NL 410: Amos: Justice Rolls Down

TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE RESOURCES

GLAAD - Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation

Amos 1:1-2; 5:14-15, 21-24

November 14, 2021

Amos 1:1-2; 5:14-15, 21-24

Initial Thoughts

  • Amos

    • Tender of Sycamore Trees

    • Angry Amos! Delivering messages of God’s anger against the northern Kingdom of Israel

    • God is angry because God loves people and it angers God when we people are mistreated, oppressed or taken advantage of

    • Unfaithfulness - Israel has been unfaithful to God- what does it mean to be faithful?

  • Alter on Amos’s setting:

    • Tekoa is a village in the vicinity of Jerusalem. 

    • Sycamore trees only exist in the north.

    • “Amos was a Judahite who undertook a prophetic mission to the northern kingdom.” (Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, p. 1255)

    • There is archaeological evidence for a great seismic event around 770 BCE. 

Bible Study

  • Historical Context (From Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)

    • Assyria’s power is growing, but provided relative stability

    • Both southern and northern kingdoms had strong kings.

    • “This made it easier to establish a comprehensive economic policy that concentrated on the mass production of export items such as grain, olive oil, and wine. Large areas… had already been given over to wheat production… Now the elite were able to impose this economic policy on the small hill country farms and villages… Thus, in addition to facing rising prices at home on basic goods such as wheat and barley, the impoverished, former peasant farmers now found themselves forced into debt servitude or day labor.”

  • Amos’s message of judgment

    • Chapter 1 lists the trespasses of Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, the Ammonites

    • Chapter 2 lists the trespasses of Moab, Judah, and Israel.

      • Judah: “For the spurning of the Lord’s teaching, and His statutes they did not keep.” (2:4)

      • Israel: “Who trample on the needy in the dust of the ground and pervert the way of the poor.” (2:7)

    • Chapter 3 and 4 focus more on Israel who “I brought up from Egypt.”

      • Special relationship with Israel means that their punishment is greater than most.

      • Details ways that God tried to get through to the people, but to no avail. 

  • Chapter 5 begins with a funeral dirge, telling of the terrible things that will happen to cities in Israel

    • Bethel, Gilgal, Beersheba - “The first two are the principal cultic sites of the northern kingdom. Beersheba is far to the south, hence the need to ‘pass on’. It would seem that some sort of cult was conducted at Beersheba, but we have scant information about it.” (Alter, p. 1266)

    • Good chance this was a speech delivered at Bethel

  • Suggest to include verses 10-13

    • These verses detail some of the wrongdoing of Israel.

      • “You afflict the righteous, who take a bribe and push aside the needy at the gate”

      • These details seem important to set the tone for why Amos/God are angry.

  • 14-15 seem pretty straightforward as to how the people should act. Makes much greater sense in the context of what has come before.

  • 21-24 are some of the most famous lines from Amos

    • “I hate, I despise your festivals.”

      • “I hate, I despise” are the negatives of the verbs used positively after the flood when God delights in Noah’s sacrifice and incense.” James Limburg, Interpretation: Hosea-Micah p.107

      • God does not enjoy the worship of people who are hypocritical

      • Remember that Jesus’ greatest anger was at religious leaders as well.

      • Religion - sacrifice, ritual, cultic activity - is only valuable if it leads to a changed life as well. Orthopraxy is more important than Orthodoxy.

      • While religion without action is rebuked- this doesn't mean an abandonment of religious festivals, worship, and rites - “the prophet requests the performance of righteousness along with the performance of ritual requirements of worship.” Cleotha Robertson, Africana Bible, p.177

      • Both Ritual AND righteousness

    • “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.

      • Rolling waters or water that has “welled up” like Alter says, is not always a pleasant experience. Flood waters roll. Flood waters well up. There is a destructive part of this that most ignore for the most idyllic picture of a flowing stream.

      • Prophetic Justice - Limburg, J. Interpretation: Hosea-Micah (p. 107).

        • Justice is active - rolling and churning

        • Justice is a response to what we have received from God - just as God has already been just to us, so we are just with one another

        • Justice is to take up the cause of the powerless. Just as God took up the cause of us, when we were slaves in Egypt, we are called to care for the vulnerable, the powerless, the widow, orphan, and stranger

  • “5:24 is a favorite in the experience of African American Christianity” (Robertson, p. 177)

    • “Slave owners used the Bible to support slavery not only as a legal institution but also as a moral and legal institution...For the African American experience, slavery and the Bible were mutually exclusive...The southern evangelical Christian rhetoric of piety was invalid and did not contain the values and actions consistent with the worship fo Jesus Christ.” (Robertson, p. 178)

    • This passage was also central to many of Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermons and speeches including the 1963 March on Washington and the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and is carved on his memorial there. (On the North Wall)

Thoughts and Questions

  • This passage exposes the tension that many churches create between ritual and righteousness. This is not a biblical tension - both are required. We must love Justice AND walk humble with God. We worship through justice and our justice should be guided and informed by our worship.  

  • What is Justice? In the western world- we depict justice as a woman, blind folded with scales. “The image Amos calls to mind is entirely different. Justice is like a surging, churning, cleansing stream. All is in motion and commotion. Nothing is at rest. The same language is used in Judges 5:21 to describe the “torrent” of the Kishon River. This is the prophetic picture of justice; it is more like an onrushing torrent than a balanced scale.” - Limburg, J. Interpretation: Hosea-Micah (p. 107).

Year 4Eric FistlerAmosComment