Amos 2:9-7:9

Much of the rest of the book of Amos is dedicated to a series of recitations of the benevolence of the Lord, the wrongdoing of the people of Israel, and promises of punishments for said wrongdoing. There are a couple of interesting aspects of this part of the book that I want to mention first: geography and religious practice.

The geography of these chapters, the bulk of the book, is focused almost entirely on the northern kingdom and Egypt. Let me do a “places mentioned” list, in order.

  • Egypt (2:10, 3:1, 3:9, 4:10)

  • People of Israel (Northern Kingdom; 2:11, 3:1, 3:12, 3:14, 4:12, 5:1, 5:2, 6:1, 7:9)

  • Ashdod (Philistia; 3:9)

  • Mount Samaria (Northern Capital; 3:9, 3:12; 4:1, 6:1)

  • Bethel (Northern Shrine, near the Judahite border; 3:14, 4:4, 5:5, 5:6)

  • Bashan (Northern Jordan, under Israel’s control; 4:1)

  • Gilgal (Northern Kingdom; 4:4, 5:5)

  • Sodom and Gomorrah (4:11)

  • Beersheba (Town in the far south, but a Northern shrine; 5:5)

  • Damascus (Syria; 5:27)

  • Zion (Probably Jerusalem in Southern Kingdom; 6:1)

  • Gath (Philistia; 6:2)

  • Calneh (Syria; 6:2)

  • Hamath (Syria; 6:2)

  • Lo-debar (Jordan, under Israel’s control; 6:13)

  • Karnaim (Jordan, under Israel’s control; 6:13)

  • Lebo-hamath (Border of Israel/Lebanon; 6:14)

  • Wadi Arabah (Far South; 6:14)


There are a couple places mentioned in the south, but this does seem to be a text focused on the kingdom of Israel and the countries on its borders. There were even a few references to cities across the Jordan River, suggesting that this was composed at a time of territorial expansion of Israel, which fits with the idea that this was written in the time of Jeroboam II, as mentioned before.


The other list I want to make concerns the elements of Israelite history and religion we can deduce from this text. If this section of Amos was all we had, what would we know about the beliefs of ancient Israel?

  • Possession of the land of the Amorite (2:9-10)

  • Migration from the land of Egypt (2:10, 3:1)

  • Tradition of prophets (2:11-12)

  • Tradition of Nazirites, who did not drink wine (2:11-12)

  • Known as the house of Jacob (3:13, 7:2, 7:5)

  • Altars with horns (3:14)

  • Sacrifices every morning (4:4)

  • Tithes every three days (4:4)

  • Thank offering of leavened bread (4:5)

  • Freewill offering (4:5)

  • Pestilence after the manner of Egypt (4:10)

  • God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah (4:11)

  • The Lord “forms the mountains, creates the wind, reveals his thoughts to mortals, makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth” (4:13)

  • House of Joseph (5:6, 5:15, 6:6)

  • The Lord “made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning, and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth” (5:8)

  • The day of the Lord as an apocalyptic event (5:18-20)

  • Festivals & solemn assemblies (5:21)

  • Burnt offerings (5:22)

  • Grain Offerings (5:22)

  • Forty years in the wilderness (5:25)

  • Sakkuth & Kaiwan as competing gods (5:26)

  • David as a musician (6:5)

  • High places of Isaac (7:9)

  • House of Jeroboam (7:9)


The three things that seem most clear from this list is that there was a tradition of Israel having come from Egypt at some point, possibly spending forty years in the wilderness on the way, though that is not directly stated; there was an abundance of sacrifices, offerings, and religious assemblies; and there were traditional ancestors of the people of Israel named Jacob, Joseph, Isaac, and possibly Israel.* 


*We now know Jacob & Israel as the same person, but I don’t want to just assume that was true in the time of Amos.


We also get some insight into the powers of God - the difference between God and Lord here is unclear to me, as both terms are used, sometimes together - which mostly seem to be natural with one intriguing exception: “reveals his thoughts to mortals.” Finally, we get an indication that Amos sees himself as within a tradition of prophets*, maybe even within the nazirities, though that is more questionable.


*This is sort of contradicted later (7:14), though I think that’s more of a rhetorical flourish.


There are some interesting omissions here, including…

  • Adam, Eve, the Garden

  • Noah & the Flood

  • Abraham

  • Moses

  • Aaron & Levites

  • The Law

  • Mount Sinai/Horeb

  • Joshua

  • Canaanite tribes other than Amorites

  • David as the chosen king (he does show up at the end, but we’ll get there)

  • Solomon

  • Jerusalem as the city of God (except at the very beginning/end)

  • The temple in Jerusalem

  • The Ark of the Covenant

  • Elijah, Elisha, other prophets & judges


Of course, absence of evidence is not [yadda yadda yadda], but the details Amos knows about and chooses to include tell an interesting story. It’s not a coherent, beginning to end, story of the people of Israel, but it’s a story nonetheless. It’s a story of a deity’s relationship with an entire people and one broken by that people. There are no heroic figures here; every name is important only as a symbol of the people or as a reference, not due to their deeds or even their specific dealings with the Lord. There is no (formal?) covenant with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David…only (informally?) with the people (or house) of Israel/Jacob/Joseph. That seems like an important ideological difference with other prophets and authors.


It’s also a contrast of life in the wilderness, in which it’s implied that the house of Israel did not bring sacrifices (5:25), to both the traditional story of the Exodus and contemporary Israel in which the sacrifices are satirized as never ending. I have mixed feelings about this; Amos is likely indulging in the age-old technique of portraying a past as better or more righteous than it actually was, but at least he seems to be doing so for egalitarian purposes.


Another aspect of this story that strikes me as interesting is the relative importance of prophecy, justice, and natural disaster as compared to law or sacrifice. The law is mentioned once in the entire book, in a section I already identified as a likely interpolation for other reasons (2:4). The rest is taken up by the words of the prophets and appeals to justice. In the traditional ordering of the Bible, we get a story that leads to the creation of the law, which is then dense enough to intimidate most readers from pressing through it. Here, if such a law even exists by this point, the prophet is clearly unconcerned by it and only uses it to point out the hypocrisies and iniquities of the people. How would Christianity be different if its story began with this sort of account? I’m not sure that Sola Scriptura Protestantism would exist, for one.


This section of Amos also includes what are probably the most famous lines from the book.


“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me burnt and grain offerings, I will not accept them;

And the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;

I will not listen to the melody of your harps.

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

-Amos 5:21-24


In the midst of an extremely dark lamentation about the destruction of Israel, Amos creates a utopian metaphor that will always be relevant as long as people continue to act like people, from the injustices of Iron Age bonded labor to modern day civil rights movements.


[I probably should have posted this yesterday (MLK Day).]

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