National judgments.
"Hear ye, and testify in the house of Jacob, saith the Lord God, the God of hosts," etc. The same persons are here addressed who in the ninth verse were summoned from Philistia and Egypt. They were now to testify to the facts of the case, that it might be seen that the punishment inflicted upon the inhabitants was richly deserved. The subject of the words is national judgment, which we are here led to regard in three aspects.
I. IN RELATION TO THE TRUE PROPHETS. "Hear ye, and testify in the house of Jacob." We may perhaps regard the words also as spoken to the prophets. Hear, ye prophets.
1. The prophets were to make themselves acquainted with the coming judgments. They were to be watchmen who were to descry afar the coming danger. All true ministers of religion should by earnest study acquaint themselves with the terrible punishment that awaits the guilty world.
2. The prophets were to announce the coming, judgment. "Hear ye, and testify." Their work is to sound the alarm, to blow the trumpet. "So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore thou shall hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me" (Ezekiel 33:7). One of the chief duties of a true minister is to "warn every man" (Colossians 1:28).
II. IN RELATION TO ITS MORAL CAUSE. What was the cause of these threatened judgments? Here it is. "I shall visit the transgressions of Israel." Judgments do not come on men as a matter of necessity; they do not roll on man like the billows of ocean on the shore, by blind force; nor do they come because the Governor of the universe is malevolent, and has pleasure in the sufferings of his creatures. No; he is love. He "desireth not the death of a sinner." They come because of sin. The sins of a nation draw judgment after them as the moon draws after it the billows that beat upon the shore. Let no nation hope to escape judgments until it gets rid of sin. Judgments are but sins ripened into a harvest, subterranean fires breaking into volcanoes. Eternal love requires for the order and happiness of the universe that sins and sorrows, transgressions and troubles, should be inseparably linked together.
III. IS RELATION TO ITS TERRIBLE ISSUES.
1. There is the deprivation of religious institutions. "I will also visit the altars of Bethel: and the horns of the altar shall be cut off, and fall to the ground." "Signal vengeance was to be taken on the place whence all the evils which spread through the ten tribes originated. The 'horns' were four projecting points, in the shape of horns, at the corners of ancient altars. They may be seen in the representations of those dug up by Belzoni in Egypt. As they were ornamental, the action here described was designed to express the contempt in which the altar would be held by the Assyrians." Corrupt punishment for a nation's transgressions would involve the ruin of religious institutions.
2. There is a deprivation of all their conveniences and luxuries. "And I will smite the winter house with the summer house; and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall have an end, saith the Lord." Eastern monarchs and princes, we are told, have summer as well as winter houses. The "ivory houses" do not mean houses composed of that material, but richly ornamented dwellings. These were to be destroyed. "The pomp or pleasantness of men's houses," says Matthew Henry, "will be so far from fortifying them against God's judgments, that it will make them the more grievous and vexatious, as their extravagance about them will be put to the score of their sins and follies."—D.T.
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Amos 3 - amos-3 - worlddic.com