Amos 1:2

Amos 1:2. The Exordium

2. The Lord Jehovah, or, strictly, Yahwèh, the personal name by which the supreme God was known to the Hebrews. The name whatever its primitive signification may have been was interpreted by them (see Exodus 3:14) as signifying He that is(or He that will be), viz. not in an abstract sense, He that exists,but He that comes to be, i.e. He whose nature it is ever to express Himself anew, and to manifest Himself under fresh aspects to His worshippers, but who at the same time is determined only by Himself ("I will be that which I will be"), and who is therefore self-consistent, true to His promises, and morally unchangeable [112].

[112] See more fully an Essay by the present writer on the Tetragrammaton, in Studia Biblica, vol. i. (1885), p. 15 18; Schultz, Theol. of the O. T. ii. 138.

Jehovah will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem The words recur verbatim, Joel 3:(4) 16, and with a modification of the thought, Jeremiah 25:30 ("Jehovah will roar from on high, and utter his voice from his holy habitation"). The temple on Zion is Jehovah's earthly abode; and from it the manifestations of His power over Israel or the world are conceived as proceeding. By the use of the term roar, the prophet shews that he has the figure of a lion in his mind (see Amos 3:8; and cp. Hosea 11:10; also Isaiah 31:4; Hosea 13:7-8); and as the -roar" (shâ"ag, not nâham) is the loud cry with which the animal springs upon its prey, it is the sound of near destruction which the prophet hears pealing from Zion. In utter(lit. give) his voicethe roar of Jehovah's voice is compared further with the rolling thunder (cf. Psalms 18:13; Psalms 46:6; Psalms 68:33; Joel 2:11; Isaiah 30:30): it was the Hebrew idea that in a thunderstorm Jehovah descended and rode through the heavens enveloped in a dark mass of cloud: the lightning-flashes were partings of the cloud, disclosing the brilliancy concealed within (Psalms 18:9-13; Job 36:29-32; Job 37:2-5); and the thunder was His voice (comp. the common expression voicesfor thunder, Exodus 9:23; Exodus 9:28-29; Exodus 9:33-34; Exodus 19:16; Exo 20:18; 1 Samuel 12:17-18; Job 28:26; Job 38:25; and see also Psalms 29:3-9).

and the pastures of the shepherds not habitations; for they are spoken of as -springing with young grass" (Joel 2:22; cp. Psalms 23:2), as -dropping" (with fertility) Psalms 65:12, and as being -dried up" Jeremiah 23:10: at most, if the text of Psalms 74:20 be sound (see Cheyne and Kirkpatrick), ne"ôthwill be a word like homestead, including both the farm and the dwellings upon it. Even, however, if this be the case, habitationsis a bad rendering, being much too general. The term is a pastoral one; and Amos, in using it, may have thought primarily of the pastures about his own native place, Tekoa.

shall mourn partly in consternation (Amos 8:8; Amos 9:5), as they hear the peal of Jehovah's thunder, partly on account of the desolation, which (see the next clause) that thunder is conceived as producing. A land, when its vegetation is dried up, or destroyed (Jeremiah 12:11), is said poetically to -mourn": for mournand be dried up, as here, in parallelism, see Jeremiah 12:4; Jeremiah 23:10; comp. mournand languish(of the land, or its products) Isaiah 24:7; Isaiah 33:9; Joel 1:10.

the top of Carmel Jehovah's judgment does not stop at Tekoa; it sweeps northwards, and embraces even the majestic, thickly-wooded headland of Carmel. Carmel in the Heb. usually with the art., the Carmel, i.e. the garden-landis the bold, bluff promontory, one of the most conspicuous of the natural features of Palestine, formed by a ridge of hills, some 18 miles long, and 1200 1600 feet high, stretching out far into the Mediterranean Sea, and forming the S. side of the Bay of Acre. It still bears the character which its name suggests. "Modern travellers delight to describe its -rocky dells with deep jungles of copse" -its shrubberies thicker than any others in central Palestine" (Stanley) -its impenetrable brushwood of oaks and other evergreens, tenanted in the wilder parts by a profusion of game and wild animals" (Porter), but in other parts bright with hollyhocks, jasmine, and various flowering creepers" (D.B[113][114] s.v.). The luxuriant forests of Carmel are often alluded to in the O.T.: ch. Amos 9:3 (as a hiding-place), Isaiah 35:2 (-the majesty of Carmel"), Micah 7:14; and (poetically) as shaking off their leaves, or languishing, Isaiah 33:9; Nahum 1:4.

[113] .B.… Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Exodus 1, or (from A to J) Exodus 2.

[114] … Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Exodus 1, or (from A to J) Exodus 2.

shall be dried up] as the blood runs cold through terror, so Amos pictures the sap of plants and trees as ceasing to flow, when Jehovah's thunder is heard pealing over the land. Cf. Nahum 1:4. In Joel 3:16 the effects of His thunder are that "the heavens and the earth shake."