Amos 7

Visions concerning the disasters coming on Israel

This is what the Lord God showed me: I saw that he was forming a swarm of locusts at the beginning of the late crop, and saw it was the late crop after the king’s mowing. 2 And it came about when it had finished eating the grass of the land, that I said,

“O Lord God, forgive, I beg you.

How can Jacob stand?

For he is small”.

3 The LORD relented about this. “It will not be”, said the LORD.

4 This is what the Lord God showed me: I saw the Lord God calling to contend by fire, and it consumed the great deep, and was eating up a part of the land.

5 Then I said, “O Lord God, stop, I beg you. How will Jacob stand? For he is small”.

6 The Lord relented about this. “This also will not be”, said the Lord God.

7 This is what he showed me: I saw the Lord standing on a wall made with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. 8 And the LORD said to me,

“Amos, what do you see?”

And I said, “A plumb line”.

7:7-8 The Lord here compares Israel to a wall. He wanted Israel to be “straight”. When He tested them He found them altogether crooked. So the wall had to come down.⚜

Then the Lord said, “See, I will set a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel. And I will not pass by them any longer.

9 “And the high places of Isaac

will become desolate,

and the sanctuaries of Israel

will be laid waste;

7:9 He would not send a devastating plague of locusts or destroying fire, but He would send an enemy army to destroy their places of idolatry and many of the people.⚜

and I will rise against the house

of Jeroboam with the sword”.

The ruin to come on Amaziah the priest

10 Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent word to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words.

7:10 Bethel was a place of idolatry – Amos 4:4; 5:5-6; 1 Kings 12:28-30. So Amaziah was an idolatrous priest and not a true one. He did his best to get rid of God’s prophet Amos.⚜

11 For Amos says this:

‘Jeroboam will die by the sword,

and Israel will surely be led away

captive from their own land.’ ”

7:11 Amos did not say Jeroboam himself would die by the sword, and Jeroboam did not (2 Kings 14:29). The sword did come on the “house of Jeroboam” – v 9; 2 Kings 15:8-10.⚜

12 Also Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go! Run away to the land of Judah, and eat food there, and prophesy there. 13 But do not prophesy any more at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and the king’s court”.

7:13 Bethel was a wicked king’s temple; the temple of the King of heaven was in Jerusalem.⚜

14 Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was not a prophet, and not the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and a gatherer of sycamore figs. 15 And the LORD took me as I followed the flock, and the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’

7:14-15 Amaziah was completely mistaken in his view of Amos. So Amos explained that he was not a professional prophet, that was not how he earned his bread (v 12), and that the king of Judah had not sent him to “conspire” in Israel (v 10). He came to Israel only because God sent him.⚜

16 Now therefore hear the word of the LORD. You say,

‘Do not prophesy against Israel,

and do not drop your words

against the house of Isaac.’

17 “Therefore thus says the LORD:

“‘Your wife will become a prostitute

in the city,

and your sons and your daughters

will fall by the sword,

and your land will be divided by line,

and you will die in a defiled land,

and Israel will surely go into captivity

out of his land.’ ”

7:17 Amos repeats his prophesy that Israel would go into exile (Amos 5:27) and adds predictions concerning Amaziah.⚜