Friday, September 19
Amos 2.1-16: Between Edom and Ammon sits the fertile plain of Moab. Its citizens, like those of Ammon, were descended from Lot, the offspring of his two daughters (Genesis 19:37-39). Hence they, like the Edomites, were related by blood to the children of Israel.
They, too, likewise fall under the censure of Amos (verses 1-3), specifically for the desecration of a tomb. Special mention is made of Kerioth, the cultic center of the Moabite god Chemosh.
Next comes the condemnation of Judah (verses 4-5), the nation of Amos himself (1:1). This condemnation differs from all the preceding in two ways. First, it does not single out any “social” sins, such as the slave trade (1:6,9), torture and slaughter (1:3), abortion (1:13), warfare (1:11), and tomb desecration (2:1). Second, offense of Judah is less specific. In the eyes of Amos, Judah has just lost its way in general.
At this point those listening to Amos may have breathed a sigh of relief. The prophet, having spoken against Judah, had reached the number seven (as we hope the attentive reader has noticed), the number of completion, so the listeners could be excused if they imagined him to be finished. So far, so good, they thought. Amos had done the complete number, but he had not mentioned them. In fact, they may have gone on to reflect, this Amos is making a lot of sense. He has identified all the bad guys, and it’s not us!
Imagine their shock, therefore, when Amos turned on them. He did so, moreover, for a full eleven verses, more than three times the length of any previous condemnation. No, said the prophet, Israel would not be spared. For its oppression of the poor (verse 6), its prostitution (verse 7), and its religious hypocrisy (verse 8), Israel deserved more punishment than those who had inhabited the Holy Land before them (verse 9).
No strength of their own would deliver Israel, he insisted. God is singularly unimpressed by the things that fallen man strives for, and He is not on the side of the strong (verses 13-16).
If the citizens of Israel felt, at this point, that Amos was laying it on a bit thick, they were not about to feel relieved. He still had seven more chapters to go.
The Apostle Paul faced this problem at Corinth, where the Holy Eucharist itself, that supreme, definitive ritual of the biblical religion, was being desecrated by the participation of the uncharitable and unrepentant. Thus, since very early in Christian history, evidenced already in 1 Corinthians 10—11, there have been worshippers who treated even the Lamb of God with the same moral insouciance that the Old Testament sinner sometimes showed to that ritual sheep that he handed over for sacrifice in the temple.
The sin of such a man comes from his inadequate, truly pathetic idea of God: “Wickedly you thought I was like you.”
Saturday, September 20
Amos 3: This next section of Amos is made up of sermons that begin with “Hear!” (3:1-5:6) or “Woe!” (5:7-6:14). They are all directed against Israel, its capital Samaria sometimes serving as the equivalent of the whole nation.
The previous chapter had ended with a reminder of God’s redemptive favors toward His people (2:9-11). Israel is now chastised for failing to respond to the Lord’s generous call. They alone, of all the peoples of the earth had the Lord acknowledged as His own consecrated people. Therefore, of them was more expected, and their punishment will be correspondingly more severe (verse 2).
We suspect that the people of Israel, at this point, challenged the credentials of Amos to address them in such terms, because we suddenly find him defending his mission to speak (verses 3-8).
As we shall see, this was not the only occasion when Amos was thus challenged, and in this respect he puts the Christian reader in mind of the Apostle Paul who, beginning with the Epistle to the Galatians, seems always to have that preoccupation in at least the back of his mind. Prophets, apostles, pastors — they all have their credentials challenged from time to time.
In his own apologia Amos compares himself to a lion, which roars from instinct in certain situations. The lion can’t help it. When it is time to roar, hr roars (cf. 1:2). It is the same with the prophet. When it is time to prophesy, he can’t help it. He roars, as though by instinct. And in the present time, Amos observes, there is certainly a great deal to roar about.
That point settled for the time being, Amos returns to the attack, decrying the violence and oppression prevalent in Israel (verse 9), where a recent period of prosperity has destroyed the people’s moral sense 9verrse 10).
From his experience as a shepherd (1:1), Amos knows about finding the remnants of sheep devoured by wild beasts. This, he says, is an image of what will be left of Israel after the departure of the invader who is to come. We readers know that this prophecy was fulfilled scarcely a generation later, when Israel fell to the forces of Assyria in 722.
Amos finishes this chapter with references to the luxurious lifestyle of Israelites that own more than one home, all extravagantly adorned (verse 15). His testimony on this point is amply illustrated and proved by the modern archeology on the sites of Israelite cities of the period.
Sunday, September 21
Amos 4: Continuing his theme on the pampered life of the oppressors, Amos turns next to idle wives of wealthy Israelites, the women whom he rather harshly compares to well fed cattle. (These comments arouse a suspicion that Amos was rarely invited to soirees and other get-togethers in these ladies’ homes. There is reason to believe that John the Baptist later had the same experience. Prophets are rarely invited to parties and high-scale receptions.)
It is particularly curious that Amos here mentions alcoholism as characteristic of this eight-century upper set. In this respect he sounds fairly contemporary to our own times, when alcoholism and drug addiction are commonly associated with wealthy, indolent women.
Naming the cities where such abuse takes place, Amos next condemns the hypocritical worship of those that live for themselves and use worship in order to salve their dirt consciences (verses 4-5). We know that he preached these sermons at those very shrines (7:10-17), causing consternation among the worshippers. We know that Isaiah, at about the same time, was making identical remarks about the worshippers further south (Isaiah 1:10-15).
On occasion the Lord has attempted, hitherto, to chasten and instruct His people by sending various trials upon them, says Amos, all to no avail (verses 6-11). Five times in these verses Amos speaks of the people’s failure to “return.” Each opportunity missed, of course, renders future repentance more unlikely, and Israel is about to run out of further chances. Although God’s mercy has no limits, apparently His patience does.
In considering the afflictions described by Amos, it is instructive to recall that these climatic and environmental conditions rose easily in the mind of a rural man (7:14), who knew by experience the truly precarious state of human survival. A delayed rain, an especially fertile year of locusts or caterpillars, and many a farmer has watched his crop wither or be devoured in an afternoon, destroyed while he stood watching, unable to do anything about it. (In my youth, I watched locusts devour a field of several acres, all the way to the ground, in thirty minutes.)
Let the prosperous cities of Israel remember, then, the lot of Sodom and the fate of Gomorrah (verse 11), overthrown in an hour and gone forever. Amos here may have an earthquake in mind (cf. 1:1).
In the ministry of Amos, then, the Lord mercifully offers Israel one last chance to repent (verse 12).
Monday, September 22
Luke 7.11-17: When the Holy Spirit prompts us to proclaim, “Jesus is Lord,” that proclamation has specific reference to His resurrection from the dead. It essentially has the same meaning as, “Christ in risen!”
This is certainly what Luke had in mind when he wrote today’s story of the widow and her son. This is the first story in Luke’s Gospel where Jesus is referred to as “Kyrios” or “Lord,” the title which belongs to Jesus by virtue of His Resurrection. Luke writes, “When the Lord saw her . . .” A failure to observe that detail is to miss an important dimension of the story
Judges 19: We come now to a horror story, a nightmare. There is a growing sense of darkness, beginning with physical darkness and going to deeper moral shadows. The unfortunate woman is thrown out into the dark, where she is gang raped all night long. After enduring unspeakable brutality, she dies at daybreak.
There is a great irony, of course, in the fact that the Levite did not want to spend the night among pagans. He wanted to sleep secure, surrounded by his fellow Israelites. He lengthened his journey for this very purpose.
We must bear in mind that this is not a story about pagans. All the characters in this account are children of the covenant.
Gibeah, however, has become as bad as Sodom. Indeed, there are striking parallels between this story and that in Genesis 19.
There is also the cruelty of the Levite himself, who abandons his wife (for “concubine” in context means only a wife of inferior rank) to the cruelty of the mob. He has clearly not forgiven his wife for her infidelity. He is morally worse than she. This compromised individual is no man of God.
It is instructive that Hosea is the only prophet ever to mention this distressing incident at Gibeah, and he does so three times (5:8; 9:9; 10:9). Obviously Hosea, who also was married to an unfaithful wife, thought a great deal about this story and its potential lessons. Indeed, Hosea’s own treatment of his wife is a fruitful matter of contrast with the behavior of the Levite in this chapter.
Tuesday, September 23
Amos 6: This short chapter is the prophet’s third “woe,” which foretells destruction and exile for the socially irresponsible, pleasure loving, and self-satisfied rulers of both Israel and Judah (verse 1). If they doubt Amos on this point, let them consider the plight of other unjust nations (verse 2).
There is a chronological problem here, inasmuch as all three of these cities were destroyed after the lifetime of Amos (Calneh in 738, Hamath in 720, and Gath in 711), though he speaks of their destruction as something that his listeners can go and inspect for themselves.
Since this latter consideration seems to exclude the possibility that Amos is simply speaking of a future event in the past tense (which, as we have seen, he sometimes does), it seems likely that a later editor of this book may have adjusted verse 2.
The northern tribes—that is, Joseph—yet enjoy their luxurious living (verses 4-6), but not for long (verses 7-8). The prophet’s reference to a feast conducted during “the affliction of Joseph” puts the attentive reader in mind of Genesis 37:23-25—“So it came to pass, when Joseph had come to his brothers, that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors that was on him. Then they took him and cast him into a pit. And the pit was empty; there was no water in it. And they sat down to eat a meal.”
The people’s exile will be preceded by siege and famine (verses 9-11).
By his rhetorical questions (verse 12) Amos appeals to the people’s sense of what is normal, conceivable, and possible. Horses and oxen need soil, not rock, on which to walk and work. Israel, he declares is showing less sense of reason than these dumb beasts.
Wednesday, September 24
Judges 21: The governing motif of this chapter is rebirth for the tribe of Benjamin.
It begins with a problem. The other Israelites have taken a vow not to let their daughters marry Benjaminites. This is the problem. No one had instructed them to make that vow, and now the vow has created a serious difficulty. They had taken the vow <i>before</i> they offered the sacrifice of reconciliation. They had acted with a split mind, doing things that were mutually opposed. This is an example of a rash vow, of the sort that Jephthe made. Such vows often enough create bigger problems than those they were supposed to solve. Anyway, this is the problem governing the present chapter, and the Israelites themselves caused it.
The story is full of irony, of course. For example, it ends at the shrine city of Shiloh, one of the ancient words for “peace.” The scene, however, is anything but peaceful.
How do we explain all this contradiction and activity at cross-purposes? The chapter’s final verse does the best it can for an explanation. Namely, everybody was following his own inclination and preference. “Everybody do what you want,” though a slogan not without popular appeal in our own times, is a formula for chaos, and what we have here toward the end of Judges is a chaotic situation.
Still, the Book of Judges finishes with an act of deliverance and a new birth. Benjamin is spared. It does not disappear from history, as did Simeon and Reuben. From the tribe of Benjamin, in fact, would come, in due course, the Apostle Paul. This final chapter, then, is about God’s fidelity even in the midst of irony and chaos.
Amos 7.1-17: Each of the next three chapters contains at least one “vision,” in which Amos perceives various dimensions of his own vocation and the divine judgment to which the Lord has summoned him to bear witness.
The first of these is a vision of locusts, one of man most threatening natural enemies (verses 1-3). In response to the intercessions of the prophet, this plague is canceled.
The second vision is the brush fire, another formidable enemy of human survival (verses 4-6). Once again, the people are spared by God’s mercy at the intercession of Amos.
The third vision is the plumb line (verses 7-9), an instrument designed to determine “uprightness.” This tool is a metaphor for the standard of righteousness that will guide the divine judgment. Whereas the locusts and the brush fire were images of irrational destruction, the plumb line is the symbol of objective, detached assessment. In this instance, Amos here does not pray. Plumb lines, like all instruments of measure, enjoy a dispassion and objectivity that are without remorse or personal feelings.
Thursday, September 17
1 Chronicles 1: In First Chronicles the pre-monarchical part of human history (that is, prior to the reign of David, which began about 1000 B.C.) is reduced to hardly more than an outline, in some places simply a name list (Chapters 1—9). By leaving out the details of human history prior to David’s monarchy, the Chronicler conveys the impression that everything that happened prior to David was a preparation for the covenant that God made with David. Indeed, the real covenant of the Lord is that with David. In Chronicles all the earlier covenants (with Noah, with Abraham, and even with Moses) appear diminished by comparison. If the Chronicler would not regard the founding of the Northern Kingdom, the schismatic Kingdom of Israel, with so much as an explicit mention, it was because that kingdom was founded in opposition to the Davidic covenant.
Still, the Chronicler places the history of Israel with human history. Thus, he commences with Adam, the single father of humanity, and his extensive genealogies of early man demonstrate what one historical calls “evidence of an ecumenical concern.” Israel’s history is regarded as the high point of human history. The New Testament will later extend this perspective by tracing the genealogy of Jesus all the way back to Adam (Luke 3:23-38).
Amos 8.1-14: The prophet’s fourth vision also comes from the farm; it is a basket of summer fruit (verses 1-3). The message associated with this vision, although perfectly clear to the first hearers of Amos, is a bit difficult to grasp without recourse to the original Hebrew. The summer fruit (qayis) suggests “ripeness” (haqes), the sense being “the end is nigh.” This is a reference to the imminence of “the day of the Lord.”
Greed and a worldly spirit have been the dominating sins of the people who suffer the accusations of Amos. They have kept all the proper religious and liturgical rules. They would not think of violating the prescribed days of rest, such as the weekly Sabbath and the monthly New Moon (Numbers 28:11-15; Colossians 2:16), but what good has come of it? It has simply provided them with more leisure to plot new ways of acquiring unjust gain!
Their perfectly observed religious practices have had no beneficial influence on the quality of their worldly hearts, which are still consumed with greed and the relentless acquisition of wealth at the expense of the needy and the weak (verses 4-6).
Amos describes the punishment destined for these offenders (verses 7-10). In this description Amos reminds his listeners of the awful darkness they had all beheld during the total eclipse of the sun over the Holy Land on June 15, 763 B.C.
Friday, September 26
1 Chronicles 2: Now we begin the genealogies of the “Israelites.” Indeed, we here observe, for the first time, that Chronicles habitually refers to Jacob by the name “Israel,” the name he received after his famous wrestling match at Peniel (verse 1). Whereas the name Jacob denotes that very interesting historical character to whom so many interesting things happened, the name Israel denotes more especially the patriarch of the twelve tribes, the man who gave his name to the twelve tribes.
In the genealogies of Chronicles, beginning with this chapter, we also observe that far greater prominence and elaboration are accorded the tribes of Judah and Levi, the kingly and priestly households. Taking Chronicles as a whole, Judah will get 102 verses and Levi 81 verses, whereas all the other tribes together will receive only 126 verses. For the Chronicler, writing long after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians in 722 B.C., only Judah and Levi were of immediate moment, and he was very eager to demonstrate the support of the priestly tribe for the covenanted royal house of David. Hence, this dominance of Levi and Judah in his genealogies.
Amos 9.1-15: The prophet’s final vision is the altar at which the Lord stands to commence the day of judgment (verses 1-6). This is apparently the altar in the shrine at Bethel. The burden of this message is that no one will escape the judgment of God, for the whole universe belongs to Him, and no one can hide from His presence.
The closing verses introduce a reassessment of the very notion of Israel as God’s “chosen” people. Chosen for what? For privilege? Hardly. For responsibility, rather, at which the people have abjectly failed.
It has become obvious to Amos that if God chose Israel, it was for reasons larger than Israel, which has so thoroughly repudiated the implications of His choice. The history of all nations, in fact, is under His sway, and the history of Israel fits into the larger designs of His heart.
For that reason, the destruction of Samaria is not the end of God’s interest in the world. Judah yet remains (verse 8), and God has other purposes in mind in the sometimes-violent sifting processes of history (verse 9).
The Northern Kingdom was never party to an independent covenant. The house of David was, however, and the Lord will honor that covenant (verse 11).
Christian readers correctly see in this proclamation the promise of the Messiah, in whom will converge all the developments of history.
Thus, the nations condemned in the opening two chapters of this book are blessed on its final page.