(Verses 9, 10.) Behold, I will give the command, and I will shake the house of Israel among all the nations, as grain is shaken in a sieve, and not a pebble will fall to the ground. All the sinners of my people will die by the sword, those who say: 'No disaster will come near or overtake us.' LXX: For behold, I will command and sift the house of Israel among all the nations, as one sifts with a sieve, and no fragment shall fall to the ground. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say: 'Evil shall not come near, nor shall any good come upon us.' God, who measures the waters with the palm of his hand, and the heavens with his span, and closes up the whole earth with his fist (Isaiah 40), he himself, by his greatness, will shake the edges of the earth to and fro like a sieve: so that the chaff and the filth of sinners falling to the ground, may leave behind pure wheat, which will be stored in the barns; or as the Septuagint translated, he will hold a fan in his hand and will cleanse his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barns, but he will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire; concerning which the Lord speaks through Jeremiah: 'What has straw to do with the wheat?' (Jeremiah 23:28). Of this same thing, under the figure of another parable, that fishing-net shows, which is cast into the sea of this world, and draws forth fishes of every kind; and when the bad have been cast away, only the good are kept (Matthew 13). In the same way, the Lord has dispersed the wretched house of Israel throughout the whole world, and has shaken it in a sieve and fanned it with a winnowing fork; and the stones and pebbles not falling to the ground, those who are called sinners on account of the filth and dust shall die by the sword. And they endure this because they do not believe the prophecies of the prophets, nor do they think that the things which the Lord threatens through them will come to pass. And when they promise themselves prosperity, they will suffer evil afterwards, opposite to the saints who fear and do not sin, and therefore do not die by the sword, because they said: Evils will come near us, and punishments will come upon us, which our sins have deserved, about which God speaks more fully in Jeremiah: I will take up and speak against that nation and kingdom, to pluck up and to break down; if that nation turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it (Jer. XVIII, 7, 8). Therefore God is not changed, who is always unchangeable; but we change him by our conversion. He rages, he gets angry, he threatens, and he says that he will inflict punishment: if we repent, he too will repent of his sentence. Again, next to the same Jeremiah (Chapter XVII), he promises prosperity: if we are dissolved in negligence, he will repent of his promise and change it. We can see an example of this in Nineveh and Jerusalem, some of whom were freed from impending punishments, while others lost what had been promised to their fathers.
[AD 420] Jerome on Amos 9:9-10