Attributed commentary excerpt
Barnes' Notes on Amos 9:13
A historical reference excerpt for this verse.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.
Behold the days are coming - The Day of the Lord is ever coming on: every act, good or bad, is drawing it on: everything which fills up the measure of iniquity or which “hastens the accomplishment of the number of the elect;” all time hastens it by. “The plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed.” The image is taken from God’s promise in the law; “Your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time” Leviticus 26:5; which is the order of agriculture. The harvest should be so copious that it should not be threshed out until the vintage: the vintage so large, that, instead of ending, as usual, in the middle of the 7th month, it should continue on to the seed-time in November. Amos appears purposely to have altered this. He describes what is wholly beyond nature, in order that it might the more appear that he was speaking of no mere gifts of nature, but, under natural emblems, of the abundance of gifts of grace. “The plowman,” who breaks up the fallow ground, “shall overtake,” or “throng, the reaper. The “plowman” might “throng,” or “join on to the reaper,” either following upon him, or being followed by him; either preparing the soil for the harvest which the reaper gathers in, or breaking it up anew for fresh harvest after the in-gathering. But the vintage falls between the harvest and the seed-time. If then by the “plowmen thronging on the reaper,” we understand that the harvest should, for its abundance, not be over before the fresh seed-time, then, since the vintage is much nearer to the seed-time than the harvest had been, the words, “he that treadeth out the grapes, him that soweth the seed,” would only say the same less forcibly. In the other way, it is one continuous whole. So vast would be the soil to be cultivated, so beyond all the powers of the cultivator, and yet so rapid and unceasing the growth, that seed-time and harvest would be but one. So our Lord says, “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest” John 4:35. “Four months” ordinarily intervened between seed-time and harvest. Among these Samaritans, seed-time and harvest were one. They had not, like the Jews, had teachers from God; yet, as soon as our Lord taught them, they believed. But, as seed time and harvest should be one, so should the vintage be continuous with the following seed-time. “The treader of grapes,” the last crowning act of the year of cultivation, should join on to “him that soweth” (literally, “draweth” forth, soweth broadcast, scattereth far and wide the) “seed.” All this is beyond nature, and so, the more in harmony with what went before, the establishment of a kingdom of grace, in which “the pagan” should have “the Name of God called upon” them. He had foretold to them, how God would “send famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” Amos 8:11. Now, under the same image, he declares the repeal of that sentence. He foretells, not the fullness only of God’s gifts, but their unbroken continuance. Jerome: “All shall succeed one another, so that no day should be void of grain, wine, and gladness.” And they shall not follow only on one another, but shall all go on together in one perpetual round of toil and fruitfulness. There shall be one unceasing inpouring of riches; no break in the heave…
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