094. LXVI. Amos’s Arraignment Of Northern Israel
§ LXVI. AMOS’S ARRAIGNMENT OF NORTHERN ISRAEL 1. The crimes of the Arameans (Amos 1:3).
Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of Damascus, Yea, for four, I will not revoke it;
Because they have thrashed Gilead with thrashing instruments of iron.
2. Judgment awaiting them (Amos 1:4-5).
Therefore I will send fire into the house of Hazael, And it shall devour the palaces of Ben-hadad, And I will break the bar of Damascus, And I will cut off the inhabitants from the valley of Aven, And him who holdeth the sceptre from Beth-Eden; And the people of Aram shall go into captivity to Kir, Saith Jehovah.
3. Crimea of the Philistines (Amos 1:6).
Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of Gaza, Yea, for four, I will not revoke it;
Because they carried away captive all the people, To deliver them up to Edom.
4. Judgment that awaits them (Amos 1:7-8).
Therefore I will send fire on the wall of Gaza, And it shall devour her palaces. And I will cut off the inhabitants from Ashdod, And him who holds the sceptre from Askelon, And I will turn my hand against Ekron, And the remnant of the Philistines shall perish, Saith Jehovah.
5. Crimes of the Ammonites (Amos 1:13).
Thus saith Jehovah, For three transgressions of the Ammonites, Yea, for four, I will not revoke it;
Because they have ripped up the pregnant women of Gilead, That they might enlarge their border.
6. Judgment that awaits them (Amos 1:14-15).
Therefore I will kindle a fire on the wall of Rabbah, And it shall destroy her palaces, With a war-cry in the day of battle, With a tempest in the day of the whirlwind. And their king shall go into exile, He and his nobles together, Saith Jehovah.
7. Crimes of the Moabites (Amos 2:1-2c).
Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of Moab, Yea, for four, I will not revoke it;
Because they have burned the bones of the king of Edom, To desecrate the dead on account of violence done to Moab.
8. Judgment that awaits them (Amos 2:2a, b,d,Amos 2:3).
Therefore I will send a fire into Moab, And it shall devour the palaces of Kirioth, With war-cry, with the sound of trumpets; And I will cut off the ruler from her midst, And all his nobles will I slay with him, Saith Jehovah.
9. The superlative crimes of the Israelites (Amos 2:6-8).
Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of Israel, Yea, for four, I will not revoke it;
Because they sell the righteous for money, And the needy for a pair of shoes. Who trample on the head of the poor, And turn aside the way of the humble. And a man and his father go into the same maid, And so profane my holy name;
Upon garments taken in pledge they stretch themselves beside every altar, And the wine of those who have been fined they drink in the house of their God.
10. What Jehovah has done for them (Amos 2:10;Amos 2:9). And yet it was I who brought you up from the land of Egypt, And led you forty years in the wilderness, And brought you hither to possess the land of the Amorites. And it was I who destroyed from before you the Amorite. Whose height was like that of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks;
Yet I destroyed his fruit from above and his roots from beneath.
11. Instruction by prophets and Nazirites (Amos 2:11-12).
Moreover I raised up some of your sons to be prophets and some of your youths to be Nazirites. Is not this indeed so, O Israel? It is the oracle of Jehovah. But ye made the Nazirites drink wine and upon the prophets ye laid a prohibition.
12. Judgment Behold it is I who will make you groan in your places, As groans a wagon under its load of sheaves.
13. Impossibility of escape (Amos 2:14-16).
Then shall refuge fail the swift, And the strongest shall not avail himself of his strength, Neither shall the warrior deliver himself, Nor he who handles the bow stand, Nor the swift of foot escape.
Even he who is mounted shall not save his life; But he who is stoutest of heart among warriors Shall flee away naked in that day;
It is the oracle of Jehovah.
I. Political Conditions in Northern Israel under Jeroboam II. The long and prosperous reign of Jeroboam II (781–740 B.C.) marks the zenith of Northern Israel’s prosperity. The east-Jordan territory had been reconquered from the Arameans. The Moabites had apparently been reduced to subjection, and the Ammonites on the east and the Philistines on the west ceased to be a menace to Israel’s peace. Except in the south, the old boundaries of David’s empire were reestablished. Peace gave the Northern Israelites ample opportunity to develop the rich natural resources of their kingdom. They felt that they had again taken their place among the great nations of southwestern Asia. Their success and prosperity were interpreted as clear evidence of Jehovah’s favor and an earnest that he had still greater conquests and glories in store for them. The political situation, however, afforded no basis for these vain delusions. Already the Assyrian armies, after having been detained for nearly a century by local uprisings and internal dissensions, were beginning to move westward. Against the numerous, well-equipped forces of Assyria the petty people of Syria and Palestine were practically helpless. Israel’s danger was all the greater, because the leaders of the nation were shutting their eyes to the ominous facts.
II. Society and Religion in Israel. Social conditions within Israel were equally alarming. In the early days each Hebrew lived on his own hereditary estate. The native slave class appears to have been small. There was no marked distinction between king, noble and subject. The Aramean wars, however, had fundamentally altered these simple conditions. In the protracted disastrous campaigns many of the free Israelite families had lost their hereditary estates and had been reduced to servitude; for slavery for himself or his family was the fate of every Hebrew who could not pay his debts. Moreover, Jehu’s revolution had brought to the front a strong military class that had been brutalized by the horrible bloodshed and cruelty which had characterized the Aramean wars.
Returning prosperity brought wealth and opportunities for commerce to the nobles, who enjoyed the royal patronage, but only greater bondage to the poverty-stricken masses, who were at the mercy of their greedy creditors and cruel rulers. The social evils of the East soon became glaringly apparent. Among Semitic peoples judicial decisions were always referred either to the civil or religious officials. When the rulers were corrupt, the dependent classes were constantly subject to a type of legalized robbery from which there was no redress. Thus through bribery and unjust decisions the common people were reduced still further to a condition of servitude; the free middle class almost entirely disappeared; and, in their new and mad zeal to build palaces and to indulge in the prevailing forms of luxury, the rulers neglected more and more the demands of ordinary justice and mercy. The old popular Semitic conception of religion still prevailed. As long as the rulers brought rich sacrifices to the sanctuaries and faithfully met the demands of the ritual, they were confident of Jehovah’s favor and protection and were blind to the glaring contrast between their public professions and their private acts. The very offerings which they brought to Jehovah were wrested from their dependent fellow-countrymen by injustice or oppression. Even the great religious festivals at the sanctuaries were characterized by gluttony, drunkenness and immorality; and yet they believed that they were thus by the splendor of their ritual purchasing Jehovah’s continued favor. The situation was well calculated to arouse the apprehensions of an enlightened onlooker and to stir him to strenuous action.
III. Date of Amos’s Appearance. The superscription to the book of Amos gives little aid in determining the prophet’s date, for it represents a period of nearly half a century. The two kings of Israel and Judah, Jeroboam II and Uzziah, reigned contemporaneously between the years 780 and 740 B.C. From references within the book it is clear that Amos’s activity belonged to the latter rather than to the earlier part of this period. The political, social and economic conditions in Northern Israel, reflected in the prophet’s addresses, indicate that many years had elapsed since the tide of prosperity turned toward Northern Israel. From paragraphs 3 and 4, it may be inferred that Gath had already been captured by Uzziah. The reference to the eclipse in § LXVIII11 is probably to the solar eclipse of 763 B.C., recorded in the Assyrian Eponym Canon. During the reigns of Shalmaneser III and Ashurdan III the Assyrian armies had ceased (except in the two campaigns of 772–1 B.C., cf. § LXV vii) to invade the West Country. These invasions were not resumed until the reign of Tiglath-pileser IV, who came to the throne in 745 B.C. While Amos’s references to the advance of Assyria are somewhat indefinite, there is a ring of certainty and a note of impending doom which suggest that the dread invaders are not far distant. In the light of all these and other considerations, the date of Amos’s preaching was evidently somewhere between 750 and 740, and probably about 745 B.C.
IV. Amos’s Personal History. In the superscriptions to his prophecies, and later in the seventh chapter, Amos is described as a man who took charge of small animals, such as sheep and goats. He is also called a dresser of sycamore trees. The fruit of this tree was ground for flour out of which a coarse bread was made. This bread was apparently eaten only by the poorer classes. His double occupation suggests that Amos was one who sought employment wherever he could find it at the different seasons of the year, and that, therefore, he came from the poorest laboring class in the land. The fact that the name of his father is not given also indicates that he belonged to an obscure family. His home was Tekoa, twelve miles south of Jerusalem and twenty-two from the sanctuary of Bethel, the scene of his ministry. The little town of Tekoa, shut in by gray limestone hills on the north and west, and looking down to the southeast over a rocky, barren wilderness which extends to the Dead Sea, was a fitting home for the stern prophet of reform. Here the life of a shepherd was a constant struggle with inclement nature and wild beasts. It was an environment calculated to develop men of iron, inured to hardship, bold in the presence of danger and opposition, keen of eye, and quick to interpret the signs of the times and to sound the cry of warning. The independence of his shepherd life and possibly the necessity of finding markets for the wool produced by the flock, gave Amos an acquaintance, not merely with Tekoa, but with the larger world about the eastern Mediterranean. His knowledge of conditions in Egypt, in Northern Israel, and even in distant Assyria, indicate, either that he had travelled widely or else had conversed frequently with traders and travellers from these distant lands. Of his later life no facts are known except those which gather about his memorable mission to the Northern Israelite sanctuary at Bethel. Like Elijah, he suddenly emerges from his desert environment and sweeps across the horizon of Israel, occupying for a brief time the central place—at least in the perspective of history—and then disappears, leaving his message to sink gradually into the consciousness of his race and to bear rich fruit in subsequent generations.
V. The Personality of the Prophet. The real character of Amos is clearly revealed in the remarkable addresses which have been preserved in the prophecy which bears his name. His independence of all human authority, and his marvellously keen perception are peculiar to his nomadic point of view and training. His boldness is not begotten by passion or religious frenzy but by a calm study of conditions and a mature judgment. While he employed a great wealth and variety of figures, Amos was at heart a realist rather than an idealist. He knew conditions in Israel from actual knowledge and careful study. From these premises he reasoned to certain conclusions, with a clear, forceful logic which was irresistible. Although from the humblest ranks, Amos was clearly one of the best educated men of his age; but his school was that of experience and observation. With the important facts of Israel’s early history he was well acquainted. He also possessed an astonishing knowledge of the ethnology, geography and sociology of the world and age in which he lived. On the basis of this wide knowledge, under the influence of the divine spirit upon his keenly receptive mind, he had arrived at certain definite convictions which differed fundamentally from those which prevailed in his day. With characteristic directness and fearlessness, he set forth to impress his God-given message upon the minds of the political and religious leaders of his race. His appearance at Bethel was one of the most significant events in human history. Single handed, trusting only in God, whose messenger he was, he attacked the established traditions, the cherished institutions, and the narrow religious conceptions of his race and age, and proclaimed instead certain universal principles which have become the basis of modern faith and ethics.
VI. Amos’s Method of Securing a Hearing. No reformer or apostle of truth ever faced greater odds than Amos, when he appeared at the royal sanctuary of Bethel. The occasion was evidently one of the annual festivals, when all classes, and especially the rich and rulers, were gathered from every part of the land to share their offerings with Jehovah amid song and glad rejoicing. The sense of power, of prosperity, and of enjoying Jehovah’s favor was strong in the minds of the assembled multitudes. Nothing could seem more incongruous than to proclaim on this joyful occasion the downfall of the nation and the futility of all the proud ceremonialism; and yet this was Amos’s purpose.
Coming also as he did from the rival southern kingdom, which had only recently suffered for its presumption a crushing defeat from a Northern Israelite army, Amos, the Judean, could expect only suspicion and contempt. His shepherd garb and his sunburned features also proclaimed the fact that he came from the ranks, and therefore had little in common with the richly clad nobles and the luxury-loving women whom he found at Bethel. But Amos proved himself a man not only with a message but with tact to deliver it. His aim in his opening address was clearly not only to win a hearing from an antagonistic audience, but also to compel his hearers to assent to certain fundamental principles which he forthwith asked them to apply to themselves. The text:
“Whenever Jehovah roars from Zion, And utters his voice from Jerusalem, The pastures of the shepherds mourn, And the top of Carmel withers,” was probably added by some later editor, who possibly took it from Joel 3:16 and introduced it here because it appropriately epitomizes the thought of the book as a whole. Amos himself, with supremer tact, opened his address with a powerful yet just arraignment of Israel’s most hated foe, the Arameans. In epigrammatic language he declared by implication and plain statement that hitherto Jehovah had repeatedly overlooked the crimes of the people whose proud capital was Damascus; but that, at last, they had sinned beyond forgiveness and that the Divine Judge would no longer withhold the sentence. The typical crime cited was the cruelty with which these northern foes treated the Hebrew victims of their conquests in the east-Jordan region. The figure of the thrashing instrument, with its projecting teeth of iron, which on the rocky thrashing-floor ground even the straw to chaff, recalled vividly to the minds of the graybeards in Amos’s audience the memories of Aramean attack, slaughter and pitiless plunder. Therefore they rejoiced in his words, and all recognized the justice of the judgment about to be meted out to their guilty foes. The Arameans had transgressed even the cruel laws of war; hence it was but just that the foreign conqueror, Assyria, should pillage and burn the palaces of Hazael and Ben-hadad, should slay the inhabitants of the tributary valleys, and should carry away the remnant of the people into captivity in distant Assyria.
Similarly those other foes of the Hebrews, the Philistines to the southwest had showed no pity to their captives, but had sold them into shameful captivity. Therefore the same conqueror, as Jehovah’s agent, must pillage and burn their palaces and cities and carry away their people into captivity. In his initial address Amos apparently spoke only of the hated foes of the Northern Israelites. Next, therefore, the Ammonites, east of the Jordan, were arraigned by the prophet. Upon them falls the same divine judgment, couched in the same grim formula of doom. Their typical crime is also that of a cruelty and greed which knew no pity. They likewise should soon know the woes of brutal conquest. The typical crime of the Moabites, the fourth and last of Israel’s foes, was a senseless act of impiety toward the dead—a crime which was condemned by all ancient people. Apparently in some hostile foray ‘they had broken open a royal tomb and dragged out and burned the bones of an Edomite king. For this and kindred acts of violence, Jehovah’s agent of judgment was about to sweep over the land of Moab.
VII. The Universal Principles Established in Amos’s Opening Address. The effect of Amos’s opening words upon his audience can readily be imagined. The garb, the strange accent and the austere aspect of the prophet had already been forgotten. Each oracle, which he uttered in the same measured formula, was received by all members of his audience with glad acclaim. That which they had secretly hoped was now openly proclaimed in their ears by a prophet of Jehovah. No one could gainsay the justice of his words and the principles upon which they were based; and yet those principles were in fundamental contradiction to the accepted faith and practice of all his hearers. Formulated in universal terms they were: (1) Jehovah rules not only over Israel, but over all peoples; therefore all are alike accountable to him for their acts. (2) Jehovah is merciful and long overlooks the crimes of nations; but the time surely comes when he must and will punish deliberate and continuous wrong-doing. (3) Each nation is responsible to him in direct proportion to its opportunity and enlightenment. (4) Jehovah judges peoples not according to their religious creeds or ceremonial rites, but according to their acts.
VIII. The Application to Northern Israel. While his hearers were perhaps still dreaming of the glories of the coming day when Jehovah would destroy their foes and establish their world-wide dominion, like a flash came the application of the principles which they had so readily accepted for others. In a few incisive sentences Israel’s guilt is laid bare. The typical crimes cited are not those of all members of the nation, but of the rich and ruling class: the selling of a needy fellow-Hebrew into slavery, because he had nothing wherewith to pay a petty debt; the subverting of the cause of the poor in the public tribunal or through the misuse of authority; immorality, all the more loathsome because practised in the name of religion, as was the case in the prevailing Canaanite cults; the retaining of garments taken in pledge, which law and mercy commanded should be returned to those for whom they were the only bed at night; and carousals under the shadow of the sanctuary with wine extorted by injustice.
Then, in striking contrast to this dark picture of guilt and ingratitude, Amos recalls in rapid succession what Jehovah had done in the past for his people; how he had delivered them, a disorganized body of slaves, from the land of Egypt, and led them through the barren wilderness, had wrested the fruitful land of Canaan from the powerful Amorites, and had made it possible for the Israelites to enjoy their present prosperity. To train them by word and example, Jehovah had also sent them prophets and Nazirites; but they had influenced the Nazirites to break their vows, and the prophets they had silenced. Time and again Jehovah had pitied and pardoned his guilty people; but now for them there was nought but doom and the heavy burden of foreign conquest which would crush them as a heavily laden wagon crushes all beneath it. From this doom neither courage nor prowess nor flight could deliver. Thus the dauntless shepherd prophet shook, for the moment at least, the fatal apathy of the Northern Israelites, and impressed upon their unwilling minds his divine message of warning.