Amos 2:3

And I will cut off the judge from the midst thereof, and will slay all the princes thereof with him, saith the LORD.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

2:1-8 The evil passions of the heart break out in various forms; but the Lord looks to our motives, as well as our conduct. Those that deal cruelly, shall be cruelly dealt with. Other nations were reckoned with for injuries done to men; Judah is reckoned with for dishonour done to God. Judah despised the law of the Lord; and he justly gave them up to strong delusion; nor was it any excuse for their sin, that they were the lies, the idols, after which their fathers walked. The worst abominations and most grievous oppressions have been committed by some of the professed worshippers of the Lord. Such conduct leads many to unbelief and vile idolatry.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

And I will cut off the judge - The title "judge" (shophet) is nowhere used absolutely of a king. Holy Scripture speaks in several places of "all the judges of the earth" Job 9:24; Psalm 2:10; Psalm 148:11; Proverbs 8:16; Isaiah 40:23. Hosea Hos 13:10, under "judges," includes "kings and princes," as judging the people. The word "judge" is always used as one invested with the highest, but not regal authority, as of all the judges from the death of Joshua to Samuel. In like way it (Sufetes) was the title of the chief magistrates of Carthage , with much the same authority as the Roman Consuls . The Phoenician histories, although they would not own that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Tyre, still own that, after his 13 years' siege , Baal reigned 10 years, and after him judges were set up, one for two months, a second for ten, a third, a high priest, for three, two more for six, and between these one reigned for a year. After his death, they sent for Merbaal from Babylon, who reigned for four years, and on his death, they sent for Hiram his brother who reigned for twenty. The judges then exercised the supreme authority, the king's sons having been carried away captive. Probably, then, when Jeroboam II recovered the old territory of Israel, Moab lost its kings. It agrees with this, that Amos says, "the princes thereof," literally, "her princes," the princes of Moab, not as of Ammon, "his princes," that is, the princes of the king.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

3. the judge—the chief magistrate, the supreme source of justice. "King" not being used, it seems likely a change of government had before this time substituted for kings, supreme judges.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

I will cut off, by the sword of the enemy, the judge; the governor, i. e. every one of them; the singular being put for the plural, to intimate the destruction of all of them.

From the midst thereof; either of Kirioth the metropolis, or of every city in which were judges appointed to govern and minister justice to the people; and these should be cut off in these cities, and in the midst of their government.

The princes; either by birth, or by office, or by excellent endowments, the chief among the Moabitish people.

With him; with the supreme governor, before threatened.

Saith the Lord; noting to us the certainty of the thing, the irrevocable sentence passed upon Moab, its king, princes, and judges, who being cut off, the people must needs perish, and come to nothing.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And I will cut off the judge from the midst thereof,.... Either from the midst of Moab, the country in general; or from Kerioth in particular, so Kimchi; meaning their principal governor, their king, as Aben Ezra; for kings sometimes have acted as judges, took the bench, and sat and administered justice to their subjects:

and I will stay all the princes thereof with him, saith the Lord; the king, and the princes of the blood, and his nobles; so that there should be none to succeed him, or to protect and defend the people; the destruction should be an entire one, and inevitable, for the mouth of the Lord had spoken it. This was fulfilled at the same time as the prophecy against the children of Ammon by Nebuchadnezzar, five years after the destruction of Jerusalem (o), which is next threatened.

(o) Joseph. Antiqu. l. 10. c. 9. sect. 7. Vid. Judith i. 12.

Geneva Study Bible

And I will cut off the judge from the midst thereof, and will slay all the princes thereof with him, saith the LORD.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

3. the judge] Why is the judge mentioned rather than, as would naturally be expected, the king? One answer is that Moab was at this time subject to Jeroboam II., and hence there was no ‘king’ of Moab, but only an Israelitish deputy or governor. The terms of 2 Kings 14:25 (which describes how Jeroboam II. recovered the old territory of Israel, as far as the Dead Sea) do not, however, prove that Moab was included in Jeroboam’s conquests: and Mesha, at the time when Moab was dependent upon Israel, is still spoken of as ‘king’ (2 Kings 3:4). More probably judge, as in Micah 5:1, is a designation of the king,—derived from the fact that the administration of justice among his subjects was one of the primary duties of an Oriental monarch (2 Samuel 8:15; 2 Samuel 15:2; 1 Kings 7:7; Jeremiah 21:12, &c.).

Both Ammon and Moab are frequently mentioned in the Inscriptions that have been already referred to as paying tribute to the Assyrians,—Sanib of Ammon, and Salman of Moab, for instance, to Tiglath-pileser; Puduil of Ammon, and Kamoshnadab of Moab, to Sennacherib; and Mussuri, king of Moab, to Esarhaddon (K.A.T[143][144], pp. 258, 291, 356). Isaiah, in a striking prophecy, foretells invasion and disaster for Moab (Isaiah 15-16): Jeremiah, a century later, does the same, in a prophecy containing many reminiscences of the oracle of his great predecessor (ch. 48): he also prophesies against Ammon (Jeremiah 49:1-6). Ezekiel uttered prophecies against both nations (Ezekiel 25:1-11; cf. Ezekiel 21:28-32), charging them in particular with malicious exultation over Judah’s fall, and predicting their ruin. See also Zephaniah 2:8-10; and Isaiah 25:10 f. (post-exilic).

[143] .A.T. … Eb. Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das A. T., ed. 2, 1883 (translated under the title The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the O. T. 1885, 1888). The references are to the pagination of the German, which is given on the margin of the English translation.

[144] … Eb. Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das A. T., ed. 2, 1883 (translated under the title The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the O. T. 1885, 1888). The references are to the pagination of the German, which is given on the margin of the English translation.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 3. - The judge; shophet, probably here a synonym for "king" (comp. Micah 5:1). it implies the chief magistrate, like the Carthaginian sufes, which is the same word. There is no ground for deducing, as Hitzig and Ewald do, from the use of this form that Moab had no king at this time. The country was conquered by the Chaldeans, and thenceforward sank into insignificance (Jeremiah 48; Ezekiel 25:8-11). Amos 2:3

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Moab. - Amos 2:1. "Thus saith Jehovah: for three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I shall not reverse it, because it has burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime, Amos 2:2. I send fire into Moab, and it will devour the palaces of Kirioth, and Moab will perish in the tumult, in the war-cry, in the trumpet-blast. Amos 2:3. And I cut off the judge from the midst thereof, and all its princes do I strangle with it, saith Jehovah." The burning of the bones of the king of Edom is not burning while he was still alive, but the burning of the corpse into lime, i.e., so completely that the bones turned into powder like lime (D. Kimchi), to cool his wrath still further upon the dead man (cf. 2 Kings 23:16). This is the only thing blamed, not his having put him to death. No record has been preserved of this event in the historical books of the Old Testament; but it was no doubt connected with the war referred to in 2 Kings 3, which Joram of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah waged against the Moabites in company with the king of Edom; so that the Jewish tradition found in Jerome, viz., that after this war the Moabites dug up the bones of the king of Edom from the grace, and heaped insults upon them by burning them to ashes, is apparently not without foundation. As Amos in the case of all the other nations has mentioned only crimes that were committed against the covenant nation, the one with which the Moabites are charged must have been in some way associated with either Israel or Judah, that is to say, it must have been committed upon a king of Edom, who was a vassal of Judah, and therefore not very long after this war, since the Edomites shook off their dependence upon Judah in less than ten years from that time (2 Kings 8:20). As a punishment for this, Moab was to be laid waste by the fire of war, and Keriyoth with its palaces to be burned down. הקּריּות is not an appellative noun (τῶν πόλεων αὐτῆς, lxx), but a proper name of one of the chief cities of Moab (cf. Jeremiah 48:24, Jeremiah 48:41), the ruins of which have been discovered by Burckhardt (Syr. p. 630) and Seetzen (ii. p. 342, cf. iv. p. 384) in the decayed town of Kereyat or Krrit. The application of the term מת to Moab is to be explained on the supposition that the nation is personified. שׁאון signifies war tumult, and בּתרוּעה is explained as in Amos 1:14 by בּקול שׁופר, blast of the trumpets, the signal for the assault or for the commencement of the battle. The judge with all the princes shall be cut off miqqirbâh, i.e., out of the land of Moab. The feminine suffix refers to Moab as a land or kingdom, and not to Keriyoth. From the fact that the shōphēt is mentioned instead of the king, it has been concluded by some that Moab had no king at that time, but had only a shōphēt as its ruler; and they have sought to account for this on the ground that Moab was at that time subject to the kingdom of the ten tribes (Hitzig and Ewald). But there is no notice in the history of anything of the kind, and it cannot possibly be inferred from the fact that Jeroboam restored the ancient boundaries of the kingdom as far as the Dead Sea (2 Kings 14:25). Shōphēt is analogous to tōmēkh shēbhet in Amos 1:5, and is probably nothing more than a rhetorical expression applied to the מלך, who is so called in the threat against Ammon, and simply used for the sake of variety. The threatening prophecies concerning all the nations and kingdoms mentioned from Amos 1:6 onwards were fulfilled by the Chaldeans, who conquered all these kingdoms, and carried the people themselves into captivity. For fuller remarks upon this point, see at Jeremiah 48 and Ezekiel 25:8.