AMOS – The Wormwood of Justice and the Famine of Hearing from God

During the long and peaceful reign of Jeroboam II (746 – 786 B.C.) Israel attained a height of territorial expansion and national prosperity never again reached. The military security and economic affluence which characterized this age were taken by many Israelites as signs of the Lord’s special favor that they felt they deserved because of their extravagant support of the official shrines.

Into this scene stepped the prophet Amos, probably sometime during the decade 760-750 B.C. A native of the small Judean village of Tekoa, Amos was called by God from a shepherd’s task (7.14-15) to the difficult mission of preaching harsh words in a smooth season. He denounced Israel, as well as its neighbours, for reliance upon military might, and for grave injustice in social dealings, abhorrent immorality, and shallow, meaningless piety. Amos’s forceful, uncompromising preaching brought him into conflict with the religious authorities of his day. His personal confrontation with the priest Amaziah (7.10-17) remains one of the unforgettable scenes in Hebrew prophecy.

Expelled from the royal sanctuary at Bethel and commanded not to prophesy there again, Amos perhaps returned to Judah and wrote down the essence of his public preaching in substantially its present form. The book falls into three parts: chs 1-2, oracles against Israel’s neighbours; chs 3-6, indictment of Israel itself for sin and injustice; and chs 7-9, visions of Israel’s coming doom. Amos became the first in a brilliant succession of prophets whose words, now preserved in written form, have left their indelible stamp on later thought about God and human history. (NRSV, Bruce Metzger, 1991, Oxford University Press)

Introduction 1:1-2 The words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of King Uzziah of Judah and in the days of King Jeroboam son of Joash of Israel, two years before the earthquake.

The List

“I will not revoke the punishment”

Damascus – threshed Giliad with threshing sleds of iron…
send a fire, devour strongholds, break the gate bars, cut off inhabitants and the scepter, into exile.

Gaza – carried into exile entire communities…
send a fire on the wall of Gaza, devour strongholds, cut off inhabitants and the ruler, the remnant of
Philistines shall perish.

Tyre – delivered entire communities to Edom and did not remember the covenant of kinship…
send fire on the wall, devour strongholds.

Edom – pursued his brother with the sword (Israel), cast off all pity, his anger tore perpetually, kept his wrath forever…
send fire, devour strongholds.

Ammonites – ripped open pregnant women in Gilead to enlarge territory…
kindle a fire against the wall of Rabbah, devour strongholds, with…shouting on the day of battle and storm
on the day of whirlwind, king and officials into exile.

Moab – burned to lime the bones of the king of Edom…
send a fire on Moab, devour strongholds, Moab shall die amid uproar, amid shouting and the sound of the
trumpet, cut off the ruler and kill all officials.

2 Kings 3:27 – “Then he (the king of Moab) took his firstborn son who was to succeed him, and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall. And great wrath came upon Israel, so they withdrew from him…”. Prior to that event, Israel was winning the battle.

Judah – rejected the law of the Lord, not kept statutes, led astray by lies of their ancestors…
send fire, devour strongholds of Jerusalem. ISRAEL – sell the righteous for silver, the needy for a pair of
sandles, trampel the head of the poor into the dust of the earth. Push the afflicted out of the way, father
and son go into the same girl, my holy name is profaned, lay down on garments taken in pledge, in the house of
their God they drink wine bought with fines they imposed.

Psalm 10:17 – “Oh Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek; you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed, so that those from earth may strike terror no more.”

Amos 2:9-11 – Yet….I destroyed the Amorite, brought you up out of Egypt, raised up your children and youths to be Prophets and Nazarites.

Amos 2:12 – But you….made the Nazarites drink wine and commanded the prophets saying, “You shall not prophesy.”
Amos 2:13 – So I will… press you down in your place… swift, strong, mighty..flee away naked.

Amos 7:10–17 – “Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel..Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel, the land is not able to bear all his words. Amos has said, “Jeroboam shall die by the sword and Israel must go into exile away from his land.” Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there, but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the King’s Sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.” “Amos answered Amaziah, I am not prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I am a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees and the Lord took me from following the flock and the Lord said to me, “Go prophesy to my people Israel.”

Gen 28:18-22 – “So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar and pour oil on the top of it. He called that place Bethel (House of God). Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my fathers’s house in peace, the the Lord shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s House; and of all that you give me I will surely give one tenth to you.” Gen 31:13 – “I am the God of Bethel where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me.”

The Greatest Judgement

Famine of Hearing from God
Amos 8:11-12 – “The time is surely coming says the Lord God when I will send a famine on the land: not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.”

Plumbline – Removal of God’s Presence
Amos 7:7-9 – “This is what He showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumbline in his hand. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see? A plum line. The Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel: I will never again pass by them..”

Basket of Summer Fruit – The End – Silence
Amos 8:1-4 – “The end has come upon my people Israel, I will never again pass them by…the songs of the temple (palace) shall become wailings in that day….dead bodies…be silent” “Hear this you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land.”

Isaiah 30:8-14 “..rebellious people…who will not hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the seers, “Do not see”, and to the prophets, “Do not prophecy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel:…this iniquity shall become for you like a break in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse, whose crash comes suddenly, in an instant; it’s breaking is like that of a potter’s vessel that is smashed so ruthlessly that among it’s fragments not a sherd is found…”

The Earthquake

Amos 3:7 – “Surely the Lord God does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. The lion has roared: who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?”

Amos 2:13 – So I will… press you down in your place… swift, strong, mighty..flee away naked.

Amos 6:11 – “See, the Lord commands, and the great house shall be shattered to bits, and the little house to pieces.”

Amos 8:7-8 – “The Lord has sworn by the Pride of Jacob:….shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone morn who lives in it and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?”

The Poor / Justice / Wormwood

Amos 5:7 – “Ah, you that turn justice to wormwood, and bring righteousness to the ground.”
Amos 5:11-13 – “Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain…..you who afflice the righteous, who take a bribe and push aside the needy in the gate…Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time.”
Amos 5:24 – “But let Justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream.”
Amos 6:12 – “But you have turned Justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood…”
Revelation 8:10 – “The third angel blew his Trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many died from the water, because it was made bitter.