---
title: "Amos 9 - Study King James Bible with barnes notes on the whole bible"
description: "Read Amos 9 with barnes notes on the whole bible commentary. 1 I saw the Lord standing upon the altar: and he said, Smite the lintel of the door, that the posts may shake: and cut them in the head, all of them; and"
image: "/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg"
url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/barnes-notes-on-the-whole-bible/amos/9"
---

[ Read](/kjv/amos/9)[ Commentary](/study/amos/9)[ Interlinear](/interlinear/amos/9) Audio

 1 I saw the Lord standing upon the altar: and he said, Smite the lintel of the door, that the posts may shake: and cut them in the head, all of them; and I will slay the last of them with the sword: he that fleeth of them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not be delivered.**

 2 Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down:

 3 And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them:

 4 And though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will I command the sword, and it shall slay them: and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for good.

 5 And the Lord GOD of hosts *is* he that toucheth the land, and it shall melt, and all that dwell therein shall mourn: and it shall rise up wholly like a flood; and shall be drowned, as *by* the flood of Egypt.

 6 *It is* he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and hath founded his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD *is* his name.**

 7 *Are* ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?

 8 Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD *are* upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the LORD.

 9 For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as *corn* is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.**

 10 All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.

 11 ¶ In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old:*

 12 That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, saith the LORD that doeth this.*

 13 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.**

 14 And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit *them;* and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them.

 15 And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.
 
[Amos 8](/study/amos/8) [Obadiah 1](/study/obadiah/1)

## Commentary

 To verse 1
 
**I saw the Lord -**He saw God in vision; yet God no more, as before, asked him what he saw. God no longer shows him emblems of the destruction, but the destruction itself. Since Amos had just been speaking of the idolatry of Samaria, as the ground of its utter destruction, doubtless this vision of such utter destruction of the place of worship, with and upon the worshipers, relates to those same idolaters and idoltries . True, the condenmation of Israel would become the condemnation of Judah, when Judah’s sins, like Israel’s, should become complete. But directly, it can hardly relate to any other than those spoken of before and after, Israel. “The altar,” then, “over” which Amos sees God “stand,” is doubtless the altar on which Jeroboam sacrificed, “the altar” which he set up over-against the altar at Jerusalem, the center of the calf-worship, whose destruction the man of God foretold on the day of its dedication. 

There where, in counterfeit of the sacrifices which God had appointed, they offered would-be-atoning sacrifices and sinned in them, God appeared, standing, to behold, to judge, to condemn. “And He said, smite the lintel,” literally, “the chapter,” or “capital,” probably so called from “crowning” the pillar with a globular form, like a pomegranate. This, the spurious outward imitation of the true sanctuary, God commands to be stricken, “that the posts,” or probably “the thresholds, may shake.” The building was struck from above, and reeled to its base. It does not matter, whether any blow on the capital of a pillar would make the whole fabric to shake. For the blow was no blow of man. God gives the command probably to the Angel of the Lord, as, in Ezekiel’s vision of the destruction of Jerusalem, the charge to destroy was given to six men [Ezekiel 9:2](/kjv/ezekiel/9/2). So the first-born of Egypt, the army of Sennacherib, were destroyed by an Angel [Exodus 12:23](/kjv/exodus/12/23); [2 Kings 19:34-35](/kjv/2-kings/19/34-35). An Angel stood with his sword over Jerusalem [2 Samuel 24:1](/kjv/2-samuel/24/1), [2 Samuel 24:15-16](/kjv/2-samuel/24/15-16), when God punished David’s presumption in numbering the people. At one blow of the heavenly Agent the whole building shook, staggered, fell. 

**And cut them in the head, all of them -**o This may be either by the direct agency of the Angel, or the temple itself may be represented as falling on the heads of the worshipers. As God, through Jehu, destroyed all the worshipers of Baal in the house of Baal, so here He foretells, under a like image, the destruction of all the idolaters of Israel. He had said, “they that swear by the sin of Samaria - shall fall and never rise up again.” Here he represents the place of that worship the idolaters, as it seems, crowded there, and the command given to destroy them all. All Israel was not to be destroyed. “Not the least grain” was to “fall upon the earth [Amos 9:9](/kjv/amos/9/9). Those then here represented as destroyed to the last man, must be a distinct class. Those destroyed in the temple must be the worshipers in the temple. In the Temple of God at Jerusalem, none entered except the priests. Even the space “between the porch and the altar” was set apart for the priests. But heresy is necessarily irreverent, because, not worshiping the One God, it had no Object of reverence. Hence, the temple of Baal was full “from end to end [2 Kings 10:21](/kjv/2-kings/10/21), and the worshipers of the sun at Jerusalem turned “their backs toward the Temple,” and “worshiped the sun toward the east, at the door of the Temple, between the porch and the altar” [Ezekiel 8:16](/kjv/ezekiel/8/16); [Ezekiel 11:1](/kjv/ezekiel/11/1). The worshipers of the calves were commanded to “kiss” [Hosea 13:2](/kjv/hosea/13/2) them, and so must have filled the temple, where they were. 

**And I will slay the last of them -**The Angel is bidden to destroy those gatered in open idolatry in one place. God, by His Omniscience, reserved the rest for His own judgment. All creatures, animate or inanimate, rational or irrational, stand at His command to fulfill His will. The mass of idolaters having perished in their idolatry, the rest, not crushed in the fall of the temple, would fain flee away, but “he that fleeth shall not flee,” God says, to any good “to themselves;” yea, although they should do what for man is impossible, they should not escape God.

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