Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Amos · About this commentary
I Destroyed the Amorite Before You
Amos 2:9-12
9 Yet I destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath. · WEB
The evidence against Israel is a list of gifts, and the last two gifts were people they silenced.
Having stated the charges, the oracle switches to what God had done, and the sequence runs backward through the nation's founding. Yet I destroyed the Amorite before them — described as tall as cedars and strong as oaks, and destroyed root and branch. Then the exodus, then forty years in the wilderness, then possession of the land.
The order is deliberate. The conquest is named before the exodus, so the argument moves from the most recent benefit to the oldest, which is how a creditor itemizes.
Then verse 11, and the last two items are not events but people. I raised up some of your sons for prophets, and some of your young men for Nazirites. The gifts include men who would say inconvenient things, and men whose abstinence was a standing witness — the Nazirite vow being public by design, marked by uncut hair and untouched wine.
Verse 12 states what was done with both. You gave the Nazirites wine to drink, and commanded the prophets, saying, do not prophesy. The two gifts were not ignored; they were actively dismantled — one corrupted, one silenced.
That second clause is the charge Amos will meet in person. A priest at Bethel tells him in almost these words to stop preaching and go home Amos 7:13. The indictment written in chapter 2 is enacted against its author in chapter 7.
settled What this mark means