Amos 6 At the time of Jesus, and for some centuries thereafter, the technology of the book (as we know it) had not yet been invented. Writings were bulky, being manuscripts written on sheepskin or some other thick material. It was impossible to get all the printing we have in our “Bible” in one volume. There were just dozens of scrolls, called “books.” A long scroll of Isaiah or Jeremiah was about as big as a “book” could get.
Once the modern type of book was invented, decisions had to be made about in which order to bind the various writings in this big volume we call a “Bible.” (The word “Bible” comes from the Greek biblios, meaning “library.” All you Spanish speakers will see the connection readily since the Spanish word for library is biblioteca. The Bible, then, is not really a book but is a library, a collection of books.)
All of this is to point out the fact that, as we progress through the Old Testament for our Bible Challenge readings, reading the various books in the order in which they are arranged in our modern Bible, we are doing a lot of century hopping. With Jeremiah and Ezekiel we were dealing with the period leading up to and immediately following the conquest of Judah and the beginning of the Babylonian Exile (587 BC). Daniel, written at the time of the Maccabean Revolt in the Second Century BC, purports to have been written at the end of the Babylonian Exile and the beginning of the Persian Period (mid-late 500’s BC). With Hosea we jump back to the mid-Eighth Century BC, before the conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (721 BC). Joel jumps way ahead to sometime between 400 – 350 BC. Amos, our topic today, is a contemporary of Hosea. So now we are dealing with the period about 25-30 years before the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 721 BC.
Reflecting on Amos’ ministry of prophecy, the Twentieth Century theologian Rabbi Abraham Heschel talks about two caricatures of faith of which Amos’ contemporaries were guilty: the ideas of “the people of the Lord” and “the day of the Lord.”
Jewish biblical faith holds up the idea of the Chosen People. But if the Jews were chosen by God for a special purpose, it is a chosenness that implies responsibility rather than favoritism. Yet many of Amos’ contemporaries felt that, since they were the only nation on earth that wasn’t pagan (which was true at that time), then surely God would always protect them and would never let them be utterly defeated. Hence they felt that the “day of the Lord,” when God would intervene dramatically in human history, would be a day in which God would take care of all those bad guys, i.e., Israel’s enemies, while Israel could just sit back and be smug.
In chapter six of his book Amos rails against this false sense of security:
Woe to those who are at ease in Zion,
And to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria,…
Woe to those who lie upon beds of ivory
And stretch themselves upon their couches,
And eat lambs from the flock,
And calves from the midst of the stall;…
But are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
The rich are fat and happy, and care not one whit for the plight of the many poor in their midst (“the ruin of Joseph”). One cannot help but draw comparisons with our own situation today. The titans of Wall Street are earning ever greater profits, the stock market is breaking records almost weekly, yet millions of our people continue out of work, and millions more are working for poverty wages. The gap between rich and poor in our country has been widening for thirty or more years now, and those on top of the heap clearly are not “grieved over the ruin of Joseph.”
More than once I have heard some Christian fervently assert that the United States is such a powerful country militarily and so incredibly rich because we are a Christian nation. Many of us seem to make the same caricature of our faith as did many of the Jews of Amos’ time. We have a prideful notion of being God’s Chosen People, and we have a false sense of security. We need to hear Amos’ message today. We need to hear, and we need to heed.
Matthew 14 Call me lazy, but I’m giving short shrift to my commentary on Matthew 14! I interpreted the Bible Challenge to be to read the entire Bible in one year. I did not and do not interpret it to mean reading through the entire Bible once and parts of the Bible twice in one year. We did Matthew way back in January, when we began this adventure, and somebody else already wrote a commentary on this chapter.
It’s only human nature to be willing to hear just what we want to hear and to try to shut out the rest. This was true of Amaziah, the priest of the temple at Bethel in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who told Amos to “go back to where you came from” and not to preach at Bethel anymore. Herod’s reaction to the preaching of John the Baptist was to have him imprisoned.
After John’s death Jesus “withdrew…to a lonely place.” This is a recurrent theme in the Gospels. We disciples of Jesus would do well to follow his example and also withdraw from time to time for quiet, for rest, for prayer, for communion with God. Nonetheless, Jesus was no escapist, and when once again confronted by human need he had compassion on the crowds and ministered to them. When the disciples wanted to send the crowds away to go find food, Jesus insisted that they (the disciples) should feed them instead. Jesus made it possible, but he expected the disciples to do it. Maybe he expects the same of us. And just like those original disciples, we too can expect Jesus to make it possible for us to do what he calls us to do.
Once the modern type of book was invented, decisions had to be made about in which order to bind the various writings in this big volume we call a “Bible.” (The word “Bible” comes from the Greek biblios, meaning “library.” All you Spanish speakers will see the connection readily since the Spanish word for library is biblioteca. The Bible, then, is not really a book but is a library, a collection of books.)
All of this is to point out the fact that, as we progress through the Old Testament for our Bible Challenge readings, reading the various books in the order in which they are arranged in our modern Bible, we are doing a lot of century hopping. With Jeremiah and Ezekiel we were dealing with the period leading up to and immediately following the conquest of Judah and the beginning of the Babylonian Exile (587 BC). Daniel, written at the time of the Maccabean Revolt in the Second Century BC, purports to have been written at the end of the Babylonian Exile and the beginning of the Persian Period (mid-late 500’s BC). With Hosea we jump back to the mid-Eighth Century BC, before the conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (721 BC). Joel jumps way ahead to sometime between 400 – 350 BC. Amos, our topic today, is a contemporary of Hosea. So now we are dealing with the period about 25-30 years before the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 721 BC.
Reflecting on Amos’ ministry of prophecy, the Twentieth Century theologian Rabbi Abraham Heschel talks about two caricatures of faith of which Amos’ contemporaries were guilty: the ideas of “the people of the Lord” and “the day of the Lord.”
Jewish biblical faith holds up the idea of the Chosen People. But if the Jews were chosen by God for a special purpose, it is a chosenness that implies responsibility rather than favoritism. Yet many of Amos’ contemporaries felt that, since they were the only nation on earth that wasn’t pagan (which was true at that time), then surely God would always protect them and would never let them be utterly defeated. Hence they felt that the “day of the Lord,” when God would intervene dramatically in human history, would be a day in which God would take care of all those bad guys, i.e., Israel’s enemies, while Israel could just sit back and be smug.
In chapter six of his book Amos rails against this false sense of security:
Woe to those who are at ease in Zion,
And to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria,…
Woe to those who lie upon beds of ivory
And stretch themselves upon their couches,
And eat lambs from the flock,
And calves from the midst of the stall;…
But are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
The rich are fat and happy, and care not one whit for the plight of the many poor in their midst (“the ruin of Joseph”). One cannot help but draw comparisons with our own situation today. The titans of Wall Street are earning ever greater profits, the stock market is breaking records almost weekly, yet millions of our people continue out of work, and millions more are working for poverty wages. The gap between rich and poor in our country has been widening for thirty or more years now, and those on top of the heap clearly are not “grieved over the ruin of Joseph.”
More than once I have heard some Christian fervently assert that the United States is such a powerful country militarily and so incredibly rich because we are a Christian nation. Many of us seem to make the same caricature of our faith as did many of the Jews of Amos’ time. We have a prideful notion of being God’s Chosen People, and we have a false sense of security. We need to hear Amos’ message today. We need to hear, and we need to heed.
Matthew 14 Call me lazy, but I’m giving short shrift to my commentary on Matthew 14! I interpreted the Bible Challenge to be to read the entire Bible in one year. I did not and do not interpret it to mean reading through the entire Bible once and parts of the Bible twice in one year. We did Matthew way back in January, when we began this adventure, and somebody else already wrote a commentary on this chapter.
It’s only human nature to be willing to hear just what we want to hear and to try to shut out the rest. This was true of Amaziah, the priest of the temple at Bethel in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who told Amos to “go back to where you came from” and not to preach at Bethel anymore. Herod’s reaction to the preaching of John the Baptist was to have him imprisoned.
After John’s death Jesus “withdrew…to a lonely place.” This is a recurrent theme in the Gospels. We disciples of Jesus would do well to follow his example and also withdraw from time to time for quiet, for rest, for prayer, for communion with God. Nonetheless, Jesus was no escapist, and when once again confronted by human need he had compassion on the crowds and ministered to them. When the disciples wanted to send the crowds away to go find food, Jesus insisted that they (the disciples) should feed them instead. Jesus made it possible, but he expected the disciples to do it. Maybe he expects the same of us. And just like those original disciples, we too can expect Jesus to make it possible for us to do what he calls us to do.
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