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COMMENTARY ON AMOS, CHAPTER EIGHT This is what the Lord showed me: a fowler’s basket. He said, What do you see, Amos? I replied, A fowler’s basket. The Lord said to me, The end has come for my people Israel: I shall never again pass their way. The ceilings of the Temple will lament on that day, says the Lord; the fallen will be numerous in every place, and I shall cast silence (vv.1–3). HE PROPHET’S discourse continues on its way; the matters that have been touched on received adequate treatment, and the order of the visions is adjusted to the purpose proper to it. So he saw the vast numbers of the Assyrians like an early plague of locusts, and with them Gog, or Sennacherib, described under the form of a young locust on account of the creature’s vigorous leaping on the ground; the arrogant person is something like this, ever leaping on high, declining to live the life of lowly people. He also saw judgment referred to as fire, and adamant placed in the midst of Israel standing on the wall of adamant. What next? A fowler’s basket. I repeat what I said initially, that, to the prophet raised as a rustic, God reveals mysteries through what happens particularly in the countryside. Fowlers, you see, and what is caught by them—birds, I mean—would be suited not to city folk but to those whose interests and lifestyle were the countryside and what is in it. Now, (509) the fact that the chosen race of those in Samaria—I mean the arrogant and the high flyers like birds—would along with the masses without any doubt be caught for slaughter, as though by the hand of fowlers , the force of the visions suggested in obscure fashion, the vision being a fowler’s basket. The God of all is thus saying, The end has come for my people Israel, and that he would never again pass over their crimes; he mentioned that even the Temple itself would be burnt down, housing as it did the golden heifer 105 106 CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA in Bethel, when he said, The ceilings of the Temple will lament on that day. Now, ceilings normally referred to the roof, or the part around it, cleverly made of varied materials by the artifice of the builders according to the verse in the Song of Songs, “Our beams are of cedar, our ceilings of cypress.”1 He says the ceilings will lament, uttering not an articulate sound, but rather one that comes from the creaking and groaning of collapse. Since the fallen will be numerous in every place, he says, I shall cast silence; because the whole place will be given over to desolation, with no inhabitants, the silence, or tranquillity, will be deafening, as in deserts and untrackable wastes. The God of all, therefore, is by no means at a loss if he chooses to chastise sinners; rather, many and varied are the chastisements available to him, and nothing will stand in the way of his imposing penalties on the offender. On the other hand, the one who averts wrath by repentance will escape, by winning over to clemency the Lord, who is kindly and compassionate.2 (510) Hear this, you who oppress the needy in the morning and withdraw the rights of the poor to the land, who say, When will the moon pass and we shall engage in commerce? When will the sabbath come and we shall open the stores so as to set the measure short, increase the weight, make the balance unfair so as to get ownership of the poor with silver and of the lowly for a pair of sandals, and to trade by every kind of sale? (vv.4–6) One of the Pharisees once asked our Lord Jesus Christ what is the first and greatest commandment in the Law, and was told that the first commandment is this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your strength, and the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” You would see (511) the divinely inspired Paul himself also relating every form of virtue to love, as it were, confidently calling it greater than both faith and hope,3 and clearly taking it for granted that the person lacking it would be nothing, even if giving his possessions to those who ask, even if...

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