The three visions in this section are similar and evidently followed one another in quick succession. The first two describe methods of divine judgment from which Amos persuaded God to turn aside, and the last one the method He chose to use to judge Israel.
7:1 Sovereign Yahweh showed Amos a mass of locusts swarming in the springtime after the first harvest and before the second. The Lord was forming this swarm of locusts. The very first crops harvested in the spring went to feed the king's household and animals (cf. 1 Kings 18:5). The crops that the people harvested later in the spring fed their animals and themselves. If anything happened to prevent that second harvesting, the people would have little to eat until the next harvest in the fall. The summer months were very dry and the Israelites had nothing to harvest during that season of the year.
Locusts swarming indicated that they were about to sweep through an area and destroy all the crops. There was no way to prevent this in Amos' day. Locust invasions were a perennial threat, and they were a method of discipline that God had said He might use if His people proved unfaithful to His covenant with them (Deut. 28:38, 42; cf. Joel 1:1-7; Amos 4:9).
7:2 Amos witnessed the locusts strip the land of its vegetation. Then he prayed and asked the sovereign Lord to pardon Jacob (Israel) for its covenant unfaithfulness. Jacob was only a small nation and could not survive such a devastating judgment if the Lord allowed it to happen as he had seen it in his vision.
Amos' view of Israel as small and weak stands in contrast to that of Israel's leaders who believed it was strong and invincible (cf. 6:1-3, 8, 13; 9:10). Israel occupied a large territory under Jeroboam II, second only to what Solomon controlled, but it was still small in relation to the larger empires of the ancient Near East. Amos may have meant that Israel was small in the sense of helpless. God had promised to take care of Jacob when that patriarch encountered Yahweh at Bethel, now a center of apostate worship in Israel (cf. Gen. 28:10-22). Perhaps that is why Amos appealed to God with the name of Jacob (cf. 3:13; 6:8; 7:5; 8:7; 9:8).
7:3 In response to Amos' prayer, the Lord relented and said He would not bring a completely devastating judgment on Israel, at least then. He would be merciful and patient and would grant Israel more grace (cf. Exod. 32:14).
The fervent prayers of righteous individuals, like Amos, can alter the events of history (cf. James 5:16-18). Some things that God intends to do are not firmly determined by Him; He is open to changing His mind about these things. However, He has decreed other things and no amount of praying will change His mind about those things (cf. Acts 1:11; Rev. 22:20). It is, therefore, important that we understand, from Scripture, what aspects of His will are fixed and which are negotiable.65
7:4 Sovereign Yahweh also showed Amos a vision of a great fire that was burning up everything. Like a great drought it consumed all the water and all the farmland (or people) in Israel (cf. 1:19-20). What he saw may have been a scorching heat wave that resulted in a drought.
The "great deep"is a phrase that refers to subterranean waters that feed springs (cf. Gen. 1:2; 7:11; 8:2; 49:25; Deut. 8:7; Ezek. 31:4). So intense was the fire that Amos saw that it dried up even these underground water reservoirs. Great heat with consequent drought was one of the punishments that the Lord warned of for covenant unfaithfulness (Deut. 28:22).
7:5-6 Amos prayed virtually the same prayer again asking the sovereign Lord not to send such a judgment because Jacob was small (cf. v. 2). Again the Lord relented and determined that it would not come then (cf. v. 3). He would not discipline Israel with a locust plague or with a raging "fire."
7:7 Amos saw a third vision. The Lord was standing beside a vertical wall with a plumb line in His hand. A plumb line was a string with a weight on the end. People used it, and still use it, to determine if a vertical structure is completely straight. God was testing something by a true standard; His judgment is not arbitrary.
7:8 The Lord asked the prophet what he saw, and Amos replied that he saw a plumb line. Then the Lord explained that He was about to test Israel as a builder uses a plumb line. The true standard by which He would judge Israel was undoubtedly the Mosaic Law, the covenant that He had given her by which God measured her uprightness (cf. Exod. 19:6). The Lord further announced that He would not spare the Israelites His judgment any longer; Amos' prayers for Israel would not turn away His punishment as earlier (vv. 3, 6). The nation was so far out of plumb that God would tear it down.
7:9 The method of judgment God would use would not be locust invasion or fire but the sword. An enemy would invade Israel (cf. Deut. 28:49-50). This enemy, as Yahweh's agent, would destroy the outdoor high places on hilltops and the temple sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel where the people worshipped God and idols, namely, all their worship centers.
Amos probably used "Isaac"simply as a synonym for "Jacob"and "Israel."
"Amos seems to have in mind the special veneration for Isaac which members of the Northern Kingdom displayed in making pilgrimages south to Beersheba (cf. 5:5; 8:14), Isaac's birthplace."66
The "house of Jeroboam"probably refers to the dynasty of Jeroboam II, but it could refer to the nation of Israel as headed by Jeroboam I. Jeroboam II's dynasty came to an end with the assassination of his son and successor Zechariah (2 Kings 15:8-10).
These three visions appear to have come to Amos in close succession. They are obviously similar and together present a picture of judgment deferred twice but finally brought on Israel. They clarify the method of Israel's punishment, namely, defeat by an enemy's invading army, and they show that judgment would come after God's patience with the nation had been exhausted.
