Amos 9:1-4 - I will fix my eyes on them for evil and not for good

9:1

“I saw the Lord standing beside the altar.” Which altar is this? Is it the altar at the Jerusalem temple, or is it an altar at Bethel? The latter would seem to be the more likely. In which case the sense of the vision would be that Israel had set up this altar with the intention that it would be a place of worship, but instead it would be the source of judgement on the nation. Now we need to look at this. Israel may have set this altar at Bethel up with good intentions, but it was done out of the flesh, out of human nature, not based on what God commanded. And what had flowed from this altar? All the sins that have been recounted in the earlier parts of this book. The injustice, the oppression of the poor. When we do things in a way that is contrary to God’s ways it will not work, and it will have evil consequences.

So judgement would come, and no one would escape.

9:2-4

KJV and NKJV have “hell” where ESV has “Sheol”. This is the world of the dead. So even going into the world of the dead would provide no escape from God’s judgement. Many maybe think that death is the end, that death provides an escape. But there is no escape from meeting God, the only “escape” is Jesus. There is nowhere they could go to get away from God. Contrast this with Psalm 139 where David expresses similar thoughts about not being able to get away from God, but there is one enormous difference. David is ultimately glad he cannot get away from God, for he knows that God is his creator, the one who truly loves him. When men are in rebellion against God the wish to get away is to avoid judgement.