Amos 7:1 - Meaning and Application

We see here that God is patient, but he will not always bear with a people who keep provoking him. He showed the prophet these things: “The Lord God showed me” (Amos 7:1, 4, 7). He showed him what was happening now and what would happen later. He let him know both what God was doing and what he planned to do, for the Lord reveals his secret to his servants the prophets (Amos 3:7).

Here are two examples of God’s sparing mercy, remembered even in the middle of judgment. The two accounts are very alike, so it is best to consider them together. God is coming against this sinful nation first with one judgment and then another.

He begins with famine. The prophet saw this in a vision. He saw God forming locusts and sending them over the land to eat the crops and strip the land of its beauty, leaving the people hungry (Amos 7:1). God formed these locusts not only as creatures of his making, which shows his wisdom and power even in tiny animals, but also as tools of his judgment. Scripture says God can “devise disaster” against a sinful people (Jeremiah 18:11). These locusts were made to eat the grass of the land, and a huge number of them were prepared for that purpose.

They came at the start of the late growth, after the king’s harvest. God’s mercy came before the judgment and softened it. He could have sent them to eat the first growth in spring, when the grass was most needed and most useful, but he let that grow and be gathered in. The king’s crops were safely stored, for the king is supported by the field (Ecclesiastes 5:9). Uzziah, the king of Judah, was known to love farming (2 Chronicles 26:10). But the locusts were sent to eat only the late growth, the aftergrass, which is worth less than the earlier crop.

God’s gifts are many, and the blessings he keeps with us are often greater than the ones he removes. That is a good reason to be thankful and not complain. Remembering the blessings of the first growth should make us humble when we face losses in the second. In the vision, the prophet saw this judgment spreading far. The locusts ate up the grass of the land, which was meant for the cattle, so the owners would suffer too.

Some take this picture as a symbol of a destroying army. In Jeroboam’s day, the kingdom of Israel had begun to recover from earlier ruin (2 Kings 14:25). The late growth came up after the “mowings” of the kings of Syria (2 Kings 13:3). Then God sent the king of Assyria with an army like locusts to sweep over the land and lay it waste, the nation spoken of in Amos 6:14. That kingdom afflicted Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the brook of the wilderness, which seems to match 2 Kings 14:25, where Jeroboam restored their border from the entrance of Hamath to the sea of the plain. God can bring everything down again when we think it has been repaired.

Then God moved on to judgment by fire, showing that he has many ways to humble a sinful nation (Amos 7:4). The Lord God “called to contend by fire.” His judgments are his disputes with a people. In them, he brings his case against them, and his charges are never empty or unfair. He “called” to this judgment by giving notice through his prophets and, as it were, setting out the case.

A fire was kindled among them. This may mean a great drought, where the sun’s heat scorched the earth and burned up the roots of the grass the locusts had left. It may also mean a deadly fever, burning like fire in the bones and destroying many people. Or it may refer to lightning and fire from heaven, which destroyed their houses, as Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed (Amos 4:11). It could also mean their cities being burned, either by accident or by an enemy, for fire and sword often went together. In this way, the towns were ruined just as the country had been ruined by the locusts.

This fire did terrible harm. It devoured the great deep, like the fire on Elijah’s altar that licked up the water in the trench. Even though the water meant to stop the fire was as great as the sea, the fire still consumed it, for nothing can stand before fire kindled by God’s wrath. It ate up a part, a large part, of the cities where it was sent. It was like the fire at Taberah, which burned along the edge of the camp (Numbers 11:1). When some were destroyed, others were spared like brands pulled from the fire. All deserved to be consumed, but it ate only a part, because God does not pour out all his wrath at once.

The prophet then meets God’s judgment with prayer and asks him to turn back his anger (Amos 7:2). When he saw in the vision what terrible damage the locusts were doing, and foresaw that they would eat nearly all the grass if allowed to continue, he said, “O Lord God, forgive, I beg you” (Amos 7:2), and “Stop, I beg you” (Amos 7:5). The one who warned the people about judgment still prayed that it would not come. He was a prophet, and he prayed for them.

It was part of a prophet’s work to pray for those he warned. That showed he did not want the sad day he announced. God showed his prophets the coming trouble so they could help the people, not only by warning them, but also by praying for them and standing in the gap to turn away God’s wrath, as Moses often did. The prophet’s prayer was this: “Forgive, I beg you” (Amos 7:2). He asked God to take away the sin, because he saw that sin lay at the root of the trouble. So he understood that forgiveness must come before deliverance, and he asked for that first. Whatever trouble we face, personal or public, the forgiveness of sin is what we should ask God for most earnestly.

He also prayed, “Stop, I beg you.” He wanted the judgment to stop, the fire to stop, the dispute to stop, and God’s anger toward them to pass away. This follows forgiveness, because when the cause is removed, the effect will stop.

People who are under God’s judgment soon learn how much they need to ask for peace. Even after God has begun to act in judgment and has gone a long way, there is still hope that mercy may be gained. The prophet pleads for this mercy with one reason: “By whom shall Jacob arise, for he is small?” (Amos 7:2). He repeats the same plea in (Amos 7:5), and this is not empty repetition. Christ, in his deep distress, prayed earnestly and kept saying the same words again and again.

It is Jacob, that is, God’s professing people, the people who bear his name and call on him, for whom the prophet speaks. He brings Jacob’s need before the God of Jacob. Jacob is already very small, weakened and brought low by earlier judgments. If these judgments continue, he will be ruined completely. The people are few now, where once they were as countless as dust. Those who remain are weak, like “worm Jacob” in (Isaiah 41:14), and cannot help themselves or each other.

Sin quickly makes a large people small. It can cut down a crowd, make the rich poor, and weaken the brave. “By whom shall he arise?” He has fallen and cannot lift himself up. He has no friend to raise him unless God does it. What will happen if the very hand that should lift him is stretched out against him? When God’s church is very low and helpless, it is right to put it before God’s pity in prayer.

God mercifully stops his judgment in answer to the prophet’s prayer, and he does it more than once (Amos 7:3). “The Lord repented for this” does not mean he changed in himself, for he does not change his mind in that way. It means he changed his course and chose to deal in mercy rather than wrath. He said, “It shall not be.” Then again, “This also shall not be” (Amos 7:6). The locusts were turned back, the fire was stopped, and a reprieve was given.

See the power of earnest prayer, and how much it can accomplish. Many times a judgment has been held back when people pleaded with the Judge. This was not the first time Israel’s life had been begged for and spared. It shows what a blessing praying people, and praying prophets, are to a land, and why they should be greatly valued. Ruin would often have broken in if they had not stood in the breach and held the line. It also shows how ready and quick God is to show mercy, and how he waits to be gracious (Isaiah 59:16).

Past acts of mercy should not be used against later prayers for mercy. They should encourage us to pray and hope for more. “This also shall not be,” just as the other judgment did not come. It is God’s glory to multiply forgiveness, to spare and pardon again and again, even beyond seventy times seven.

But here we also see the final rejection of those who had often been spared and yet never changed. They were brought into hard places, but never brought back to God or to duty. This is shown to the prophet in a vision (Amos 7:7, Amos 7:8), and then stated plainly as a warning of total ruin (Amos 7:9).

The vision is of a plumb-line, the tool builders use to test whether a wall is straight. Israel had been like a wall, strong and carefully built by God himself, a defense for his sanctuary among them. The Jewish church could say of herself, “I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers” (Song of Solomon 8:10). Their structure had once been exact and well ordered, and it had stood firm like a wall of bronze.

Now God stands on that wall, not to support it, but to judge it. He holds a plumb-line to measure it and show that it is crooked and bulging. The line exposes what is not straight. In this way God would test Israel, reveal their wickedness, and show where they had gone wrong. He would also bring his judgment with full fairness, setting a line in their midst to mark how far the wall must be pulled down, as David measured the Moabites with a line (2 Samuel 8:2).

When God comes to ruin a people, he is said to lay judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet. His punishment is exact. The matter is now settled: “I will not again pass by them any more” (Amos 7:3). They will no longer be spared and given another reprieve as before. God’s patience, when long abused, will at last run out. Those who have often been spared may at last be spared no more. His Spirit will not always strive.

The prediction is utter ruin (Amos 7:9). The whole nation will be destroyed, along with everything that made it seem strong and honorable. Here they are called Isaac as well as Israel, the house of Isaac (Amos 7:16), perhaps with a hint from Isaac’s name, which means laughter. They will become a joke among their neighbors, and their neighbors will laugh at them. The destruction will strike their high places and their sanctuaries, whether those were their strongholds or their temples, both built on elevated ground. They trusted their fortresses to keep them safe and their temples to keep them holy. Both will be laid waste, to punish their idolatry and expose their false confidence.

When those places are destroyed, they will be able to read their sin and foolishness in their punishment. The royal family will fall first, as a sign of the ruin that will follow for the whole kingdom. God says, “I will rise against the house of Jeroboam,” meaning Jeroboam the second, who was then king over the ten tribes. His family was cut off in his son Zechariah, who was killed with the sword before the people by Shallum, who conspired against him (2 Kings 15:10). The men who carried it out were unjust, but God was righteous in using them. In them, he rose against that idolatrous family.

Even a king’s house will not protect it from the sword of God’s wrath.