It was a time of peace and prosperity. It was a time of
luxury, even, of affluence and delight. The statesmanship of King Jeroboam II
had “made Israel great again,” had brought back the glory and opulence of the
rule of Solomon. King Jeroboam II had waged aggressive military campaigns to “recover
territory from the Pass of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah” (2 Kings 14:25). He’d
forced Damascus and Hamath to return to their promises of allegiance to Judah
and to Israel (2 Kings 14: 28). “By our own strength,” he boasted, “we captured
Karnaim” (Amos 6:13).
And with the expanded borders and this peace secured through
superior firepower came an economic boom. The people of Israel were buying both
summer and winter houses, fine ivory houses and splendid mansions (Amos 3:15). They
lived in comfortable confidence on the hills of Samaria (6:1). They slept on
carved ivory beds and plush divans. They dined on stall-fattened veal, drank
wine by the bowlful, oiled their skin with fine oils, and relaxed to soothing
melodies played on the lyre (6: 4 – 5).
“We are rich,” they proclaimed, “and we are strong.” And they believed that
this was of God. And why wouldn’t they have thought this was true? After all, “Blessings
are on the head of the upright…” (Proverbs 10:6). Yes? And “the wealth of the rich is their stronghold,
while poverty is the undoing of the weak” (Proverbs 10: 15). Their wealth was a
strong wall around them (Proverbs 18: 11). They remembered that “In the house
of the upright there is no lack of treasure…” (Proverbs 15:6).
The people of Israel went to the city of Bethel - to the “house of God’ – to worship.
They brought sacrifices and offerings each morning. They brought their tithes
every third day (Amos 4:4). They made oblations and burnt offerings, they
attended solemn assemblies and exuberant festivals (Amos 5: 21 – 22). All was well in Israel, or so it seemed.
Amos came from nowhere, from obscurity – without pedigree or college degree –
to challenge and condemn the houses and people of power in Israel. Amos was a
migrant worker, moving between tending sheep (1:1) and cattle (7:14) in the
high hill country of Tekoa where the shepherds eked out a subsistence existence
on the stony slopes of the limestone hills, and tending the sycamore-fig trees
of the low Jordan valley (7:14). He was not a trained prophet or a member of
the brotherhood of prophets (7:14). He spoke by intuition and inspiration (and
maybe those are the same thing). He saw visions of Israel and her impending
doom.
It was true, of course, that King Jereboam II ruled in a time of peace and
economic prosperity, just as it was true that the people of Israel made a show
of their faith at the temple in Bethel. But this was all veneer. Beneath this
beautiful and laudable exterior the Virgin Israel was a dead woman, a rotting
corpse (Amos 5: 1 – 2).
Amos came up from Judah to Israel to make an announcement, for the prophets
seldom engaged in debate or argument. They did not entreat or exhort; they
announced; “Thus says the LORD” (Gowan 343). He began his announcement by
listing the sins and offense of Israel’s neighbors, the war crimes of the
surrounding countries. The Aramean city-state of Damascus had cruelly threshed
the region of Gilead, completely suppressing it. Gaza, a Philistine city, had
sold an entire population into slavery, as had Tyre, a wealthy Phoenician trade
port, in spite of a covenant of brotherhood. Edom was condemned for pursuing
his brother with a sword – a reference to the familial heritage between Israel
and Edom going back to the book of Genesis (Genesis 25: 23, 3:1). Ammon had “disemboweled
the pregnant women of Gilead” in order to expand their borders. And Moab had
desecrated the grave and the bones of a king (Amos 1: 3 – 2: 3). Amos continued
by condemning the southern, brother nation of Israel, Judah despising Yahweh’s
law and for failing to keep his commandments (Amos 2: 4 – 5).
This rapid fire denunciation of Israel’s neighbors may have rallied the people
in Bethel to excitement. “Yes. This Amos fellow really tells it like it is.”
But before their schadenfreude glee
could be fully realized Amos turned his gaze on Israel and launched into a most
uncivil criticism.
Israel had sold the upright for silver,
sold the poor for a pair
of sandals,
crushed the heads of the
weak and powerless into the dust of the earth,
thrust the rights of the
poor aside (2: 6 -7)
They had crammed their palaces
full with violence (3:10)
and exploited the weak and
the poor (4:1)
They had despised the man teaching justice at the city gates
just as they had loathed anyone speaking the truth (5:10). They’d trampled on
the poor man and taxed his wheat in order to build their own storehouses and to
plant their own pleasant vineyards (5:11).
Yes. They slept on carved ivory beds and plush divans, and dined on
stall-fattened veal. Yes. They drank wine by the bowlful, and oiled their skin with
fine oils – but for the ruin of Joseph, for the ruination of the poor and the
low – they cared nothing (6:6). They were swindlers and cheats, generating
their fortunes by force and by fraud, tampering with scales and exploiting
loopholes in the law so that they could buy up the poor as slaves to further increase
their gains (8: 5 – 6).
This is why Amos called them “fat cows of Bashan” (4:1) and Virgin corpses (5:
1 – 2): in their mistreatment of the poorest of the people they had forgotten
Yahweh, God Sabaoth, the Lord of the Angel Armies.
“But,” they objected, “we bring our tithes and offerings to
the temple. We make the ritual observances. We sing the hymns and recite the
prayers.”
“Screw your sacrifices,” Amos answered speaking for God. “I hate, I abhor your festivals
and assemblies. Your sacrifices do not please me, and spare me the execrable din
of your incessant chanting. Your piety is worthless without justice” (5: 21 –
23).
“Let justice flow like water.
Let righteousness flow like a never failing stream! (5:24)
This is what I want.”
“Who can ascend to the mountain of Yahweh,” the psalmist asked. “Who shall
stand in his holy place?
Only the clean of
hand and the pure of heart. Only the one not set on vanities. Only the one who
does not lie and deceive (Psalm 24).
“So go ahead and go to the sanctuary, to the temple in Bethel” Amos said,
speaking for God. “Go ahead and go to Bethel and sin, sin all the more. Take
your sacrifices, and your tithes, burn your offerings if it makes you happy.
But I’ll have none of it” (Amos 4: 4 – 5).
Now this was all too much for the Amaziah, the priest of Bethel. It was
uncivil. It was rude. It was treasonous. So he sent a message to King Jeroboam
II: “the man Amos is conspiring against you in the heart of the House of
Israel. The country cannot tolerate his speeches. He threatens you with a
sword, and says that Israel will be taken away into captivity” (7: 10 -11).
And to Amos Amaziah said, “Get out of here you so-called seer. Go back to Judah
where you belong. Prophesy there, if you like, but never come back to speak in
Bethel. This is a sanctuary, a national temple” (7: 12 – 13).
There’s little arc in this brief narrative nestled in among the words and
visions of Amos, the shepherd of Tekoa. There’s no introduction and no
conclusion; it’s all second act and no denouement. We do not know what happened
to Amos. Did he return home to tend the sheep and pluck the figs having
proclaimed his message of imminent doom? Was he arrested and put to death by
the religious and political forces he’d offended in Samaria and Bethel? We do
not know.
But the words and visions of Amos, the shepherd of Tekoa, were recorded and
preserved as the earliest part of the prophetic tradition (though he himself
declined that title.) Maybe he isn’t quoted as often as the prophet Isaiah.
Maybe he isn’t as famous as
the anti-prophet Jonah. But his indictments and
challenges stand: religious ritual is not enough and displays of worship are
grotesque parodies of faith without a commitment to justice and righteousness.
His warning that a people held enthralled by military might and economic prosperity
while exploiting and abusing the poor and powerless are despised by God should
cause us to tremble – even if his announcements and threats were not addressed
specifically to us. His instruction to “seek good and not evil so that you may
survive” (5:14) is just as relevant to the USA in the 21
st century
AD as it was to Israel in the 8
th century BC.
“Hate evil, love good,
and let justice reign at the city gates” (5:15).
This is, and not our nationalistic displays of empty worship is what God wants.
How we treat the poor, the immigrant, the widow, the orphan, the minority, and the
powerless is a better signifier of our faith than our grand churches and
worship services. We may claim to be a Christian nation, founded in the values
of the word of God, but if we do not protect and serve the poor, it is a lie.
Our wealth and power are not indicators of God’s unequivocal blessing.
“Hate evil, love good,
and let Justice reign at the city gates.”
This is what God wants.
Gowan, Donald E. “The Book of Amos: Introduction,
Commentary, and Reflections” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VII.
Nashville, TN. Abingdon Pres. 1996.
