Amos 9:15

And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up

And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up - (, "I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart, and with my whole soul").

Which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God - "thy God," Israel's God: this is the ground of their restoration, God's original choice of them as His.

Remarks:

(1) Every altar which man erects to idolatry, literal or spiritual, shall be smitten by the Lord; and all idols and all their worshippers shall perish together ().

(2) Flight from the Omnipotent and Omnipresent Yahweh is vain. Height or depth alike are within His reach. "The sea" (), as in Jonah's case, so far from being a way of escape, brings the sinner into more immediate contact with God's avenging power. "And in the great day of judgment the sea will give up the dead which are in it, and death and hell shall deliver up the dead which are in them" (). Not even captivity exhausted the woes that pursued the apostate Israelites wheresoever they went. As it is the greatest joy and comfort of believers to know that God sets His eyes upon them for good, so it shall be the greatest of miseries to the lost to feel the eye of the avenging God ever set upon them for evil.

(3) At the mere "touch" of God, the land that is under His displeasure melteth, and its inhabitants mourn, and destruction, as an overwhelming "flood" (). sweeps every trace of its prosperity away. How as a nation we should fear and obey this Almighty and holy "Lord God of hosts," that so we may enjoy the bliss of His favour, rather than incur the terrible consequences of His frown!

(4) The vast spaces occupied by the starry hosts, so incalculably distant, and the interval again between the material heavens and the heaven of angels, and the interval again between the heaven of angels and the heaven of heavens (), are as it were so many "steps" () to the presence of the Great King, who is "above all heavens" (). Yet still He stoopeth down to regard the things upon earth; yea, by successive spiritual steps, He is conducting the stunt so as ultimately to be admitted into His immediate presence.

(5) Israel vainly relied on her past privileges as the elect people of God (). But God chose them only that they might choose Him. By casting Him off they became castaways from Him. Thenceforth his having brought them up out of Egypt lest all its spiritual meaning to them; and no more availed them for safety from punishment than the bringing up of the Philistines from Caphtor, or the Syrians from Kir, availed them both respectively for deliverance from the penalty of their sins. Privileges are of no avail for salvation to those who neglect or abuse them.

(6) In all God's threats against the kingdom of Israel, He makes an exception in favour of the house of Jacob-that is, the remnant according to the election of grace, who constitute the true descendants of the believing patriarch. The house of Israel has been violently "sifted," not merely among some, but "among all nations." In every nation of the world Jews have been and are found. Yet, amidst this ceaseless tossing to and fro, no one true spiritual Israelite has been finally lost, whom God in His electing grace willed to be saved. The literal Israel, too, which is reserved for the coming national restoration, is similarly secured by the watchful guardianship of Yahweh. In the Church of Christ also, while the chaff is driven away by the winds of temptation and persecution "not the least grain" of the wheat of real faith and love "shall fall upon the earth." Believers, like Simon, are shaken in the sieve by Satan, the world, and the flesh; but this very sifting is overruled by God to the very opposite of what Satan intended: the dust and chaff of self-confidence and worldly-mindedness are shaken off, and they learn more wholly to rest all their hopes of salvation, righteousness, and strength in God alone. None of Christ's elect shall ever perish, nor shall any power ever pluck them out of His Almighty hand.

(7) As not one goodly grain shall be lost, so not one particle of ungodly chaff shall be saved: "All the sinners shall die ... which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us" (). The children of Israel," when they apostatized from Israel's faith, became in the eyes of God as "children of the Ethiopians," the unchangeableness of whose black skin represents their unchangeableness in all that is evil (). Therefore they can only expect the curse of Ham, from whom Cush derived his origin. Their false security is the forerunner of their destruction. So it is with all who deceive themselves with false pleas. None are so likely to perish as those who think they are safe in deferring repentance and faith to some future time.

(8) Amos closes his prophecy of calamities to Israel with one bright and glorious promise of coming temporal and spiritual good to Israel, and, through Israel, to "all the pagan" or Gentiles (). He foretells that it should be when David's house had become but a tabernacle or hut, and that "tabernacle fallen;" then God would "raise it up" (), and close up the breaches made in it by the various Gentile enemies of the theocracy. It is God's way often to wait until man's extremity, and then to interpose, as His most fitting opportunity, that the glory of salvation may be all His own. It was when David's princely palace had become the hut of Nazareth and the stable of Bethlehem that the Saviour was born of David's royal seed. It shall be also at the coming time of Israel's greatest "trouble" () that the Divine Son of Man shall interpose in His people's behalf, and shall, as the 'Son of the fallen' (one of Messiah's titles among the Jews, 'Bereshith Rabba,' sec. 88:, end, quoted by Schoetigen in Pusey.), raise the house of David in His own person to a transcendent glory never attained before.

Not only Israel and Judah then, but "all the pagan" also, shall belong to Christ in reality as well as name, being taken by the Israelites into their spiritual "possession" (). As individual Jews (the Lord Jesus and His apostles) gained possession of the individuals among the nations who formed the nucleus of the present election-church, so the converted Israelite nation shall at Christ's coming again take spiritual possession of all Gentile nations for our common Lord. As the tabernacle service of praise in Zion and the priestly service at Gibeon were united in the temple of Solomon, so, under our antitypical Solomon, the Prince of Peace, at His coming again, the service of praise on earth and His sacerdotal ministry above, which are now separate, shall then be united in that millennial period of perfect liturgy. Unparalleled national prosperity also shall attend Israel, "planted" once more in her own land, from which she is never to be "pulled up" again (Amos 9:13). Spiritually, too, seedtime and harvest shall be continuous (). Let us pray for the blessed time when Israel's God shall manifest Himself, according to His everlasting purpose, as both her God and the God of the whole earth!