Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Amos 1:2
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Notes on the Whole Bible
Albert Barnes (1798–1870) · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
The Lord will roar - Amos joins on his prophecy to the end of Joel’s, in order at once in its very opening to attest the oneness of their mission, and to prepare people’s minds to see, that his own prophecy was an expansion of those words, declaring the nearer and coming judgments of God. Those nearer judgments, however, of which he spake, were but the preludes of the judgments of the Great Day which Joel foretold, and of that last terrible voice of Christ, “the Lion of the tribe of Judah,” of whom Jacob prophesies; “He couched, He lay down as a lion, and as a young lion; who shall raise Him up?” Genesis 49:9. God is said to “utter His” awful “voice from Zion and Jerusalem,” because there He had set His Name, there He was present in His Church. It was, as it were, His own place, which He had hallowed by tokens of His presence, although “the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him.” In the outset of his prophecy, Amos warned Israel, that there, not among themselves in their separated state, God dwelt. Jeremiah, in using these same words toward Judah, speaks not of Jerusalem, but of heaven; “The Lord shall roar from on high, and utter His voice from His holy habitation” Jeremiah 25:30. The prophecy is to the ten tribes or to the pagan: God speaks out of the Church. He uttereth His Voice out of Jerusalem, as He saith, “Out of Zion shall go forth, the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” Isaiah 2:3, “where was the Temple and the worship of God, to shew that God was not in the cities of Israel, that is, in Dan and Bethel, where were the golden calves, nor in the royal cities of Samaria and Jezreel, but in the true religion which was then in Zion and Jerusalem.” And the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn - Perhaps, with a feeling for the home which he had loved and left, the prophet’s first thought amid the desolation which he predicts, was toward his own shepherd-haunts. The well-known Mount Carmel was far in the opposite direction in the tribe of Asher. Its name is derived from its richness and fertility, perhaps “a land of vine and olive yards.” In Jerome’s time, it was “thickly studded with olives, shrubs and vineyards.” “Its very summit of glad pasturcs.” It is one of the most striking natural features of Palestine. It ends a line of hills, 18 miles long, by a long bold headland reaching out far into the Mediterranean, and forming the south side of the Bay of Acco or Acre. Rising 1,200 feet above the sea , it stands out “like some guardian of its native strand;” yet withal, it was rich with every variety of beauty, flower, fruit, and tree. It is almost always called “the Carmel,” “the rich garden-ground.” From its neighborhood to the sea, heavy dews nightly supply it with an ever-renewed freshness, so that in mid-summer it is green and flowery . Travelers describe it, as “quite green, its top covered with firs and oaks, lower down with olives and laurels, and everywhere excellently watered.” “There is not a flower,” says Van de Velde , “that I have seen in Galilee or on the plains along the coasts, that I do not find here again on Carmel. It is still the same fragrant lovely mountain as of old.” : “Its varied world of flowers attracts such a number of the rarer vari-colored insects that a collector might for a whole year be richly employed.” “It is a natural garden and repository of herbs.” Its pastures were rich, so as to equal those of Bashan. “It gives rise to a number of crystal streams, the largest of w…
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