Amos 7:10-15
10 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words.
11 For thus Amos saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land.
12 Also Amaziah said unto Amos, O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there:
13 But prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it is the king's chapel,b and it is the king's court.
14 Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit:
15 And the LORD took me as I followed the flock, and the LORD said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.
I. There is something very wonderful, and at the same time most natural, in the expansion of mind which a man brought up as Amos was, acquires when he has been raised out of himself and has been made to understand the glory and the guilt of his country. He knew that he was speaking of one who was true and in whom was no lie; he knew that he was testifying against lies; he knew that the whole universe and the consciences of those who heard him, however they might turn away from him or persecute him, were on his side, and were acknowledging his sentence to have issued from the mouth of the Lord Himself.
II. Amos would not have left his sheepfolds to denounce the idolatries of Israel if he had not felt that men, that his own countrymen, were maintaining a fearful fight against a will which had a right to govern them, and which could alone govern them for their good. He could not have been sustained in the witness which He bore if an ever-brightening revelation of the perfect goodness of that goodness, active, energetic, converting all powers and influences to its own righteous and gracious purposes had not accompanied revelations, that became every moment more awful, of the selfishness and disorder to which men were yielding themselves. It is precisely because he has not only history and experience to guide him, but the certainty of an eternal God, present in all the convulsions of society, never ceasing to act upon the individual heart when it is most wrapped in the folds of its pride and selfishness it is precisely because he finds this to be true, whatever else is false, that he must hope.
F. D. Maurice, Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament,p. 155.
References: Amos 8:1. Pulpit Analyst,vol. i., p. 167. Amos 8:1; Amos 8:2. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vi., No. 343.Amos 8:2. Preacher's Monthly,vol. vi., p. 186. Amos 8:11. W. Wilkinson, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 205.Amos 9:1. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. xi., p. 217.