Amos 9:10

All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

9:1-10 The prophet, in vision, saw the Lord standing upon the idolatrous altar at Bethel. Wherever sinners flee from God's justice, it will overtake them. Those whom God brings to heaven by his grace, shall never be cast down; but those who seek to climb thither by vain confidence in themselves, will be cast down and filled with shame. That which makes escape impossible and ruin sure, is, that God will set his eyes upon them for evil, not for good. Wretched must those be on whom the Lord looks for evil, and not for good. The Lord would scatter the Jews, and visit them with calamities, as the corn is shaken in a sieve; but he would save some from among them. The astonishing preservation of the Jews as a distinct people, seems here foretold. If professors make themselves like the world, God will level them with the world. The sinners who thus flatter themselves, shall find that their profession will not protect them.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

All the sinners of My people shall perish - At the last, when the longsuffering of God has been despised to the uttermost, His Providence is exact in His justice, as in His love. As not "one grain should fall to the earth," so not one sinner should escape. Jerome: "Not because they sinned aforetime, but because they persevered in sin until death. The Aethiopians are changed into sons of God, if they repent; and the sons of God pass away into Aethiopians, if they fall into the depth of sin."

Which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us - Their security was the cause of their destruction. They perished the more miserably, being buoyed up by the false confidence that they should not perish. So it was in both destructions of Jerusalem. Of the first, Jeremiah says to the false prophet Hananiah, "Thus saith the Lord, Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt make for them yokes of iron" Jeremiah 28:13; and to Zedekiah, "Obey, I beseech thee, the voice of the Lord, which I speak unto thee; so shall it be well unto thee, and thy soul shall live. But if thou refuse to go forth - thou shalt not escape out of their hand, but shalt be taken by the hand of the king of Babylon, and thou shalt burn this city with fire" (Jeremiah 38:20, Jeremiah 38:23; add Jeremiah 27:9-10, Jeremiah 27:19). At the second, while thee Christians (mindful of our Lord's words) fled to Pella, the Jews were, to the last, encouraged by their false prophets to resist. "The cause of this destruction," at the burning of the temple, says their own historian , "was a false prophet, who on that day proclaimed to those in the city, 'God commands to go up to the temple, to receive the signs of deliverance.' There were too, at that time, among the people many prophets suborned by the tyrants, bidding them await the help from God, that they might not desert, and that hope might prevail with those, who were above fear and restraint. Man is soon persuaded in calamity. And when the deceiver promises release from the evils which are upon him, the sufferer gives himself wholly up to hope. These dcceivers then and liars against God at this time mispersuaded the wretched people, so that they neither regarded, nor believed, the plain evident prodigies, which foretokened the coming desolation, but, like men stupefied, who had neither eyes nor mind, disobeyed the warnings of God." Then, having related some of the prodigies which occurred, he adds ; "But of these signs' some they interpreted after their own will, some they despised, until they were convicted of folly by the capture of their country and their own destruction."

So too now, none are so likely to perish forever, as they "who say, The evil shall not overtake us." "I will repent hereafter." "I will make my peace with God before I die." "There is time enough yet." "Youth is for pleasure, age for repentance." "God will forgive the errors of youth, and the heat of our passions." "Any time will do for repentance; health and strength promise long life;" "I cannot do without this or that now." "I will turn to God, only not yet." "God is merciful and full of compassion." Because Satan thus deludes thousands upon thousands to their destruction, God cuts away all such vain hopes with His word, "All the sinners of My people shall die which say, the evil shall not overtake nor come upon us."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

10. All the sinners—answering to the chaff in the image in Am 9:9, which falls on the earth, in opposition "to the grain" that does not "fall."

overtake … us—"come on us from behind" [Maurer].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

All the sinners of my people, the great, notorious sinners, idolaters, oppressors, perverters of law and equity, cruel and inhuman judges and others, shall die by the sword; either at home in the wars, or abroad by barbarous men that captivate them; as Amos 9:4.

Which say; in their hearts thinking or hoping, or in their words discoursing, the impossibility of what Amos did foretell.

The evil, the sad, miserable, and desolating end, shall not overtake nor prevent us; as a pursuing enemy, we will flee from it: see Amos 9:1. It is far off, we shall die first, and be safe in the grave; a kingdom in its prosperity, and well settled, as this kingdom was in Jeroboam’s time, cannot soon be brought to such confusion; we shall never see it. This savoured rank of their atheism, and these shall certainly fall and perish, and never rise.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword,.... By the sword of the Assyrians, and of others, into whose countries they shall flee for shelter, Amos 9:1; even all such who are notorious sinners, abandoned to their lusts, obstinate and incorrigible; live in sin, and continue therein; repent not of sin, disbelieve the prophets of the Lord, and defy his threatenings, and put away the evil day far from them:

which say, the evil shall not overtake nor prevent us; the evil threatened by the prophet, the sword of the enemy, the desolation of their land, and captivity in a foreign land; these evils, if they came at all, which they gave little credit to, yet would not in their days; they would never come so near them, or so close to their heels as to overtake them, and seize them, or to get before them, and stop them fleeing from them; they promised themselves impunity, and were in no pain about the judgments threatened them; so daring and impudent, so irreligious and atheistical, were they in their thoughts, words, and actions; and therefore should all and everyone of them be destroyed.

Geneva Study Bible

All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

10. which say, The evil shall not draw near, or come in front about us] i.e. shall not meet us in any direction. The sinners whom the prophet has here specially in view are those who, trusting to the fact that they were members of the chosen people (cf. Amos 3:2), or relying upon their zeal in an external ceremonial (Amos 5:21 ff.), deemed themselves secure, and declared that misfortune could never overtake them (cf. Amos 6:3). Their false security, says Amos, should be the cause of their destruction. Cf. similar expressions of security, uttered in defiance of the prophets’ warnings, Isaiah 5:19; Micah 3:11; Jeremiah 23:17; Ezekiel 12:22; Ezekiel 12:27. Overtake (A.V., R.V.) may be a legitimate emendation (תשׂיג for תגישׁ[202]; cf. Deuteronomy 28:2; Deuteronomy 28:15, in the Hebrew), but it is no rendering of the existing text. Prevent (A.V., R.V.) is, of course, used in its old sense of come before, which it has in such passages as Psalm 18:5 (A.V.), Psalm 59:10 (A.V., R.V.), Psalm 119:147-148 (A.V., R.V.).

[202] Or rather, as should no doubt be read (the Hiphil conj. being elsewhere transitive), תִּלֹשׁ (Psalm 91:7).

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 10. - If any are to be saved, it will not be the sinners; they need not flatter themselves that their wilful blindness shall secure them. The evil shall not overtake. They lulled themselves into a false security, and shut their cars against the warnings of the prophets; but that would avail them nothing. Prevent; come upon suddenly, surprise. Amos 9:10

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Election, therefore, will not save sinful Israel from destruction. After Amos has thus cut off all hope of deliverance from the ungodly, he repeats, in his own words in Amos 9:8., the threat already exhibited symbolically in Amos 9:1. Amos 9:8. "Behold, the eyes of the Lord Jehovah are against the sinful kingdom, and I destroy it from off the face of the earth; except that I shall not utterly destroy the house of Jacob: is the saying of Jehovah. Amos 9:9. For, behold, I command, and shake the house of Israel among all nations, as (corn) is shaken in a sieve, and not even a little grain falls to the ground. Amos 9:10. All the sinners of my people will die by the sword, who say, The evil will not overtake or come to us." The sinful kingdom is Israel; not merely the kingdom of the ten tribes however, but all Israel, the kingdom of the ten tribes along with Judah, the house of Jacob or Israel, which is identical with the sons of Israel, who had become like the Cushites, although Amos had chiefly the people and kingdom of the ten tribes in his mind. Bammamlâkhâh, not upon the kingdom, but against the kingdom. The directing of the eye upon an object is expressed by על (Amos 9:4) or אל (cf. Psalm 34:16); whereas ב is used in relation to the object upon which anger rests (Psalm 34:17). Because the Lord had turned His eye towards the sinful kingdom, He must exterminate it, - a fate with which Moses had already threatened the nation in Deuteronomy 6:15. Nevertheless (אפס כּי, "only that," introducing the limitation, as in Numbers 13:28; Deuteronomy 15:4) the house of Jacob, the covenant nation, shall not be utterly destroyed. The "house of Jacob" is opposed to the "sinful nation;" not, however, so that the antithesis simply lies in the kingdom and people (regnum delebo, non populum), or that the "house of Jacob" signifies the kingdom of Judah as distinguished from the kingdom of the ten tribes, for the "house of Jacob" is perfectly equivalent to the "house of Israel" (Amos 9:9). The house of Jacob is not to be utterly destroyed, but simply to be shaken, as it were, in a sieve. The antithesis lies in the predicate החטּא, the sinful kingdom. So far as Israel, as a kingdom and people, is sinful, it is to be destroyed from off the face of the earth. But there is always a divine kernel in the nation, by virtue of its divine election, a holy seed out of which the Lord will form a new and holy people and kingdom of God. Consequently the destruction will not be a total one, a השׁמיד אשׁמיד. The reason for this is introduced by kı̄ (for) in Amos 9:9. The Lord will shake Israel among the nations, as corn is shaken in a sieve; so that the chaff flies away, and the dust and dirt fall to the ground, and only the good grains are left in the sieve. Such a sieve are the nations of the world, through which Israel is purified from its chaff, i.e., from its ungodly members. Tserōr, generally a bundle; here, according to its etymology, that which is compact or firm, i.e., solid grain as distinguished from loose chaff. In 2 Samuel 17:13 it is used in a similar sense to denote a hard piece of clay or a stone in a building. Not a single grain fill fall to the ground, that is to say, not a good man will be lost (cf. 1 Samuel 26:20). The self-secure sinners, however, who rely upon their outward connection with the nation of God (compare Amos 9:7 and Amos 3:2), or upon their zeal in the outward forms of worship (Amos 5:21.), and fancy that the judgment cannot touch them (הקדּים בּעד, to come to meet a person round about him, i.e., to come upon him from every side), will all perish by the sword. This threat is repeated at the close, without any formal link of connection with Amos 9:9, not only to prevent any abuse of the foregoing modification of the judgment, but also to remove this apparent discrepancy, that whereas in Amos 9:1-4 it is stated that not one will escape the judgment, according to Amos 9:8, the nation of Israel is not to be utterly destroyed. In order to anticipate the frivolity of the ungodly, who always flatter themselves with the hope of escaping when there is a threatening of any general calamity, the prophet first of all cuts off all possibilities whatever in Amos 9:1-4, without mentioning the exceptions; and it is not till afterwards that the promise is introduced that the house of Israel shall not be utterly annihilated, whereby the general threat is limited to sinners, and the prospect of deliverance and preservation through the mercy of God is opened to the righteous. The historical realization or fulfilment of this threat took place, so far as Israel of the ten tribes was concerned, when their kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians, and in the case of Judah, at the overthrow of the kingdom and temple by the Chaldeans; and the shaking of Israel in the sieve is still being fulfilled upon the Jews who are dispersed among all nations.