Though they dig into Sheol, there my hand will take them; and though they climb up to heaven, there I will bring them down.
"Though they go into captivity ..." Amos had pointedly prophesied this fate for Israel; and this is a terrifying amplification of it, showing that the captivity in store for them will not be a benign and favorable one (as it had been in Egypt, at first); but it will be terminal. The historical disappearance of the ten tribes after the Assyrian captivity is proof enough of what happened.  W. R. Harper, and other later commentators following his views, have supposed that this clause is addressed to an Israelite conception (borrowed from paganism, into which the whole nation had slipped) to the effect that, "In a strange and foreign land, they would be under the power of the god or gods of that land,"[9] and not any longer under Jehovah!  We do not believe there is anything like this in view, either in this place or in  Jonah 1:1.