Amos 9:13

Amos 9:13. Behold the days come Here we have another promise, literally to be understood of the abundant plenty which God would bestow on the returned captives, and mystically of the abundant grace given and blessings conferred in gospel days. That the ploughman shall overtake the reaper He who breaks up the ground, and prepares it for the seed, shall be ready to tread on the heels of the reaper; who shall have a harvest so large, that before he can gather it all in, it shall be time to plough the ground again. And the treader of grapes him that soweth seed This is to be understood in the same sense as the foregoing clause: so great shall their vintage be, that before the treaders of grapes can have finished their work, the seedsman shall be sowing his seed against the next season. And the mountains shall drop sweet wine The vineyards shall be so fruitful, and shall produce such abundance of grapes, that wine shall appear to be as plentiful as if it ran down from the mountains. And all the hills shall melt Hebrew, shall flow. The meaning is, that they should afford such plenty of rich feeding to the cattle, that they should in consequence thereof give a large quantity of milk. The parallel expression to this, in the prophecy of Joel, is, The hills shall flow with milk. As these predictions were not fulfilled in their literal sense between the time of the return of the Jews from Babylon and the coming of Christ, it is evident they are either to be figuratively understood of gospel blessings, or, if taken in their literal sense, they respect the happy state of things during the millennium, which may be supposed to begin after the future restoration of the Jews to their own country. See notes on Joel 3:18. The prophets, it may be observed, frequently describe the days of the Messiah in terms similar to those which the poets used in describing the golden age.