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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Amos 8:11 - 8:11
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And at that time the light and comfort of the word of God will also fail them. Amo 8:11. “Behold, days come, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah, that I send a hungering into the land, not a hungering for bread nor a thirst for water, but to hear the words of Jehovah. Amo 8:12. And they will reel from sea to sea; and from the north, and even to the east, they sweep round to seek the word of Jehovah, and will not find it.” The bitterness of the time of punishment is increased by the fact that the Lord will then withdrawn His word from them, i.e., the light of His revelation. They who will not now hear His word, as proclaimed by the prophets, will then cherish the greatest longing for it. Such hunger and thirst will be awakened by the distress and affliction that will come upon them. The intensity of this desire is depicted in Amo 8:12. They reel (נוּעַ as in Amo 4:8) from the sea to the sea; that is to say, not “from the Dead Sea in the east to the Mediterranean in the west,” for Joe 2:20 and Zec 14:8 are not cases in point, as the two seas are defined there by distinct epithets; but as in Psa 72:8 and Zec 9:10, according to which the meaning is, from the sea to where the sea occurs again, at the other end of the world, “the sea being taken as the boundary of the earth” (Hupfeld). The other clause, “from the north even to the east,” contains an abridged expression for “from north to south and from west to east,” i.e., to every quarter of the globe.