Commentary on Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah and Nahum John Calvin (continued)
JOHN CALVIN
destroyed and driven away;'' and they refer this to the land; and then, ``it shall be sunk down:'' this also they apply to the land; except that some give this rendering, ``It shall discharge itself like the river of Egypt.'' But I translate otherwise, ``It shall heave up whole as a river, and shall be driven away, and shall be immersed as by the river of Egypt.'' It shall heave up, he says, that is, the land as a river; so that there will be no habitation for men: ``I have given this land to my people that they might live in it; but the land itself shall heave up as a river; there shall be an inundation of the whole land.'' And then when he says, It shall be driven away and sunk, this ought not to be referred to the land itself, but to the inhabitants or to the people. 63
He had said before, {,}כארkar, as a river; but now he says, {,}כיאורkiaur, which I explain as meaning, as by the river of Egypt. The Nile, we know, overflows annually and covers the whole plain of Egypt. The Prophet therefore borrowed a similitude from the Nile; and he says, that such would be God's vengeance, that the land would be like a river, and its dwellings would be immersed and carried away, or annihilated: for when there is no surface of land, it seems to have been cleared away. So then he says now, It shall be driven away, It shall be sunk. This is the simple explanation; and {,}עoin, is to be understood; for {,}שקעshiko, is to sink or to cover. Here, {,}ה he is only put, but {,}עoin, is to be understood, and there is also a double reading pointed out. 64 We now then perceive the Prophet's meaning. But it follows ---
Amos 8:9
9. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day:
9. Et accidet die illa, inquit Dominus Jehova, ut occumbere faciam (vel, descendere faciam) solem in meridie, et obtenebrescere faciam terram in die lucido.
The Prophet speaks here metaphorically of the punishments which were then to the people nigh at hand: and as prosperity and success deceived the Israelites, the Prophet makes use of this significative mode of speaking: ``Ye congratulate yourselves on account of your wealth and other things which delight you, as though
God could not turn light into darkness; and as God spares you, ye think that it will ever be the same with you; but God can, he says, turn light into darkness: a dark night therefore will overtake you even at mid-day.'' We now understand why the Prophet employed this figurative expression, --- that God would obscure the sun, or cause it to go down, and would on a clear day send darkness to obscure the earth. It was not, it is certain, the eclipse of the sun; and the Prophet did not mean this. But these figurative expressions must be first noticed, and then we must see what they import.
63A different view is given by Newcome and also by Henderson. Newcome translates thus, — And shall not all of it rise up as the river, And be driven out of its place and sunk down as the river of Egypt? Henderson renders the lines in the same sense, though in different words, — Shall not all of it rise like the river? Shall it not be driven and subside Like the river of Egypt? The question is unnecessarily retained, borrowed from the first line of the verse. It is seldom, if ever, that this is the case in Hebrew; it is not consistent with the simplicity of the language. It is evidently the earthquake that is here compared to the rising and subsiding of a river. I would therefore render the whole verse thus, — Shall not for this the land shake, And every inhabitant in it mourn? For heave up as a river shall the whole of it, And it shall be agitated and subside like the river of Egypt. Here is the heaving, the agitation, and the subsidence of the earth in an earthquake. — Ed.
64He means evidently the Keri, the marginal reading. — Ed.