Amos 2:13
Behold, I am about to crush you in your place as with a cart full of grain.
Sermons
God's GriefF. Hastings.Amos 2:13
God's Sin-BurdenGeorge Hutcheson.Amos 2:13
Ill-Treatment of GodAmos 2:13
Men's Sins a Divine BurdenJ.R. Thomson Amos 2:13
God and NationsD. Thomas Amos 2:9-13














The figure of the text is one taken by Amos from his own experience as a husbandman. In the harvest field the cart is piled high with sheaves to be taken to the garner or the threshing floor. The wain groans - as poets put it - beneath the load. Even so, it is represented that the sins of Israel oppress Jehovah; he is distressed by their magnitude and their aggravations.

I. LIGHT IS CAST BY THIS LANGUAGE UPON THE CHARACTER OF GOD.

1. His repugnance to sin is here brought before us. The deities of the heathen do not seem to have been represented as hating sin, though they were pictured as resenting the neglect of their worshippers. It was otherwise with Jehovah, for he was not an invention of human ignorance and frailty. The Old Testament writers, with one consent, represent the Eternal as holy, and as hating sin as sin.

2. His distress at sin is conveyed in this declaration. This is no imperfection. Mere disapproval would have been an imperfection. But it is an encouraging view which we are justified in taking of the Divine character, as we read that God is pained by human iniquity. What an appeal to sinful man is this, "I am pressed under you"!

II. LIGHT IS CAST BY THIS LANGUAGE UPON THE NATURE OF HUMAN SIN. Men's transgressions are not unheeded by God, neither are they a matter of indifference to him. The Supreme Being is not oppressed by the vast care of the material universe. But sin is so heinous and awful that it affects his feelings - if we may use language so human. Shall man be careless with regard to that which is so felt by the infinite heart? Of all ills there can be none like this.

III. LIGHT IS CAST BY THIS LANGUAGE UPON THE PROSPECT OF REDEMPTION. This light may be dim, but it is an advance upon darkness. If man's sin is so distressing to God, there is reason to hope that Divine wisdom and grace will concur to provide means for its forgiveness and its cancelling. The feeling which is uttered in the figurative language of the text found lull expression in the cross of Christ, in the gospel of salvation. - T.

Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves.
(compare Hosea 8:10; Hosea 11:8): — These three passages give us an intimation, a glimpse of the burden and grief of the Infinite. What is this burden that presses on the heart of the Divine? What are the thorns under the golden crown of universal dominion? Can we know what they are? Yes, the burden of the King of princes is the sin of His creatures, and to clear it from the world is the one great problem of the Divine. If sin were committed by any who were independent of God — were it possible for such to exist — it might cause Him no such sorrow. But all are dependent on Him, closely united by creation. Sin is evidently a matter of greatest cost to God, and something much more awful than we can comprehend. Sin meets God in His world at every turn. Sin now rears its serpent head amid the glories of God's creation, and is now working terrible damage in the fair world of our Father. It may seem a trifling thing to many; but it is a real burden and annoyance to God. It is not necessary that a man should have a sharp stone in his eye in order to feel a smart. A speck of dust, a grain of sand, will be sufficient to blot out to us for a season the glories of the most beautiful landscape. As to the presence of such a slight foreign substance, the eye is most sensitive, so is the nature of God to the presence of sin in His creature. To a Being of such great love it must be a great burden to see such multitudes of His creatures rushing on in the misery of sin. In proportion to the infinite tenderness of the Divine nature, so is the burden increased. God knows the far-reaching effects of man's sin. It is a very common thing to represent God as existing only in unalloyed happiness. It is only like Him to take up our burdens, to know our sorrows. He Is most like God when love leads to an infinite self-sacrifice in bearing man's burdens, and sympathising in human sorrow. We should not believe in God's sympathy and love so much apart from this bearing some burden. We should not go to Him so readily. There was not, let us remember, in Christ, who manifested God, the appearance of submission to suffering. It was real suffering, because there was a real burden and sympathy. If the Divine Being sympathises with man, He also shows us that He wishes to have from us .sympathy and love in return. We are "to sorrow a little for the burden of the King of princes." And the measure of our power to enter into sympathy with the Divine is the measure of the strength of our spiritual character.

(F. Hastings.)

This verse, as it is by some translated, is a part of the sentence or threatening, showing that God would press their place or land, and fill it with heaps of judgments and enemies, as a cart is pressed and filled with sheaves in harvest. But as it is here translated, it is a general conclusion introductory to the sentence; wherein the Lord declareth, that the multitude and variety of these their sins did so provoke His justice and patience, that He might justly complain of them as insupportable and intolerable, as a cart groans under burdens; and therefore He would punish, as is declared in the following verses. Doctrine.

1. It is the way of secure sinners to lay over the weight of all their sins on God, and on His mercy, as if He were but a cart to lie under the burden of them all, that so they may sleep the sounder and sin the faster.

2. The Lord, even toward secure sinners, will take on this burden so far, as to suffer their manners long, before He cast it off, albeit He be provoked by every sin, and doth not allow their presumptuous casting off their iniquities upon Him, yet He doth not complain nor strike, till He be pressed, "as a cart that is full of sheaves."

3. God's patience and long-suffering will at last weary to endure the provocations of sinners, as becoming insupportable.

4. When the cup of men's iniquities is full, and God is about to bear them no longer, yet they may be so stupid as to need up-stirring to consider it.

(George Hutcheson.)

Consider, then, for a moment, how bad human nature must be, if we think how ill it has treated its God. I remember William Huntington says, in his Autobiography, that one of the sharpest sensations of pain that he felt after he had been quickened by Divine grace was this: " He felt such pity for God." I do not know that I ever met with the expression elsewhere, but it is a very expressive one, although I might prefer to say sympathy with God and grief that He should be so evil entreated. Ah, there are many men that are forgotten, that are despised, and that are trampled on by their fellows; but there never was a man who was so despised as the everlasting God has been.

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

People
Amorites, Amos, Nazarites, Nazirites
Places
Edom, Egypt, Jerusalem, Kerioth, Moab
Topics
Behold, Beneath, Cart, Creak, Creaketh, Crush, Crushed, Crushes, Crushing, Filled, Full, Grain, Itself, Loaded, Press, Pressed, Presses, Presseth, Pressing, Sheaf, Sheaves, Wagon, Weighted
Outline
1. God's judgments upon Moab,
4. upon Judah,
6. and upon Israel.
9. God complains of their ingratitude.

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Amos 2:13

     5248   cart
     5282   crushing

Library
Ripe for Gathering
'Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. 2. And He said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon My people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. 3. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence. 4. Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Third Circuit of Galilee. The Twelve Instructed and Sent Forth.
^A Matt. IX. 35-38; X. 1, 5-42; XI. 1; ^B Mark VI. 6-13; ^C Luke IX. 1-6. ^b 6 And he ^a Jesus ^b went about ^a all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner sickness and all manner of sickness. [In the first circuit of Galilee some of the twelve accompanied Jesus as disciples (see [3]Section XXXIII.); in the second the twelve were with him as apostles; in the third they, too, are sent forth as evangelists to supplement
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

The Kingdom of God Conceived as the Inheritance of the Poor.
These maxims, good for a country where life is nourished by the air and the light, and this delicate communism of a band of children of God reposing in confidence on the bosom of their Father, might suit a simple sect constantly persuaded that its Utopia was about to be realized. But it is clear that they could not satisfy the whole of society. Jesus understood very soon, in fact, that the official world of his time would by no means adopt his kingdom. He took his resolution with extreme boldness.
Ernest Renan—The Life of Jesus

To his Praise!
"They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness." THIS chapter is written more than seven years later than the foregoing, in further testimony and praise. Returning to Canada at the time of the Great War, we came face to face with a serious financial crisis. Only two ways seemed open to us. One was to lay our affairs frankly before the Board, showing that our salary was quite insufficient, with war conditions and prices, to meet our requirements. The other course was to just go forward,
Rosalind Goforth—How I Know God Answers Prayer

The Tests of Love to God
LET us test ourselves impartially whether we are in the number of those that love God. For the deciding of this, as our love will be best seen by the fruits of it, I shall lay down fourteen signs, or fruits, of love to God, and it concerns us to search carefully whether any of these fruits grow in our garden. 1. The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind upon God. He who is in love, his thoughts are ever upon the object. He who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of
Thomas Watson—A Divine Cordial

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