Amos 9:8

"Behold the eyes of the Lord Jehovah are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth."

This verse is not a promise that God will destroy "the house of Jacob," nor a promise that God will annihilate the total posterity of Abraham; but it is a promise to wipe "the sinful kingdom" off the face of the planet. Which sinful kingdom? Every sinful kingdom, especially the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom of Israel. The ultimate application of this to the whole world of wicked and unbelieving humanity is dramatically detailed in the prophecy of Revelation (Revelation 19:11-21). In the case of the kingdoms of the Jews, the very initiation of their kingdom under Saul was a rejection of God (1 Samuel 8:7); reciprocally, this was also their rejection of their own status as "God's chosen people," a term that henceforth would apply to the "righteous remnant" and not to Israel as a whole.

McKeating interpreted this and the preceding verse 7 as "a formal contradiction of Amos 3:2, `For you alone have I cared among all the nations of the world.'"[12] However, these verses are not speaking of the same thing. God's solicitous care for "you," means his special and unique care for those who love and obey him, a promise valid now, and eternally, and which in no sense nullifies or contradicts what is said here of the destruction of the sinful kingdom. Furthermore, in God's selection and choice of Abraham's posterity as containing "his chosen people," there were countless instances in which Israel had indeed been "cared for" by the Father in a manner absolutely unique in human history, a blessing absolutely not founded in any divine partiality for Jews, but necessary for the ultimate blessing of "all the families of the earth." At the time of God's choice of Israel, idolatry was so widespread and nearly universal on earth, that the very knowledge of God might have perished from the planet had it not been for the choice of Abraham.

McKeating's allegation of a contradiction here, as is usually the case with such allegations, is founded upon a fundamental ignorance of what this prophecy is saying. Hammershaimb correctly observed what is denoted by these verses thus:

"The point was that Israel had no entitlement to sin more than others, because Yahweh had chosen it; on the contrary, this carried with it all the greater obligations on the side of the people, and Yahweh would not spare them for that reason."[13]

There is nothing in these verses which may be interpreted as a denial that, "God is the God of all history, not of Hebrew history alone; he is behind all the great world movements, the migrations of people ... are ultimately determined and effected by him."[14] Paul's great sermon in Athens emphasizes this truth (Acts 17).

Smith also observed that:

"God seems to be announcing the end of God's special relationship to Israel as a nation (i.e., a kingdom). It means that God will treat Israel like any other nation; the nation will have no special privileges; and when they sin they will be punished."[15]

This of course, is true; but it needs to be pointed out that their secular state had never been the object of any special favor from God (for it was contrary to his will), except in the necessity that time and again, there was no way to aid the "righteous remnant" without aiding and favoring the wicked state of which that remnant was an integral part. This mingling of the two Israels in the Old Testament is one of the primary factors usually overlooked by commentators. Paul elaborated the distinction between these two Israels in Romans (Romans 9-11), and no full understanding either of the New Testament or the ancient prophecies is possible without keeping this distinction constantly in view. The true Israel was, and ever will be, the people who love and obey God; the other Israel, as this passage dogmatically affirms has the same status with God as the Ethiopians, the Philistines and the Syrians!

"The sinful kingdom ..." in this verse refers to both Judah and Israel; but "the house of Jacob" in the last half of this verse is a reference to the "righteous remnant," which is the true Israel.

"Save that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith Jehovah."

Having failed, completely, to understand what Amos is saying, some commentators assault the integrity of this passage:

"This flatly contradicts the point of the whole (verse). It is a later addition to the text ... The opinion expressed in 8b is doubtless that of a Judean redactor[16] ... These verses are manifestly later additions,"[17] etc.

Such denials of the Word of God may be rejected with impunity; they are founded upon no sufficient evidence and are but the futile denials of some scholars whose fallacious interpretations of previous passages are contradicted here. It should be kept in mind, however, that it is not the previous words of the prophet Amos which this half-verse contradicts, but the false opinions advanced in the inaccurate interpretation of preceding verses.

Smith, after taking note of the assault upon the integrity of this verse, freely admitted that, "It must also be said that these verses could have come from Amos."[18] The obvious truth is that any one understanding the full significance of this section finds them fully harmonious with the whole verse and the whole prophecy and will have no hesitancy whatever in receiving them as the true words of God spoken through Amos.

Essentially, it is the good news of this passage which is so repulsive to many interpreters, who have already decided that there can be no good news at all in a book with so many warnings and denunciations. As Smith said, "Many earlier scholars did not believe that a prophet could predict judgment and hope (woe and weal) at the same time."[19] Fortunately, most present-day scholars have outgrown such a naive and foolish notion. "Present scholars recognize that messages of weal and woe often came from the same prophet."[20] It is surely evident that scholarly bias entered into the rejection of this part of Amos, as did also their failure to discern its true import.

"The house of Jacob ..." is not a mere distinction between the northern and southern kingdoms, for the term stands for "the righteous remnant" of both kingdoms; the true antithesis is between the "sinful kingdom" (8a) and "house of Jacob" as a "divine kernel in the nation, by virtue of its divine election, out of which the Lord will form a new and holy people."[21] This "kernel" is the "righteous remnant," the true Israel of God, who were never, in fact, identifiable as "the kingdom." Elijah and the 7,000 who had not bowed to Baal represented the totality of that remnant during the reign of the wicked Ahab (1 Kings 19:10; Romans 11:4). This righteous remnant was the remnant formed by the true believers in both the secular kingdoms of Israel and Judah, in the same sense that "the sinful kingdom" refers to the same two secular kingdoms.

Thus, here in Amos 9:8b is introduced the subject of the concluding verses of Amos' great prophecy which foretells how God will, from that righteous remnant, develop the universal kingdom of the church of Christ and endow it with the most extravagant blessings, that new "kingdom," being not a kingdom of this world at all, but the true followers of Christ, his church being called the "rebuilt tabernacle of David" (Amos 9:11).