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The prophet ponders God’s Word

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these studies were first written as brief studies only in 2008, and are now being completed and updated (Summer 2010)

Bible study for Amos 1:1-8

Amos 1:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Review

(consult Dictionaries)

Amos begins his powerful prophecy, which sweeps through Judah, Israel and beyond.  It cries out against the injustices of war and human aggression, and declares that God is the ruler of all nations.

The book of Amos is a remarkable prophecy.  At first reading, its message seems very bloodthirsty because of its many references to violence and war, but we will find that like all prophetic books, it says far more.  Like all prophets, Amos spoke firstly about what happened in his own day, but later generations perceived that his message held timeless truths that should be valued as God’s Word.  Our task is to look carefully at what the message meant to Amos, and this will help us understand what it says to us today.

The prophecy begins with a brief introduction, which indicates that Amos prophesied at a relatively peaceful period of Israel’s life in the eighth century BC (around 760BC). Only a hundred year earlier, the great prophets Elijah and Elisha had dominated the life of Israel by challenging the kings of the day to worship God alone and act justly. However, as Israel prospered she became corrupt in her religion and national affairs, and He called Amos to speak against this, long before He called the other Biblical prophets (Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel etc.).  Amos was a working man, one of the many ’shepherds of Tekoa’, which tells us that Amos came from the southern nation of Judah, which was then divided from the other Israelites who lived in northern Israel.  God called a southerner to go and preach to the northerners, and it was a tough call!

Verse 2 is a powerful word of intent, spoken by Amos, describing why he prophesied. He describes God’s voice as like a powerful force ‘roaring’  from Jerusalem and effecting the whole land from the pasture lands of Israel to the great fertile plains on Mount Carmel, in the far north.  This sums up Amos’ feelings as he began to prophesy; he felt God’s Word within him like a wind with great force, invisible but with great power, and he was its mouthpiece!

The rest of our passage today contains two stinging prophecies against Damascus (1:3-5) and Gaza (1:6-8).  Notably, this is the first time in Scripture that we read these great arresting words, ‘This is what the Lord says ...’ (or as older Bible versions say, ‘thus says the Lord ...’).  In addition, each prophecy is delivered with a clear formula of words, and as we read on in Amos, we will find that they begin a series of eight similar prophecies (1:3-2:5), each beginning, ‘for three crimes ... and for four, I will not withdraw the punishment’ (1:3,6).  So whatever Amos says about Damascus and Gaza, our suspicions should be raised that these small prophecies are part of a group that deliver a more important and as yet unknown message. 

The wider picture will become clear in later studies, but we must now pay attention to what Amos says here.  The formula of words at the beginning of each prophecy suggest God’s condemnation of atrocities that had gone too far; ‘for three crimes ... and for four ...’ (1:3,5).  Firstly, Damascus had gone too far by using ‘iron-toothed threshing sledges’ in her attacks on the region of Gilead.  The city of Damascus was the capital of Syria, to the north of Israel, and was in a constant state of war with Israel at the time.  Their use of agricultural implements to inflict horror in warfare was abhorrent to God, and He condemned them for this.

The second prophecy condemns Gaza, the region lying to the south and west of Israel and Judah previously occupied in David’s day by Philistines.  It seems that after inflicting defeat on neighbouring lands, Gaza took people captive and sold them in slavery to Edom, another nation on the eastern boundaries of Israel.  Again, the point is simple, God hates such violence against people.

Now, at the beginning of our passage, we were led to believe that God had a message for Israel (1:2), yet Amos had travelled north to Israel and begun by railing against the sins of neighbouring nations!  What was he doing?  We will find out as we read on, but for the moment, we must accept his timeless message about the absolute justice of God, who hates all forms of unjust violence.

Going Deeper

The Bible study goes deeper to look at these issues:

• The timing of Amos’ prophecy  (1:1)
• The Lord, roaring from Zion to Carmel   (1:2)
• The prophecies against Damascus and Gaza   (1:3-8)

Amos 1:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Translation Notes

(consult Dictionaries)

V1 ‘earthquake’

The Hebrew word here translates as ‘the quaking’, and is presumed to mean ‘the earthquake’, though there is no other record of an earthquake in Israel at the time Amos spoke.  The Hebrew word is sometimes used in the OT to refer to God’s ‘shaking’ of a nation (Is 14:16).  It might be possible to translate the passage ‘two years before the shaking (of the nation by God)’

V3 ‘for three crimes of Damascus ...’

Other translations:

‘for three sins of Damascus ...’   (NIV)

‘for three transgressions of Damascus’   (NRSV)

The word for ‘crimes’, also translated ‘sins’ and ‘transgressions’, is the Hebrew word ‘pesach’.  This is a common word for ‘sin’ or ‘wrongdoing’ in general, but Amos is complaining about the injustice and inhumanity of the actions of nations, that is, the war crimes of his day, hence my translation.  The word also contains the idea of rebellion against God, which is explored in the study.

V3 ‘... I will not withdraw the punishment’

Other translations:

‘... I will not turn back my wrath’   (NIV)

‘... I will not revoke the punishment’   (NRSV)

Each translation has to deal with the fact that the Hebrew words at this point in the prophecy say no more than ‘I will not hold it back’, with no mention of punishment or wrath.  It might be quite good to translate the passage ‘I will not hold myself back’ on the assumption that God always acts with justice.  In English, we have to add something at this point to make the translation clear, but it is not obvious what this might be!  I have kept to the traditional method of assuming that God is not holding back punishment for sin.

Amos 1:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Going Deeper

(consult Dictionaries)

The timing of Amos’ prophecy  (1:1)

Amos was a shepherd from Tekoa, a small town in the southern countryside of Judah to the west of Jerusalem.  This tells us that Amos was a southern Judean.  At that time, God’s people were divided into two; the northern kingdom was called Israel with Samaria as its capital city, and the southern kingdom was called Judah with Jerusalem as its capital city.  This famous split had occurred a couple of centuries earlier after the reign of Solomon, and it is important that we remember this when reading any Biblical prophecies.  They all refer to ‘Israel’ and ‘Judah’, but because they were different nations, the message for each is often quite different.  It will help us to remember that a few decades after the prophecies of Amos (and Hosea a little later), Israel was obliterated by the Assyrians (720BC).  Now the Assyrians attempted to invade Judah and Jerusalem, but they were miraculously spared from a siege (see 2 Kings 19).  However, they were eventually overthrown by the infamous Babylonians (2 Kings 25) 120 years later (587BC).

So Amos was one of the first prophets to speak out against evil within Israel and Judah, prior to these great events.  So when he says that Israel is doomed, we know that history proved him right, for Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians only a few decades later.  Also, when he says at the end of his prophecies that God wanted to work through the house of David, meaning Judah (9:11), then he was also proved right.  His accuracy as a prophet meant that later Jewish people kept Amos’ prophecies as true prophecies of God; God had done what He said through Amos, so all his prophecies were to be kept, valued and studied.

The first verse of Amos gives us a good idea of when he prophesied, which was during the reign of Uzziah (of Judah, 780-744BC) and of Jeroboam II (of Israel, 790 – 750BC).  Both of these kings reigned successfully and for a long time.  They brought stability to their nations, but it was a stability based on trade and increasing wealth, and it disadvantaged many (as Amos later points out).  Verse 1 also says that the prophecies were given ‘two years before the earthquake’ (1:1) but we do not know when this was because there is no other record of it in the Bible, or anywhere else.  In the notes above, I have suggested the possibility that ‘earthquake’ could refer to some great deed of God, but without some other Biblical reference to link to this, such an idea can only be guesswork.

Although we do not know when the earthquake happened or what it was, the very fact that we have this specific reference means that it is likely Amos’ prophecies were given at one specific time.  Later on in chapter 7 (7:10-14), we read about an intriguing incident in which Amos was confronted by the High Priest at Bethel, one of the shrines in northern Israel.  Of course, people had a good reason to worship God there, because Bethel was the place where Abraham first pitched his tent in Canaan (Gen 12:8), and where Jacob first saw a vision of angels (Gen 28:19f.).  So it was used by northern Israelites who preferred it to going all the way to the Temple in the Jerusalem, in the south.  So it seems that Amos, a southern Judean, had gone from Tekoa to Bethel, one of the main religious centres of the northern kingdom, to deliver his prophecies.

The Lord, roaring from Zion to Carmel   (1:2)

If you think that all this is a little too much for us to deduce simply from the first verse of Amos and a story from half way through (7:10-14), then the second verse of the book confirms the picture we have painted.  Amos said;

‘The Lord roars from Zion and shouts out from Jerusalem; the pasture lands of the shepherds languish, and the top of Carmel withers.’

This sounds very poetic to us, but if we are to do it justice, we must accept that it is very specific.  There are three places named here, and they all help us build up a picture of God’s Word going out to all His people, in the south and in the north.

Firstly, Amos says that God’s voice goes out from Zion, meaning Jerusalem.  In this way, Amos declared that his was a very strong prophetic message and he claimed that this message came directly from Zion.  Amos claimed to speak with the authority of God’s holy city!  We should remember that although Israel and Judah were divided, the ordinary people were also divided in their loyalties to places like Jerusalem, so although Jerusalem was the capitol of only Judah, it was still regarded as a unique holy place, because it contained the Temple, and the ‘dwelling place’ of God.  Even people in the north accepted the importance of ‘Zion’.

Amos then went on to say that two things happened as a consequence of God’s Word coming out of Zion; the pasture lands of the shepherds ‘languished’ and the top of Carmel ‘withered’ (1:2).  The picture created here is of the Lord’s voice roaring northwards from Jerusalem like a hot wind from the south, blowing firstly past the ‘pasture lands’ of the shepherds in Judea, and eventually reaching to the very top of Israel, to the flat and agriculturally fertile plain on the top of Mount Carmel in the far north west of Israel!  This is not fanciful poetry, for people of those days knew all about the perils of this hot summer wind.  If and when it came, it had the potential to destroy crops and create famine, and was much feared.

Amos’ prophetic word was clear; God had something to say to His people in the northern lands of Israel, and it was a fearsome word that might bring destruction!  Moreover, it came from Zion, via the southern lands of Judah and from the mouth of a southerner, named Amos!

The prophecies against Damascus and Gaza   (1:3-8)

We have already seen that the two prophecies against Damascus and Gaza are the first two of a series of prophecies that take up most of chapters 1 and 2 of Amos (1:3-5, 6-8, 9-10, 11-12,13-15 and 2:1-3).  If you have an opportunity, have a look at this in a Bible, and you will see that the prophecies are against;

• Damascus   (1:3-5)
• Gaza  (1:6-8)
• Tyre   (1:9-10)
• Edom   (1:11-12)
• Ammon   (1:13-15)
• Moab   (2:1,2)
• Judah   (2:3-5)
• Israel   (2:6f.)

From this list it now become obvious that Amos’ eventual message in the seventh and eighth prophecies are directed against God’s own people, Judah and Israel.  This confirms what we have just worked out from verse 2, which is that although Amos speaks against a number of nations, the ultimate target of God’s wrath is His own people.  As we get further into Amos, this will become all too clear.

So what can we make of the six prophecies that come before Amos’ words against Judah and Israel?  To begin with, we must accept that God has always been interested in all the nations of the world as well as His own people.  This is indicated by the fact that all the nations mentioned here make up the complete number of nations surrounding Israel in the eighth century BC (not including Egypt, which bordered Judah but not Israel).  Beyond this, it is possible to suggest that Amos may have had a reason for mentioning the nations in this order, but it is not clear to us now what this is.  The atrocities themselves cannot be placed in a time sequence, for we cannot identify them positively within Biblical records.  It seems therefore that we must be content with hearing a strong message of God against injustice, cruelty, war and slavery.

However, there is little more to these prophecies.  Each one begins with a word of judgement, but if we look at the end of each one, they all conclude with a clear statement of punishment.  In the cases of Damascus and Gaza, the prophecies declare that God will remove authority from their rulers.  This is what is meant by the colourful language ‘I will hew down the one who rule in the valley of Awen’ (1:5) and ‘I will cut off the one who rules in Ashdod’ (1:8).  In addition, God will bring the violence of war on those who have perpetrated it, and each prophecy contains warlike images within God’s condemnation (1:4,5,7,8).  Unequivocally, the judgement on the nations will be war and a removal of authority.  Now with this prophesied against the nations surrounding Israel, what will be God’s message against His own people, Judah and Israel?  We wait to find out.

Amos 1:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Application

Amos is obviously keeping us in suspense, and using a technique of prophetic oratory to do it!  Nevertheless, we are now beginning to see the force of God’s Word as delivered by Amos to His people.  This prophecy reminds us that God is true peaceful and just, and He hates injustice and war.  Now it is one thing to say that God is just and hates injustice, but it is another thing to say what He will do about it.  In the days before the coming of Christ, Amos declared that God’s punishment on warring people was to remove their authority and bring war on them, and we wonder whether God does the same today.  We can surely say that for those who call on Christ, God has removed the punishment of sin and replaced this with acceptance through Christ (alone).  However, we could well be justified in suggesting that for those nations and people that do not accept God’s authority, their injustice will have the same results as those prophesied by Amos against the nations of Damascus and Gaza.

In the course of history, we can see plenty of examples of nations that have fallen because of their corruption and injustice.  Amos’ prophecy suggests that we should instead see the hand of God at work in all this, establishing His own moral law within His world.  God has not left the world to wallow in its sinfulness, He is at work in all manner of ways to govern and control His world, and often, we do not perceive what He is doing.  True prophets like Amos do not just give the church messages about God’s love or His calling, they speak out God’s message for the whole world, for those who will hear.  We should listen for such messages today.

Clearly, this beginning of Amos’ prophecy does not say much to us personally, but it does indicate that the Lord will choose whoever He wants in order to deliver His message.  Amos was an ordinary shepherd, a man of lowly status in Judah, and God used Him eventually for a mighty work.  We do not often recognise that Amos was one of the first prophets whose writings are recorded, so what happened to him and his message must have affected a considerable number of people.  We must remember that God can often do something far greater than we ever think out of our efforts; and like Amos, we must be diligent to do God’s will and faithful to see it through.  Then we will find that He has used us!

Amos 1:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Discipleship

Questions (for use in groups)

1. Discuss in your group what you know about the breakup of the kingdom of Israel into Israel and Judah (read 1 Kings 12).
2. Have a look at a map of Old Testament Israel (from the time of David onwards) and discuss the location of the places mentioned in this text.
3. How important are the prophets to the message of God’s Word in the Bible?

Personal comments by author

I first studied this passage of Scripture when I was learning Hebrew at University, and I well remember being fascinated by the sheer complexity of the literary techniques used by Amos; it was something I had never come across before.   I was also fascinated by the way that Amos spoke given that he was a peasant farmer, a shepherd!  I find it deeply moving to know that God can use someone who had no training in rhetoric or the ways of the world, to speak eloquently about the affairs of His own day.  Sometimes God needs someone He can use, someone who is willing if not tutored, and will not let himself or herself get in the way of the message!

Ideas for exploring discipleship

• Think back through your life and consider who the Lord has used to bring His Word to you; He will have used all kinds of people.  Now take time to pray and ask the Lord how your own life and witness have affected other people around you.  In what ways does the Lord use you to bring His message to others?
• Pray for those who have no confidence in themselves and find it hard to believe that they can be of value to anyone else.  Pray that God will speak to them through people they trust to build them up in faith.

Final Prayer

All praise to You, Lord God, for all the wonderful things You do for us.  We praise you for the redemption of our souls through Jesus Christ, the victory You have won for us over evil, and Your eternal salvation.  We praise you for the way in which You help us in the midst of our most difficult struggles.  You have done all things for our benefit, and we praise You!  AMEN

Bible study for Amos 1:9-15

Amos 1:9-15 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Review

(consult Dictionaries)

Amos condemns the crimes of Tyre, Edom and the Ammonites.  None of the nations surrounding Israel could stand before the judgement of God

This passage of scripture is certainly not easy reading, because these words were meant to shock.  In three terse prophecies, Amos condemned three nations on the borders of Israel for a variety of sins, including slave trading (1:9), sustained rage (1:11) and war atrocities (1:13).  The Lord’s punishment in each case would be to bring ‘fire’ to each nation and undermine its authority and military power (1:10,12,14,15).

Now, if we were to open our Bibles and read these verses without looking at the rest of Amos’ prophecies then we would indeed be bemused.  These three short prophecies pronounce God’s just judgement on some terrible sins, but it is hard to imagine why Amos went to northern Israel to give them.  Israelites would have been glad to hear such denunciations of their neighbouring nations, with whom they often had difficult relationships.  But surely, if God had given Amos special messages about other nations, then they should have been taken to those people.  So why did Amos deliver them to Israel?

We will find out the full answer to this question tomorrow, but we must keep the question in mind as we study the text.  Amos had come from his homelands of Tekoa (1:1) to preach at one of the sanctuaries of Israel, probably Bethel (7:10,13 etc), and those who heard him would probably have approved of his denunciation of the nations.  So as Amos began to speak, the first impressions he made were favourable!

Having begun with prophecies against Damascus and Gaza (1:3-8), the prophecies in today’s reading continue to address states which directly bordered on Judah and Israel.  Here, Amos riles against the three states of Tyre (1:9,10), Edom (1:11,12) and Ammon (1:13-15).  You will see in the map of the region provided below the general position of each of the nations or ‘city-states’ surrounding Israel and Judah.

Looking at the map makes everything clearer, and it is not such a wild thought for us to guess at what Amos is doing; he seems to be giving a series of prophecies whilst leading up to a greater message.  But although we know there is more to come, we must still look carefully at what Amos prophesies for each of the nations in today’s reading.

It is impossible for us to know exactly what happened between Israel and the surrounding states in the middle of the eighth century BC, and what lies behind these prophecies.  Their details hold clues to incidents, skirmishes and atrocities not recorded in scripture or elsewhere.  In general, it seems that the rich merchants of Tyre had broken their agreements with nations and begun to trade people into slavery (1:9,10), and such injustice threatened the stability of the region.  The nation of Edom was descended from Jacob’s brother Esau, but long term relationships between Israel and Edom were poor; it seems that Edom was still jealous of Israel and had conducted aggressive military raids into Israel and Judah (1:11,12).  Lastly, the Ammonites had committed acts of unspeakable humanitarian outrage (1:13-15) in the midst of war.  Amos’ prophetic condemnation of such things is plain; God brings judgement on all nations who act with deception, injustice and lack of regard for human life.  The penalty for such things is the same as found previously for Gaza and Damascus; God will bring down the authority of these nations, as it says here, ‘by fire’.

As we read these prophecies, we can imagine a crowd of Israelites listening to Amos at the sanctuary at Bethel (see yesterdays’ study).  The preacher prophet was a stranger from the south until he began to raise people’s interest in this way. The tension mounts, and nods of agreement accompany Amos’ words as he castigates the nations for the terrible things they have done against Israel.  His message is appreciated, and the crowd grows.  As he speaks out God’s judgement on each nation, we can almost hear shouts of approval!

But Amos was drawing near to the climax of his presentation, and he had succeeded in his primary aim, which was to raise a crowd.  The northern Israelites were listening to him, and he was biding his time.  He was about to unleash on them his real message, as we will soon discover in chapter 2!

Going Deeper

The Bible study goes deeper to look at these issues:

• The condemnation of Tyre, Edom and Ammon
• The punishments of Tyre, Edom and Ammon

Amos 1:9-15 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Translation Notes

(consult Dictionaries)

V9 ‘covenant of kinship’

In various places within the Old Testament, we read about God’s covenant with His people.  The term ‘covenant’, however, is a general word for an agreement, and this is what it means here.  Clearly, our passage refers to an agreement between Israel and the city / nation of Tyre which is described as a ‘covenant of kinship’.  Such an agreement may have been in operation for a number of reasons, but from the days of Solomon onwards, Israel (and also Judah) tended to trade with Tyre and there was little war between them because of mutual commercial commitment.

V10 ‘citadels’

The word used here is usually translated ‘strongholds’.  However, Tyre was an important trade centre but was not strongly fortified and had little military backing, keeping its peace by negotiation rather than warfare.  It seems more appropriate to refer to ‘citadels’, that is, fortresses for show rather than effective military strongholds.

V11 ‘threw away all pity’

Other translations:

‘stifling all compassion’   (NIV)

‘cast off all pity’   (NRSV)

The word translated ‘pity’ or ‘compassion’ is the Hebrew ‘racham’, meaning ‘belly’.  In ancient thought, the root of all feeling was believed to lie in the belly, or, as we might say, ‘in the guts’.  Amos mentions feelings here because the dispute between Edom and Israel is a dispute between brothers (see study).  A familial bond has been broken.

Amos 1:9-15 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Going Deeper

(consult Dictionaries)

The condemnation of Tyre, Edom and Ammon

• Tyre   The port of Tyre stands on the Mediterranean shores, and it has been a trading centre for the whole region for longer than is known.  In the eighth century BC, Tyre was like a small state, run from the city itself, and was not occupied or dominated by a larger power.  The entire region depended upon trade that came through the port from the rest of the Mediterranean, and the city used its position to advantage, and many of its occupants became very wealthy.  It was therefore able to dominate trade agreements, and the other nations including Israel and Judah, had o accept its terms.  For example, if kings wanted quality wood from Lebanon, or spices from other regions of the Mediterranean, then it came through Tyre, and with little competition, they could exact whatever rate could be paid.  There is ample archaeological evidence of such trade in the region for thousands of years.

Amos denounces Tyre because ‘they handed over whole groups of captives to Edom, and did not remember the covenant of kinship’ (1:9).  This sentence is a little difficult to unpick, but it could refer to two separate sins, one of ‘handing over groups of captives’, which sounds like one aspect of the slave trade, certainly, some form of human trafficking.  The second part of the sentence then refers to a ‘covenant of kinship’, which might have been some kind of commercial agreement, or a special arrangement between Tyre and Israel acknowledging their historic relationship (see Solomon’s use of Tyre in building the Temple – 1 Kings 5:1f.).

Some who have studied this passage suggest that both halves of this sentence go together, and Tyre is condemned for breaking an agreement with Israel to provide them with slave labour, and sending slaves to Edom rather than to Israel!  This may seem to be a reasonable explanation of what is said, but it hardly sounds right for God to condemn Tyre for failing to supply Israel with slaves!  It is perhaps best to think of these as two separate issues deserving condemnation. 

• Edom   The people of Israel are the descendants of Jacob and the Edomites are the direct descendants of Esau, Jacob’s older twin brother.  Enmity existed from the beginning between Esau and Jacob, because Isaac’s inheritance, including God’s covenant, should normally have been given to the older twin brother.  However, Jacob tricked Esau out of his inheritance at his mother’s behest and against the will of his father Isaac (Genesis 27,28).  Later in life, Jacob made peace with his brother Esau (Genesis 33), but in the following centuries, there was little peace between Israel and Edom (e.g. Numbers 20).

The specific crime of Edom stated here by Amos is that of pursuing his brother (that is, Israel) with the sword.  Undoubtedly, this means that there were incursions or other military actions on the borders between Israel and Edom, and Amos accuses Edom of being the aggressor.  Amos also states the historic reason for this instability on the border, which is jealousy.  He says, Edom ‘threw away all pity, his anger raged continually, and he held his wrath forever’ (1:11).  The threat of Edom is not so much violent as persistent, but this is just as much an offence. 

• Ammon   The people of Ammon lived on the eastern side of the Jordan.  Now when Israel came to the Promised Land and entered Canaan by crossing the Jordan, several tribes decided to take their chances settling on the east of the Jordan, and part of this is a region called ‘Gilead’.  In the light of all this, the accusation against the Ammonites here in Amos becomes clearer.  It seems that atrocities had taken place on the east of the Jordan, as the Ammonites attempted to take back from Israel some of the tribal lands they believed to be theirs.

Throughout history, atrocities have taken place in times of war, and to this day, militias in some parts of Africa commit appalling atrocities on isolated village communities in order to intimidate people and gain ground.  In recent decades, similar things have happened in Europe, in Bosnia and Macedonia, and they continue the world over.  From ancient times to this, men have committed outrages on women and children, and this is the clear root of the evil highlighted here, ‘they ripped open pregnant women in Gilead, simply to enlarge their border’ (1:13).  It should be no surprise to us to read in Scripture that God abhors such things.  Indeed, if Scripture did not say this, it would surely be lacking.  Such heinous crimes are indeed ‘crimes against humanity’, and as Anos says, the ultimate judgement against them is God’s judgement.

The punishments of Tyre, Edom and Ammon

The punishments meted out by God to Tyre and Edom are remarkably similar.  God say that He will ‘send a fire’ on the ‘wall of Tyre’ (1:10) and ‘upon Teman’ (1:12).  On first reading, this sounds like a retaliatory act of war instigated by God, who punishes sinners according to their sins.  However, the Bible frequently refers to fire when describing God Himself, who appears to the people of Israel in flames of fire (Ex 13:21,22, 40:38).  The theme of judgement by fire is also found elsewhere in the Old Testament, where it refers to purification, and this implies an intent on God’s part to deal with Tyre and Edom with judgement, but perhaps not with total destruction.  Note that Amos prophesies that each of them will be ‘consumed’ by God’s judgement, and no more.  In comparison with the punishments meted out to the other states in this series of prophecies, this seems less strident than the punishments given, for example, to Ammon (see next).  This may be because Tyre was not regarded as a long term enemy of Israel, and Edom was Israel’s brother, despite the enmity.

There is a clear difference between the punishment by fire pronounced on Tyre and Edom, and the more extended punishment pronounced for Ammon. God’s abhorrence at the violence of Ammon is more pronounced, because this was an attack on the integrity of Israel herself.  Violence leading to the death of pregnant women and unborn children was no mere war atrocity; it compromised the future of Israel in the entire region.  Indeed, these actions were taken precisely to try and put a stop, practically and symbolically, to the population of the area with Israelites.  This is the punishment;

So I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah, and it will consume her strongholds amidst the clamour of battle and with raging anger on the day of judgement.  Their king shall go into exile, he and his princes together,’ says the Lord (1:14,15)

Along with sending fire (in common with the punishments of other nations), Ammon is punished with a clear threat of war and battle, after which the king of Ammon will ‘go into Exile’ (1:15).  Moreover, the exile of the King of Ammon, together with his princes, suggests a wholesale destruction of Ammonite society as then known.

It would be many decades before Israel herself was carted off to exile in Assyria and a century and a half before Judah was exiled to Babylon, but it is interesting to see that Amos here prophesies exile as a general punishment for the sins of the nations.  Later prophets (such as Isaiah) also spoke about exile as a punishment for Israel’s sins, and by the time Isaiah used the idea, it is reasonable to think that he did indeed believe that Jerusalem would be exiled one day because of her sins (Isaiah 39).  I say this because in recent years, the idea that Isaiah could have foreseen the exile of Judah has been scorned as improbable.  It is in fact quite feasible.

Amos 1:9-15 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Application

It is easy to read through this passage of Amos quickly, knowing that it is part of a sequence of prophecies building up to something more important.  The temptation is to sit lightly to what it says while waiting for the more important material still to come.  While it is right to understand how the prophecy of Amos works to build up to a climax, it is wrong to say that these prophecies have little value of themselves.  Together with those against Gaza and Damascus, they are a reminder that although God is primarily concerned with His plan of salvation and the people through whom He works, His eyes are always on the world.

In the same way as He did centuries ago, God looks out on the world today and watches while evil happens, and He stands ready to judge.  We must watch too and see what He sees; women who are abused and children who are massacred, whether in war or through the domination of demagogues whose oppression slaughters millions in their own homes without war being declared, or through social oppression even within so-called ‘rich’ countries.  The devil always seeks new ways to reach the same ends; unhappiness, oppression, depression and death.  He is the enemy of humanity and the enemy of God, and God alone is our Saviour.

After tomorrows reading, Amos will thrust us back into the world of God’s relationship with His people, where Christians today feel that they can comfortably relate to what Scripture says.  Here in this passage, we stand at the edges of faith, looking at how God relates to the world.  It may seem to us today that the rest of the world goes on without any interest from God, while the devil plays his games with the godless, in a manner that is of little concern to the church (that is, unless people are converted).  God’s people are called to more, and it is wise of us to appreciate Scripture’s revelation that God is always concerned about what happens in the world.

Much of the time, events unfold in our world in what seems to be a godless manner.  But from time to time, if our eyes are open, we will notice that God is in fact deeply involved and interested in the fate of all His creation.  We might like Him to intervene in this or that circumstance, but God’s interest goes far deeper than ‘fixing things’ in a simplistic sense.  He wants us to be involved with Him in influencing what happens in the world for good, just as parliamentarians in the UK and US have worked to ban all forms of slavery and prejudice over decades, perhaps centuries.  Such work can be the true beginning of large scale evangelism, instead of church-based schemes, let us interaction with the world as we know it, personally, honestly and with our faith held high.  Then, our God will use us.

Amos 1:9-15 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Discipleship

Questions (for use in groups)

1. Discuss the features of these prophecies which most speak of world life today.
2. These prophecies describe God acting directly in judgement.  Can you give examples of how God does this same thing today?
3. Is it possible for us to rid the world of war and inhumanity by operating good national and international politics?  If not, why do people try?

Personal comments by author

When I read about the terrible wars and war crimes in Old Testament times, I am reminded that although we have the benefits of so much technology, science and education today, we still cannot avoid confrontation and war.  On any day, life might seem very peaceful for many of us who live a comfortable lifestyle in the West, but it does not take much of a search on the internet to discover the truth about the atrocities happening in our own lifetimes, and I often ask the question, where is God in all this?  In my experience, I do not always perceive what God is doing, but I know I must always look.  The real dangers come when I cease to be aware of the world and ignore the fact that God is deeply concerned about it.

Ideas for exploring discipleship

• Try making a list of the injustices you see around you in your own country.  Imagine you are Amos, try to imagine what God must think of each situation and write down a prophecy of God in the style of Amos, which addresses each situation.  You may find this exercise taxing, but it will make you think carefully about how God responds to injustice in His world.
• Pray for those who seek to work for justice in countries of the world where there is little respect for law.  Pray for changes that will bring freedom and justice to countries that need to hear the Gospel.

Final Prayer

Dear Lord and Father.  Keep us safe from the dreadful injustices which exist in our world, even within apparently safe nations which seem to be at peace.  Give us ears to hear what You would say about these, and voices to declare Your Word about them.  We ask this in Your name: AMEN

Bible study for Amos 2:1-8

Amos 2:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Review

(consult Dictionaries)

Amos completes his round of eight prophecies with a startling attack on the godlessness of Judah and Israel.  He accuses them both of religious infidelity, and accuses Israel of social injustice.

These three prophecies complete the round of eight short prophecies at the beginning of Amos, and everything we anticipated whilst studying the previous five  (1:3-15) now comes alive.  The prophecy against Moab is the sixth against one of Israel’s neighbouring states, and together with the previous five, it depicts God’s wrath at injustice.  However, the real interest in this passage today lies in what comes next, because Amos delivers two more similar prophecies; the seventh against Judah, and eighth against Israel!

As we read prophecies six to eight, it is immediately obvious that the themes change and God has harsh but different words to say against His own people, Judah and Israel.  Judah is castigated for rejecting God’s Law and abandoning the historic faith, and Israel are reprimanded for the injustices found within her and also for the practice of some form of prostitution or deviancy.  He says, ‘They trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and force the humble out of the way; Father and son go in to the same prostitute, profaning my Holy Name’ (2:7).  Social injustice and religious defamation are both an insult to God!

Before looking more closely at these prophecies and trying to work out why God made these accusations against His own people, we will learn more if we reflect on what is happening in this whole series of eight prophecies.

Amos was a Judean called by God to go north to Israel and prophesy there at the sanctuary of Bethel (1:2, 7:10f.).  There, he would have been unknown as a prophet, so in order to be heard, he would have needed to gather a crowd, and we now know how he did this.  He created interest by prophesying against Israel’s neighbouring states, first Damascus, then Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon and Moab.  Each prophecy announced God’s judgement on the sinful nations, and it is likely that the Israelites who heard them agreed, and welcomed this strange Judean preacher from the south who seemed so concerned about Israel and her neighbours.  This was an effective way to gather a crowd.

Next, as if to complete a perfect round of seven prophecies, Amos spoke against his own country, Judah.  We tend to forget today that in those days, Israelites and Judeans disliked each other immensely.  Certainly, Israel despised Judah, rejected the authority of David’s line (they had their own line of kings and did not accept that the Temple in Jerusalem was God’s unique dwelling place.

Against this background, Amos’ seventh prophecy confirmed Israel’s view that Judah was consumed by false religion (2:4)!  The Israelites would have cheered to hear from Amos that their reviled neighbours were to be punished by God (2:5), and would have been surprised to hear these words from a Judean!  They may have though that he was a convert to the ancient faith of northern Israel, which honoured the memory of Abraham and Moses, but certainly not David!

But Amos had more to say, and he had gathered a substantial following of Israelites who listened to His every word.  Then, just as was hinted at in his phrase ‘for three crimes ... and four ...’ (1:3,), Amos added one more prophecy to the previous round of seven, to deliver a grand and climactic eighth message, and it was directed straight at Israel herself!  Let us be under no illusions; all Amos’ previous prophecies are worthy prophetic messages, but it is the eighth message that God wanted delivered by Amos to Israel!  At last, we now know the truth about God’s commission (see 1:2)!

We now realise that all along, Amos’ intent has been to gather a crowd of Israelites and deliver a stinging message of rebuke from God, addressing their injustice and irreligion.  We will look more closely at this as the Bible study goes deeper, and as we will see tomorrow, the prophecy against Israel goes on to conclude chapter 2.  But if we are to grasp the meaning of Amos’ dramatic opening prophecies, then we must keep this picture in mind.  Moreover, we should try and imagine the peril in which Amos now stood; he had gathered a crowd and proceeded to insult them!

Going Deeper

The Bible study goes deeper to look at these issues:

• The prophecy against Moab – what does it mean?
• The prophecy against Judah – what does it mean?
• The prophecy against Israel – what does it mean?

Amos 2:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Translation Notes

(consult Dictionaries)

V3 ‘I will remove the ruler’

Other translations:

‘I will cut off the ruler’   (NIV)

‘I will cut off the judge’   (New AV)

The Hebrew word at the beginning of this sentence is interesting, because it means ‘to cut off’, in the sense of pruning or removing a part of something.  This suggests that the prophecy is about cutting Moab down to size rather than obliteration.  

V4 ‘they have been led astray by the same lies their forefathers believed’

Other translations:

‘they have been led astray by false gods, the gods their ancestors believed in’   (NIV)

‘their lies have led them astray, those after which their fathers walked’   (ESV)

The Hebrew sentence is difficult to translate, and reads like this ‘their lies led them astray which their fathers followed’.  I do not believe that the NIV is right in interpreting this as the false gods referred to elsewhere in Scripture, because there is no other connection in Scripture between ‘lies’ and ‘false gods’.  For this reason, I have kept as close to the text as I can to maintain good English.

V7 ‘they ignore the needs of the poor’

Other translations:

‘deny justice to the oppressed’   (NIV)

‘push the afflicted out of the way’   (NRSV)

The Hebrew translates as this; ‘the way of the poor they turn aside’.  This could mean that the poor are denied justice or told to get out of the way, or it could mean that the faith of the poor is manipulated or misguided.  Whatever it could mean, the phrase is entirely general, so I have left it entirely general.  As such, it stands as a clear testimony to the actions of those who ignore God’s ways and is consistent with the rest of Scriptural teaching about the poor in general.

Amos 2:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Going Deeper

(consult Dictionaries)

The prophecy against Moab – what does it mean?

The sixth prophecy (2:1-3) is against Moab, and it follows the same pattern as the previous five prophecies in the first chapter (1:3-5, 6-8, 9-10, 11-12,13-15).  God’s people of Israel and Judah were both long time enemies of the Moabites, who were the descendents of Lot by incest (see Genesis 19:30-38).  Apart from the disgust with which they were held because of this ancestry, the Moabites were hated because they had formally prevented Israel from travelling directly to Canaan during the last days of their wanderings (Numbers 22,23). 

In addition, at some time in their past, their religious practices seem to have involved the sacrifice of children (Judges 3:6f.), and in particular the sacrifice of first born sons (2 Kings 16:3).  This was particularly obnoxious to the Israelites, and Scripture describes many wars between Israel and Moab.  The particular crime that stirred up Amos to prophesy was a military campaign by Moab against Edom, in which the Moabites had sought to destabilise the region by rooting out and killing the entire ruling family of Edom (2:1-3), by burning ‘to ashes the bones of the King of Edom’ (2:1).  So although Israel and Judah had little love for Edom, the crime was both heinous and politically dangerous for the entire region; these nations lived very close to each other, and they either lived at peace together or all fought each other.

God’s punishment of Moab is initially the same as we saw before for Gaza, Damascus, Tyre, Edom and Ammon.  He will come in fire and judgement (2:2), but in addition to this, Amos prophesies that the king of Moab who was responsible for this crime would die in battle, in recompense for having slaughtered the king of Edom.  God’s punishment was a royal ‘tit-for tat’ that would lead both Moab and Edom leaderless, and unable to offer any danger to Israel or Judah.

The prophecy against Judah – what does it mean?

Amos then gives his seventh prophecy.  As we saw in the first part of the study, people would have expected this to be the last prophecy, and the most significant and important prophecy of the series.  However, it sounds to us rather tame and ordinary in comparison to what went before.  In verse 4, we do not read about Judah committing acts of war or provoking atrocities, or even threatening any of the other nations.  Judah is condemned on religious grounds.  We should be careful, however, for in ancient times, religious matters were not regarded as casual, or as less significant than affairs of state, or even war.  Nations would be called to repent if a king thought his country was not right before their god (see Jonah chapter 3, for example).

We should therefore not gloss over the prophecy against Judah, because the sins mentioned here were indeed a problem for Judah and Jerusalem.  Indeed, time would come when Jerusalem would be taken captive into Babylon because of her irreligion (as is clearly set out in the prophecies of Jeremiah).

In this prophecy, Amos refers to the way in which the worship of God in Jerusalem had become corrupted over many generations, and this may well have played on his own heart, as a Judean.  He speaks of Judah being ‘led astray by the same lies their forefathers believed’ (2:4), and if we do not understand what this might mean, we only need look in the Old Testament to uncover what had happened in the past.  The records are clear, and contain many descriptions of the way in which kings, from Solomon onwards, profaned the Temple by accepting into its courts the god-images of other nations who were trading partners of Israel and Judah (see 1 Kings 11:1f.). 

As we have seen, the effect of the prophecy would have been to galvanise the Israelite crowd around Amos.  The heart of the disputes between northern Israelites and southern Judeans concerned the issue of ‘who worshipped God properly’; and Amos’ prophecy touched sensitive issues.  Each nations believed that it retained the proper heritage of Moses and the forefathers, and although this denunciation of Judah may have been a sad truth, Amos used it to effect, and to prepare the way for a far more severe charge against those who were listening to him. 

The prophecy against Israel – what does it mean?

For those who first heard Amos or first read this prophecy, verse 6 comes as a shock.  It is unexpected, and the whole prophetic work of Amos now begins to roar into life with the stunning words that come next.  Verses six to eight are indeed only the beginning of the full prophecy, which lasts until the end of the chapter, but they serve to arrest our attention and indeed to shock those who first heard Amos.  Remember, these are Amos’ accusation of godlessness and they are delivered face to face, directly confronting the very people who committed these sins!  One of the remarkable things about the stories of the prophets is their ability to deliver prophecies in the midst of real events; Isaiah faced down King Ahaz (Isaiah 7), Jeremiah did the same to King Zedekiah (Jeremiah 27f.).  We should be in no doubt, such prophets faced real, personal danger.  In those times, people who were believed to insult the gods could be stoned to death by a crowd, with few questions asked..

Amos’ charge was direct, and he went straight to the heart of the matter.  Good people were not valued, they were traded, the disadvantaged were abused, and the needs of the poor were ignored (2:6,7).  This picture of social injustice is penetrating, and cuts to the chase of social injustice even today.  The end of verse 7 through into verse 8 is a little more difficult for us to understand however, and Amos makes three accusations here, each of which needs to be explained.

Firstly, ‘father and son go in to the same prostitute, profaning my Holy Name’ (2:7).  This refers to the practice of what can be called ‘Temple prostitution’, which is a feature of Ba’al worship, something that was endemic both in northern Israel and also southern Judah.  Ba’al was a fertility god, and there is archaeological and written historical evidence that part of the worship of these gods involved the men of farming communities having sex with designated ‘Temple’ prostitutes in order to secure harvests for the forthcoming year (see also Hosea 1,2,3).  Amos stood firm in his condemnation of such practices, and we will see that he makes similar accusations later on.  This was a direct insult to God, because it ignored His plea to treat Him as ‘One true and Only God’ (Exodus 20:1,2), and it also defamed the ‘image’ of God by appearing to condone a religious sexual union in God’s name, outside marriage (reference Genesis 1:26,27).

Amos’ second condemnation reads like this, ‘and they recline beside every altar on clothing taken in pledge ...’ (2:8).  This refers to the practice of priests who took advantage of items of clothing they had taken ‘in lieu’ of offerings and other gifts appropriate at the Temple or at local shrines.  This may not seem to be a ‘big deal’ to us, but throughout the life of Israel, God had set down strict guidelines about the holiness of religious ritual, and things that had been taken as given to God were regarded as holy; they were not for ordinary use.  In the past, people had died as a direct consequence of overstepping such boundaries (see Leviticus 10:1f.).

Lastly, Amos makes a third, less specific accusation; ‘they also drink the wine of those who have been fined in the house of their God.’ (2:8).  It is uncertain what this could mean, but one suggestion is that this is another example of the same lax attitudes towards holy things as in the previous charge.  Another possibility is to link this sentence up with another part of Amos chapter 2, which speaks of the category of religious people called ‘Nazirites’ (12).  It has been suggested that in the profligacy of the day, the traditional nazirite vows of abstinence were being eroded.  As such, this was an example of the irreligion of the religious classes who should have been an example to the people.

Amos 2:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Application

We can easily take Amos’ religious message and apply it to the Christian community today.  In this way, Amos can challenge the church about whether ritual has become more important than a true relationship with God, either for the individual or for the church community.  In addition, Amos’ words about injustice are remarkably fresh, and for probably the first time in the Bible since the giving of the Law (see Exodus 21-23), we hear not about injustice as it affects kings and priests, but about the effect of injustice against the poor and disadvantaged (2:6,7).  Amos was the first prophet whose works were taken and written in a book, eventually to become God’s Holy Word, the Scriptures.  It is important to remember that at the beginning of his work, he cries out against injustice, in a manner that becomes a characteristic of so many other later prophets (see Isaiah 1-5).

Apart from this, however, we should perhaps take note of Amos’ extraordinary courage.  From the picture we have built up, it seems almost certain that he risked a great deal to deliver this message.  He was a shepherd and presumably not versed in the learning of his day, yet he fashioned a remarkable piece of oratory that has astonished scholars for centuries.  Moreover, the force of his prophecy lies in a combination of holy inspiration, direct relevance and personal courage, for if the crowd had turned ugly, Amos’ life would have been in danger.  Certainly, chapter seven tells us that Amos was no stranger to confrontation!

So-called prophets who like to speak from the comfort of their computers or the safe haven of support in their own churches may well not deliver God’s Word as He intends.  Starting with Amos, the Old Testament prophets delivered God’s Word precisely to the people who needed to hear it.  Amos looked into the eyes of those he accused of the most heinous crimes before God.  Jonah ate his pride and went against all he knew to travel to a foreign land and deliver a message of repentance to people he hated, and he did this personally, and alone.  True prophecy is not just about getting words out of the mouth, but about delivering them to where they are needed despite the dangers.

We need to learn from this today.  The Gospel is not merely for people who have elected to sit in pews or attend worship concerts, it must be delivered appropriately to all for whom it is given; that is, to people of other faiths, to scientists and engineers at their places of work, to politicians in meetings and committees, and to all people in every place where it is not yet known.  Christian witness is not best when it is silent.  It needs to be spoken to those who need it.

Amos 2:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Discipleship

Questions (for use in groups)

1. In your group, discuss your reaction to the picture painted by this study and the potential reaction of those who listened to Amos
2. To what extent is Amos’ prophecy against Judah and Jerusalem also a condemnation of false religion today?
3. Read through verses 6 and 7 and identify the social evils within Israel condemned by Amos.  What are the social evils of today?

Personal comments by author

I find it fascinating to watch how Amos uses technique to get across his message.  He spoke nearly 2,800 years ago, and yet from scripture we can understand what he says and why.  It is a remarkable testimony from a remarkable man.  I am tempted to wonder how I would fare today if I spoke deviously to a group of people whilst ‘buttering them up’ to condemn them!  Certainly the task of prophecy required a fair amount of bravery, and God needs brave people today to do His will.

Ideas for exploring discipleship

• It is either bravery or foolishness to tell people directly when they have done something wrong.  The difference lies only in whether you yourself are right or wrong.  What kind of person are you?  Do you feel you must engage when you see something that is wrong, or would you rather stand aside and let others speak?  Examine yourself before God and let Him speak to you.
• Pray for God’s prophets today, some known and many unknown, and pray against the forces that prevent their voices from being heard.  Pray that God will make their voices heard in every way possible, and pray that God will grant His people wisdom to hear what is said.

Final Prayer

Your love beckons us onwards, dear Lord. Surround us with such an assurance of our salvation that we are content to do Your will and proclaim You salvation in whatever circumstance You require of us. May our hearts reflect Your great love, so that others will find You through us. AMEN

Bible study for Amos 2:9-16

Amos 2:9-16 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Review

(consult Dictionaries)

Amos unleashes the most terrifying prophecy against Israel; she will be judged for her sins.  She has let herself wander from the truths of her inheritance, and in her future lies disaster.

This is Amos’ first prophecy against Israel, and his words are dramatic.  He had gathered together a crowd of Israelites to listen to his berating of surrounding nations, and we can almost picture the scene.  Amos sounded forth about the sins of the Syrians (1:3-5), the Edomites (1:11,12) and others, gaining plaudits for his zeal.  In addition, he rebuked the Judeans (2:4,5) to confirm the suspicions of his listeners, the northern Israelites, who would have wondered what more he had to say!

Then with no warning except through the considerable skill of his rhetoric, Amos delivered his message of condemnation; he accused those who stood before him of injustice against the poor, sexual deviancy and ignorance of God’s holiness (2:6-8)!  The Israelites had listened with eager expectation, but this would have stunned them.  Were they hearing this prophet rightly?  Who would dare to condemn their way of life?  Yet Amos ploughed on.  He had a few minutes before those before him either attacked him or went to plot his death.  Our passage reflects a sense of urgency and drama.

Amos appealed to his listeners to recall the great deeds of God.  Now, we might think that he would refer to a great event such as the crossing of the Red Sea, but instead, Amos chose a less well known incident, the defeat of the Amorites before Israel entered the Promised Land (Num. 21 and Judges 11:19f.).  Why did he choose this?  It may be that the remembrance of this battle was a significant feast day at the time, and was therefore a topical illustration of God’s patronage of Israel.  Certainly, Amos appealed to Israel to remember that they were a nation under God, whose history was underscored by the mighty acts of God (2:9,10).  Israel could do nothing outside of the watchful eye of her God!

Yet Amos did not hold back his message of judgement, and condemned Israel for her injustice and irreligion.  He questioned her sincerity by reminding his listeners of the holy order of Nazirites, one of whom was Samson.  These were people who had given themselves to God, kept their hair unshaven, and did not drink alcohol.  He challenged his listeners; did they not know this, and did they not know that in their own day, the Nazirite vows had been watered down, and Nazirites commonly drank?  Were they not aware that a decree had gone out to forbid prophets from prophesying (2:12)?

Amos’ words are intriguing.  What was going on in those days?  It seems that he was speaking to people about things commonly known to them, but not to us.  Moreover, what is Amos speaking about when he mentions an instruction that prophets should not prophesy (2:12)?  If such a decree was in force as Amos spoke, then it seems that he was breaking the law by prophesying!  We are left wondering whether we are reading exploits of great daring and danger!

Lastly, Amos unleashes his message of judgement, and it is shattering (2:13-15), and he uses two prophetic ‘pictures’ to stunning effect.  Firstly, he describes a cart weighed down to breaking point by a harvest, which illustrates the way that God is pressing down on Israel just like a load pressing down on a cart, about to break (2:13).  Then, Amos dramatically switches illustrations, and the next two verses read like a terrifying firsthand description of people fleeing battle.  It speaks of strong people unable to flee, warriors unable to stand, runners unable to run, and horsemen unable to ride for their lives, and at the end, naked and humiliated men scurry in panic from the field of battle pursued by death (2:14,15).  This is Amos’ picture of God’s judgement and it is utterly dreadful and sickly realistic.

We must not forget that Amos said all this standing before astonished Israelites who could not believe their ears.  The prophet was condemning them, and had just pronounced a judgement of death by battle!  Just like those who first heard this, we are left in shock.  Fortunately for us, we can sit in peace and read through the rest of Amos to try and find out more about what this all means.

Going Deeper

The Bible study goes deeper to look at these issues:

• What is this about the battle against the Amorites?
• What is this about the Nazirites and the prophets?
• What does the picture of the cart tell us?
• What does the picture of flight from battle tell us?

Amos 2:9-16 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Translation Notes

(consult Dictionaries)

V13 ‘I will weigh you down to the ground ...’

Other translations:

‘I will crush you as a cart crushes ...’   (NIV)

‘I will press you down in your place ...’   (NRSV)

The Hebrew is difficult to translate because the verb translated ‘weigh down’, ‘crush’ or ‘press occurs only in this place in the entire Bible, and it is uncertain what it means.  Comparisons with other ancient languages suggest that it denoted the action of pressing or crushing, and this idea gives rise to most current translations. 

V13 ‘... as a cart full of sheaves is loaded down’

Other translations:

‘... as a cart crushes when loaded with grain’   (NIV)

‘... just as a cart presses down when it is full of sheaves’   (NRSV)

This part of verse 13 continues on from the first part of the sentence.  As a whole, the picture painted is of a cart that is overloaded to the point of being ‘crushed’ by the weight of the load.  More importantly, we must try and work out what Amos means by saying this about God and His punishment of Israel (see study).

Amos 2:9-16 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Going Deeper

(consult Dictionaries)

What is this about the battle against the Amorites?

It is well known that one generation of Christians will focus on certain great texts of the Old Testament and remember certain stories of God’s power and glory well, and yet a few generations later, the emphases will change.  For example, fifty years or so ago, Christians in the UK would happily teach Sunday School children about Goliath and David, up to and including cutting off his head.  Yet now, such stories are removed from Christian children’s literature, or they are amended to remove the parts about death. 

In a similar way, the Israelites of old had a different set of recollection of their past than we do today.  They were closer to the events, of course, but dominated perhaps by the stories passed down to them as much as by the written texts of God’s Word, at that time only just being discerned and gathered.  While Judeans in the south held the sacred texts in the Temple at Jerusalem (the Ten Commandments in the Holy of Holies, for example), Israelites in the north retained the memory of other significant events, and it seems that the defeat of the Amorites is one of these.

The Amorites are mentioned several times in the Old Testament as people who inhabit various parts of both Canaan itself and the regions around, to the east.  In truth, they were probably a moving tribal federation common in the region.  What seems to be clear is that before the invasion of the Promised Land, the Amorites were numerous and powerful, and afterwards, there is little record of them in Scripture.  Historically, it seems that they were indeed obliterated from the scene in Canaan, and their removal or defeat was a major part of Israel’s occupation of the Promised Land.

The story of their defeat is straightforward.  When Israel came towards the end of their journey through the wilderness, the Amorites were the first nation to stand in their way.  But with God’s help, Israel defeated the Amorites and travelled on towards the Promised Land (Num 21:13-35).  Other opponents proved more difficult to conquer, but the Amorites were comprehensively beaten, and the Biblical record clearly indicates that this battle was celebrated as a major military success, and attributed to God. 

The Old Testament yields some interesting clues about the significance of all this.  When Abraham was first promised land for his descendants, God explained that the land could not be theirs until ‘the iniquity of the Amorites is complete’ (Genesis 15:13).  Certainly, the Amorites did something that deeply offended God!  Secondly, the record of their defeat in Numbers includes references to Israel taking lands, villages and towns from them, before they came into their inheritance in Canaan (Num 21:24-35), and it also hints at festive remembrance of this great event.  Remnants of Amorites were still around in the time of the Judges, but it seems that by that time, their influence had decreased significantly.

What is this about the Nazirites and the prophets?

After speaking about the Amorites, Amos turned to face the Israelites with their responsibilities to maintain the holy orders God had given, including the Nazirites.  The rules for Nazirite living are to be found in Numbers 6:2-8:

Speak to the Israelites and say to them: When either men or women make a special vow, the vow of a nazirite, to separate themselves to the LORD, they shall separate themselves from wine and strong drink; they shall drink no wine vinegar or other vinegar, and shall not drink any grape juice or eat grapes, fresh or dried.  All their days as nazirites they shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins.  All the days of their nazirite vow no razor shall come upon the head; until the time is completed for which they separate themselves to the LORD, they shall be holy; they shall let the locks of the head grow long.  All the days that they separate themselves to the LORD they shall not go near a corpse.  Even if their father or mother, brother or sister, should die, they may not defile themselves; because their consecration to God is upon the head.  All their days as nazirites they are holy to the LORD.

At that period in the life of Israel, the gap between rich and poor had grown so wide that those who were well off felt they had the right to abuse the ancient traditions of God’s people, developed from the laws of Moses.  As this passage says, the Nazirites had been compromised, and the prophets, the very people who God used to speak His Word had been silenced in Israel.  No prophets had spoken there for eighty years since the days of Elisha and the reign of king Joash (2 Kings 13:15f.).  Without the moral and spiritual compass provided by these people, Israel was lost.

Amos’ words were designed to spell out to God’s people the truth of what was happening in their midst, and though past prophets had spoken to Kings and advised them about how they should govern Israel in godly power, such times were past.  Amos perceived that he had to go straight to the people.  Perhaps both he and the people were surprised by the prophecies that came from his mouth!

What does the picture of the cart tell us?

The first picture Amos used was that of a cart used at harvest-time, loaded with sheaves of corn and ready to be taken to the threshing floor (2:13).  As we saw in the notes above, it is hard to interpret the Hebrew words exactly and arrive at a translation which both makes sense and is accurate, but in general, what Amos said was this; the cart was weighed down so much that it was on the verge of breaking, and nothing could be done to prevent it!  In other words, his vision was not simply of a harvest, representing ‘the end’, but something more dramatic.  He saw the breakup of the cart, meaning that the harvest itself was compromised!

This prophecy is therefore about a catastrophe, and this is the theme that binds together this picture with what comes next.  Amos has not placed this picture together with images of battle for no purpose.  They warn that God’s judgement is real like a harvest ad it will come to an end just like a battle comes to and end, and also, as an overloaded cart will eventually reach breaking point.

What does the picture of flight from battle tell us?

Amos proceeded to conclude his prophetic word.  It would have been clear to his listeners that Amos was talking about a catastrophe, and what he said next revealed its nature.  Amos held back no longer, and with chillingly descriptive words he prophesied the most extreme thing that could happen to any nation in those days, which was defeat in battle.  His words describe the terrible panic of defeat, something that spreads amongst an army when staring defeat and death.  He saw strength sapped out of stout warriors, archers unable to steady themselves to shoot, the terror of pursuit in fear of death and the inability of even a cavalry to change the course of battle.  Amos’ words are one of only a few prophecies in the Old Testament to convey the sheer terror of such a calamity.

Pause for a moment, however, and think about what was happening as Amos spoke these words, as we have already outlined above.  The crowd Amos gathered and who so loudly applauded him for the first seven of his prophecies had been silenced as he rounded on the northern nation of Israel (2:6), and looked these people in the eye.  Now, he had the temerity to tell them that God would punish them for their sins by allowing them to be defeated in war!  Yet this would have meant little to those who heard Amos.  From their point of view, there was indeed a little trouble with the neighbouring state of Assyria, but because the nation of Israel had become rich through trade, it was doing fine and feared no one.  What on earth was this trouble maker saying?  Where would this threat come from?  Those who first heard Amos would have been sceptical, and quite unaware that history would prove him right within a few decades.  The mood of the crowd changed with this prophecy of doom, and you can imagine them scratching at the ground for stones.  The penalty for someone who insulted their nation like this was death, with no questions asked ...

Amos 2:9-16 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Application

It is extraordinarily hard to imagine how a prophecy like this might apply to our lives today!  Ultimately, Amos’ prophecy against Israel is one that pronounces a judgement of battle and war on Israel because of her wandering far away from God.  Does God pronounce such judgement today?  If we think about this, the answer must be ‘yes’, because if people go against His will there must be consequences, and ultimately, the end result of rebellion is separation from God, and ultimate separation from God is death.  Remember that our faith is this, in Christ we pass through death to find life, so death is the final judgement.  Amos pronounced a judgement on Israel of death through battle.  He was unspecific, but perhaps he was aware that death has always been the ultimate consequence of human sin.

This is all difficult stuff, and as we go through Amos, we will find that we are forced to look ever more closely at such things.  Certainly, we must read this scripture for what it is, and let it speak to us.  If we do, then we may find that it challenges us to think about what it would be like if someone came and insulted our way of church life just as Amos offended the Israelites.  It is no bad thing to think about this carefully, for we all need to listen to the fierce judgement of those who look into our own practices from the outside.  Of course, we must listen to God’s Word, if we so discern it, but we do well to try and place ourselves in the position of other Christians who might come to our fellowship and see all the holes in what we do, especially where we have forgotten ancient godly wisdom.  The Israelites had forgotten the Nazirites, and they had forbidden the prophets to speak!

It may sound odd to some, but if you did not know this, it is important to be aware that some Christians teach strongly that the Holy Spirit first came to establish the Early Church, and the signs and wonders of those days including speaking in tongues and healing, were a part of God’s ‘dispensation’ for those days.  Many people have been taught such things, and many people consequently believe that there is no work of the Holy Spirit today with which they are obliged to engage.  To me, this sounds rather like the modern equivalent of ‘telling the Nazirites to drink and forbidding the prophets to prophecy’!  Amos’ comments about these things may only have been made quickly while he moved on to say more, but they are extraordinarily perceptive, and we do well to think about what similar words may be said about us today.

Amos 2:9-16 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Discipleship

Questions (for use in groups)

1. How do the great stories of our faith help God’s people today?  Is it possible for them to be misused and misunderstood, to the point where they lead people astray?
2. Do you believe that there are holy orders of God that have been ignored in our own day, or perhaps misinterpreted and abused?
3. How does God speak to the world about its sins today?  Does He use prophets, and if so who are they?  Does He speak to us in other ways?

Personal comments by author

Amos had the gift of drawing a crowd and delivering a message.  The whole story makes me wonder whether I would be as faithful to the Lord in such dangerous circumstances.  Would I be as brave and as persistent, and would I make sure the message was heard by using every technique available to me?  Or would I have a go and give up if the going became tough and people did not listen?  One of the differences between then and now is that in Amos’ day someone could get an audience in the streets by speaking out in public.  Nowadays, this is often not possible, so we must try and use other means to broadcast our message.

Ideas for exploring discipleship

• The prophecies here in Amos are shocking.  But think about this for a little while, surely, this passage of Amos reflects the prophet’s conviction that God operates in the true real life affairs of men women and nations.  Ask yourself.  Do you really think that God uses the events of real life to punish wrongdoing?  And, does He use the events of real life to bless His faithful?
• Have you ever made promises to God?  Have you kept these promises?  Think about what it means to make a promise to God, and consider whether it is worthwhile doing so for things that are truly important in life.

Final Prayer

Your love beckons us onwards, dear Lord. Surround us with such an assurance of our salvation that we are content to do Your will and proclaim You salvation in whatever circumstance You require of us. May our hearts reflect Your great love, so that others will find You through us. AMEN

Bible study for Amos 3:1-8

Amos 3:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Review

(consult Dictionaries)

This remarkable passage of Scripture is unique within the Old Testament.  Here, Amos defends himself against those who might reject his message and asserts that what he has said is indeed God’s Word; ‘the lion has roared!  Who will not fear!’

Amos begins by confirming that his prophecy is indeed God’s judgement and it has indeed been delivered against Israel, the nation with a special relationship with God (3:1,2).  He then asks a series of seven questions, each of them painting a different scenario.  Together, these questions ask the listener or reader to consider that behind everything that happens on earth there is a reason, which is found in the will and purpose of God.  This is true of the circumstances of life, such as people meeting (3:3), and also of natural phenomena such as lions roaring (3:4f.).  It is also true of world events such as battles and disasters that befall cities (3:6).  Then, after his point has been well made, Amos makes two powerful observations, firstly, that God always reveals His intentions to His prophets (3:7), and secondly, that once God has revealed His Word to His servants the prophets, they have no option but to deliver it (3:8).

It is worth recalling the circumstances in which Amos first said this.  He had just delivered an aggressive, anti-Israelite prophecy (2:6-16), moreover, he had delivered it directly to Israelite people face to face.  He told them that they were under the judgement of God for the injustice to be found in their midst, and because they had deviated from the true faith of their ancestors (2:8-16).  Such a shocking word would have been met with hostility, and we can imagine that Amos was heckled, and worse.  What right did this southern prophet have to insult Israel?  Why should they listen to a wandering prophet like this?  Surely, they had their own prophets who could deliver the true Word of God?

So, in his defence, Amos responds to this negativity by making out a strong case that his is indeed a word from God.  To begin with, he re-affirms that he is speaking to Israel, ‘You alone have I known from amongst all the families of the earth ...’ (3:2), and he adds, forcefully, that this privilege carries with it the searching light of God’s judgement; those who are closest to God must bear punishment ‘for all your sins’ (3:2).

The series of intriguing questions found next in verses 3 to 6 have a clear purpose, which is to say that everything happens for a reason, but imagine what it was like to hear them first in these circumstances.  People would have wondered what Amos was getting at!  After seven examples, they may well have realised the point he was making, but Amos had set them up.  For just as he had earlier delivered a round of seven prophecies only to deliver the real message in the eighth (see 1:3-2:6), this round of seven questions is intriguing, but it only leads us towards Amos’ main point, which is that God speaks through His prophets as He wills, and not at the behest of His people!  God delivers His Word, and it is not up to anyone to prejudge it or set down the conditions under which they will receive it.

In truth, we often misunderstand prophecy today.  When people talk about prophecy, they often think of it as a gift of the Spirit and a means by which God speaks to His people.  This way of understanding prophecy comes from the New Testament, and we should be careful not to limit ourselves by it, because it lacks some Old Testament perspective.  Amos tells us that we should always expect God to reveal what He is doing through His prophets.  So, prophecy is not something driven by the need of God’s people to know His will, it is driven by the will of God to keep His people informed of what He is doing in our world.

This surely warns us that if we ignore prophetic gifts in our midst, then we will have only a limited understanding of God’s work in our world.  Moreover, to ignore the prophets is to ignore God Himself.  The Lord is constantly speaking to His people; He walks with us, sustains us, feeds us and warns us about what is happening in the world.  Those who do not hear Him are those who have stopped listening to His prophets.

Going Deeper

The Bible study goes deeper to look at these issues:

• God’s Word for God’s people   (3:1,2)
• The will of God found within everyday life   (3:3-6)
• God and His work of prophesy   (3:7,8)

Amos 3:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Translation Notes

(consult Dictionaries)

V2 ‘I will punish you for all your sins’

Other translations:

‘I will punish you for all your iniquities’   (NRSV)

The Hebrew word used here for ‘sins’ is ‘awon’, meaning something twisted or devious.  It implies the idea that it was once straight but has become like this in the course of life.  Note that when Amos prophesied ‘for three crimes and for four ...’ (1:3f.) the word used there for ‘crimes’ is a different word, meaning rebellion.

V3 ‘do two walk together unless they have agreed to meet?’

Other translations:

‘do two walk together unless they have made an appointment?’   (NRSV)

A Hebrew question always implies an answer of ’yes’ or of ‘no’, depending on the words used and they way that they are used.  In this instance, it is clear that the question requires a negative answer.  ‘No’, we are supposed to say ‘two people do not meet unless they have made an appointment!’

V7 ‘the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing what he proposes to His servants’

Other translations:

‘the Sovereign Lord doe nothing without revealing His plans to His servants’   (NIV)

‘the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servants’   (New AV)

The Hebrew words read as follows; ‘the Lord God does nothing unless he discloses his counsel to His servants ...’.  One reasonable translation of this is ‘plan’ (NIV), but the modern idea of a plan is of something fixed, whereas the Hebrew behind this word here suggests something far more fluid, that is, God’s ‘counsel’, or perhaps ‘what he believes to be right’.  My translation attempts to convey this idea as simply as possible.

Amos 3:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Going Deeper

(consult Dictionaries)

God’s Word for God’s people   (3:1,2)

The first verse of our passage directly confirms what we already know; that Amos was prophesying against God’s people.  Look closely, at what Amos says, however, because underneath the surface of his forceful prophecy against Israel lies a greater concern.  First of all, Amos confirms that he speaks against Israel with these words:

‘Hear this word, you people of Israel, that the Lord has spoken against you ...’   (3:1)

Then, after saying this he adds these words:

‘and against the whole family I have brought up from the land of Egypt ...’   (3:1)

This second phrase suggests that behind his exterior, Amos was a man concerned not just with Israel (the northern Israelites), but with all God’s people including his own people the Judeans (southern Israelites).  In his own day the two nations of Israel were split apart, but Amos appears to be one of those who still retained a belief that all God’s people were one, despite the enormous divisions between the two in his own day.  Remember that in the previous chapter, his seventh prophecy had been against the Judean people (2:4,5), just before he prophesied against Israel.  When we looked at this prophecy in our studies we found that although the prophecy seems tame from our point of view, it would have sounded cutting to any true Judean.  All of this reminds us of the problems of division amongst God’s people and the fact that this, of itself, creates great problems for those who seek to know God’s will.

In verse 2, we read these words;

 ‘You alone have I known from amongst all the families of the earth’  (3:2)

This phrase sounds almost familiar and it is certainly a phrase we might expect to find in the Old Testament.  Yet surprisingly, this is the only place in the Old Testament where it is found!  This sentence reflects God’s pure love for all His people, and we might expect to find similar phrases in the psalms, or perhaps in Genesis.  However, if you look up the words, you will find that they occur in a very different form, in an abundance of warnings to Israel about the dangers of worshipping other gods; for example;

‘See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known. Deuteronomy 11:26-28

Some commentators say that the prophecy of Amos is one of the most negative in the whole Old Testament, but this small insight shows that the man had a profound sense of the love of God.  This shows that true love must be strong enough to want to deal with what is wrong in this world, and such love reflects the love of God Himself.

The will of God found within everyday life   (3:3-6)

The seven prophetic questions found in verses 3 to 6 are fascinating, and they all describe some form of cause and effect.  But within this pattern there are differences of emphasis, which say yet more to us.  The first question sets the pattern.

Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?   (3:3)

Here, Amos declares that there is a reason for everything.  He cites a simple story of cause and effect, and the question he asks requires an answer of ‘no’ (see notes above).  His point is that two people only meet together because they have previously agreed to do so, and this is typical of how God works in the world.  He works logically and we can work out His intentions. 

Does a lion roar in the forest, when he has no prey?   (3:4)

Now, Amos turns to an example of cause and effect from the natural world.  The lion roars only when it has caught its prey, because it does not have to hide itself any more as part of its hunt.  This is an example of God’s order within the world.

Does a young lion growl from within its den, if he has caught nothing?   (3:4)

In a fascinating twist, Amos turns to a similar but almost opposite example; for a young lion is not mature, and will growl when it is hungry and has not caught anything!  Yet this is still an example of the way God has made the world, which works.

Does a bird fall into a snare on the ground, when there is no bait set in it?   (3:5)

This question begins to turn the questions towards Amos’ final point, because it introduces the idea of entrapment.  A bird flies down into a trap because bait has been set, and unless this has been done, then it will not be diverted in flight.  Is Amos suggesting that he has set a trap into which his listeners have fallen?

Does a snare spring up from the ground, when it has taken nothing?   (3:5)

Again, the example is a simple cause and effect, but if we follow the possibilities I have suggested above, then is Amos commenting on the way that the people have been stirred up against him because they have taken the bait of his message!  They will become trapped by its message of judgement!

Does a trumpet sound in a city, without bringing fear to the people?   (3:6)

Of course, here is yet another picture of cause and effect.  When a city comes under threat, a trumpet is sounded to warn the citizens of impending invasion, for example.  But we must remember that Amos had already warned Israel that she was to be punished by God and the results would be war-like catastrophe (2:9-16).  It is possible that Amos was introducing this idea to make sure that people knew His message?  Certainly the ‘trumpet’ was a well known metaphor for prophecy in Amos’ day!

Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has caused it?   (3:6)

Again, everything seems to point towards this as the concluding and seventh prophecy.  It also describes cause and effect, it says that God is behind any act of judgement, and it seems unlikely that Amos says this as a simple example.  This is his precise message to Israel.  He knows it, and those who listen to him know it, which is why they are angry with him!

God and His work of prophesy   (3:7,8)

In this fascinating way, Amos both intrigued his audience and kept them wondering what he would say next.  He also reiterated some of the key themes of his message about judgement, and he insisted that God was actively warning His people.  Those before him wanted to dismiss Amos’ prophecy, but this was Amos’ defence.  God works through the logic of the world to speak to people and reveal His will to His prophets, and those who perceive it must deliver it.

In Amos’ day, more than a century had passed since the days of the great prophets Elijah and Elisha.  They were unique characters, and in their day and subsequent days, prophets tended to live in groups attached to the great shrines of Israel and Judah.  Many were recognised as such and had no other role in Israel and did no other work; they looked after themselves in community (see the stories of Elisha (2 Kings 4f.).

It was therefore something of a shock for people to hear a shepherd stand up before them and claim to be a prophet!  Make no mistake, this passage here is Amos’ justification for speaking in prophecy, and it is the very ‘modern’ argument that he prophesies because God has given Him a word, no less.  This was unheard of, this is the first Scriptural defence of such prophecy, and it opens the door for countless other prophets, including all the written prophets of the Bible from Isaiah to Malachi, who were people of all kinds who were called by God to give His word.  The old form of prophecy delivered through specialised prophets had gone, and God was now pouring out His Spirit on a wider range of people.  It is interesting that the prophet Joel perceived the same movement of God’s Spirit in his own day, and projected this forward, looking to a time when God would send His Spirit on ‘all people (Joel 2:28)

Amos had made his case that he was a true prophet of God and that the words of judgement he gave would be fulfilled because they came from God.  It was a highly skilful appeal to the people of Israel to accept both him and his message.  We cannot know exactly how the people reacted to Amos’ defence.  People of ancient times were easily swayed by speech, and they also felt deeply about how God spoke through the prophets.  But it is hard not to imagine that they remained very much on edge.  Despite his subtle and clever speech, what Amos had said in his prophecy (2:6-12) was political dynamite, and his prophecy of judgement by war was something no-one would want to hear.  What would become of his prophecies?

Amos 3:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Application

Bubbling up from within Amos’ austere message to Israel, we find this pearl of the Old Testament, which speaks to us of the way in which God always delivers His Word to His people by means of His prophets.  More than this, He also informs His people of everything He is doing in this way.  Now, we need to hear God’s Word today just as people have needed to hear it in every generation, from Old Testament times to this, and Amos’ message reminds us of God’s intent to communicate with us, if we will listen.  Amos spoke at a time when God’s Word was not otherwise being heard, and was hardly expected, and he certainly raised the dust with his words!  Perhaps we need prophets who are willing to do the same today! 

One feature of this passage is of course the seven questions found at its heart.  They have a number of interesting features, and they should remind us that we can see God at work not just in the extraordinary, but also in the ordinary.  Amos spoke about natural events and occurrences within the world, and perceived that God was involved in them and indeed behind them.  For example, he choose to speak about God being behind a planned meeting of two friends.  This might not seem very significant to us, until we think about the fact that in many testimonies, people today tend to bear witness to God as one who works in the extraordinary rather than the ordinary.  For example, I have heard many testimonies that rejoice in God’s making sense out of an extraordinary meeting between two friends rather than a planned one, and the force of the testimony is this; we are asked to believe that God will do miraculous things for us, too!  Of course, there is nothing wrong with such testimony, but Amos’ point must be heard, God is normally at work in the ordinary, and we urgently need to perceive this.

This passage of Scripture also deserves to be well read in any Biblical study of the nature of prophecy.  As we saw in the ‘review’, it also tells us that God does ‘nothing’ without revealing it to His prophets, and this implies that God has revealed a great deal to them that has either not been passed on by the prophets or we have not heard!  This is something of great importance, and suggests that within the church today there is a considerable amount of heart searching to do.

Amos 3:1-8 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Discipleship

Questions (for use in groups)

1. What do the brief prophecies (3:3-6) teach us about what Amos came to Israel to say?
2. Discuss what you would feel if someone came to your church and prophesied strongly that it would be destroyed because of its sins!
3. Try to summarise Amos’ defence of his prophecies to the Israelites.

Personal comments by author

I find this passage deeply moving.  Amos was fighting for his life before a crowd of people who were distinctly hostile.  He was prepared to stand up before others and face death in order to proclaim what God had said to Him.  I ask myself whether I would have been prepared to do just this.  The courage of the ancient prophets is awesome, and God enabled these great men (and in some cases women) to prophesy as they did because the message they bore was more important than they could possibly understand for themselves.  This is true of prophets today, and yet all too often we do not often recognise it!

Ideas for exploring discipleship

• Think about how you have reacted when people have criticised you or have rejected the things you do, at church, at home or at work.  We all have powerful emotions at such times, and we need to make sure that they are balanced by a proper understanding of God’s Word and not just a result of our natural reactions.  Ask the Lord for discernment that will help you know when things go wrong in your life.
• Pray for the life of all God’s people, and pray that we will all have the courage to deal with prophets of God who tell us what has gone wrong with the church.

Final Prayer

Dear Lord, drive away from us those spirits of despair that take advantage of our daily troubles and trap us into self pity and gloom.  Liberate us by the power of Your Holy Spirit, and may our confidence in Christ be unshakeable, each and every day of our lives: AMEN

Bible study for Amos 3:9-15

Amos 3:9-15 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Review

(consult Dictionaries)

Amos lets loose with an astonishing prophecy exposing rottenness at the core of Israelite society.  Other nations are invited to survey the rich pickings of this state gone bad, and God will barely be able to save His people from the wreckage of their civilisation!

The courage of Amos never ceases to amaze us.  For under the guidance of the Spirit, he has travelled far from his homeland in Judea to deliver God’s message to Israelites at Bethel, north of Jerusalem.  When he arrives, he gathered a crowd of Israelites by speaking out God’s Word against the surrounding nations (1:3-2:3).  Eventually, he unleashes the burden God has placed on his heart, and he condemns Israel for her injustice and for abandoning her faith (2:6-16).  People would have been shocked.  They would not have expected to hear such things from a country shepherd!  But with great skill, Amos justified his trenchant prophecy (3:1-8).

Then, something extraordinary happens.  Amos seems to abandon all clever forms of speech to deliver four brief prophecies that cut to the heart.  The first of these says that Israel is rotten through and through, and Amos invites the surrounding nations of Egypt and Ashdod (3:9) to watch the nation being torn apart by corruption and violence (3:9-10)!  Ominously, the second prophecy says that because of her corruption, Israel will suffer the humiliation of invasion and plunder by ‘an enemy’ (3:11).  Yet God does not delight in this, for Amos’ words suggest that disaster is the natural consequence of Israel’s rebellion against God.  She has opened herself up to God’s judgement, which comes in the form of military action by other nations.

All this is tragic, but this is how the world works.  The judgement of the nation follows corruption and godlessness in the same ‘cause and effect’ way that Amos described earlier; ‘does a lion roar in the forest when it has no prey? ... does disaster befall a city unless the Lord has done it? (3:4-6).  Then, just as now, God’s people tended to believe that because of their special relationship with God, He would protect them, come what may.  To them, the prophetic declaration that God would use foreign nations to judge His own people was scandalous.

Yet we will find this theme throughout Scriptures.  In Deuteronomy, Moses warns those who ‘think they are safe even though they go their own way’ (Deut 29:19) that they will suffer the curse of invasion by ‘a nation far away’ (Deut 28:49).  Then, centuries later, Judah and Jerusalem are invaded by Babylon, and Jeremiah the prophet struggles to persuade the people to accept their punishment as from God, so that they can receive His ‘new covenant’ (Jeremiah 29, 31:31f.).  So we must conclude that Amos’s prophecy here is entirely consistent with the whole Old Testament, however shocking it may seem.

Verse 12 is the third prophecy in our passage today, and it is a desperate and tragic description of the ruin of God’s people after tragedy.  As a shepherd, Amos was used to salvaging the remains of a sheep after it had been savaged by a lion, and he used this imagery to describe God salvaging Israel after an invasion by foreigners.  The picture is gruesome; ‘just as a shepherd snatches ... a piece of an ear from the mouth of the lion, so will the people of Israel be snatched away ...’ (3:12).  Then, to make the point yet again, he pictures people escaping from the war zone with fragments of once luxurious furniture; ‘so will Israel be snatched away ... with a piece of a bed! (3:12)

Lastly, Amos speaks out against ‘the house of Jacob’ (3:13), which is one of the royal names of Israel’s ruling dynasty.  By prophesying the destruction of the ‘altars of Bethel’ (3:13), he says that God will take away the power of this dynasty and destroy its symbols of wealth, the great palatial buildings of court, summer houses and winter houses (3:15).

There is no ambiguity about this prophecy; God will punish Israel through the calamity of war and invasion, and the nation will be destroyed.  Amos hints that God will act to save His people, but the picture he gives of this salvation offers little real hope (3:12).  It is as if at this point in the Old Testament, the people of Israel demonstrate for us what Paul says centuries later ‘the wages of sin is death’ (Romans 6:23)!

Going Deeper

The Bible study goes deeper to look at these issues:

• An invitation to the nations   (3:9,10)
• Invasion by foreign powers   (3:11)
• The dire picture of salvation   (3:12)
• The collapse of power in Israel   (3:13-15)

Amos 3:9-15 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Translation Notes

(consult Dictionaries)

V9 ‘look at the great turmoil within her and the oppression at her very core’

Other translations:

‘see the great unrest within her and the oppression among her people’   (NIV)

‘see what great tumults are within it and what oppressions are in its midst’   (NRSV)

This sentence describes the state of Samaria, the capital of Israel in the north.  The Hebrew words say this; ‘see her many tumults and her inner oppressions’.  The words tumult and oppression refer to the political state of Israel, and significantly, they hint at the hidden nature of these troubles (see study).

V10 ‘they do not know how to be honest’

Other translations:

‘they do not know how to do right’   (NIV)

Nearly all translations are similar to the NIV here, but I prefer the translation ‘to be honest’ instead of ‘to do right’, because the idea that lies behind the Hebrew word here is ‘straightness’, not simply ‘right’ in the moral sense.  This is not about morality itself, but about the inner desire to persist with moral virtue.  Honesty is a much misused and misunderstood quality, but it seems to me to be the right translation here.

V12 ‘those who live in Samaria with a piece of a bed, and in Damascus, with a couch!’

Other translations:

‘those who sit in Samaria on the edge of their beds and in Damascus on their couches!’   (NIV)

‘those who live in Samaria, with the corner of a couch and a part of a bed!’  (NRSV)

The whole translation depends on two things.  Firstly, on an interpretation of the second to last word, which is a form of the word ‘Damascus’; and secondly, on how this last clause fits with the rest of the sentence.  Some translators assume that the reference to Damascus is meaningless because it may well have been used to refer to some form of bed decoration (as we might speak of an ‘Oxford’ pillowcase).  There is no other similar use in the Old Testament, so I think it risky to assume this, and have translated the sentence more literally, in a similar way to the NIV.

V15 ‘the great dynasties will come to an end ...’

Other translations:

‘and the mansions will be demolished ...’   (NIV)

‘and the great houses will come to an end ...’   (NRSV)

The Hebrew of verse 15 is a play on the word ‘house’, which as in English, can refer to houses that are built as well as Temples and other structures, and also dynasties, such as the ‘house of Windsor’ or the ‘house of David’.  The last use of the word of house in verse 15 suggests something more than the magnificent palaces for winter and summer built by the wealthy, and it makes more sense to translate this as ‘dynasties’.  The study will make it clear why this fits Amos’ theme well.

Amos 3:9-15 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Going Deeper

(consult Dictionaries)

An invitation to the nations   (3:9,10)

Samaria had become the capital of Israel in the reign of Omri, who purchased the city from a man named Shemer and renamed the city Samaria (1 Kings 16:23), in the early ninth century BC.  After the reign of Omri, his son King Ahab and his queen Jezebel made the city a centre of Ba’al worship (see 1 Kings 18:1f.) and although this was stoutly opposed by Elijah, Ba’al worship continued on the site for a long time.  In Amos’ day, this would have been well known by all, and whilst Ba’al worship was tolerated by some Israelites, doubtless, others continued to strongly oppose it.

It is not surprising therefore, that when Amos wanted to draw attention to Israel’s sins, he turned to Samaria (3:9).  But he seems to be interested in something more than Ba’al worship, and he speaks of the ‘great unrest and the oppressions’ (3:9) at the heart of Israel.  What did he mean?  Now, Amos prophesied in the dying years of Jeroboam II, who had reigned for around forty years, but after his death, Israel was ruled by his son for only a few months before there was a violent military coup (2 Kings 15:10) by an officer named Shallum.  Then, just one month later, there was another coup, and Shallum was deposed by Menahem (2 Kings 15:14).  All this shows that underneath the surface of Israel’s rich and affluent society there was seething discontent that erupted when the old king died.  Amos perceived the situation correctly.

People of the day may well have known a little about this unrest and they certainly knew about the Ba’al worship in Samaria and the other shrines of Israel.  Yet when Amos declared God’s word of condemnation, he did not give these as reasons for God’s wrath.  His prophecy says ‘they do not know how to be honest’ (3:10), using a word for ‘honest’ meaning ‘keeping straight’.  He went to the heart of Israel’s multiple sins, for she was unable to walk the straight path given her by her covenant with God.  She had lost her moral compass. 

Certainly, nations that become rotten at the core become ripe for invasion, and this was known in Amos’ day as today.  He hints at this with his bold invitation of Egypt to watch what is happening in Samaria (3:9), perhaps he thought that Egypt would be the agent of God’s wrath.  Eventually, Assyria invaded Israel, not Egypt, but Amos’ perception was proved right.

Invasion by foreign powers   (3:11)

Invasion by foreign powers is God’s way of judging His people in the Old Testament, and the supreme example of this is the exile of Judea in Babylon, where the Jews had to come to terms with the fact that even though they had endured such punishment, God still loved them.  Of course, these themes are important for the whole Bible.  In the New Testament, we find that Jesus is crucified on the Cross by the foreign soldiers of Rome, and the power of the Gospel eventually takes God’s message of salvation beyond the boundaries of Judaism to the whole world.  The nations that were once only used by God for judgement become the recipients of His grace, through the work of Jesus Christ.

For this reason, we should not be surprised whenever the Old Testament speaks about other nations and their role in God’s eternal plan, whether for judgement or for glory.  Some who study the Old Testament say that the entire work is about Israel and God’s people, with the whole of the rest of humanity held at arm’s length as irrelevant to the purposes of God.  I strongly suggest that this is wrong, and that the nations are never far away from God’s heart.  Although God uses them for judgement in the Old Testament, and not much else, it is not possible to understand what is happening to Israel unless we look carefully at what God is doing with these ‘other nations’. 

I would go as far as saying that when we accept that the Old Testament describes God’s relationship with all nations, we can then understand fully the special relationship He has with Israel.

The dire picture of salvation   (3:12)

Many people stumble over the picture presented to us in verse 12.  The first half is gruesome, yet to a certain extent, it is understandable (see review above).  The prophecy says that God will only be able to salvage small pieces from His nation; but the more we think about this, the less hope it gives.  The pieces of ear seem to offer hope, but they suggest that the animal is dead, and cannot be saved!  So, what kind of judgement is God therefore bringing, and will some of Israel be left?

The same question hangs over the rest of the verse, which pictures Israel as saved, clutching the  wreckage of items of luxury, a ‘piece of a bed’ or a couch’ (32).  But what does this mean?  Remember that in the first illustration, the items recovered by a shepherd were used to prove that a lion had indeed savaged the sheep.  So are these remnants of luxury items proof of Israel’s past extravagance, lest they forget why they were saved?

The reference to Damascus at the end of this verse is interesting (see notes above).  We think of Damascus as being a part of Syria, so why should Amos speak about Israelites being saved from Damascus (3:12)?  The answer may be found in 2 Kings 14:28, where it is recorded that in the reign of Jeroboam II, Damascus was captured from Syria by Israel!  The city was recaptured later, but this brief change of hands goes some way to explaining Amos’ comment here.

All this is interesting, but after looking at this verse more closely, we are left with the conclusion that it gives us less hope for Israel than we imagined.  As we study Amos further, we will see that this indeed is the prophet’s conclusion.

The collapse of power in Israel   (3:13-15)

The fourth of Amos’ mini-prophecies describes the bringing of evidence of Israel’s corruption to trial; ‘bring testimony against the house of Jacob says the Lord God, the God of Hosts’ (3:13).  A trial had been set for Israel, and punishment would be meted out (3:13,14).  Now, in Amos’ original round of prophecies, accusations brought against Israel (2:6-11), but the punishments were never specified.  If we look back at the punishments given to the other nations, then we can clearly see that God took power away from them; ‘I will cut off the ruler from her midst ...’ says Amos to Moab (2:3).  So here, God punishes Israel in the same way by removing her power.

We may not spot this unless we know something a little esoteric about altars, which are mentioned in verse 14; ‘I will punish the altars of Bethel and the horns of the altar will be cut off and fall to the ground!’ (3:14).  In ancient thought, power was concentrated in altars because they symbolised basic religious power and authority.  We do not know why, but ancient people believed that power was concentrated at the corners of altars, or at its ‘horns’.  Verse 14 is one of a number of similar Old Testament references to the ‘horns of the altars’.  All this sounds strange to our ears, but the message is clear; Israel will lose its royal power and religious authority.

Finally, Amos plays on the word ‘house’ to declare God’s destruction on the symbols of power (see notes above).  He says that God will tear down ‘the winter house together with the summer house, and the houses of Ivory will perish’ (3:15).  These words form a distinct and self contained section of Hebrew poetry, with the message that the coming destruction will see the end to these great statements of royal power.  The next stanza of Hebrew poetry forms the logical conclusion; ‘the great dynasties will come to an end’ (3:15), which means that God will bring Israel’s royal lines to an end.

ebrew He

Amos’ words were very apt, because royal authority in Israel had been passed on from one dynasty to another.  So whereas Judah had been ruled over exclusively by the descendants of David, northern Israel had been ruled over by these dynasties for centuries.  The first ruler of Israel was Jeroboam, who led Israel in revolt against Solomon’s son Rehoboam (1 Kings 12), and his descendants ruled the nation for more than a century until his dynasty was replaced in a military coup by Jehu, around 845BC.  This bloody coup was instigated by Elijah, no less (see 1 Kings 19:16), after he had met God at Mount Horeb, and his actions set in place the dynasty of Jehu, which reached its peak with the reign of Jeroboam II in the days of Amos. 

Without question, God was doing a significant work amongst His people and revealing it through his prophet Amos.  Things would never be the same again.

Amos 3:9-15 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Application

The judgement of God falls on all sin equally, as the whole of Scripture testifies, and the destruction of northern Israel prophesied by Amos is part of this.  If we are to come to terms with the idea of God’s punishment for sin and His destructive power, then we should read Old Testament passages such as this together with Romans 2 and 3, which speak of God’s judgement as the necessary background to His saving power in Christ.  God’s wrath comes on the world because He longs to bring people to a place of repentance, where they will turn to Him for salvation, and find in Him the answers to their longings.  Passages such as this one in Amos remind us that human sin and self-centredness seed destruction within society, and this is how our world works.  It is God’s world and it works according to His moral law.

Amos warns us about the dangers of allowing our material wealth to become a substitute for true faith in God and right behaviour.  The most telling words in our passage are these; ‘they do not know how to be honest’ (3:10).  God looks on earth to find those who will be true to their word, and those who will follow through what they have said by putting their words into action.  Such things may appear simple, but too many have failed to measure up to God’s test, even in matters of faith.  Of course, we all struggle with sin in this life, but the Christian is called to be honest and ‘straight’ in all matters, and we should not sit lightly to this calling.

God sees all things, and although we do not like to think about this, it is true.  We, like Israel, can hide nothing from our God, and He will always know what is wrong in our lives whether we confess it or not.  The Israelites did not have a reason to bring their sins to God in confession, and they did not know a Saviour.  Now that Christ has died for us we should not need to wait to hear God warning us of judgement before dealing with anything that has gone wrong in our lives.

Amos 3:9-15 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Discipleship

Questions (for use in groups)

1. Read through the passage carefully to make sure that you understand it after having read the study.  Discuss with your group why Amos might have spoken like this.
2. How easy or hard do you find it to talk about God as one who judges nations by war, as described by Amos?
3. How do our own experiences today affect how we present God to the world, and does our own experience limit God?

Personal comments by author

Amos spoke bravely about the condition of the world as he saw it, and we must speak today about the condition of the church as we see it!  The prophecies of Amos challenge me deeply because I hear too many prophecies today that effectively congratulate the church for what it does.  However, I hear few that challenge God’s people to respond to their failures.  God is surely challenging His people to be like Him and continue their witness to Him in the world.  In a world in which most Christians are sucked into a church life that drains their personal enthusiasm and spiritual life, the prophetic voice needs to call people to follow the true life of a disciple and reject the religious parodies Satan uses to tempt people away from practical faith.  They are found throughout the church and need to be exposed.

Ideas for exploring discipleship

• Think carefully about the injustices you can see happening within the life of the world at this present time, and consider whether they are reflected in the life of the church.  If this is so, then pray and ask the Lord to show you how He will judge both the world today and also the church.
• Pray for those who suffer because of injustice within the world and within the life of the church today.  Pray that God will liberate people who are oppressed and set them free.

Final Prayer

Amazing and wondrous Lord, You have guided Your people by a historic path on which astonishing things have happened.  Do amazing things amongst us once again we pray; liberate us and remove our small-mindedness, and give us the courage to place our trust in You for everything: AMEN

Bible study for Amos 4:1-5

Amos 4:1-5 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Review

(consult Dictionaries)

In these two brief prophecies, Amos exposes the sins of arrogant selfishness and religious self satisfaction, and declares them openly as an insult to God

Amos ploughs on in his quest to confront Israel with her sins, and we are left wondering what the people who first heard his prophecies made of them.  In general, people who hear that they have done something wrong will either be humbled by the message and accept it, or they will strongly oppose it.  So although many Israelites would have been affronted by what Amos said about social injustice and irreligion, others may have listened and perceived something of the truth.  They would have already been concerned about oppression and godlessness within the nation, but it was only when Amos spoke that they realised he was a prophet of God and gave voice to their feelings.

In our passage today, Amos delivers two brief prophecies that strike at heart of Israel’s sins.  Each of them begins with a cutting dramatic picture, and continues with God’s comments on the sins that have been exposed.  The first prophecy parodies the excesses of the rich in Samaria (4:1-3) and the second makes a mockery of the religious rituals practiced at sacred shrines of Israel (4:4,5).  If we have followed everything that Amos has said so far, then we will recognise these themes as the twin pillars of God’s complaint against Israel; social injustice and religious apostasy.

To begin with, Amos rounds on the profligate women of northern Israel, which he calls ‘Samaria’, after its capital city, with a direct insult!  Yes, here in this prophecy Amos calls the women of Samaria ‘cows’ (4:1)!  Various scholars have tried to explain why Amos should call women ‘cows’, but we cannot escape the fact that in Hebrew just as in English, it is insulting to liken women to cows!  His exact phrase is ‘cows of Bashan’, which is a reference to cattle reared in Bashan on the far northern side of the Jordan and Lake Galilee.  The region was famous for its fatted cattle, which provided the best animals for ritual slaughter at the sanctuaries and also the best beef for eating.  So, Amos compares the rich women of Samaria to the fattened cows of Bashan, awaiting slaughter!  It is hard to think of a more pointed insult!

Yet the message of the prophecy is not found in the insult, for this is only the startling picture that arrests our attention.  Amos paints a picture of profligate and self-centred excess amongst the rich, and prophesies that the days of their indulgence are ending.  Indeed, they will end violently.  He describes a horrendous scene of people being dragged with fishhooks straight out through the walls of their cities after they have been overcome in battle and defeated (4:3).  In days long before visual arts and drama, Amos’ prophecies require an X rating for violence!

But we must not be distracted by the picture, for in the midst of this prophecy, Amos hints at something important about why this awful judgment must take place.  In verse 2, the Lord God swears by ‘His holiness’ that He will deal with Israel, and this phrase suggests that Israel, God’s ‘holy’ nation, has profaned what is holy.  She has sinned by living according to her own wants and desires.  Selfishness has replaced godliness, as it always does, and if God is to re-establish His witness in the world, He must act for the sake of His holiness.

The second prophecy is no less awful, though less directly insulting.  Amos issues a classic summons to worship, saying, ‘come to Bethel ...’ and he calls for the standard ritual practices of daily sacrifices, regular tithes, and thanksgiving as well as free-will offerings (4:5).  Nevertheless, the result of this dedication to ritual is no more than sin in God’s eyes, he says, ‘come to Bethel ... and sin’ (4:5)!  Indeed, the sin is endemic in Israel, because for a proud people, the practice of religion has itself replaced God.

It is shocking to read Amos’ insults and cynicism, but this is his prophecy.  Such tactics cannot always be defended, but we must be in no doubt that God will use them where necessary, to make His people face the truth about their self-centredness.  This is God’s Word at its most sharp and most urgent.

Going Deeper

The Bible study goes deeper to look at these issues:

• Profligacy and ignorance of God
• Holiness
• The threat of war
• The insult of religious practice without God

Amos 4:1-5 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Translation Notes

(consult Dictionaries)

V1 ‘who say to your husbands’

All translations are similar at this point, but it is still worth noting that the term ‘husbands’ translates the Hebrew ‘adonai’ meaning ‘Lords’.  This same word is used to speak of God Himself as the ‘Lord God’, and it is possible that Amos was taking advantage of this in a word play.  If we add to this the fact that the word ‘Ba’al’ also means ‘master’ or ‘lord’, then we can see that there is ample scope for any play on words (see study)

V2 ‘holiness’

The Hebrew word for holiness ‘qadesh’ is used frequently in the Old Testament, yet it is not always understood.  Something that is holy is something that is of God and not of this world, and only God can make something ‘holy’; it is different and set apart from the things of ordinary life.  There is no place in the Bible for the idea that something special to our religious practice is ‘holy’, for it is not us who make this designation.  Holiness is God’s and God’s alone.

V4 ‘sin’

The word for sin used here is ‘pesach’, meaning to transgress or rebel.  Amos specifically refers therefore to deliberate deviation from the ways of the Lord, not casual or unfortunate misunderstanding or the like.  This word denotes the most serious form of sin.

V5 ‘Tell everyone about them, as you love to do, O people of Israel!’

Other translations:

‘boast about them, you Israelites, for this is what you love to do ...’   (NIV)

‘publish them, for so you love to do, O people of Israel ...’   (NRSV)

The Hebrew says poetically ‘make them heard about, just as you love, O people of Israel’, and each translator finds a way of expressing this.  It is also clear that Amos speaks here with cynicism, for Israel like to think that she is religious and has in fact lost sight of the true holiness of God.

Amos 4:1-5 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Going Deeper

(consult Dictionaries)

Profligacy and ignorance of God

The whole region around Samaria is picturesque, and regarded as one of the beautiful parts of the central regions of Israel, with hills rising on each side of the valley and fertile fields with vineyards and crops such as wheat and barley.  This was why King Omri bought the land for his capital (1 Kings 16:24), and if there was anywhere in Israel where life should be good, it was here.

With an economy of words, Amos’ prophecy describes a simple truth known to us even today, which comments on the consequences of such good living.  He observes that when people become self content they forget God.  We can easily construct a mental picture of the affluent circumstances and gratification behind verse 1.  Israel’s men had created wealth through economic means such as trading, and whilst engaged in this, their wives lorded it over their households.  Most significantly, Amos complains that the women oppressed the poor and needy.  There is no other accusation like this in the Bible, for Amos observes that women had broken the bonds of their own oppression only to act with cruelty against servants and the poor.  Meanwhile, they drank to excess and made sure that their husbands provided the necessary liquor!  Binge drinking amongst women is not just a modern phenomenon!

There are many parallels to be drawn with our own world today, but we must keep close to Amos’ point, which is that self-centredness and materialism draws men and women away from their God.  Amos was not just observing a characteristic of Israel in the eighth century BC, he put his finger on something that continues to haunt God’s people, especially those who live in the midst of relative material wealth.  The remarkable thing about this passage is that this is the first place in the Bible where this point is forcefully made.  Centuries later, Jesus picks up on this in his teaching about wealth and worry in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 6,7).

Holiness

Living in the Christian era we are used to the idea that God’s holiness has been shared with us through Jesus Christ, and His sacrifice for us breaks down the barriers between earth and heaven.  We therefore do not have such a developed sense of the holiness of God as is found in the Old Testament.  So when Amos says ‘The Lord God has sworn on His holiness ...’ (4:2), we tend to read on, thinking that this is just some form of emphatic oath.

In truth, Amos could hardly have said anything stronger.  As a prophet, he said these words only with utter conviction, for they would have sounded ridiculous without such certainty.  The punishment of God against those of His people who had become apparently self sufficient and ignorant of their God was something of enormous importance.  God had deigned to cross the great divide between heaven and earth to choose His own people, to have a covenant relationship with them so that they would demonstrate something of His glory in the earth.  But if His own people ignored Him, they blasphemed against His holiness.  For the sake of His holiness, God could not allow such a tainted witness to Him to continue, and He took an oath to destroy it.

We may wonder whether Amos simply said this in order to make a forceful point, for there were indeed other prophets of the day who claimed to know what God had said or would do.  But the reason we have the book of Amos in Scripture is because those who heard Amos wrote down what He said, and history proved that God did indeed punish Israel by bringing the northern nation to an end, only a few decades after Amos spoke.  Part of the armoury of the prophet is to say that God will do certain things and risk their reputation on whether what they say comes true.  So although verse 2 sounds as if Amos might describe God swearing an oath in order to make a point, we must remember that his words are in Scripture for a good reason.

The threat of war

Amos has skilfully used scaring  images of battle and war.  He has already compared God’s saving of Israel from battle as like saving pieces of a sheep that has been slaughtered by a lion (3:12)!  Here, he describes an awful practice of invading armies of evicting the occupants of a city they have sieged swiftly and with violence force.  They have destroyed the walls of the city completely, so that there is no obstacle to this eviction, and people are dragged out with fishhooks.  Such violence would seem fanciful if there were not similar descriptions elsewhere (e.g. Habakkuk 1:15), and part of the art of war in those days was to use the implements of agriculture and fishery in battle.

There is no way of taming the fact that war is violent, and people die violent deaths in battle (4:3).  Neither can we escape the fact that war is brought on Israel as punishment by God, indeed, everything Amos has said about the punishment of Israel has hinted at war and invasion.  Chapter two contains a prophecy of Israel fleeing from battle in the midst of the horror of defeat  (2:14-16), and chapter three contains Amos’ prophetic invitation of Egypt and Ashdod to survey Israel as ripe targets for invasion.  We are beginning to get the picture that the main theme of Amos’ prophecy is the military defeat of Israel as God’s punishment for her sins.

We find it hard to read about war and battles today, and we certainly find it hard to think that God is somehow involved in this violence of humanity.  It is better if we try to see that Amos and God’s people of old perceived that God was involved in every aspect of human like, including war, and this of itself does not imply anything bad about God, just that He is to be found in this world along with everything in it.  His perfect will is not war but peace, but we should be in no doubt, God fights evil.

The insult of religious practice without God

Now, Amos was speaking at Bethel and this was the principal shrine of worship to the Lord God in that part of northern Israel.  Bethel had grown as a religious centre because it was where Jacob had slept and dreamt of God’s angels ascending and descending from heaven (Genesis 28:12f.).  Gilgal, which is also mentioned in this prophecy was the place where Israel had camped when re-entering the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua (Joshua 4,5), and was equally valued as a religious shrine.

Northern Israelites did not have the Temple at Jerusalem, and they valued the sites of Bethel and Gilgal as evidence of their close connection with the God of their forefathers, but without the Temple, how did they worship God there?  The answer is partly provided by Amos, who lists the bringing of sacrifices every morning, tithes every three days, and the sacrificial offerings of thanksgiving and freewill.  This is similar to the sacrificial worship offered to God in the Jerusalem Temple by the Judeans, and the Israelites did this presumably because they felt it was the right thing to do.  Amos suggests that they were proud of what they did!  But it was not what God required.

Verses four and five take the form of an invitation to people to come and worship God, and we will find that here, just as later on in chapter 5, Amos uses a classic ‘call to worship’ to parody the religious practices of Israel.  The usual call would be ‘come to Bethel and worship the Lord’, but Amos calls out ‘come to Bethel and sin; to Gilgal, and sin even more!’ (4:4).

There are two possible reasons why Amos declares that the worship at Bethel and Gilgal is ‘sin’.  Firstly, as Amos has already remarked (2:7,8), worship at Bethel was tainted by the fact that not only was God worshipped there, but the Ba’al gods were also worshipped.  Archaeological evidence shows that altars for the worship of the Lord God and also for the worship of Ba’al frequently stood side by side in the Israel of those days, and it was difficult for people to know the difference.  Indeed, some scholars suggest that the sacrificial offerings and tithes could as much be for Ba’al as for the Lord.  We will see whether this theory is born out by later prophecies of Amos.

The other reason why Amos might have described the worship as sin was for the same reason just identified.  The people of Israel had compromised their relationship with God through the sins of materialism and self centeredness, and no ‘correct’ worship could be offered if the people were not committed wholly to the Lord in covenant faithfulness.  True worship reflects the worshipper, so the worship offered at these shrines was tantamount to sin.

Amos 4:1-5 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Application

From this point onwards, Amos’ words strike home to us today because of our problems with materialism.  Our world today has often been likened to the comfortable world of the Israelites of the mid eighth century BC.  In those days, many people were wealthy and were able to account for their own needs, just as many people are today.  But this apparent wealth and success has always been mixed up with sinfulness, as Amos points out in our passage, and is clear to us in our own day.  For example, the proper liberation of women from the shackles of domination have unfortunately led many younger women to act like young men, and succumb to the gods of selfishness, of fashion and binge drinking.  Also, the proper and traditionally morally prudent role of the ‘banker’ within modern society has been defaced by the greed of the few, so that trust has evaporated and society diss-served.  God looks on these things and sees sin, moreover, He looks to warn people of the dangers of materialism at every level, especially where His people live in its grip.

The message of Amos in confirmed by the New Testament, for the judgement of God on all sin is indeed absolute.  He fights it and will prevail.  The Christian must therefore read passages such as this and spot all its hints about the nature of sin, for we must avoid it at all costs.  Firstly, we must be conscious of the affects of materialism and the way that it fundamentally erodes faith.  The way that it does this today is possibly different to that in Amos’ day, but the prophet was right to point to excess, alcohol, male/female relationships and the practice of religion as some of the main routes by which the materialistic person wanders from God.  It is up to us to follow Amos’ leads.

Amos 4:1-5 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Discipleship

Questions (for use in groups)

1. Can it ever be right to think of the horrors of war as being inflicted upon people today as judgement from God?
2. In what ways do people still go to worship God and yet harbour sin in their lives?  Discuss examples of this.
3. How do people ‘show off’ their faith today in inappropriate ways, and how can you make sure that you do not do this yourself?

Personal comments by author

This passage of Scripture reminds us yet again of the danger of becoming so wrapped up with our own lives that we fail to honour our Lord properly.  Great vigilance is required of each of us to make sure that we do not become wrapped up in our own little worlds and live as if we alone matter to God and not much else. God’s world is so much bigger, and there are challenges out there beyond our understanding, if we will rise to what the Lord is saying to us.  Our Lord is always calling us on to other things and to greater challenges.  Yet for as long as Satan keeps us trapped in our world, we must hear Amos’ words and realise that God is calling us on.

Ideas for exploring discipleship

• At the weekend, you will probably be going to worship the Lord in some way together with other people.  Remembering Amos’ words ‘come to Bethel ... and sin!’ (4:4), spend time in prayer asking the Lord to enable You to go to worship tomorrow in a true state of worship.
• Pray for God’s people that they do not fall into sin as the people of Old testament times did.  Pray that the Holy Spirit will work amongst God’s people to bring light into the church and into the world.

Final Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, save us from becoming so wrapped up with our own lives and our own work that we do not give to You or to listen to Your voice.  Bless us we pray with a spirit of discernment so that we may hear Your words of warning when we forget You, and bless us with Your presence, we pray: AMEN

Bible study for Amos 4:6-13

Amos 4:6-13 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Review

(consult Dictionaries)

Amos looks back over Israel’s past and sees the abundant evidence of God’s desire to restore His relationship with His people.  Yet His people have ignored Him and this is why they face His judgement!

As we have read through Amos, it has become increasingly obvious that God intended to punish His people for their sins through some act of war, most probably invasion.  Amos has not said blandly, ‘God will come and invade Israel’s land!’  He has agonised over the reasons why Israel wandered far away from her God and the security of their covenant relationship.  He has also declared openly that Israel’s rebellion cannot continue, and God will soon come to judge His people.

This message is never far from our minds as we read Amos; yet there is a different twist to the prophecies in today’s reading.  If we stop reading this text from a human perspective and read it from God’s point of view, then something new comes into focus.  Behind God’s drastic decision to judge His people lies His passionate desire to see His people return, and each of the five prophecies in this reading (4:6, 7-8, 9, 10, 11) ends with the same words; ‘yet you did not return to me, says the Lord’.  Whatever ‘tone of voice’ might lie behind these words, they reveal One who has frequently attempted to call Israel back so that she would repent of her ways.  The whole passage suggests that if Israel had ever repented, then God would have graciously forgiven her sins; but she had tragically never turned.

Each of the five prophecies describes a difficult time in the past when Israel would have been better served by trusting in God rather than on her own strength or worldly strategies.  Amos pinpoints these difficulties as times of famine, drought, pest and plague (4:6-10).  The agriculture of the land before modern irrigation and farming techniques was fragile, and these were all a regular part of life until comparatively modern times.  Lastly, Amos refers to a time when Israel had narrowly escaped destruction; Israel had been saved at the last moment, as Amos describes with enigmatic flair, ‘like a brand plucked from the burning ...’ (4:11).  But even this was not enough to make Israel to repent.

It is almost certain that as Amos prophesied, he had in mind certain historic incidents of famine, but unfortunately, there is not enough information for us to say more about when these natural disasters took place.  Famine arose in Israel for each of the three reasons given here, that is drought (4:7-8), pest (4:9) and plague (4:10), though we should spot that Amos’ description of plague sounds more like war than any spread of disease! 

However, the last prophecy about a narrow escape probably refers to events around the middle of the ninth century BC, when Israel and Judah were saved from the evil dynastic rule of Ahab and Jezebel in a revolt led by an army officer named Jehu (see 2 Kings 10).  This period of the Old Testament is not well known, but Scripture regards the terrible religious oppressions of Ahab’s rule time as some of the worst in Israel’s history.  Interestingly, the Biblical record tells us that God used Elisha to appoint Jehu and end the tyranny (2 Kings 9f.).

At the conclusion of this string of prophecies, Amos concludes with an announcement of God’s coming, for this is what we find in verses 12 and 13.  The strong word ‘therefore’ (4:12) tells us that God will now respond to Israel’s stubborn rebellion, and Amos uses traditional language describing God as Creator to announce the glorious arrival of ‘the Lord, the God of Hosts’ (4:13).

Strangely, this passage describes something of Amos’ own character and faith.  He had been given a terrible prophecy about the future of Israel, and most of his words reflect the weight of this awesome burden.  Yet in this passage we have a glimpse into Amos’ heart and His faith in the awesome creative power of God.  He was deeply dedicated to the God of Creation and the God of his forefathers, yet he also believed that God passionately wanted His people to return so that He could forgive them.  Yes, he had already announced dire punishment, but the inclusion of these prophecies shows how much he, as well as the Lord God, wanted Israel to repent.

Going Deeper

The Bible study goes deeper to look at these issues:

• Famine   (4:6)
• Drought   (4:7-8)
• Pest   (4:9)
• Plague   (4:10)
• Narrow escape   (4:11)
• Warning and doxology   (4:12-13)

Amos 4:6-13 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Translation Notes

(consult Dictionaries)

V6 ‘in every locality’

Other translations:

‘in every town’   (NIV)

‘in all your places’   (NRSV)

The Hebrew word translated ‘locality’ means ‘standing place’.  It is a general word denoting any particular relevant to what is being discussed.  Classically, it is translated ‘place’ or ‘town’ (to match ‘city’ in the previous phrase).  However, it seems to me to be right to use the more modern word ‘locality’, and this reads well.

V9 ‘I struck you with blight and mildew, and locusts consumed your increasing number of gardens, vineyards, fig trees and olive trees ’

Other translations:

‘Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards, I struck them with blight and mildew.  Locusts devoured your fig trees and olive trees ...’ (NIV)

‘I struck you with blight and mildew; I laid waste your gardens and your vineyards; the locust devoured your fig trees and your olive trees …’   (NRSV

The translation of this sentence depends on one Hebrew word which appears out of place in the original sentence.  The word itself means ‘to multiply or increase’.  I have translated it ‘increasing number’ and followed the word order of the Hebrew fairly closely.  Other translations split up the list of trees to try and balance the sentence to read like normal Hebrew poetry, and the NRSV believes that the Hebrew is incorrect at this point and suggests an alternative understanding of the word, giving ‘I laid waste’.  I suggest that it is not worth departing from the plain meaning of the text here even though the grammar is obscure.  Little can be gained in the interpretation of the prophecy by major alterations.

V10 ‘I killed your young men with the sword, together with your captured horses’

Other translations:

‘I killed your young men with the sword, along with your captured horses.’   (NIV)

‘I killed your young men with the sword; I carried away your horses’   (NRSV)

The translation is a little difficult because the Hebrew says more accurately, ‘I killed your young men with the sword and the captivity of your horses’.  In theory, this could mean that the young men died because the horses had been captured, which is rather meaningless!  I reckon that the most sensible translation is to suggest that together with the young men, the horses were killed.  Of course, horses were not natural to Israel and any they possessed were ‘captured’ from other armies or foreign powers.

Amos 4:6-13 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Going Deeper

(consult Dictionaries)

Famine   (4:6)

We might not immediately recognise this verse as description of famine, because the first sentence sounds odd; ‘I gave your teeth no food ...’. The Hebrew of this verse says literally ‘I will give you cleanness of teeth’, which you will find in some translations of Amos 4:6.  Those of us who live in developed countries are not used to the fact that is well known to people who live in Africa, for example, that people who are in the grip of famine will frequently have very white teeth!  The lack of corrosive foods in the mouth mean that teeth stay clean.

Famine occurs because of the fragility of the Israelite agriculture.  For although the land was fertile enough when it rained, without regular rains when barley and wheat were planted at the beginning of the year, there would be no harvest.  Famine had made Abraham leave Canaan and go to Egypt (Gen 12:10f.) and his son Isaac endured a long period of famine and managed to stay in the land (Gen 26:1f.).  Famine again caused Jacob’s sons to go in search of food to Egypt in the well known story of Joseph, and if we look at each of these stories, great good came out of these forefathers dependence upon God at such times.  Amos’ point comes from a good and comprehensive understanding of Israel’s past; he does not prophecy famine as if lulling a threat from a bag of natural disasters with which to taunt Israel.

This history of famine in Israel should tell us that despite the worst of human circumstances, God can make great good out of disaster, if we will but trust in Him.

Drought   (4:7-8)

Drought is a significant part of the story of God’s people, though we tend not to notice many of the details in Scripture that point to its importance.  People sometimes forget that the great prophet Elijah was used by God at a time of drought, to challenge God’s people about whether they trusted Him or trusted the Ba’al gods for the fertility of the land (see 1 Kings 17,18).   The great clash between Elijah and the prophets of Ba’al make powerful reading, but we forget that at the very end of the story, the answer to Elijah’s prayer comes as God sends a small cloud that eventually turns into a thunderstorm, bringing the rain that will save the people and given them crops (1 Kings 18:43-46).

Now we tend to think of Elijah’s work at Mount Carmel as an astounding victory for the Lord, but the truth is that after this, there was only a limited repentance on the part of the people and their King (Ahab).  Certainly, Elijah knew that his hard work was tenuous and Queen Jezebel sought his life (1 Kings 191:f).  Amos would have seen the great stories of Elijah in this light and may have thought of this event as evidence of Israel’s inability to repent rather than her desire to follow the Lord.  Famine was a highly emotive subject in Israel.

Because of this, it is not surprising that Amos mentions drought here in this passage.  He pictures the vagaries of weather that make for drought in one city but not another, and one field but not another, and the chaos of people wandering about trying to find food at such times.  It is easy to imagine that such circumstances might bring out the worst as well as the best of humanity, but as far as Amos was concerned, it was Israel’ inability to respond to such events by turning to their God that was most worrying.

Pest   (4:9)

Pests are mentioned in a number of Old Testament texts, and Amos is not the only prophet who uses the imagery of pests, from blight and mildew, to locusts.  Joel famously describes a storm of locusts and develops a message that calls on God’s people to repent and turn again to their God.  His message also resolves in the blessing of God, who pours out His Spirit on ‘all flesh’ (Joel 2:28), and brings restoration ‘for the years the locust has eaten’ (Joel 2:25).  In addition, Solomon famously describes ‘blight, mildew, locust or caterpillar’ (1 Kings 8:37) as plagues that should remind the people to turn to their God in prayer and humble submission.

Amos would have been aware of the great prayer of Solomon, and there is evidence that this great Temple prayer found in 2 Chronicles (ch 7) as well as 1 Kings (ch 8) was well used.  His message could well have been inspired by this prayer, for it is none other than a call for repentance, the same as Amos’ message here.  The prophecy of Joel is more difficult to pin down, for it is impossible to date the book, and no one has been able to give a certain background for what it describes.  It could either have been written before Amos’ day, in which case, it reinforces the message, or it was written after Amos, in which case this prophecy may have inspired Joel.

It is worth noting that when Amos delivers his climactic vision in chapter 7, the first vision is that of locusts.  Amos’ response to his vision of the destructive power of locusts is to beg for God’s forgiveness, which is granted (7:1-3).  So this confirms our interpretation which says that these prophecies are about repentance more than judgement.

Plague   (4:10)

The plagues in Egypt were designed to call Pharaoh to change his mind, and they included all manner of evils alongside what we might think of as plagues.  Moreover, the plagues themselves did not force Pharaoh to change His mind, rather, it was the angel of death who did this, after the plagues had been finished.  For this reason, we would be wise to think that Amos’ use of the word ‘plague’ here.

If we read the whole of verse 10, we find that it mentions in turn ‘plague’ or perhaps ‘pestilence’, then ‘the sword’, and lastly, the chaos of defeat as typified in the stench of an abandoned military camp after battle.  It is perhaps best of we take these all together and accept that all of them describe the terror of defeat in battle.  There are a number of Old Testament texts that use this trio to describe military defeat (2 Chron 21:8, Jeremiah 14:12f. etc.), together with famine.

So it seems that Amos has typically fought shy of speaking directly about the one subject that runs like a thread through all his prophecies, military defeat.  We saw this theme at the end of chapter 2, and throughout chapter 3, and we will find that it never disappears from this book.

Narrow escape   (4:11)

I have mentioned some of the bare bones of the awful horror of what happened to Israel and Judah in the middle of the ninth century BC, after the dire rule of Ahab and his wife Jezebel.  Their eventual deaths unleashed a period of bloodshed in the royal households of both Israel (in Samaria) and Judah (in Jerusalem, and if you pick your way carefully through 2 Kings 11 and 12, you will find some incredible stories.  The evils of Ahab and Jezebel were quickly removed from Israel by the army officer Jehu, but the daughter of Jezebel, named Athaliah, seized the throne of Judah from her son Ahaziah, and reigned for several years in Jerusalem (2 Kings 11:1f.)!  She was only removed from the throne of David by a coup not of army officers but of priests (2 Kings 11:4f.).

The fact that a half-Israelite queen reigned in Jerusalem on the throne of David is such an extraordinary slur on the lineage that not only is this period of history expunged from many Jewish records of the ancestry of David, it is entirely absent from the genealogies of Jesus found in Matthew (ch.1:1f.) and Luke (ch 3:23f.)!  The massive shock of these events would certainly have been felt for several generations, and people in Amos’ day would have certainly looked back on this as a ‘narrow escape’ for Israel and Judah.

It is possible that other scholars will make a case for other events in the life of Israel and Judah to be closely identified with verse 11 in Amos 4, however, I reckon that this is the most likely contender.  Certainly, the apostasy of the ruling elite of those days was the closest we can get to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah in the life of Israel.  Underneath the political headlines lay a considerable element of sexual intrigue, which justifies the comparison with these two cities of depravity.

Amos’ point is still that although Israel had been through this experience, she had still not returned to the Lord.  2 Kings 10:28-31 confirms that King Jehu did not eventually follow the Lord as he was supposed to do, and it seems that the ‘brand plucked from the burning’ was not entirely saved.  She continued to burn!

Warning and doxology   (4:12-13)

Amos’ call to Almighty God is typical of ancient Jewish liturgical summons to God to come into His Temple and reign.  In various parts of Scripture, from the Psalms, to Job to the prophets, we can read similar texts to verse 13 (e.g. Job 38, Psalm 46), and this is not the only place in Amos where the prophet uses such language (Amos 5:8).

Moreover, if we read verse 13 with care we can see that its words are not just like an ancient doxology giving praise to God as Creator, they are also like the great apocalyptic messages of later prophets such as Daniel and Zechariah, who had visions of God’s coming again in glory.  Certainly, Amos did not say a great deal about the end of the world and God’s final recreation, however, these words, together with Amos’ description of the ‘day of the Lord’ (5:18f.) have been essential in the development of our understanding of God’s last judgement.  Amos describes God’s re-creative power to move mountains, His command of the wind (the Spirit) the revelation of hidden thoughts, His mastery of time and His stance above all things ‘on the highest places of the earth’ (4:13).  This is both a prophecy of Christ’s ascension and also of His return in glory!

Amos 4:6-13 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Application

Whatever we think about God, he is always wanting to draw us back to His care.  This is the most we can take from this passage of Scripture, and it is a treasure, perhaps one that we were not expecting in Amos.  Whilst Amos was desperately concerned that the people of Israel had not returned to the Lord, what was impossible for Israel has now become possible for us, in Christ.

Many good people struggle with various forms of sin or godlessness and will quickly say ‘I am not worthy of the Lord’.  I have even come across Christians who have attended church services for decades and profess faith in a variety of effective ways, yet they do not feel worthy of attending a communion service.  Others will confess that they have difficulty with some habitual sin and have given up on trying to confess it.  They end up feeling unworthy and unclean before God, and unwilling to deal with some aspects of faith because of their shame.

To all such people, the message must go out to say that God is always in the business of hearing our repentance, and He will receive us whatever the circumstances.  This is God’s nature from the Old Testament to this.  Now if we can find this message even in the words of the prophet Amos, then this surely means that it is true!  Amos is known as the prophet of doom who spoke about the destruction of Israel, yet in his heart, he knew that God was a God of repentance who would always receive a sinner.  Israel did not return to her God.  Through Christ, all of us have an unending opportunity to return, so let each one take it as necessary.

Amos 4:6-13 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Discipleship

Questions (for use in groups)

1. Do we believe today that God speaks to us through the natural events and disasters of the world, as Amos did?
2. Is it wise or unwise for us to explain to other people that God might be speaking to us through events in the world around us?
3. Amos spoke about God as Creator as if this fact was the most important thing about God.  Do you agree?

Personal comments by author

It may be too much to imagine that Amos did on fact have a group of supporters in Israel.  However, there is constant evidence within the Old Testament that although the northern tribes had their own life and religious structure, different from the people in the south, many northerners were still deeply committed to the God of the forefathers.  Indeed, after the exile, the remnant of all the tribes of Israel were gathered together into the ‘Jewish’ people who survived both the destruction of the northern kingdom under Assyria in 721BC and the destruction of the south by Babylon in 597-587BC.  The Lord has never been without His witnesses and He has always sustained them; let us be those people today.

Ideas for exploring discipleship

• Look at a newspaper and read through one.  How many of the reports you read could be explained as God trying to send messages to us about justice, about what is right or wrong, about the judgement of the world, or something similar.  The Scriptures tell us that because God has made everything, He is to be found through the world in which we live if we have eyes to see Him.  Do your best to see what you can find!
• Pray for the people of the world who are trapped in faiths that limit their perception of the one true God and make them dependent upon superstitions about the weather and how people relate to natural features of the world.

Final Prayer

Help us, dear Lord, to offer ourselves to You in a true spirit of worship.  We seek to be set free to worship you in ‘spirit and truth’; and yet without Your presence by the Holy Spirit our efforts are meaningless.  Fill us with Your Spirit, we pray, so that our worship may be a natural consequence of the lives we live for You: AMEN

Bible study for Amos 5:1-9

Amos 5:1-9 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Review

(consult Dictionaries)

Amos sings a funeral lament over Israel, and his song sums up all his feelings about the nation and the tragedy of her sins against God.  Is there nothing between Israel and oblivion?

Dramatically, Amos changes the tone of his prophecy, and sings a funeral song for Israel.  It is a song in which Amos projects himself forwards in time to look back on Israel after she has been punished, and it speaks of Israel’s sins and her punishment as fixed in the heart of God.  Yet the song also contains God’s on-going plea for repentance and change, for even though Israel has rejected this call, God never stops reaching out to His people with this plea; ‘seek me and live ...’ (5:4,6).  For God stands above time and space and has all authority in earth and heaven (5:8,9).

When read, this passage does not come across in English as a song!  However, it has been translated here with simple short phrases, as is common in Hebrew poetry.  In the original language, theses phrases follow each other with a rhythmic lilt, revealing the song that lies hidden in translation.  We would love to know what kind of tune or melodic structure was sung in those days, but we must be content to focus on the message, not the medium!

Chapter five clearly marks a point of change in Amos’ prophecy, but the change is more in style than substance.  His song contains no new accusations about sin or information about God’s punishment, it continues with the same themes we have read already.  He attacks the shrines where sacrifices are brought to the Lord but people do not demonstrate a heart of worship (5:5,6, see previously 4:4,5).  He declares God’s punishment on Israel by war (5:2,3, see previously 2:14-16, 3:9-12, 4:3).  As we read on in Amos 5, we will find yet more parallels, and they all reinforce the idea that this funeral song is a summary of Amos’ prophetic message.

The first verse announces the lament, but this is where we come face to face with the drama of Amos’ prophecy (verse 2 of chapter 5).  He describes Israel as a fallen virgin, with no one to protect her.  Now, until she was married, a young woman of those days would have depended upon her father for security, so Amos’ picture of the abandoned virgin adds a sense of horror; why would a father do such a thing?

Then in the next stanza of the poem (5:3), Amos offers yet another fleeting military picture of defeat.  Each previous prophecy has offered us a snapshot of this defeat, and here, Amos describes the plight of a returning army.  Each military unit has been decimated to a tenth of its previous size, and the army as a whole has become incapable of providing the nations with protection.  At this point, Israel has lost everything and stands on the brink of annihilation.

It is exactly at this point that Amos reports God’s final plea; ‘seek me and live ...’ (5:4-6).  He goes on (in verse 5) to appeal to His people to come to Him directly and not to think that their journeys to religious shrines at Bethel or Gilgal will help them.  Indeed, not even their pious pilgrimages across Israel and Judah to Beersheba in the far south will benefit them; they must seek God Himself, not places or religious experience!

At this climactic point, Amos repeats the call of God, saying, ‘seek me ...’ (5:6), and warns that the fire of God’s final judgement is imminent.  And as if to emphasise the message, Amos turns on the stubborn Israelites of Bethel, and in verse 7, he accuses them of turning justice sour and bringing all godliness and righteousness to an end in Israel (5:7).  In this way, Amos rightly summaries the fact that failed law and empty religion will bring down a nation.

Amos’ lament summarises the state of Israel in his day, but the prophet is deeply conscious of God’s awesome power as Creator and Redeemer.  This remarkable prophet has used all kinds of rhetorical skill in declaring God’s message, yet at the very height of his message of judgement and challenge, He offers exclusive praise to the God of Creation (5:8,9).  He cannot be the victim of his own message of judgement!  He must turn to God!

Going Deeper

The Bible study goes deeper to look at these issues:

1. The structure of Amos 5
2. The lament and the punishment  (5:1-3)
3. The call of God   (5:4-7)
4. The doxology   (5:8,9)

Amos 5:1-9 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Translation Notes

(consult Dictionaries)

V1 ‘O house of Israel, hear this word that I take up against you, it is a lament.’

Other translations:

‘Hear this word, O house of Israel, this lament I take up concerning you’   (NIV)

‘Hear this word that I take up over you in lamentation, O house of Israel’   (NRSV)

 The meaning of the sentence is clear, it introduces this part of Amos’ prophecy as a ‘lament’, and it is addressed directly to Israel.  The order of the words is not important, but the meaning of it is, so I have translated the opening slightly differently to others in order to bring out this inherent meaning.

V7 ‘... and bring righteousness to a halt!’

Other translations:

‘... and cast righteousness to the ground’   (NIV)

‘... and lay righteousness to rest in the earth’   (New AV)

The Hebrew talks about righteousness being made to rest on the earth.  From a literal point of view this makes little sense, and it reads more like an arresting metaphor.  I have therefore translated this phrase with a degree more force than others, and suggest that it means bringing righteousness to a halt.  If we simply translate the metaphor in English, people readily assume that it means something like this.

V9 ‘who makes violence burst upon the strong, and brings destruction upon the fortress.’

Other translations:

‘he flashes destruction on the stronghold and brings the fortified city to ruin’   (NIV)

‘who makes destruction flash out against the strong, so that destruction comes upon the fortress’   (NRSV)

The same Hebrew word is used in the first phrase as the second, meaning ‘destruction or violence’.  Most translations simply use the same word ‘destruction’, but it seems to me to be better to use the different senses of the word to give the whole verse more meaning, for it is logical to write that ‘violence ... brings destruction’.

Amos 5:1-9 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Going Deeper

(consult Dictionaries)

The structure of Amos 5

We have looked at this passage of Scripture so far quite simply, and if you were to read any other detailed book about Amos, it would now be explained to you that this part of Amos’ prophecy is only half of a bigger poem of lament.  The structure of this poem is called ‘chiastic’, and you can find a simple explanation of this form of Hebrew writing in the Dictionary of this website.  This structure is set out below:

• (5:1-3)   Announcement of lament  
• (5:4-6)   Call to turn back  
• (5:7)   Accusation  
• (5:8-9)   Hymn of praise to God
• (5:10-13)   Accusation  
• (5:14,15)   Call to turn back  
• (5:16-17)   Announcement of lamentation  

There is undoubtedly something to be gained from this analysis of the poem, which includes today’s reading and tomorrows.  It shows us that what comes next in the poem is almost the same as what we have just read, and to western ears, this may sound repetitive.  However, I tend to sit lightly to the implications of the chiastic theory of this passage because once you have spotted the chiasm, it is easy to rearrange it in a number of ways, and various books on Amos do just this.  This reminds us that this is a theory and it does not explain everything there is about the passage!

One interesting fact about this chiastic lament is this.  It stands at the half way point in Amos, and half way through it we find the words, ‘the Lord is His Name!’ (5:8).  There is plenty of evidence elsewhere in Amos that these prophecies have been edited into their present form, by whom, we do not know (perhaps Amos or a supporter?).  It therefore seems that this editor has designed the book to give glory to God in the midst of its dire message.  Perhaps it was indeed characteristic of Amos to give praise to God in the midst of His prophetic work!

The lament and the punishment  (5:1-3)

As we read this book, the opening words of Amos’ lament come as something of a shock.  His picture of Israel stands out, because it is entirely new in Israel.  We can find reference to ‘virgin Israel’ in the prophecies of Jeremiah (18:13, 31:4,21) and Ezekiel (Ez 44:22), but these two prophets come after Amos.  Also, they use this picture to describe God’s relationship with Israel as like a man who marries a pure virgin.  Amos uses the picture in a totally different way. 

We have already seen how this picture tragically illustrates God’s abandonment of Israel, but it suggests more.  The death of a virgin is surely a tragedy because she has been cut off in her prime and before she could live fruitfully and bear children.  In this way, Amos reminds his hearers that the death of Israel means that there will be no more descendants.  The young woman Israel has died before she could bear the fruit God intended.  Looking at Scripture as a whole, we are entitled to reckon that the intended fruit is surely witnessing to God in the world and being a means of God’s grace to all, and a ‘light to the nations’ (Isaiah 42:9, 49:9).  Did Isaiah know these words of Amos and understand them, before he came out with his own prophecy, ‘a virgin will conceive and bear a child ...’ (Isaiah 7:14)?  It is possible

The connections between Amos and other prophets is extensive.  If Jeremiah and Ezekiel did not use the picture of virgin Israel in the same way as Amos, they certainly used his idea of pronouncing a funeral dirge over the nation.  Both these later great prophets spoke lamentations (Jeremiah 7:29f. and Ezekiel 19:1, 26:18, 32:2f.), and Jeremiah is well known for the additional writings often ascribed to him, the book of Lamentations.

The next verse in this lament is more interesting than we might think.  Verse 3 describes the decimation of an army.  You may have spotted the fact that the word ‘decimation’ which is in common use today describes this verse exactly, for Amos says the army is reduced to one tenth (Latin – ‘decima’).  Now it seems that Amos point is that an army that is so reduced is incapable of providing a defence, but the fact one tenth survive the fight could be significant.  Throughout the whole of Amos, we are left asking the question, is there any hope for anyone in the midst of this disaster?

The call of God   (5:4-7)

In truth, Amos always seems to prophecy the ‘final solution’ of God’s absolute judgment, but at the same time, leave the door open for the possibility of repentance.  For example, why does he describe God’s call to repent here in a lamentation?  The lament happens after death, so one would have thought that once the body is dead, there is no hope?

We must be careful and watch to whom Amos addresses his prophecies, for he formerly addressed Israel as a nation state, but here in this prophecy he seems to present God’s appeal to individuals, offering his clear advice about how to find God.  They will certainly not find Him, he says, by doing the religious rounds of the day and visiting Bethel and Gilgal (5:5), or travelling the longer distance across Judah to the homelands of Abraham and Isaac, in Beersheba.  Specifically, Amos says that Gilgal will be exiled, and the sanctuary at Bethel will ‘come to nothing’.  Now the only circumstances in which a sanctuary such as Bethel would cease to be regarded as holy would be if the people who lived in the region did not believe in God!  So this prophecy suggests that after her judgement, Israel will no longer be the residents in the Promised Land!

All this sounds horrific, but we should note that having been tempted to unpick the prophecy we have begun to think not just about the future of Israel as a state, but what will happen to individual people.  Amos’ lamentation has pronounced the death of Israel, but there seem to be hints that individuals will survive this judgement.  Beyond the death of Israel as a state, people will be left who will face choices about how to respond to what has happened and how to re-connect with God.  If God’s plea ‘seek me and live’ (5:4) cannot be responded to by a state that has died, but it can be heard by individuals who have experienced the trauma of judgment.

The doxology   (5:8,9)

The praise of God found in verses 8 and 9 sounds a little strange to our ears because Amos describes God as the Creator of celestial constellations!  Job is the only other writer who does anything similar (9:9f. and 38:31f.), and Amos praises God in similar ways three times (4:13, 5:8, 9:5,6).  Why would Amos praise God in this way?

The answer lies in the life and times of Israel and the people who lived in Canaan in those days.  Ancient people of all kinds used to attribute great power to the stars and the constellations, and part of the way that they understood ‘the gods’ was to ascribe to them power over these celestial bodies.  The whole of Genesis is written to stand against such religious speculation, declaring firmly that God is in charge of all His creation, and that the days the seasons and all the world of life is dictated not by celestial bodies but by a benevolent God.  In this prophecy, Amos stands foursquare in the Israelite tradition of ascribing all creation to God, but he is remarkable in that together with Job and the writer of Genesis, he is the only Biblical writer to describe the stars and constellations as coming under the authority of the supreme God and Lord of all.

In this text, God is not just higher than the stars, He is also the one responsible for controlling the waters, just as in the Genesis account of Creation (5:8), and the One who turns night into day and day into night.  By inference, this makes Him the God of the seasons, which have their own pattern of day and night (see Genesis 1:14).  Verse 8 is only a small part of Amos’ great prophecy, but its strong connection with Genesis is a remarkable feature of the prophecy, and it begs all kinds of questions about how familiar the people of his day were with the stories of Genesis as we know them now.

Of course, Amos purpose was to declare the authoritative ‘name of the Lord’ (5:8), the One responsible for all things, and ultimately responsible for the punishment that was to come of Israel.  He alone had the authority to bring violence on earth and control it for His purposes (5:9).

Amos 5:1-9 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Application

It is not common for anyone to find much hope in Amos, for on the surface, his prophecies are profoundly gloomy.  His main message is always that Israel is about to be judged by God and this will come in the form of some kind of military action that will bring bloodshed and horror.  If we are to get anything out of reading this book, then we must come to terms with this awful message and what it means.  However, there is arguably a message of hope in Amos.  Some scholars think that this message of hope only surfaces in the last chapter, after Amos raises the prospect of hope through God’s raising of the ‘booth of David’ (9:11).  But I would suggest that it can be found, albeit tentatively, in other places, and chapter 5 is one of those places.

This passage suggests several things about the message of hope.  Firstly, it comes only after God’s punishment of Israel for her sins, signified here by the death of Israel, the ‘fallen virgin’ (5:2).  Secondly, the message of hope is addressed to individuals who are seeking God, rather than to the structured state that was the old northern kingdom of Israel.  Thirdly, the message of hope is a call to ‘seek God’ in whom life may be found.  This is a profoundly Gospel message, and it challenges us today to think that God has had the elements of His Gospel message in His mind for centuries.

The Gospel does not arise as if by magic in the first century AD.  This has been God’s plan from the beginning, and He has always called people to turn to Him and live.  He does this today by calling people to look at Jesus and find their hope in Him.  Moreover, when the Gospel is preached, the words ‘seek me and live’ (5:4) are not taken from Amos inappropriately.  If Amos could catch a glimpse of the Gospel in the midst of the tragedy of the sins of Israel, then the Gospel can surely cut through the wretchedness of our world today. That is, if we, like Amos, will believe the impossible.

Amos 5:1-9 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Discipleship

Questions (for use in groups)

1. What do you think is meant by Amos’ words ‘seek me and live’?
2. Amos has been accused of using what we might call ‘hell fire and damnation’ techniques.  Can they ever work?
3. Discuss how it is possible to praise God in the midst of a dire personal trouble.

Personal comments by author

Amos spoke with such conviction he prophesied as if his own prophecy had already come true!  Now that was conviction!  Some, however, have said that Amos was deluded, and merely exaggerated what was going on in  Israel.  Clearly, Amos was deeply affected by the sin within the worship life of God’s people, and spoke out because of this.  Now each one of us will feel deeply about some things in the life of the church, or about matters of faith.  Our own convictions are important, and if we submit them to God for His use, then they can be turned to good.  In my own life, I have realised that I must submit my deep feelings about the state of the church and the state of theology as it is taught in training colleges, to Him.  Then, and then only can He use this concern in me for some good in the world, just as He used the prophet Amos

Ideas for exploring discipleship

• Amos was clearly affected by what he perceived as the wrongful worship of God within the shrines of Israel.  Forgetting issues to do with music and worship styles, is there anything wrong with the ‘heart of worship’ amongst God’s people today?  If so, forget about mere criticism of this, what will the consequences of it be.
• Pray for any people you know who are seeking to worship the Lord their God and find it hard to feel that they can indeed worship Him in the services provided by local churches.

Final Prayer

Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, we ask that may we never be oppressed by the troubles we endure, but offer You the fruit of our life of faith.  We offer You the words we say, the deeds we do, the love we share, the hopes we have and the joys that brighten our lives.  Lift our hearts we pray, this and every day; AMEN

Bible study for Amos 5:10-17

Amos 5:10-17 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Review

(consult Dictionaries)

Amos continues to hammer out his blunt message; although Israel has turned away from her God and become corrupt with injustice, God is still holding our His hand of compassion.  He is heartbroken at her rejection.

Our passage today follows on from what we read yesterday, and apart from the song of praise at the end (5:8,9), it repeats the same themes.  This funeral song stands at the very centre of Amos’ message, and it demonstrates perfectly the tension between God’s righteous judgement and His compassion.  Israel cannot avoid the just punishment of God for her sins, but this does not mean to say that God has stopped loving her.  In God’s heart, there is always room for those who hear His call to repentance, and return.

When we studied these same themes yesterday (5:1-9), we came to a radical conclusion.  Despite the dreadful consequences of Israel’s sin, God still stands ready to accept those who ‘seek the Lord’ (5:6, see 5:14).  This theme of hope is not presented openly, but it is the only thing we can conclude if we are to understand Amos’ lament.  The song is constructed very carefully, and on the one hand it is sung after Israel’s death (5:16,17) because of sin (5:10-13), but on the other hand, God still speaks to ‘what is left of Jacob’ (5:15) after the nation has died.  Surely, some have survived, but not as a nation.

Christians may be tempted to latch on to this glimmer of hope for Israel.  It tempts us to look forward to later Old Testament prophecies that speak more specifically of the survival of God’s people despite national defeat.  For example, Isaiah and Jeremiah both look forward to when the remnant of the Jewish people survive exile and return to Jerusalem.  The hope of such a transformation is crystallised in their hope for a Messiah, and this hope is fulfilled in Jesus.  But we cannot afford to run away with our thoughts.  This passage remains a song of lament, and our duty is to attempt to understand this tension between ‘crime’, and ‘punishment’.

This passage says yet more about Israel’s sins, and highlights the social injustices of a nation that had become corrupt in its wealth.  Now from ancient times, elders who gathered at the city gates decided all legal matters (5:10).  They gathered to do business, decide disputes, and settle community affairs (e.g. Ruth 4:1-12).  But this legal system had been corrupted by bribery (5:12), so that the rich could manipulate justice and ‘trample’ the poor (5:11,12).  This evil was abhorrent to God’, as the Law given to Moses clearly says when it defends the rights of the poor (Lev 23:22, Num 13:20, Deut 24:14).

Such injustice and inhumanity is unacceptable to God, and it brings down His wrath on those who do it, whether in Israel or today.  So, with a none too subtle twist of words, Amos reminds Israel of what God has done in the past by saying ‘I will pass right through you’ (5:17).  These Hebrew words remind the reader of the dreadful angel of death who tore through Egypt the night Israel was liberated (Exodus 12); there would be no escape from God’s justice!

Yet the whole poem makes no sense unless we explore what it says about those who survive this punishment.  Who are these people who mourn after Israel has been destroyed by God’s wrath (5:16)?  Surely, some have survived because they have responded to God’s call to turn from evil and ‘seek good’ (5:14).  Remember, when Amos speaks of seeking ‘good’, he is not speaking about abstract morality, he means only God Himself.  The phrase, ‘seek good and not evil’ (5:14), echoes Amos’ earlier call ‘seek the Lord and live’ (5:6), and this shows that there is no difference between the two.  To seek good means to seek God, and seeking God means making right moral choices.  The two are inseparable.

So we must conclude that Amos’ shocking lament tells us that Israel has been killed by God.  It also tells us that this has happened because of the dire moral state of the nation.  But we cannot escape the powerful conclusion that Amos saw not only the absolute judgement of Israel and her death.  He also foresaw the salvation of individuals who would repent and live.  There is always more to Amos than we think!

Going Deeper

The Bible study goes deeper to look at these issues:

• Justice and the rejection of God   (5:10-13)
• Making moral choices   (5:14,15)
• God’s judgement in ‘real life’   (5:16,17)

Amos 5:10-17 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Translation Notes

(consult Dictionaries)

V10 ‘they hate the judge at the gate’

Other translations:

‘you hate the one who reproves in court’   (NIV)

‘They hate the one who reproves in the gate’   (NRSV)

The Hebrew word I have translated ‘judge’, and translated by others as ‘one who reproves’ means ‘one who makes decisions’, and elsewhere in  Scripture, the word is used of God who rebuke His people.  However, I reckon that the word means something different when used of people, and it seems to me that the natural logic of the word suggests it means ‘judge’.  A judge is quite literally, ‘one who makes decisions’.

V12 ‘For I know about your many crimes, and the great number of your sins.’

Other translations:

‘For I know how many are your offences and how great your sins.’   (NIV)

‘For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins’   (NRSV)

The other translations suggest that Israel’s sins and transgressions are great in number and large in sinfulness.  However, the Hebrew uses words that suggest only largeness in quantity.  For t his reason, my translation suggests nothing about how bad the sins are and focuses exclusively on the large number of them.

V15 ‘it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to what is left of Joseph’

Other translations:

‘Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.’   (NIV)

‘it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph’   (NRSV)

The various modern translations refer to the ‘remnant’ of Joseph.  Now the concept of the ‘remnant’ is a theological issue connected with the prophet Isaiah.  The Hebrew word for ‘the remainder’, or ’what is left’ is found here in Amos, but there is no developed theology of the ‘remnant in Amos as there is in Isaiah.  For this reason, it is better to translate the Hebrew verb as we would if we did not know that the ‘remnant’ would later become a significant theological matter of debate, after the time of Isaiah.  My translation does just this.

V16 ‘cry in anguish’

Other translations:

‘Alas, alas!’   (NRSV)

The Hebrew poetry here has two words ‘Ah, Ah’, and these were cries of anguish and woe.  I have preferred to explain this in translation rather than try and find a similar expression in English, for although the word ’alas’ is a feature of old English, it does not help the modern reader.

Amos 5:10-17 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Going Deeper

(consult Dictionaries)

Justice and the rejection of God   (5:10-13)

Because we have very complex systems of centralised and state controlled justice, we do not easily understand the way that justice worked in ancient times.  In those days, justice was far more ‘local’; it was practiced in the open air and was available to all.  A gathering in a city gate by city elders was all that was needed to settle disputes or to decide family inheritance issues, for example.  In his prophecy, Amos paints a picture of disregard for this common justice meted out in public.  He describes people who ‘hate the judge in the gate’ (5:10), because they want to achieve their own ends in their own ways.  Truth is their enemy, of course, for their intention is to manipulate the system for personal gain.

Amos then makes a series of accusations against those of his own day who oppressed the poor.  He identifies them as overlords who had rented out land to people so that they could make a living, but not content with this, they extracted oppressive taxes to bolster their income.  More than this, Amos describes these landlords as living in houses they did not built themselves and drinking wine from vineyards they had not grow themselves (5:11).  This suggests that such people had taxed the people of the land out of their homes and had taken them in payment!

Such activities were abhorrent to God!  For when Israel was divided up after the occupation, the ownership of land was granted to people in their tribes as from the Lord (Lev 25:23f.).  Moses then gave laws that required the return of lands to families on a periodic basis, to ensure that no one could gain wealth through land ownership (see the principles of Jubilee, as found in Lev 25:10).  The principle set out was that the land belonged to God firstly, and to the people according to His will.

Such godliness had long since been abandoned.  Going back a few decades, the Old Testament contains a story about King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, who contrived to strip Naboth of his vineyard on the grounds that the King wanted it, and his queen made his wish come true by having the owner slaughtered (1 Kings 21).  This story is found in 1 Kings primarily to tell us that the sins of Israel were rooted in their monarchs.  If this was how their leaders behaved, then it is not surprising that corruption was rife in Israel.

Amos declares boldly that God knows all about such things.  Now those who commit such sins frequently believe that they can control the consequences of their actions, and they maintain this control largely by oppression.  However, such a person ignores God, and does so at his peril!  The sins of oppression, the unjust application of taxes, and the accumulation of wealth at the expense of others, can be all identified within Israel either here or elsewhere in the Biblical record (e.g. Isaiah 3:14f.).  Here, Amos tersely describes the fine living of the elite in their houses of ‘cut stone’ (5:11).  The evidence of Israel’s sin is highly visible!

Making moral choices   (5:14,15)

In a brief comment found in 5:13, Amos comments that a prudent man will keep silent when such evil abounds.  This is strange advice, for we might think that someone should speak out.  However, we should try and imagine what Amos means by saying this here.  One way of reading this text is to perceive that it carries straight on into the next phrase ‘seek good and not evil’ (5:14).  When read together, Amos’ advice is that people should quietly seek God, at a time when He is active to judge His people.  The individual should seek the mercy of God rather than to be so presumptive as to attempt to do God’s work for Him!

However, Amos did not remain silent; he was a servant of God and following His orders!  He was uniquely called to stand at Bethel and prophesy to crowds at one of the great religious festivals of Israel, and announce God’s judgement.  This was his call, and this phrase suggests that his advice to all others was that they should not follow his example and attempt to prophesy, but seek the Lord for themselves.  This is no bad advice.

In this way, Amos sets out a route for ordinary Israelites to know again the presence of their God. We can imagine that if Amos spoke like this at Bethel and some of the crowd accepted that he was right, then they would have wanted to hear how they could escape the terrible state they were in.  They may have agreed with Amos that God’s judgement was coming on their land, perhaps they were the poor and disposed people and they immediately knew that Amos spoke the truth.

Astonishingly, Amos says nothing about setting up a new shrine or starting again but perhaps with only pure people; he says only that God’s people should seek Him (5:14).  This message sounds remarkably similar to the Gospel and is not what we might expect from an Old Testament prophet let alone someone as early as Amos, who was one of the first of all the prophets.  He goes on to add some other instructions to those who sought God, telling them to ‘hate evil’, and to ‘maintain justice in the gate’.  We should not forget that this positive attitude and support of justice is important, and it follows on from a mere attitude of seeking God.  Positive and moral decision making reflects true goodness and true godliness, and God urges His people to embrace life in this way especially when the world seems filled with evil.

God’s judgement in ‘real life’   (5:16,17)

God had already decided to punish Israel for her sins and the punishment set.  As Amos sings the song of lament, it had already begun, for ‘virgin Israel has fallen’ (5:2).  To remind the people of what was happening, Amos’ prophecy paints a picture of lamentation that was all too familiar to people of ancient times.  The picture he paints sounds poetic;

• ‘In every town square there will be wailing;
•   and in every street they will cry in anguish.
• They will summon the farmers to weep
•   and the professional mourners to wail;
• in every vineyard there will be wailing ...

In those days, professional mourners would have been used, just as they are in some parts of the world today, in order to give common public expression of grief.  This is a picture of mourning at the judgement of God, but if someone of Amos’ day had read this, first impressions would suggest that this was a description of the public mourning accompanying a drought.  The whole community was involved in such circumstances, for no one could escape the consequences of a drought.  Even farmers were called in from the fields to share the mourning because in a drought, they had no work to do.  Crops had failed!  Amos used this picture to say to the people of his own day that the judgement of God was like a drought over Israel.  Just as real food ran out in a drought, so God’s patience and His presence had ‘run out’.

In a terrible twist to the prophecy, Amos declares that the sins of Israel mean that she will suffer the same fate as that of the Pharaoh of Egypt who would not let Israel go when she was in Egypt.  His stubborn nature meant that God eventually tore through the land in and angel of death, which killed all Egypt’s firstborn (Exodus 12).  The horror of this event was celebrated by Israelites regularly each year at the Passover Festival, and all Israelites knew the story.  Amos does not say much, but by raising the picture, Israelite would have know full well what he was saying.

Amos 5:10-17 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Application

There are some subtle lessons for us in this passage of Scripture.  To begin with, it seems clear that Amos did not advocate everyone doing what he did (see verses 13 and 14).  He was called to speak out, but not all people are asked by God to do the same.  God calls each person to a distinct task within the economy of His Kingdom, so that His will is done, moreover, each person must keep faithful to the task given if God’s will is to ultimately succeed.  Some people do not like to think that God’s will is made subject to the efforts of ordinary people in this way, but the evidence of Scripture is that this is how God works with people, both in Old Testament times and in New.  He chooses to depend upon us, and he equips us for tasks in ways we cannot understand.  In addition, His will is done even when we fail!  This may be hard to understand in a mortal world, but we must accept God’s ways!

The other important message of this text comes from Amos’ absolute insistence that godliness and goodness are one and the same thing.  Today, people will quickly say that doing good is not what God requires, and then make the case for ‘salvation by faith’ against ‘salvation by works’.  From the perspective of an argument about the nature of salvation, this is understandable.  However, Amos’ point is different, and must be accepted.  God is the author of all good, and as such, the one who seeks to be close to God cannot avoid the obligation to do good.  This is done not to try and make a show of personal holiness, but simply because it is right.

We live in an age when the judgement of God may be seen in events all around us, so all God’s people need to hear Amos’ advice about how to survive in such circumstances.  There is more in this passage, but it may be enough for most people to face the challenge to seek God and ensure that they make positive moral choices for good.

Amos 5:10-17 (get text)   Study links:  / Review / Notes / Going Deeper / Application / Discipleship /

Discipleship

Questions (for use in groups)

1. Discuss how much of the Gospel you can find in this text.  How much more do we need from the New Testament?
2. What do you believe to be the worst forms of corruption to plague your own society, and to what extent are they a violation of your nation’s godly heritage?
3. Why would God use war to judge people in the past, and does He do the same today?

Personal comments by author

I find this passage of scripture deeply challenging.  I am shocked every time I read something in the newspapers or hear on the news that justice is available to the rich and not to the poor; and I thought that England was a just society!  Unfortunately, justice must be purchased, in one way or the other, and some people are adept at buying the justice they want.  I am ashamed that this happens within my own country and I often pray that God will re-work it!  God will certainly judge the many people who abuse it.

Ideas for exploring discipleship

• Listen to the news one day over this week and note how many instances you come across of greed, selfishness and corruption that have adversely affected society and the world.  People who act in this way might believe that what they do will not affect others too badly, but how wrong they are; consider what can be done about what you have read.
• Pray for God’s people to rise up against injustice and to speak out against what is wrong within this world, using ever means possible, the internet and every other form of communication.

Final Prayer

For every minute of this day when we have forgotten to live according to Your call, O God, forgive us.  And by Your grace, remind us through others when we fall short of the principles of Christian discipleship; death to self and new life through Christ.  Through Him who has lived and died, and lives again; Jesus Christ our Lord, AMEN