Amos 7
v.2-3
When they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, “Sovereign Lord, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!” 3So the Lord relented.
See the power of prayer. See what a blessing praying people are to a land. See how ready, how swift God is to show mercy; how he waits to be gracious.
v.4
This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: The Sovereign Lord was calling for judgement by fire; it dried up the great deep and devoured the land.
v.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.
In this Judgment, as at the Last Day, God would not condemn, without having first made clear the justice of His condemnation. He sets it “in the midst of” His “people,” showing that He would make trial of all, one by one, and condemn in proportion to the guilt of each.
When God said He was setting a plumb line among His people, He was declaring an end to their attempts to justify their crooked ways. The Lord was setting the standard. God does not negotiate His laws. He does not change with the whims of culture (Numbers 23:19).
v.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.
Throughout the ancient world it was believed that prophets not only proclaimed the message of deity but in the process unleashed the divine action. In Assyrian king Esarhaddon’s instructions to his vassals, he requires that they report any improper or negative statements made by anyone, specifically naming prophets, ecstatics and dream interpreters. It is no wonder, then, that a prophet negatively disposed toward a king had to be controlled lest he bring about all sorts of havoc. One can perhaps understand why a king would be inclined to imprison a prophet whose very words might incite insurrection or impose doom.
v.13
Don’t prophesy anymore at Bethel, because it is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.”
Satan deceives the elect by confusing Whose house they belong to.
v.14
Amos answered Amaziah, “I was neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees.
But those who have a warrant from God, like Amos, ought not to fear the face of man. If God, that sent him, had not strengthened him, he could not thus have set his face as a flint. The Lord often chooses the weak and foolish things of the world to confound the wise and mighty.
The trees are capable of as many as six crops per year. Since the fruit is inferior to that of the common fig (Ficus carica L.), the poor principally consume it. Date gardens take up to twenty years to reach their full productive potential. They require much attention because they have to be pollinated by hand. The care of the sycamore fig requires that the fruit be gashed or pierced to encourage an increase in ethylene gas that speeds the ripening process.
“May it please your Majesty, if I could possess the tinker’s abilities to grip men’s hearts, I would gladly give in exchange all my learning.” (to Charles II, answering how he, the learned doctor of divinity, would want to hear a mere tinker preach).