Amos 9:15

And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

9:11-15 Christ died to gather together the children of God that were scattered abroad, here said to be those who were called by his name. The Lord saith this, who doeth this, who can do it, who has determined to do it, the power of whose grace is engaged for doing it. Verses 13-15 may refer to the early times of Christianity, but will receive a more glorious fulfilment in the events which all the prophets more or less foretold, and may be understood of the happy state when the fulness both of the Jews and the Gentiles come into the church. Let us continue earnest in prayer for the fulfilment of these prophecies, in the peace, purity, and the beauty of the church. God marvellously preserves his elect amidst the most fearful confusions and miseries. When all seems desperate, he wonderfully revives his church, and blesses her with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. And great shall be the glory of that period, in which not one good thing promised shall remain unfulfilled.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

And I will plant them upon their own land - The promises and threatenings of God are, to individuals, conditional upon their continuing to be of that character, to which God annexes those promises or threats. Theodoret: "The God of all often promises, when those who receive the promises, by joying in iniquity hinder those promises from taking effect. At times also he threatens heavy things, and they who for their offences were the objects of those threats, being, through fear of them, converted, do not in act experience them." The two tribes received some little shadow of fulfillment of these promises on the return from Babylon. "They were planted in their own land." The non-fulfillment of the rest, as well as the evident symbolic character of part of it, must have shown them that such fulfillment was the beginning, not the end. Their land was "the Lord's land;" banishment from it was banishment from the special presence of God, from the place where He manifested Himself, where alone the typical sacrifices, the appointed means of reconciliation, could be offered.

Restoration to their own land was the outward symbol of restoration to God's favor, of which it was the fruit. it was a condition of the fulfillment of those other promises, the coming of Him in whom the promises were laid up, the Christ. He was not simply to be of David's seed, according to the flesh. Prophecy, as time went on, declared His birth at Bethlehem, His revelation in Galilee, His coming to His Temple, His sending forth His law from Jerusalem. Without some restoration to their own land, these things could not be. Israel was restored in the flesh, that, after the flesh, the Christ might be born of them, where God foretold that He should be born. But the temporal fulfillment ended with that event in time in which they were to issue, for whose sake they were; His coming. They were but the vestibule to the spiritual. As shadows, they ceased when the Sun arose. As means, they ended, when the end, whereto they served, came.

There was no need of a temporal Zion, when He who was to send forth His law thence, had come and sent it forth. No need of a temple when He who was to be its glory, had come, illumined it, and was gone. No need of one of royal birth in Bethlehem, when "the Virgin" had "conceived and borne a Son," and "God" had been "with us." And so as to other prophecies. All which were bound to the land of Judah, were accomplished. As the true Israel expanded and embraced all nations, the whole earth became "the land" of God's people. Palestine had had its prerogatives, because God manifested Himself there, was worshiped there. When God's people was enlarged, so as "to inherit the pagan," and God was worshiped everywhere, His land too was everywhere. His promises accompanied His people, and these were in all lands. His words then, "I will plant them upon their own land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them," expanded with their expansion. It is a promise of perpetuity, like that of our Lord; "Lo! I am with you alway, even to the end of the world. The gates of hell shall not prevail against" the Church, the people of God. The world may gnash its teeth; kings may oppress; persecutors may harass; popular rage may trample on her; philosophy may scoff at her; unbelief may deny the promises made to her; the powers of darkness may rage around her; her own children may turn against her. In vain! Jerome: "She may be shaken by persecutions, she cannot be uprooted; she may be tempted, she cannot be overcome. For the Lord God Almighty, the Lord her God, hath promised that He will do it, whose promise is the law to nature."

Saith the Lord thy God - Rib.: "O Israel of God, O Catholic Church, to be gathered out of Jews and Gentiles, doubt not, he would say, thy promised happiness. For thy God who loveth thee and who from eternity hath chosen thee, hath commanded me to say this to thee in His Name." Rup.: "He turneth too to the ear of each of us, giving us joy, in His word, 'saith the Lord thy God.'" "They too who are plants which God hath planted, and who have so profited, that through them many daily profit, "shall be planted upon their own ground," that is, each, in his order and in that kind of life which he has chosen, shall strike deep roots in true piety, and they shall be so preserved by God, that by no force of temptations shall they be uprooted, but each shall say with the holy prophet, "I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever" Psalm 52:9. Not that every tree, planted in the ground of the Church militant, is so firm that it cannot be plucked up, but many there are, which are not plucked up, being protected by the Hand of Almighty God. O blessed that land, where no tree is plucked up, none is injured by any worm, or decays through any age. How many great, fruit-bearing, trees do we see plucked up in this land of calamity and misery! Blessed day, when we shall be there, where we need fear no storm!" Yet this too abideth true; "none shall be plucked up." Without our own will, neither passions within, nor temptations without, nor the malice or wiles of Satan, can "pluck" us "up." None can "be plucked up," who doth not himself loose his hold, whose root is twisted round the Rock, which is Thou, O Blessed Jesus. For Thou hast said, "they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of My Hand" John 10:28.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

15. plant them … no more be pulled up—(Jer 32:41).

thy God—Israel's; this is the ground of their restoration, God's original choice of them as His.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

I will plant, or settle them, as trees that are well rooted,

upon their land, by ancient gift, and by late restitution to it by the Lord.

They shall no more be pulled up by the violence of their enemies which promise is an implicit condition that they seek, and not forsake the Lord, and was on God’s part with admirable constancy and patience to that sinful nation performed through six hundred years, perhaps the longest time of freedom from captivity they ever knew.

Which I have given, of free gift, without their merit.

Saith the Lord thy God; God, thy God and thy Lord, will do it for his covenant’s sake, therefore surely and fully will he do it.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And I will plant them upon their land,.... The land of Israel, as trees are planted; and they shall take root and flourish, and abound with all good things, temporal and spiritual:

and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God; by which it appears that this is a prophecy of things yet to come; since the Jews, upon their return to their own land after the Babylonish captivity, were pulled up again, and rooted out of it by the Romans, and remain so to this day; but, when they shall return again, they will never more be removed from it; and of this they may he assured; because it is the land the Lord has, "given" them, and it shall not be taken away from them any more; and, because he will now appear to be the "Lord their God", the "loammi", Hosea 1:9, will he taken off from them; they will be owned to be the Lords people, and he will be known by them to be their covenant God; which will ensure all the above blessings to them, of whatsoever kind; for this is either said to the prophet, "the Lord thy God", or to Israel; and either way it serves to confirm the same thing.

Geneva Study Bible

And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

15. Israel will moreover remain permanently settled in its own land.

And I will plant them … and they shall no more be pulled up, &c.] Cf. Jeremiah 24:6 (“I will plant them and not pull them up”); Jeremiah 42:10. For similar promises, see Jeremiah 32:41; Ezekiel 34:28; Isaiah 60:21; Joel 3:20; and elsewhere. On the question of the non-fulfilment of such promises, see Riehm, Messianic Prophecy (ed. 2, 1891), pp. 238–268. It is to be remembered (1) that they are conditional upon Israel’s worthiness; (2) that the question forms part of a larger one, viz. the nature and extent of the ideal element in the prophets’ pictures of the future, and the degree to which those pictures were coloured by the national and local limitations peculiar to their religion. Cf. p. 32 f., above, with the passages referred to in the footnotes; and comp. also F.H. Woods, The Hope of Israel (1896), chaps. 4 5 10.

thy God] the title, expressive of consolation and affection, as Isaiah 41:10; Isaiah 52:7; Isaiah 54:6; Isaiah 66:9. The restored nation is pictured naturally by the prophet as penitent and reformed (cf. pp. 31 f., 121); hence Jehovah is no longer its foe (Amos 9:4; Amos 9:8), but can acknowledge it again as His own.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 15. - The blessing shall last forever. They shall no more be pulled up. This was not true of the literal Israel; it must be taken of the spiritual seed, planted in God's land, the Church of Christ, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. "Lo," says Christ, "I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" (Matthew 28:20)



Amos 9:15

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

To the setting up of the kingdom and its outward extension the prophet appends its inward glorification, foretelling the richest blessing of the land (Amos 9:13) and of the nation (Amos 9:14), and lastly, the eternal duration of the kingdom (Amos 9:15). Amos 9:13. "Behold, days come, is the saying of Jehovah, that the ploughman reaches to the reaper, and the treader of grapes to the sower of seed; and the mountains drip new wine, and all the hills melt away. Amos 9:14. And I reverse the captivity of my people Israel, and they build the waste cities, and dwell, and plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; and make gardens, and eat the fruit thereof. Amos 9:15. And I plant them in their land, and they shall no more be torn up out of their land which I have given them, saith Jehovah thy God." In the new kingdom of God the people of the Lord will enjoy the blessing, which Moses promised to Israel when faithful to the covenant. This blessing will be poured upon the land in which the kingdom is set up. Amos 9:13 is formed after the promise in Leviticus 26:5, "Your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing-time;" but Amos transfers the action to the persons employed, and says, "The ploughman will reach to the reaper." Even while the one is engaged in ploughing the land for the sowing, the other will already be able to cut ripe corn; so quickly will the corn grow and ripen. And the treading of the grapes will last to the sowing-time, so abundant will the vintage be. The second half of the verse is taken from Joel 3:18; and according to this passage, the melting of the hills is to be understood as dissolving into streams of milk, new wine, and honey, in which the prophet had the description of the promised land as a land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3:8, etc.) floating before his mind. In the land so blessed will Israel enjoy unbroken peace, and delight itself in the fruits of its inheritance. On שׁוּב את־שׁבוּת, see the exposition of Hosea 6:11. That this phrase is not used here to denote the return of the people from captivity, but the turning of misfortune and misery into prosperity and salvation, is evident from the context; for Israel cannot be brought back out of captivity after it has already taken possession of the Gentiles (Amos 9:12). The thought of Amos 9:14, as attached to Amos 9:13, is the following: As the land of Israel, i.e., the territory of the re-erected kingdom of David, will no more be smitten with the curse of drought and failing crops with which the rebellious are threatened, but will receive the blessing of the greatest fertility, so will the people, i.e., the citizens of this kingdom, be no more visited with calamity and judgment, but enjoy the rich beneficent fruits of their labour in blessed and unbroken peace. This thought is individualized with a retrospective glance at the punishment with which the sinners are threatened in Amos 5:11, - namely, as building waste cities, and dwelling therein, and as drinking the wine of the vineyards that have been planted; not building houses for others any more, as was threatened in Amos 5:11, after Deuteronomy 28:30, Deuteronomy 28:39; and lastly, as laying out gardens, and eating the fruit thereof, without its being consumed by strangers (Deuteronomy 28:33). This blessing will endure for ever (Amos 9:15). Their being planted in their land denotes, not the settling of the people in their land once more, but their firm and lasting establishment and fortification therein. The Lord will make Israel, i.e., His rescued people, into a plantation that will never be torn up again, but strikes firm roots, sends forth blossom, and produces fruit. The words point back to 2 Samuel 7:10, and declare that the firm planting of Israel which was begun by David will be completed with the raising up of the fallen hut of David, inasmuch as no further driving away of the nation into captivity will occur, but the people of the Lord will dwell for ever in the land which their God has given them. Compare Jeremiah 24:6. This promise is sealed by אמר יי אל.

We have not to seek for the realization of this promise in the return of Israel from its captivity to Palestine under Zerubbabel and Ezra; for this was no planting of Israel to dwell for ever in the land, nor was it a setting up of the fallen hut of David. Nor have we to transfer the fulfilment to the future, and think of a time when the Jews, who have been converted to their God and Saviour Jesus Christ, will one day be led back to Palestine. For, as we have already observed at Joel 3:18, Canaan and Israel are types of the kingdom of God and of the church of the Lord. The raising up of the fallen hut of David commenced with the coming of Christ and the founding of the Christian church by the apostles; and the possession of Edom and all the other nations upon whom the Lord reveals His name, took its rise in the reception of the Gentiles into the kingdom of heaven set up by Christ. The founding and building of this kingdom continue through all the ages of the Christian church, and will be completed when the fulness of the Gentiles shall one day enter into the kingdom of God, and the still unbelieving Israel shall have been converted to Christ. The land which will flow with streams of divine blessing is not Palestine, but the domain of the Christian church, or the earth, so far as it has received the blessings of Christianity. The people which cultivates this land is the Christian church, so far as it stands in living faith, and produces fruits of the Holy Ghost. The blessing foretold by the prophet is indeed visible at present in only a very small measure, because Christendom is not yet so pervaded by the Spirit of the Lord, as that it forms a holy people of God. In many respects it still resembles Israel, which the Lord will have to sift by means of judgments. This sifting will be first brought to an end through the judgment upon all nations, which will attend the second coming of Christ. Then will the earth become a Canaan, where the Lord will dwell in His glorified kingdom in the midst of His sanctified people.