Amos 8:8-9

The Pulpit Commentary - Amos 8:8-10

Carried away as with a flood. A man in earnest is always graphic. If he be also inspired he can afford to be explicit. In this passage Amos is both. The words were spoken before the convulsions they foretell, and written after some of them had occurred. But the descriptions of events, transpired between the speaking and the writing, have no flavour of an ex post facto deliverance. There is a bare record of the original verbal utterance without the attempt to write into any part of it... read more

Spence, H. D. M., etc.

The Pulpit Commentary - Amos 8:9

I will cause the sun to go down at noon. This is probably to be taken metaphorically of a sudden calamity occurring in the very height of seeming prosperity, such as the fate of Israel in Pekah's time, and Pekah's own murder ( 2 Kings 15:29 , 2 Kings 15:30 ; see also 2 Kings 17:1-6 ). A like metaphor is common enough; e.g. Joel 2:2 : Joel 3:15 ; Micah 3:6 ; Job 5:14 ; Isaiah 13:10 ; Jeremiah 15:9 . Hind calculates that there were two solar eclipses visible in Palestine in... read more

Spence, H. D. M., etc.

The Pulpit Commentary - Amos 8:9

A sunset at noon. This language is at once prophetic and figurative. It predicts an event in the moral world under the figure of an analogous event in the physical world. The symbolical event is not an eclipse of the sun, which the language does not suit, but his going down at midday; and the event symbolized is clearly death in the midst of young life. Israel was rich and prosperous and young. To all outward seeming she was just in the meridian of her life. But her sun would never reach... read more

Albert Barnes

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible - Amos 8:8

Shall not the land tremble for this? - o: “For the greater impressiveness, he ascribes to the insensate earth sense, indignation, horror, trembling. For all creation feels the will of its Creator.” “It shall rise up wholly as a flood,” literally, “like the river.” It is the Egyptian name for “river, which Israel brought with it out of Egypt, and is used either for the Nile, or for one of the artificial “trenches,” derived from it. “And it shall be cast out and drowned,” literally, “shall toss... read more

Albert Barnes

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible - Amos 8:9

I will cause the sun to go down - Darkness is heaviest and blackest in contrast with the brightest light; sorrow is saddest, when it comes upon fearless joy. God commonly, in His mercy, sends heralds of coming sorrow; very few burst suddenly on man. Now, in the meridian brightness of the day of Israel, the blackness of night should fall at once upon him. Not only was light to be displaced by darkness, but “then,” when it was most opposite to the course of nature. Not by gradual decay, but by a... read more

Joseph Benson

Joseph Benson's Commentary of the Old and New Testaments - Amos 8:8

Amos 8:8. Shall not the land tremble Shall not the state, or government, and all the people of the land, be terribly afraid, and greatly troubled; for this This, that you have done, O house of Israel, in sinning, and this that God will do in punishing? And every one mourn that dwelleth therein Shall not all be deeply concerned and distressed, since all have sinned and deserved punishment, and all will suffer in the approaching calamity? Certainly they shall. Observe, reader, those that... read more

Joseph Benson

Joseph Benson's Commentary of the Old and New Testaments - Amos 8:9

Amos 8:9. I will cause the sun to go down at noon Calamitous times are often expressed in the Scriptures by the failing of the light of the sun, and the day’s being overspread with darkness. So Israel’s sun did begin to go down, as at noon, under the dark cloud of conspiracies and civil wars by Shallum, Menahem, Pekah, and Hoshea, till it entirely set, and total darkness came on through the Assyrian invasions by Pul, Tiglath-pileser, and Shalmanezer, and by the entire desolation and... read more

Donald C. Fleming

Bridgeway Bible Commentary - Amos 8:1-14

Israel nears its end (8:1-14)Just as the harvest comes to an end and the fruit is gathered into baskets, so Israel has come to its end and will be punished. Celebration will be turned to mourning, and hope will be replaced by despair. When the enemy attacks, the slaughter will be so extensive that bodies will lie unburied in the streets and fields for days (8:1-3).Amos returns to conditions in Israel to indicate that one reason for the nation’s downfall is the upper classes’ exploitation of the... read more

E.W. Bullinger

E.W. Bullinger's Companion Bible Notes - Amos 8:8

flood. Hebrew. or . Referring to the overflowing of the Nile. drowned = subside. read more

E.W. Bullinger

E.W. Bullinger's Companion Bible Notes - Amos 8:9

cause the sun. This determines the time of the fulfilment of this "threatening". See Isaiah 13:10 ; Isaiah 59:9 , Isaiah 59:10 . Jeremiah 15:5 .Joel 2:2 ; Joel 3:15 .Micah 3:6 . Can this refer to the earthquake of Amos 1:1 ? read more

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