Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Amos 2:7
A historical reference excerpt for this verse.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.
That pant after the dust of the earth - Literally, “the panters!” with indignation. Not content with having rent from him the little hereditary property which belonged to each Israelite, these creditors grudged him even the “dust,” which, as a mourner, he strewed on his head Job 2:12, since it too was “earth.” Covetousness, when it has nothing to feed it, craves for what is absurd or impossible. What was Naboth’s vineyard to a king of Israel with his “ivory palace?” What was Mordecai’s refusal to bow to one in honor like Haman? What a trivial gain to a millionaire? The sarcasm of the prophet was the more piercing, because it was so true. People covet things in proportion, not to their worth, but to their worthlessness. No one covets what he much needs. Covetousness is the sin, mostly not of those who have not, but of those who have. It grows with its gains, is the less satisfied, the more it has to satisify it, and attests its own unreasonableness, by the uselessness of the things it craves for. And turn aside the way of the meek - So Solomon said, “A wicked” man “taketh a bribe out of the bosom, to pervert the ways of judgment.” (Proverbs 17:23. God had laid down the equality of man, made in His own image, and had forbidden to favor either poor Exodus 23:3 or rich Exodus 23:6. Amos calls these by different names, which entitled them to human sympathy; “poor, depressed, lowly; poor,” in their absolute condition; “depressed,” as having been brought low; “lowly,” as having the special grace of their state, the wonderful meekness and lowliness off the godly poor. But all these qualities are so many incentives to injury to the ungodly. They hate the godly, as a reproach to them; because “he is clean contrary to their doings, his life is not like other people’s; his ways are of another fashion” (WisdomAmos 2:12; Amos 2:12, Amos 2:15). Wolves destroy not wolves but sheep. Bad people circumvent not the bad but the good. Besides the easiness of the gain, there is a devilish fascinating pleasure to the bad, to overreach the simple and meek, because they are such. They love also to “turn aside the way of the meek,” by , “turning them from what is truly right and good; “or from the truth; or again to thwart them in all their ways and endeavors, by open injustice or by perverting justice. Every act of wrong prepares the way for the crowning act; and so “the turning aside the way of the meek” foreshadowed and prepared for the unjust judgment of Him who was “the Meek and Lowly” One Matthew 11:29, the selling the righteous for a trilling sum prepared for the selling “the Holy One and the Just” Acts 3:14 for “the thirty pieces of silver.” : “Contrariwise, whoso is truly wise, cordially venerates the humble and abject, the poor and simple, and prefers them in his own heart to himself, knowing that God has ‘chosen the poor, and the weak things of the world, and things despised, and things which are not’ 1 Corinthians 1:27-28; and that Christ hath likened Himself to such, saying in the Psalm, ‘I am poor and sorrowful’ Psalms 69:29.” The same damsel - This is not expressly forbidden by the law, except in the case of marriage, the father being forbidden to marry his son’s widow, and the son to take his father’s widow to wife Leviticus 18:8, Leviticus 18:15. Abominations, unless they had become known to Israel in Egypt, were not expressly forbidden, but were included in the one large prohibition, which, as our Lord explains, forbade every offence, bearing…
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