Thought #1

THE PROPHET AMOS: The Wednesday Morning Bible Study resumed this past week – please note we will not meet on September 29.  We read the Book of Amos, one of the Twelve Minor Prophetic Books. 

Amos was a shepherd from the Southern Kingdom of Judah.  His book is a collection of oracles that were delivered in and to the Northern Kingdom of Israel during the reigns of King Uzziah of Judah and King Jereboam II, King of Israel, sometime between 760 and 750 BC.  (Recall that King Saul, King David and King Solomon presided over a united kingdom, but after Solomon’s death the kingdom split into two: northern Israel and southern Judah – the Biblical account of the united and divided monarchies can be found in the Old Testament Books 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings.)  Amos’ oracles were delivered to Israel at a time when the Northern Kingdom was in the midst of a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity, yet only one or two generations away from being overrun and destroyed by Assyria (in the 720s BC). 

The Book of Amos begins with a series of oracles (chapters 1-2) indicting Israel’s neighbors for their various sins and crimes: if you look at a map you can see that Amos first points far north to Damascus, then far south to Gaza, then north again, though not as far, to Tyre, then south once more, again not as far south, to Edom, gradually and continually naming neighbors closer and closer to Israel and Judah.  The penultimate oracle in this section lambasts Judah for rejecting the Law and being “led astray by the same lies after which their ancestors walked” – precisely what 1 & 2 Kings states the leaders of Judah and Israel did.  Finally, Amos looks at Israel and indicts them on a far greater scale than the rest.  Israel is guilty of defrauding and oppressing the poor and making a mockery of their religion by letting it be swallowed up in the cultic practices of their neighbors.  One assumes that a resident of the Northern Kingdom hearing this first part of the oracle would almost cheer as God’s wrath is made known about the sinful neighbors, one after the other, not noticing that the neighbors in question seem to be getting closer and closer.  However, at the mention of the sister Kingdom Judah, that same resident’s ears might prick up and an audible gulp might escape his or her lips.  I find Amos’ rhetorical skill quite impressive in this opening sequence.

The second part of the book (chapters 3-6) lists in great detail Israel’s shortcomings and the punishment that God is most certain to bring.  The people have “trampled on the poor” and “turned justice into poison”.  Amos is blunt about what the Lord will do: “I will punish the altars of Bethel, and the horns of the altar shall be cut off and fall to the ground”.  And he is clear that the “notables” who “lounge on their couches”, “sing idle songs”, “drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils” will “be the first to go into exile, and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.” 

The third and final part of the book (chapters 7-9) details several visions of Amos.  Amos sees locusts devouring the king’s fields, he sees fire devouring the deep and the land, and is shown a plumb line, symbolizing the fact that Israel does not measure up.  After being confronted by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, who tells Amos to go home and prophecy somewhere else, Amos compares Israel to summer fruit… which will rot in short order.  To many Christian ears, one of the last few oracles echoes forward to Good Friday: “On that day says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight.  I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.”  In the final vision of Amos, the Lord appears next to Amos at the altar and commands him to “strike the capitals [of the altar]”, and “I will shatter the heads of the people”. 

A theme running through the book is that the Day of the Lord is coming.  Amos corrects the presumption that the day of the Lord will be far off, or that it will be a good thing… but in fact the day of the Lord is unexpected, near, and severe.  “[The Day of the Lord] is darkness and not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear, or went into a house and rested a hand against a wall, and was bitten by a serpent.”  Amos is clear that the Day of the Lord will come, but it will be followed by resurrection and new life: “I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen”, and “restore the fortunes of my people Israel.”  “I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that I have given them, says the Lord your God.” 

The Book of Amos is probably the earliest of the written prophetic books.  Amos’ language is stark and at times very violent, and sometimes people have difficulty with the idea of God’s wrath.   But that wrath is spoken of in the context of extreme injustice in the midst of prosperity.  Amos sees Israelites who are wealthy, peaceful, and happy, but who are also very unjust, immoral, and practicers of religious abominations (temple prostitutes and so forth), and so he indicts them for their injustice and treatment of the poor and for their false religious practices.  Amos may not have known that his oracles would come true soon, but that luxury and prosperity was gone quickly when Israel was overrun by the Assyrian Empire, and everything that Amos said was going to happen, happened.  For Christians the book has served as a preview of the events of the Passion, when both the Day of the Lord and the restoration of the people would truly come with the death and resurrection of the Son of God.  The book also serves as a reminder that we are called by God to use all the gifts that we have been given in this life to love God and our neighbor.  Amos might say there is no time like the present to act.