<p>15:16 <i>After this things <em>I will return</em></i>- This is hard to interpret; the idea seems to be that after the crucifixion, God 'departed' for a time but now was returning to men in calling the Gentiles.</p><p><i>And I will build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen</i>- Not the temple of Solomon, although the language of rebuilding is relevant to a temple rather than to a tent. &quot;In that day (of the future Kingdom- v.14) will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen&quot; (Amos 9:11)- a clear future Kingdom prophecy, but quoted about the building up of the first century church in Acts 15:14-16.</p><p><em>And I will build again the ruins of it</em>- He is surely saying that because the house of David has been rebuilt, therefore it is now O.K. to help the Gentiles &ldquo;seek after the Lord&rdquo;. James perceived that firstly the Gospel must go to the house of David, the Jews, and once they had responded, then it would go to the Gentiles. Perhaps the Lord had the same principle in mind when He bad His preachers to not then preach to Gentiles but instead at that stage concentrate on preaching to the house of Israel (Mt. 10:5). Yet the primary fulfilment of Amos 9 is clearly in the last days- then, after Israel have been sifted in the sieve of persecution amongst the Gentiles in the latter day holocaust, the tabernacle of David will again be &lsquo;rebuilt&rsquo;, the Gentiles will turn to the Lord, and then &ldquo;the ploughman shall overtake the reaper&hellip; the mountains shall drop sweet wine&hellip; and I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel&hellip; and I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be plucked up out of their land&rdquo; (Am. 9:13-15). Surely what we are being told is that there must be a repeat of what happened in the first century. What happened then, in the repentance of a minority in Israel, the spread of the Gospel to the world and then the Lord&rsquo;s &lsquo;coming&rsquo; in AD70&hellip; this must all be repeated on a far greater scale. Thus some in Israel must repent in the last days, after the pattern of the 1st century. This will bring about the great latter day gathering in of the Gentiles at the establishment of the Kingdom, when the whole Gentile world will seek to come up to Zion (Is. 2:3; 19:23; 11:10; 51:4,5; 60:3,11; 66:20; Zech. 8:21).</p><p><em>And I will raise it up</em>- An apparent reference to the resurrection of Jesus. He had spoken of His resurrection as a rebuilding of the temple (Jn. 2:19,20). </p><p>A note is perhaps necessary about <em>how</em> the NT writers quoted from the LXX. Because often it appears they don&rsquo;t quote exactly from the LXX text. The classic example would be the way Amos 9:11,2 is quoted in Acts 15:16-18. The argument of James actually hinges on the LXX reading as opposed to the Hebrew Masoretic text reading. &lsquo;All the nations&rsquo; were to have God&rsquo;s Name called upon them, whereas Is. 63:19 describes the Gentiles as people upon whom God&rsquo;s Name had not then been called. Yet this &lsquo;quotation&rsquo; is actually a merger of the Amos passage with several others (Is. 45:21; Jer. 12:15; Hos. 3:5). That&rsquo;s why James introduces the quotation with the comment that he is quoting &ldquo;the prophets&rdquo; (plural). The quotation is more like an interpretation of the text- which was how the Jews were used to interpreting the OT texts. Their principle of exposition, called <em>gezera shawa</em>, linked together Bible texts which used the same language. One of the texts which James incorporates into his &lsquo;quotation&rsquo; is Jer. 12:16 LXX, which speaks of how converted Gentiles will be &ldquo;in the midst of my people&rdquo;. Yet this very phrase occurs several times in Lev. 17 and 18, where we have the commands for how the Gentiles who lived amongst Israel should behave (Lev. 17:8,10,12,13; 18:26). They were told that there were four areas where their lifestyle had to conform to Jewish practice. And these are the very four areas, in the same order, which James asks the Gentile Christians to obey Clearly, then, the decree of Acts 15, commanding the Gentile Christians to e.g. not eat blood, had as its context how Gentile Christians should live &lsquo;in the midst of&rsquo; a Jewish Christian ecclesia. This is the limitation of the context. From this little exercise in exposition we learn how carefully and intricately the early brethren expounded the OT. Yes, they used the LXX, but they used it in such a way as to bring out practical points, searching always for Bible precedents for the situations they found themselves in. They set us quite some example, especially considering that James, the Lord&rsquo;s brother, would have been a manual worker and artisan as the Lord was; perhaps he was scarcely literate. And yet he reached such heights of exposition and wisdom purely from a simple love of God&rsquo;s word and attention to its detail. See on Jn. 13:18.</p>