Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Amos · About this commentary
Two Visions, Two Reprieves
Amos 7:1-6
1 Thus the Lord Yahweh showed me: behold, he formed locusts in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s harvest. · WEB
Twice the prophet interrupts a judgment with a plea, and twice it is granted — which makes the third vision's silence audible.
The vision sequence begins with locusts, and the timing is specific: the swarm is formed for the late growth, after the king's share of the harvest has already been taken. The crop being eaten is what the ordinary population had left.
Amos does not describe the vision and move on. He interrupts it. Lord Yahweh, forgive, I beg you. How can Jacob stand? For he is small. The plea makes no argument about Israel's merits — six chapters have shown there are none. It appeals to size and nothing else.
And it works: Yahweh relented concerning this.
The second vision is fire, drying up the great deep and about to consume the land, and the exchange repeats almost word for word. Amos asks him to stop rather than to forgive — the request has shifted from pardon to cessation — and gives the same reason, that Jacob is small. Again it is granted.
Two things follow from the pair. First, the man Amaziah will shortly accuse of conspiracy against the nation Amos 7:10 is the same man who twice talked God out of destroying it. Second, and the reason the sequence is built this way: the third vision comes next, and Amos says nothing.
The plumb line arrives, and the prophet who interceded twice does not intercede a third time Amos 7:8. The silence is the vision's message as much as the image is.
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