DOOM OR DISCIPLINE?
Amo 8:4-9
WE now enter the Third Section of the Book of
Amos: chapters 7-9. As we have already treated the first part of
it-the group of four visions, which probably formed the prophet’s
discourse at Bethel, with the interlude of his adventure there (Amos
7- Amo 8:3) -we may pass at once to what remains: from Amo 8:4 to
the end of the book. This portion consists of groups of oracles more
obscure in their relations to each other than any we have yet
studied, and probably containing a number of verses which are not
from Amos himself. They open in a denunciation of the rich, which
echoes previous oracles, and soon pass to judgments of a kind
already threatened, but now with greater relentlessness. Then, just
as all is at the darkest, lights break; exceptions are made: the
inevitable captivity is described no more as doom, but as
discipline; and, with only this preparation for a change, we are
swept out on a scene, in which, although the land is strewn with the
ruins that have been threatened, the sunshine of a new day floods
them; the promise of restoration is given; Nature herself will be
regenerated, and the whole life of Israel planted on its own ground
again.
Whether it was given to Amos himself to behold this day-whether
these last verses of the book were his "Nunc Dimittis," or the hope
of a later generation, which found his book intolerably severe, and
mingled with its judgments their own new mercies-we shall try to
discover further on. Meanwhile there is no doubt that we start with
the authentic oracles of the prophet. We know the ring of his voice.
To the tyranny of the rich, which he has so often lashed, he now
adds the greed and fraud of the traders; and he paints Israel’s doom
in those shapes of earthquake, eclipse, and famine with which his
own generation had recently become familiar. Note that in this first
group Amos employ’s only physical calamities, and says nothing of
war and captivity. If the standard which we have already applied to
the growth of his doctrine be correct, these ought therefore to be
counted among his earlier utterances. War and captivity follow in
chapter 9. That is to say, this Third Section follows the same line
of development as both the First and the Second.
1. EARTHQUAKE, ECLIPSE, AND FAMINE
Amo 8:4-14
"Hear this, ye who trample the needy, and would
put an end to the lowly of the land, saying, When will the New-Moon
be over, that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, that we may open
corn (by making small the measure, but large the weight, and
falsifying the fraudulent balances; buying the wretched for silver,
and the, needy for a pair of shoes!), and that we may sell as grain
the refuse of the corn!" The parenthesis puzzles, but is not
impossible: in the speed of his scorn, Amos might well interrupt the
speech of the merchants by these details of their fraud, flinging
these in their teeth as they spoke. The existence at this date of
the New-Moon and Sabbath as days of rest from business is
interesting; but even more interesting is the peril to which they
lie open. As in the case of the Nazarites and the prophets, we see
how the religious institutions and opportunities of the people are
threatened by worldliness and greed. And, as in every other relevant
passage of the Old Testament, we have the interests of the Sabbath
bound up in the same cause with the interests of the poor. The
Fourth Commandment enforces the day of rest on behalf of the
servants and bondsmen. When a later prophet substitutes for
religious fasts the ideals of social service, he weds with the
latter the security of the Sabbath from all business. So here Amos
emphasizes that the Sabbath is threatened by the same worldliness
and love of money which tramples on the helpless. The interests of
the Sabbath are the interests of the poor: the enemies of the
Sabbath are the enemies of the poor. And all this illustrates our
Savior’s saying, that "the Sabbath was made for man."
But, as in the rest of the book, judgment again follows hard on sin.
"Sworn hath Jehovah by the pride of Jacob, Never shall I forget
their deeds." It is as before. The chief spring of the prophet’s
inspiration is his burning sense of the personal indignation of God
against crimes so abominable. God is the God of the poor, and His
anger rises, as we see the anger of Christ arise, heavy against
their tyrants and oppressors. Such sins are intolerable to Him. But
the feeling of their intolerableness is shared by the land ‘itself,
the very fabric of nature; the earthquake is the proof of it. "For
all this shall not the land tremble and her every inhabitant mourn?
and she shall rise like file Nile in mass, and heave and sink like
the Nile of Egypt."
To the earthquake is added the eclipse: one had happened in 803, and
another in 763, the memory of which probably inspired the form of
this passage. "And it shall be in that day-‘tis the oracle of the
Lord Jehovah-that I shall bring down the sun at noon, and cast
darkness on the earth in broad day. And I will turn your festivals
into mourning, and all your songs to a dirge. And I will bring up
upon all loins sackcloth and on every head baldness, and I will make
it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it as a bitter
day."
But the terrors of earthquake and eclipse are not sufficient for
doom, and famine is drawn upon.
"Lo, days are coming-‘tis the oracle of the Lord Jehovah-that I will
send famine on the land, not a famine of bread nor a drouth of
water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah. And they shall wander
from sea to sea, and from the dark North to the Sunrise shall they
run to and fro, to seek the word of Jehovah, and they shall not find
it who swear by Samaria’s Guilt the golden calf in the house of the
kingdom at Bethel-and say, As liveth thy God, O Dan! and, As liveth
the way to Beersheba! and they shall fall and not rise anymore." I
have omitted Amo 8:13 : "in that day shall the fair maids faint and
the youths for thirst"; and I append my reasons in a note. Some part
of the received text must go, for while Amo 8:11-12 speak of a
spiritual drought, the drought of Amo 8:13 is physical. And Amo 8:14
follows Amo 8:12 better than it follows Amo 8:13. The oaths
mentioned by Bethel, Dan, Beersheba, are not specially those of
young men and maidens, but of the whole nation, that run from one
end of the land to the other, Dan to Beersheba, seeking for some
word of Jehovah. One of the oaths, "As liveth the way to Beersheba,"
is so curious that some have doubted if the text be correct. But
strange ‘as it may appear to us to speak of the life of the
lifeless, this often happens among the Semites. Today Arabs "swear
wa hyat, ‘ by the life of,’ even of things inanimate; ‘By the life
of this fire, or of this coffee."’ And as Amos here tells us that
the Israelite pilgrims swore by the way to Beersheba, so do the
Moslems affirm their oaths by the sacred way to Mecca.
Thus Amos returns to the chief target of his shafts-the senseless,
corrupt worship of the national sanctuaries. And this time-perhaps
in remembrance of how they had silenced the word of God when he
brought it home to them at Bethel-he tells Israel that, with all
their running to and fro across the land, to shrine after shrine in
search of the word, they shall suffer from a famine and drouth of
it. Perhaps this is the most effective contrast in which Amos has
yet placed the stupid ritualism of his people. With so many things
to swear by; with so many holy places that once were the homes of
Vision, Abraham’s Beersheba, Jacob’s Bethel, Joshua’s Gilgal-nay, a
whole land over which God’s voice had broken in past ages, lavish as
the rain; with, too, all their assiduity of sacrifice and prayer,
they should nevertheless starve and pant for that living word of the
Lord, which they had silenced in His prophet.
Thus, men may be devoted to religion, may be loyal to their sacred
traditions and institutions, may haunt the holy associations of the
past and be very assiduous with their ritual-and yet, because of
their worldliness, pride, and disobedience, never feel that moral
inspiration, that clear call to duty, that comfort in pain, that
hope in adversity, that good conscience at all times, which spring
up in the heart like living water. Where these be not experienced,
orthodoxy, zeal, lavish ritual, are all in vain.
2. NEMESIS
Amo 9:1-6
There follows a Vision in Bethel, the opening of
which, "I saw the Lord," immediately recalls the great inauguration
of Isaiah. He also "saw the Lord"; but how different the Attitude,
how other the Word! To the statesman-prophet the Lord is enthroned,
surrounded by the court of heaven; and though the temple rocks to
the intolerable thunder of their praise, they bring to the contrite
man beneath the consciousness of a lifelong mission. But to Amos the
Lord is standing and alone-to this lonely prophet God is always
alone-and His message may be summed up in its initial word, "Smite."
There-Government: hierarchies of service, embassies, clemencies,
healings, and though at first devastation, thereafter the
indestructible hope of a future. Here-Judgment: that Figure of Fate
which terror’s fascinated eye ever sees alone; one final blow and
irreparable ruin. And so, as with Isaiah we saw how constructive,
prophecy may be, with Amos we behold only the preparatory havoc, the
leveling and clearing of the ground of the future.
"I have seen the Lord standing over the Altar, and He said, Smite
the capital"-of the pillar" that the" very "thresholds quake, and
break them on the head of all of them!" It is a shock that makes the
temple reel from roof-tree to basement. The vision seems subsequent
to the prophet’s visit to Bethel; and it gathers his whole attack on
the national worship into one decisive and irreparable blow. "The
last of them will I slay with the sword: there shall not flee away
of them one fugitive: there shall not escape of them a" single
"survivor!" Neither hell nor heaven, mountain-top nor sea-bottom,
shall harbor one of them. "If they break through to Sheol, thence
shall My hand take them; and if they climb to heaven, thence shall I
bring them down. If they hide in Carmel’s top, thence will I find
them out and fetch them; and if they conceal themselves from before
Mine eyes in the bottom of the sea, thence shall I charge the
Serpent and he shall bite them; and if they go into captivity before
their foes"-to Israel as terrible a distance from God’s face as
Sheol itself! "thence will I charge the sword and it shall slay
them; and I will set Mine eye upon them for evil and not for good."
It is a ruder draft of the Hundred and Thirty-Ninth Psalm; but the
Divine Pursuer is Nemesis, and not Conscience.
"And the Lord, Jehovah of the Hosts; Who toucheth the earth and it
melteth, and all its inhabitants mourn, and it rises like the Nile,
all of it" together, "and sinks like the Nile of Egypt; Who buildeth
His stories in the heavens, and His vault on the earth He foundeth;
Who calleth to the waters of the sea and poureth them forth on the
face of the earth-Jehovah" of Hosts "is His Name."
3. THE VOICES OF ANOTHER DAWN
Amo 9:7-15
And now we are come to the part where, as it
seems, voices of another day mingle with that of Amos, and silence
his judgments in the chorus of their unbroken hope. At first,
however, it is himself without doubt who speaks. He takes up the now
familiar truth, that when it comes to judgment for sin, Israel is no
dearer to Jehovah than any other people of His equal Providence.
"Are ye not unto Me, O children of Israel-‘tis the oracle of
Jehovah-just like the children of Kushites?" mere black folk and far
away! "Did I not bring up Israel from Egypt, and the Philistines
from Caphtor, and Aram from Kir?" Mark again the universal
Providence which Amos proclaims: it is the due concomitant of his
universal morality. Once for all the religion of Israel breaks from
the characteristic Semitic belief that gave a god to every people,
and limited both his power and his interests to that people’s
territory and fortunes. And if we remember how everything spiritual
in the religion of Israel, everything in its significance for
mankind, was rendered possible only because at this date it broke
from and abjured the particularism in which it had been born, we
shall feel some of the Titanic force of the prophet, in whom that
break was achieved with an absoluteness which leaves nothing to be
desired. But let us also emphasize that it was by no mere method of
the intellect or observation of history that Amos was led to assert
the unity of the Divine Providence. The inspiration in this was a
moral one: Jehovah was ruler and guide of all the families of
mankind, because He was exalted in righteousness; and the field in
which that righteousness was proved and made manifest was the life
and the fate of Israel. Therefore to this Amos now turns. "Lo, the
eyes of the Lord Jehovah are on the sinful kingdom, and I will
destroy it from the face of the ground." In other words, Jehovah’s
sovereignty over the world was not proved by Israel’s conquest of
the latter, but by His unflinching application of the principles of
righteousness, at whatever cost, to Israel herself.
Up to this point, then, the voice of Amos is unmistakable, uttering
the doctrine, so original to him, that in the judgment of God Israel
shall not be specially favored, and the sentence, we have heard so
often from him, of her removal from her land. Remember, Amos has not
yet said a word in mitigation of the sentence: up to this point of
his book it has been presented as inexorable and final. But now to a
statement of it as absolute as any that has gone before, there is
suddenly added a qualification: "nevertheless I will not utterly
destroy the house of Jacob-‘tis the oracle of Jehovah." And then
there is added a new picture of exile changed from doom to
discipline, a process of sifting by which only the evil in Israel,
"all the sinners of My people," shall perish, but not a grain of the
good. "For, lo, I am giving command, and I will toss the house of
Israel among all the nations, like" something "that is tossed in a
sieve, but not a pebble shall fall to earth. By the sword shall die
all the sinners of My people, they who say, The calamity shall not
reach nor anticipate us."
Now as to these qualifications of the hitherto unmitigated judgments
of the book, it is to be noted that there is nothing in their
language to lead us to take them from Amos himself. On the contrary,
the last clause describes what he has always called a characteristic
sin of his day. Our only difficulties are that hitherto Amos has
never qualified his sentences of doom, and that the change now
appears so suddenly that the two halves of the verse in which it
does so absolutely contradict each other. Read them again, Amo 9:8 :
"Lo, the eyes of the Lord Jehovah are on the sinful nation, and I
will destroy it from off the face of the ground-nevertheless
destroying I shall not destroy the ‘house of Jacob: ‘tis the oracle
of Jehovah." Can we believe the same prophet to have uttered at the
same time these two statements? And is it possible to believe that
prophet to be the hitherto unwavering, un-qualifying Amos? Noting
these things, let us pass to the rest of the chapter. We break from
all shadows; the verses are verses of pure hope. The judgment on
Israel is not averted; but having taken place her ruin is regarded
as not irreparable.
"In that day"-the day Amos has threatened of overthrow and ruin-"I
will raise again the fallen but of David and will close up its
breaches, and his ruins I will raise, and I will build it up as in
the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all
the nations upon whom My Name has been called"-that is, as once
their Possessor-"‘tis the oracle of Jehovah, He who is about to do
this."
"The "fallen but of David" undoubtedly means the fall of the kingdom
of Judah. It is not language Amos uses, or, as it seems to me, could
have used, of the fall of the Northern Kingdom only. Again, it is
undoubted that Amos contemplated the fall of, Judah: this is
implicit in such a phrase as the whole family that brought up from
Egypt." {Amo 3:1} He saw then "the day" and "the ruins" of which Amo
9:11 speaks. The only question is, can we attribute to him the
prediction of a restoration of these ruins? And this is a question
which must be answered in face of the facts that the rest of his
book is unrelieved by a single gleam of hope, and that his threat of
the nation’s destruction is absolute and final. Now it is
significant that in face of those facts Cornill (though ‘he has
changed his opinion) once believed it was "surely possible for Amos
to include restoration in his prospect of ruin," as (he might have
added) other prophets undoubtedly do. I confess I cannot so readily
get over the rest of the book and its gloom; and am the less
inclined to be sure about these verses being Amos’ own that it seems
to have been not unusual for later generations, for whom the daystar
was beginning to rise, to add their own inspired hopes to the
unrelieved threats of their predecessors of the midnight. The
mention of Edom does not help us much: in the days of Amos after the
partial conquest by Uzziah the promise of "the rest of Edom" was
singularly appropriate. On the other hand, what interest had so
purely ethical a prophet in the mere addition of territory? To this
point we shall ‘have to return for our final decision. We have still
the closing oracle-a very pleasant piece of music, as if the birds
had come out after the thunderstorm, and the wet hills were
glistening in the sunshine.
"Lo, days are coming-‘tis the oracle of Jehovah when the ploughman
shall catch up the reaper, and the grape-treader him that streweth
the seed." The seasons shall jostle each other, harvest following
hard upon seed-time, vintage upon spring. It is that "happy
contention of seasons" which Josephus describes as the perpetual
blessing of Galilee. "And the mountains shall drip with new wine and
all the hills shall flow down. And I-will bring back the captivity
of My people Israel, and they shall build" the "waste cities and
dwell" in them, "and plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof, and
make gardens and eat their fruits. And I will plant them on their
own ground; and they shall not be uprooted any more from their own
ground which I have given to them, saith Jehovah thy God." Again we
meet the difficulty: does the voice that speaks here speak with
captivity already realized? or is it the voice of one who projects
himself forward to a day, which, by the oath of the Lord Himself, is
certain to come?
We have now surveyed the whole of this much-doubted, much-defended
passage. I have stated fully the arguments on both sides. On the one
hand, we have the fact that nothing in the language of the verses,
and nothing in their historical allusions, precludes their being by
Amos; we have also to admit that, having threatened a day of ruin,
it was possible for Amos to realize by his mind’s eye its arrival,
and standing at that point to see the sunshine flooding the ruins
and to prophesy a restoration. In all this there is nothing
impossible in itself or inconsistent with the rest of the book. On
the other hand, we have the impressive and incommensurable facts:
first, that this change to hope comes suddenly, without preparation
and without statement of reasons, at the very end of a book whose
characteristics are not only a final and absolute sentence of ruin
upon the people, and an outlook of unrelieved darkness, but scornful
discouragement of every popular vision of a prosperous future; and,
second, that the prophetic books contain numerous signs that later
generations wove their own brighter hopes into the abrupt and
hopeless conclusions of prophecies of judgment.
To this balance of evidence is there anything to add? I think there
is; and that it decides the question. All these prospects of the
future restoration of Israel are absolutely without a moral feature.
They speak of return from captivity, of political restoration, of
supremacy over the Gentiles, and of a revived Nature, hanging with
fruit, dripping with must. Such hopes are natural and legitimate to
a people who were long separated from their devastated and neglected
land, and whose punishment and penitence were accomplished. But they
are not natural to a prophet like Amos. Imagine him predicting a
future like this! Imagine him describing the consummation of his
people’s history, without mentioning one of those moral triumphs to
rally his people to which his whole passion and energy had been
devoted. To me it is impossible to hear the voice that cried, "Let
justice roll on like waters and righteousness like a perennial
stream," in a peroration which is content to tell of mountains
dripping with must and of a people satisfied with vineyards and
gardens. These are legitimate hopes; but they are the hopes of a
generation of other conditions and of other deserts than the
generation of Amos.
If then the gloom of this great book is turned into light, such a
change is not due to Amos.
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