Amos 9:1

This chapter comprises the fifth vision of Amos as recorded in this section of the prophecy. It is a vision diverse from all of the others and deals with a great deal more than the temporal fortunes of the kingdom of Israel (either one of the two kingdoms, Judah, or Israel). It entails the final and total destruction of both Jewish kingdoms, as such, including even the overthrow of the Jerusalem temple, accounted as sacred by all Israel (Amos 9:1-4). The certainty of this was emphasized by means of Amos' third doxology (Amos 9:5,6). The vaunted position of the Jews as God's chosen people, a fact the Jews had mistakenly interpreted as a perpetual heavenly endorsement of their earthly, secular monarchy, is announced as being solemnly withdrawn by the Lord in the announcement that the Jews were nothing more to him than the Ethiopians and the Philistines! a fact which is sadly absent from the thoughts of most of the commentators on this passage. In this very discerning passage, the "seed of Abraham," called the "house of Jacob" (Amos 9:8), is severed, terminally and completely from any identification whatever with a Jewish state, whether ancient Judah, or Israel, or any subsequent state (or kingdom) that might appear later in history, professing to be any kind of successor to it (Amos 9:7-10). Finally, the chapter presents a prophecy of the Messiah, Jesus Christ the Lord, and the "rebuilding of the fallen tabernacle of David," which is as beautiful and circumstantial a prophecy of the church of Christ as may be found anywhere in the Bible (Amos 9:11-14). Without any doubt, this is one of the most important and instructive chapters to be found in the Old Testament.

Regarding the doubts of critical scholars and their fulminations against passages in this chapter, such things are due, categorically, to their blindness to the prophetic appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ and his church in these passages, and also to their failure to understand that neither the Jewish temple (at Jerusalem) nor the secular kingdom of Solomon were in any sense harmonious with the will of God, and also to their failure to understand that no kingdom, state or nation, in the sense of its corporate existence, either ever was or ever will be "the chosen people of God," a fact made crystal clear in this chapter.

Amos 9:1

"I saw the Lord standing beside the altar: and he said, Smite the capitals that the threshold may shake; and break them in pieces on the head of all of them; and I will slay the last of them with the sword: there shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them escape."

"The Lord standing beside the altar..." The notion that this is a reference to the pagan altars (plural) in the temple at Bethel is false. It is utterly inconceivable that the Lord would have taken a place beside the golden calf in the so-called "temple," at Bethel, which, in the first place, is not called "a temple." There was a pagan shrine there, of course, but no temple. There were many altars there and at other places in Israel; and no one of them could possibly have been designated as "the altar" associated with the history of the Jews. Many arguments are suggested in order to justify the application of this verse to Bethel, such as: "it is the only holy place at which tradition locates Amos during his ministry;"[1] "the chief temple of Northern Israel was located at Bethel;"[2] "Jacob saw the Lord at Bethel;"[3] "there is a close connection with the preceding chapter 8, (Amos 8:14) which mentions Bethel in the last verse,"[4] etc.; but none of these alleged arguments has any weight whatever. As C. G. Keil noted:

"There is no ground whatever for the assertion that this chapter contains simply an explanation of Amos 8:14 ... There was not any one altar in the northern kingdom that could be called "the altar" ... In Amos 3:14, Amos foretold the destruction of "the altars" (plural) at Bethel ... So there was not any one altar in the kingdom of the ten tribes, that could be called "the altar."[5]

Another allegation designed to support this passage as a reference to Bethel relies upon the assumption that this prophecy is not at all concerned with the southern kingdom, an assumption denied by the frequent and pertinent references to the southern kingdom, and to "the whole house of Israel, and to Judah," etc., occurring frequently enough. Some of these are: Amos 2:5; 6:1; 5:4,5; 8:11,12, etc. It is true enough that the northern kingdom is the principal focus of the prophecy, but not for one instant is the southern kingdom left very far out of sight, as, for example, when the apostasy of David was mentioned in Amos 6:5. One simply cannot read Amos 9:1 as any kind of reference to Bethel.

This verse is therefore a prophecy of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, with the implied end of the kingdom and of the dynasty of David at the same time. Most Biblical exegetes seem to be unaware of what the Old Testament says of that Solomonic temple. To begin with, it was never God's idea at all, but David's (2 Samuel 7). It stood in exactly the same relationship to the tabernacle (which God indeed had given the people) as that in which the secular monarchy stood to the theocracy, namely, a rejection of it, neither the monarchy nor the temple ever being, in any sense whatever the true will of God. The Christian martyr Stephen made this abundantly clear in Acts 7:44-50. The summary and final end of the northern kingdom had just been announced in preceding verses; and, in this passage, preparatory to the prophecy of the eternal kingdom of the Messiah, Amos made it clear that neither the northern nor the southern kingdom, in their corporate existence, would in any manner enter into the eternal purpose of God regarding the "true Israel," which was never identified with either one of them.

The reason that the temple was widely viewed in Israel as "God's house" is that God indeed did accommodate to it, as also he did in the case of the monarchy; and so long as the Lord continued to send prophets to the northern kingdom, so long did they, despite all their sin, still pass as belonging to the "people of God." This points up the relevance of this reference to the temple at Jerusalem, which Keil defined as, "the divinely appointed sanctuary and the throne of Jehovah."[6] Thus, what happened to the temple and the kingdom of Judah was of the most vital relevance to Israel also, hence the inclusion of this fifth vision of Amos' prophecy. God appeared at the altar in Jerusalem, because there at the true sacrificial place of the nation (both of Judah and of Israel), their sins were heaped up; and from that perspective the Lord will judge and punish them.

Considerable attention has been devoted to the meaning of "altar" in this first verse; because, when this is understood as a reference to the pagan altars in Bethel, a correct interpretation of the entire passage becomes impossible.