Amos 9:15

9:11-15 Christ died to gather together the children of God that were scattered abroad, here said to be those who were called by his name. The Lord saith this, who doeth this, who can do it, who has determined to do it, the power of whose grace is engaged for doing it. Verses 13-15 may refer to the early times of Christianity, but will receive a more glorious fulfilment in the events which all the prophets more or less foretold, and may be understood of the happy state when the fulness both of the Jews and the Gentiles come into the church. Let us continue earnest in prayer for the fulfilment of these prophecies, in the peace, purity, and the beauty of the church. God marvellously preserves his elect amidst the most fearful confusions and miseries. When all seems desperate, he wonderfully revives his church, and blesses her with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. And great shall be the glory of that period, in which not one good thing promised shall remain unfulfilled.

And I will plant them upon their land,.... The land of Israel, as trees are planted; and they shall take root and flourish, and abound with all good things, temporal and spiritual: and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God; by which it appears that this is a prophecy of things yet to come; since the Jews, upon their return to their own land after the Babylonish captivity, were pulled up again, and rooted out of it by the Romans, and remain so to this day; but, when they shall return again, they will never more be removed from it; and of this they may he assured; because it is the land the Lord has, "given" them, and it shall not be taken away from them any more; and, because he will now appear to be the "Lord their God", the "loammi", Hosea 1:9, will he taken off from them; they will be owned to be the Lords people, and he will be known by them to be their covenant God; which will ensure all the above blessings to them, of whatsoever kind; for this is either said to the prophet, "the Lord thy God", or to Israel; and either way it serves to confirm the same thing.

I will plant, or settle them, as trees that are well rooted, upon their land, by ancient gift, and by late restitution to it by the Lord. They shall no more be pulled up by the violence of their enemies which promise is an implicit condition that they seek, and not forsake the Lord, and was on God’s part with admirable constancy and patience to that sinful nation performed through six hundred years, perhaps the longest time of freedom from captivity they ever knew. Which I have given, of free gift, without their merit. Saith the Lord thy God; God, thy God and thy Lord, will do it for his covenant’s sake, therefore surely and fully will he do it.

Verse 15. - The blessing shall last forever. They shall no more be pulled up. This was not true of the literal Israel; it must be taken of the spiritual seed, planted in God's land, the Church of Christ, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. "Lo," says Christ, "I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" ( Matthew 28:20 ) Amos 9:15

15 . Israel will moreover remain permanently settled in its own land. And I will plant them … and they shall no more be pulled up , &c.] Cf. Jeremiah 24:6 (“I will plant them and not pull them up”); Jeremiah 42:10 . For similar promises, see Jeremiah 32:41 ; Ezekiel 34:28 ; Isaiah 60:21 ; Joel 3:20 ; and elsewhere. On the question of the non-fulfilment of such promises, see Riehm, Messianic Prophecy (ed. 2, 1891), pp. 238–268. It is to be remembered (1) that they are conditional upon Israel’s worthiness; (2) that the question forms part of a larger one, viz. the nature and extent of the ideal element in the prophets’ pictures of the future, and the degree to which those pictures were coloured by the national and local limitations peculiar to their religion. Cf. p. 32 f., above, with the passages referred to in the footnotes; and comp. also F.H. Woods, The Hope of Israel (1896), chaps. 4 5 10. thy God ] the title, expressive of consolation and affection, as Isaiah 41:10 ; Isaiah 52:7 ; Isaiah 54:6 ; Isaiah 66:9 . The restored nation is pictured naturally by the prophet as penitent and reformed (cf. pp. 31 f., 121); hence Jehovah is no longer its foe ( Amos 9:4; Amos 9:8 ), but can acknowledge it again as His own.

And I will plant them upon their own land - The promises and threatenings of God are, to individuals, conditional upon their continuing to be of that character, to which God annexes those promises or threats. Theodoret: "The God of all often promises, when those who receive the promises, by joying in iniquity hinder those promises from taking effect. At times also he threatens heavy things, and they who for their offences were the objects of those threats, being, through fear of them, converted, do not in act experience them." The two tribes received some little shadow of fulfillment of these promises on the return from Babylon. "They were planted in their own land." The non-fulfillment of the rest, as well as the evident symbolic character of part of it, must have shown them that such fulfillment was the beginning, not the end. Their land was "the Lord's land;" banishment from it was banishment from the special presence of God, from the place where He manifested Himself, where alone the typical sacrifices, the appointed means of reconciliation, could be offered. Restoration to their own land was the outward symbol of restoration to God's favor, of which it was the fruit. it was a condition of the fulfillment of those other promises, the coming of Him in whom the promises were laid up, the Christ. He was not simply to be of David's seed, according to the flesh.

Prophecy, as time went on, declared His birth at Bethlehem, His revelation in Galilee, His coming to His Temple, His sending forth His law from Jerusalem. Without some restoration to their own land, these things could not be. Israel was restored in the flesh, that, after the flesh, the Christ might be born of them, where God foretold that He should be born. But the temporal fulfillment ended with that event in time in which they were to issue, for whose sake they were; His coming. They were but the vestibule to the spiritual. As shadows, they ceased when the Sun arose. As means, they ended, when the end, whereto they served, came. There was no need of a temporal Zion, when He who was to send forth His law thence, had come and sent it forth. No need of a temple when He who was to be its glory, had come, illumined it, and was gone. No need of one of royal birth in Bethlehem, when "the Virgin" had "conceived and borne a Son," and "God" had been "with us." And so as to other prophecies. All which were bound to the land of Judah, were accomplished. As the true Israel expanded and embraced all nations, the whole earth became "the land" of God's people. Palestine had had its prerogatives, because God manifested Himself there, was worshiped there. When God's people was enlarged, so as "to inherit the pagan," and God was worshiped everywhere, His land too was everywhere. His promises accompanied His people, and these were in all lands.