensations, under which the way of mortals runs its course, the vision of the prophet of whom we speak has made public. For whereas the preceding sentences showed the judge either threatening or raging and gaping like a lion over the deaths of the guilty (which motions or affections, surely, are taught to be foreign to the nature of God, who rejoices in continual tranquility, according to the reasoning of doctrine), the occasion of the present passage has disclosed by what manner above all our God would rise up to take vengeance—namely, by forsaking rather than by raging. For since a heap of calamities was rushing in at once, if he had reluctantly desisted, he says that they were brought down by his striking, and for the sake of stirring compunction in the hearts of the guilty, he takes upon himself both the bearing and the motion that an enemy would have had, raging with his permission.

Therefore, when the prophet's intercession had removed the twofold sentence he had pronounced against the merits of the Jews, he brought forward a third: against which the prophet, as if most gently, did not dare to oppose himself, but which contained a most complete disposition of vengeance. He says: For the Lord of all things seemed to me to stand upon a plastered wall, that is, one put together by the mason's art, holding in his hand the trowel of a mason, by which he indicated, namely, the office he was accustomed to perform—that is, that he both protected them with continual defense and applied frequent remedy, by which they might be healed and restored. Otherwise, if he were to remove that providence which confers these things on the wretched, none of them could either hold together or stand. Therefore, he says, I will lay down this trowel, that is, my care, by which broken things were plastered over and made firm, and I will indicate a certain leisure to my kindness, because Israel thus compels it, nor will I endure any longer the labor of striving, with shameless profanity, by an ineffective piety. And so at last they will know what they have perpetrated, when, with me in no way striking but yet not protecting, they perish. And they shall demolish the high places of the idol, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be made desolate: and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. For enemies will come, and, achieving full triumph, they will rage with sword and fire, burning shrines and profane places together with entire cities, and they will lay waste the family of Jeroboam with avenging sword.

But after the prophet's discourse had proceeded to this point, a certain man named Amaziah, a priest of the idols, sent to Jeroboam, who at that same time presided over the empire of the ten tribes, and reported to him that Amos, by the impulse of a rebellious spirit rather than of one prophesying, was both announcing destruction by name to him, that is, to the king, and so terrifying the whole people with manifold threats that even his own judgment became doubtful, since he was uncertain, of course, which king he should follow. And briefly summing up the purpose of the entire prophetic volume,

Verse 11. — For thus, he says, Amos says: Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall go into captivity from his land. From these words we accordingly observe, as we also experience in the affairs of our own times, that the humbler part of the people, that is, the common folk, in proportion as they had less of the pride of nobility, were the more easily moved by the sayings of the prophets. But the priests and the leading men, since they strove to favor the vices of the king, rejected—indeed, accused—and, if it were permitted, killed the teachers of salvation. But let us continue the order of the reading. When, therefore, he had sent his message to King Jeroboam, by which he might be inflamed against the prophet of God, not content to await the outcome of the contest he had stirred up, but desiring that the holy man be put to flight in whatever way, he summons the very man to him as a mediator.

Verses 12–13. And Amaziah said to Amos, "You who see, go, flee into the land of Judah, eat bread there, and prophesy there. And in Bethel you shall no longer continue to prophesy, because it is the king's sanctuary and the house of the kingdom." Fearing, I believe, lest reverence for the prophet should restrain even the king's indignation, he attempted to expel him by his own efforts, and addressing him with honor he said, "You who see, depart, and flee to the neighboring region of Judah, where you may be able both to live safely and to teach." But in this place, that is, Bethel, where you look upon the hall that has been built and the king's sanctuaries—namely, the idol to whose worship we have been enslaved together with the prince himself—do not continue further to make yourself heard with utterances of this kind, which you will perhaps find are by no means unpunished for you.

Verses 14–15. Amos answered and said to Amaziah: "I am not a prophet, and I am not the son of a prophet, but I am a herdsman, plucking sycamore figs. And the Lord took me when I was following the flock, and said to me, Go, prophesy to my people Israel." From the occasions of the responses, even those things which are left unsaid are for the most part to be understood, as now the prophet, when the soothsayer had told him to flee, responded that he was not descended from the stock of the prophets, nor had he undertaken this office from the beginning, and yet for that reason he ought not to be held in contempt by his hearers as though he were prophesying falsely.

But what they were accustomed to say as an insult to him, this he also professed with joy—namely, that he was neither of the choir nor of the stock of prophets, but devoted only to the pastoral office, leading herds through the glades and gathering food from trees in the most lowly manner, yet chosen by God, the inspector of the heart, and appointed to this office of prophesying. In accordance with this custom the Apostle also glories when he says that when it pleased God to reveal his Son through me, I did not immediately acquiesce to flesh and blood, nor did I go up to my predecessors the Apostles, but I went away into Arabia, and from there I returned to Damascus (Gal. 1:17)—that is, I sought neither any teaching authority nor privilege, but at once I obeyed our Redeemer who called me, promptly and without delay, so that I might enter upon the work of preaching. Therefore the blessed Amos also professes himself a shepherd of flocks, having come to this work not by any ambition, but by the sole election of the one who called him, who says to me, "Go, prophesy to my people Israel." Those things, therefore, which I have set down above as threats, you, O Amaziah, and all your associates ought to have received not as my words, but as the words of God speaking through me, and not to doubt that by God's will I was announcing those things which I had known were to come. That you may not be ignorant of this, receive the proof of him who speaks in me, Christ.

Your wife will fornicate in the city, your sons and your daughters will fall by the sword, and your ground will be measured with a line. And you will die in a polluted land, and Israel will go away captive from its land. What benefit, then, is it to you to be unwilling to hear what you must necessarily endure, since it is not the words of the one who denounces you that torment you, but the wounds of the one who pursues you. Therefore, so that you may realize that the sentence hanging over you cannot be removed by any skill, I declare that you will feel the torments of all affections—that is, those which a husband, a father, a distinguished citizen undergoes. For your wife will not be defiled by secret shame, but in the midst of the city she will be subjected to the lust of the conquerors, and the sword will ravage your children before your eyes, while you are permitted to mourn them; and you, struck at once by disgrace and bereavement, will die in a polluted land—that is, either in the very region of the Jews, which first the sacrileges of its citizens and afterward the crimes of its enemies polluted, or certainly in barbarian territories, which you have always esteemed to be most refined—and Israel will be driven into exile by the whirlwind of captivity. But let us also look at the rest.

CHAPTER VIII.

Verses 1–3. — This the Lord God showed me, and behold a hook of fruits. And he said: What do you see, Amos? And I said, A hook of fruits. And the Lord said to me: The end has come upon my people Israel; I will no longer pass by them. And the hinges of the temple shall creak in that day, says the Lord God: many shall die, in every place silence shall be cast down. Up to the present point he had announced the calamities that were owed to crimes, and were contained by the fixed sentence of the eternal judge, so that the profane should by no means escape unpunished. But when the force of his speech had long resounded with this, now at last he shows that the time for inflicting punishments is near, and according to the custom of the prophets he has introduced an image that expresses this very thing. For just as above the trowel of the mason made public the care of providence, which the judge, setting it down from his hand in indignation, taught that he had already ceased to protect them: so now, showing the nearness of damnation, he took up a hook of fruits, that is, such as those are accustomed to have who climb into trees to pluck fruits, and because through the tenderness of the branches they cannot advance to the ends, standing firm on the solid part, they bend the heads of the branches toward themselves, gathering the fruits that they see to be ripe.

Therefore, since the eternal Judge now saw that vengeance was opportune, he made it understood that the peoples had, as it were, ripened for receiving it, and he declares that he has taken up the office of vengeance, and that Israel can no longer remain unpunished. I will no longer pass by them, just as, namely, gatherers of fruits pass by those which they see are still unripe, but pluck those which are fit for eating. Therefore the form of the hook has already shown that the time for fulfilling the sentence has come: that is, of him dragging to the deserved punishments those who seemed to flourish in riches and abound in children. The hinges of the temple shall creak in that day, says the Lord; many shall die: in every place silence shall be cast down. And do not think it doubtful, O people, what this form of the hook announces: The hinges of the temple shall creak: that is, when together with the cities all the shrines in which you trust shall be destroyed; for their doors shall not be gently opened for the offices of those who worship, but they shall burst apart by the force of the attackers, and the profane crowd shall die in confused slaughter; and thus the crossroads, which resounded with the multitude of citizens, shall be filled with mournful silence. But by the name of the temple, whose hinges he says creak, he would seem to announce the calamity of Judah as well, and the destruction of the temple situated at Jerusalem, unless the whole context agreed with the ten great tribes. Therefore he said that the hinges of that temple are to be torn out, of which he also said above (Chap. 7, v.

9.) The high places of the idol shall be demolished, and the sanctifications of Israel shall be laid waste, and after a few things he says openly: He who swore in the transgression of Samaria, and said: As the Lord your God lives, Dan, the ways of Beersheba shall fall, and they shall not rise again any more.

Verses 4–6. — Hear this, you who crush the poor and make the needy of the land fail, saying: When will the month pass, and we will sell goods: and the Sabbath, and we will open the grain, that we may diminish the measure and increase the shekel, and set up deceitful balances. That we may possess the needy for silver, and the poor for shoes, and sell the refuse of the grain. By the same rules by which it was established, the prophetic discourse is woven together, so that although above all crimes it accuses the worship of idols, by which, namely, forsaking God, they were made utterly profane: yet it does not keep silent about other parts of life, that is, the remaining sins of conduct: and thus it may either show that through love of vices they despised the teaching of the sacred law, or what fruits of conduct impiety produces, which, although it wanders through almost all kinds of wickedness, yet before all else pursues avarice: which even in the Apostle is called the service of idols (Gal. 5:20).

Therefore, when this divine discourse had also rebuked the sacrilegious and was now threatening them with imminent destruction, it suddenly cried out, as one who wished to break through the deafness of the profane—so that if they were unwilling to judge by the merits of their pursuits, but preferred things foul to things fair and to their vines, at least, now that their affairs had been reduced to straits and the crash of stirred-up vengeance was sounding close at hand, they might see for what purpose they were gathering money, and with what bronze they were striving to fill their purses, which were certain to pass forthwith into the power of their enemies. Hear this, he says, you who crush the poor and make the needy of the land fail. Sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and shamelessly pant after lying riches? From these you will feel nothing of help, nothing, indeed, of comfort—things that bring you both the cause of guilt and of punishments. With what hope, when entrusted to you, did you corrupt the gifts of those who judge, so that from the poor whom you oppressed and slew you might receive bloody spoils, and have no kind of industry that was harmless? For you did not sin only by the corruption of verdicts in judgments, but also, when you continued to collect money from the fruits of the fields, polluting those very trades which could have been conducted honorably, you mingled the crimes of your vows with the industry granted to you. For when, you said, will the month pass, and we will sell our wares, and the sabbath, and we will open the grain, so that we may diminish the measure and increase the shekel and set up deceitful scales?

You therefore, who sin no less through greed than through iniquity, were awaiting and longing for public scarcity—though you were most luxurious and for that reason most sluggish, you nonetheless loathed the solemnity of the sabbaths, because when rest was proclaimed, for at least one day you restrained yourselves from your frauds. So, he says, you were rebuking the slowness of the passing rest, hastening, of course, toward busy times, in which you would sell to a hungry people at great prices not only grain but even the refuse that you were certainly accustomed to throw away, devising such things among yourselves by mutual iniquity, so that you might possess the needy for silver and the poor for sandals. Since, therefore, you have so conducted yourselves as enemies of humanity that, the richer you were than others, the more cruelly the crowd of citizens felt this from you, and not even the abundance of things called you to generosity, you ought surely to obtain no mercy from the eternal judge, which you denied to your neighbors with such obstinacy and such shamelessness.

Verse 7. — The Lord has sworn against the pride of Jacob, if I forget all their works to the end. The indignation of the Creator will make public the greatness of your iniquity, O Israel, he who has bound himself even by an oath, that no one mindful of so many evils would be spared: but until he should destroy them with final destruction, he would strain the force of his severity. At the same time he also exposed the confessed disposition of the guilty, who, though they seemed to have sinned in the fraud of measures and weights through avarice alone, he threatens that he will rise up against their pride: showing indeed that they would never have committed so many crimes unless they admitted them through contempt of the law, and that as they valued money immoderately, so too they esteemed the precepts of God cheaply. There is no reason, he says, that you should put an end to their arrogance by outrages against the poor; far beyond has the unbridled audacity of the impious proceeded, they have drunk in our impious contempt: on account of which deservedly, I who am the inspector of souls detest their pride: and I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest. For what censure can mercy temper when they rage with such atrocity, that their whole region deserves to tremble, desiring to be freed from the weight of those whom it nourished as degenerates.

Verse 8. — Shall the earth not be moved over this, and every inhabitant of it mourn: and it shall rise up like a river, all of it, and be cast out and flow away like the river of Egypt? What it meant for the earth to be moved, which he had declared through the figure of terror, he disclosed in plain speech by saying, And every inhabitant of it shall mourn. There will come, he says, the captivity once promised and until now deferred; for already the business of vengeance — that hook of our sentence which I mentioned above — has drawn it on. And everything will be fulfilled which I brought forward both as contempt and as sworn, and the whole people of Israel will flow out with no greater difficulty than the river of Egypt, that is the Nile, and will be compelled to cross over to the Assyrians. The face of that time will be so sad and bitter that in the middle of the day the sun will seem to have failed and night to have rushed in. For thus no distinction of orders, no light of counsel will remain, as if palpable darkness had taken away earth and heaven alike from the eyes of the wretched.