The Twelve Prophets Volume I
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.