Commentary on Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah and Nahum John Calvin (continued)
JOHN CALVIN
exhort and stimulate us by holy admonitions, and even frighten us by punishments, that we may not run headlong to our own ruin, --- O grant, that we may not be deaf to admonitions so holy and gracious, nor be hardened against thy threatening, but that we may become instantly submissive, and also return to the right way and constantly proceed in it, and follow one vocation through our whole life, as long as thou continues it to us, until we at length reach the mark which is set before us, even until we be gathered into thy celestial kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Lecture Sixty-seventh
Amos 8:13-14
13. In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.
13. In die illa deficient virgines decorae et adolescentes prae siti.
14. They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.
14. Jurantes in peccato Samariae, et qui dicunt, Vivet via Barsaba; et cadent et non resurgent amplius.
The Prophet, having threatened spiritual famine, now adds, that the people would in every respect be barren and destitute of every good: for I take not thirst here in the same sense as before; but that they should be dried up through the want of all things.
It is indeed the worst deprivation when men are parched up with thirst; and this is what the Prophet threatens here. A country may suffer from want of provision, while there is water enough to drink; but when not even this remains, it is an evidence of a heavier and of almost the extreme curse of God. We now perceive what the Prophet meant, which was this, --- that when God should take away his word, by which the souls of men are nourished up to eternal life, the Israelites would be then in want also of all blessings, so that they would not only be without bread, but also without water; and he mentions a circumstance which would greatly aggravate the evil, Faint, he says, shall the fair virgins and the youth in their vigor It seems unnatural, that those who are vigorous, and can run to get supply for their wants, should faint: but the Prophet, as I have said, wished to show that there would be no escape, but that God would distress the strongest, when he sent such a famine, and with it the want also of drink.
He afterwards mentions the reason why the Lord would inflict such punishments on his people; it was, because they had prostituted themselves to wicked superstitions; They swear, he says, by the sin of Samaria; they say, Live does thy God, Dan; Live does the way of Beersheba Some understand ``sin'' here metaphorically, (as it is taken also in many other places,) as meaning sin-offerings, which are called by the Hebrews {,}אשמותashimut, and by the Latins piacula --- expiations: but this exposition is too refined. The Prophet then speaks only of the idols of Israelites: and they are called wickedness or sin, because superstitious men, we know, delight in their own devices. He therefore calls an idol sin by way of reproach, though they gave it the honorable name of a god. They swear, he says, in or by the sin of Samaria He calls it the sin of Samaria, for thence arose all their corruptions, it being the royal residence and the chief city of the whole country. Since then superstition proceeded