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7. Locusts, Fire and a Plumb Line

¹ This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts after the king’s share had been harvested and just as the late crops were coming up. ² When they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, “Sovereign LORD, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”

³ So the LORD relented.

“This will not happen,” the LORD said.

⁴ This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: The Sovereign LORD was calling for judgment by fire; it dried up the great deep and devoured the land. ⁵ Then I cried out, “Sovereign LORD, I beg you, stop! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”

⁶ So the LORD relented.

“This will not happen either,” the Sovereign LORD said.

⁷ This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, The meaning of the Hebrew for this phrase is uncertain. with a plumb line The meaning of the Hebrew for this phrase is uncertain; also in verse 8. in his hand. ⁸ And the LORD asked me, “What do you see, Amos?”

“A plumb line,” I replied.

Then the Lord said, “Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

    ⁹ “The high places of Isaac will be destroyed
   and the sanctuaries of Israel will be ruined;
   with my sword I will rise against the house of Jeroboam.”

Amos and Amaziah

¹⁰ Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent a message to Jeroboam king of Israel: “Amos is raising a conspiracy against you in the very heart of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words. ¹¹ For this is what Amos is saying:

   “‘Jeroboam will die by the sword,
   and Israel will surely go into exile,
   away from their native land.’”

¹² Then Amaziah said to Amos, “Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. ¹³ Don’t prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.”

¹⁴ Amos answered Amaziah, “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. ¹⁵ But the LORD took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ ¹⁶ Now then, hear the word of the LORD. You say,

“‘Do not prophesy against Israel,
and stop preaching against the descendants of Isaac.’

¹⁷ “Therefore this is what the LORD says:

   “‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city,
   and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword.
Your land will be measured and divided up,
   and you yourself will die in a pagan Hebrew an unclean country.
And Israel will surely go into exile,
   away from their native land.’”

This vision opens more clearly to us what the Prophet meant before, and what was the object of his doctrine: his intention was to show the people that what they had gained by their obstinacy was only to render God implacable, and to cause him not to spare them any longer, as he had hitherto done. The meaning is, — “God has hitherto borne with you according to his own goodness, promise not to yourselves that he will ever deal in the same manner with you; for your contumacy and waywardness has provoked him. As he sees you to be beyond measure obstinate, he must now necessarily execute on you final vengeance. There is therefore now no forgiveness provided for you; but as ye are incurable, so the Lord on his part will remain unchangeable in the rigor of his judgment, and will by no means turn to mercy.”

Interpreters explain this vision in various ways, and refinedly philosophize on the word, plumbline; and yet frigid are almost all their refinements. Were I disposed plausibly to handle this passage, I would say, that the plumbline is the law of God; for it prescribed to his people a regular order of things, which might serve as a plumbline; inasmuch as all things were directed according to the best rule. I might speak thus; but I am not disposed to refine in this manner; for I doubt not but that God meant only that this would be the last measuring; for he would punish his people without any remission and without any delay. We now apprehend the Prophet’s meaning: but all this will become more evident from the words of the passage.

Thus he showed to me; and, behold, the Lord stood on a wall of a plumbline. The wall of a plumbline he calls that which had been formed by rule, as though he had said that it was a wall by a plumbline. God then stood on a plumbline-wall, and a plumbline, he says, was in his hand False then is what some interpreters say, that a plumbline was cast away by God, because he would no more perform the office of a mason in ruling his people. This is frivolous; for the Prophet testifies here expressly that a plumbline was in the hand of God.