It is, after all, the practice of the prophets and the just to grieve not only for themselves but also for the rest of humankind. If you’re inclined to check that, you will find them all giving evidence of this compassion—for example, you can listen to Jeremiah, Who will pour water on my head, and provide a fountain of tears for my eyes?^[1] or Ezekiel, Alas, Lord, you will destroy what remains of Israel?^[2] or Daniel lamenting in these words, You have made us few in number by comparison with the Gentiles, or Amos, Think better of this, Lord.

I will also proclaim confidently that there is someone who cannot be affected very much by the hammer of the whole earth.^[1] And since the example was offered of a perceptible hammer, I will seek a material stronger than the hammer which does not feel the blows from it. In searching for it I find it too in what was written: Behold a man standing above the adamant walls, and in his adamant. History records about adamant^[2] that it is stronger than every hammer striking it, remaining unbroken and unyielding. Even if the hammer, the devil, stands above, and the serpent, who as an indomitable anvil,^[3] may position himself below, still adamant endures nothing when it is resting in the hand of the Lord and in his regard. Thus the two opposites to this adamant are the hammer and the immovable anvil. Yet there is indeed among the nations a much-used proverb in the common language concerning those who are pressed by anxieties and extremely bad situations; they say, They are ‘between a hammer and an anvil.’ Still you can say that this refers to the devil and the serpent, who are always signified by names of this sort in the Scriptures for a variety of purposes. And you can say that the holy person, who is an adamant wall or is adamant in the hand of the Lord, is not affected either by the hammer or by the anvil, but the more one is struck, the brighter will his virtue shine.

Jesus would lead his detractors to the point of judging themselves, saying, What do the vinedressers deserve?^[1] They decided concerning themselves, saying, Let him destroy the evil ones with evil.^[2] Then he explained this, saying, Have you not read that ‘the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner?’^[3] What stone? That which is known to be lead. For see, he has said, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of the sons of Israel. To show that he himself was this stone, he said concerning it, Whoever knocks against that stone will be broken to pieces, but it will crush and destroy whomever it falls upon.^[4] The leaders of the people were gathered together against him and wanted his downfall because his teaching did not please them. But he said, It will crush and destroy whomever it falls upon, because he had resisted idolatry, among other things. For the stone that struck the image has become a great mountain, and the entire earth has been filled with it.^[5]

Amos also said, I was no prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but only a herdsman, a gatherer of sycamore fruit. And God took me. He did not say this to exalt himself but to stop their mouths that suspected him as no prophet, and to show that he is no deceiver, and what he says does not come from his own mind.

How good it is to raise up eyes of faith to the power of this worker, the Holy Spirit, and to look here and there at our ancestors in the Old and New Testaments. With the eyes of my faith open, I gaze on David, on Amos, on Daniel, on Peter, on Paul, on Matthew—and I am filled with a desire to behold the nature of this worker, the Holy Spirit. But I fall short. The Spirit filled a boy who played upon the harp, and made him a psalmist; on a shepherd and herdsman who pruned sycamore trees, and made him a prophet; on a child given to abstinence, and made him a judge of his elders; on a fisherman, and made him a preacher; on one who persecuted the church, and made him the teacher of the Gentiles; on a tax collector, and made him an Evangelist. What a skilled worker this Spirit is! There is no question of delay in learning what the Spirit teaches us. No sooner does the Spirit touch our minds in regard to anything than we are taught; the Spirit’s very touch is teaching. The Spirit changes the human heart in a moment, filling it with light. Suddenly we are no longer what we were; suddenly we are something we never used to be. ^[1] FULL DISCLOSURE. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: And Amaziah sends, etc. In fact, since the prophet had received the order to prophesy beside the temple of the idols, so that his words might be heard not only by the ten tribes but also by the people living around, Amaziah, the priest of the temple, thinks that if these words were addressed to the people for some time, inevitably they would have been afraid and would not have come to worship the idols anymore, and therefore he would have lost authority. So he sends his complaint to excite the reaction of the king against the prophet, asking that either he was executed or expelled from that place. But since the king was afraid to harm the prophet, Amaziah dares say to the prophet by mocking him and laughing at him—in fact, the word seer is used with scorn: Go, flee away to the land of Judah. That is, there you will be treated justly by receiving the wage for your role as a prophet, because those of the house of Judah are accustomed to taking care of their prophets. This priest of the demons had believed that the prophet had taken up his task as if it was an ordinary job, that is, to make a living as he himself had done. He imagined that the motive of Amos was to stuff himself with food. But the prophet answered, according to the Greek text, I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son. That is, I have not learned this profession as a trade nor have I inherited it from my fathers, but it is the work of divine grace that is given to those who seek after God. I was a goat herder and dug around sycamore trees.^[1] Other versions read, I looked for the fruits of the sycamore trees,^[2] or I scraped the wild fig trees, or I made incisions on the fruits of the sycamores.^[3] This meaning is, sometimes I pastured goats and sheep as well, sometimes I tilled the ground by digging and raking and irrigating around the trees. By mentioning the sycamore trees, which are wild fig trees, he refers to all trees. ^[4]

If the spirit of prophecy had always been present to the prophets, the prophet Amos when asked would never have said, I am no prophet; he even adds, neither a prophet’s son, but I am a herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit. How then was he no prophet who foretold so many true things concerning the future? Or in what way was he a prophet if he at the time disowned the truth concerning himself? At the moment that he was called in question, he felt that the spirit of prophecy was not with him. He bore true testimony concerning himself in saying, I am not a prophet. Yet he added afterward, Now therefore hear the word of the Lord. Therefore thus said the Lord, ‘Your wife shall be a harlot in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by line, and you shall die in a polluted land.’ By these words of the prophet it is plainly shown that while he was bearing that testimony about himself he was filled, and on the instant rewarded with the spirit of prophecy, because he humbly acknowledged himself to be no prophet.