Amos (Prophet)

97:4.1A great step in the tran­si­tion of the tribal god—the god who had so long been served with sac­ri­fices and cer­e­monies, the Yah­weh of the ear­lier He­brews—to a God who would pun­ish crime and im­moral­ity among even his own peo­ple, was taken by Amos, who ap­peared from among the south­ern hills to de­nounce the crim­i­nal­ity, drunk­en­ness, op­pres­sion, and im­moral­ity of the north­ern tribes. Not since the times of Moses had such ring­ing truths been pro­claimed in Pales­tine.

97:4.2Amos was not merely a re­storer or re­former; he was a dis­cov­erer of new con­cepts of De­ity. He pro­claimed much about God that had been an­nounced by his pre­de­ces­sors and coura­geously at­tacked the be­lief in a Di­vine Be­ing who would coun­te­nance sin among his so-called cho­sen peo­ple. For the first time since the days of Mel­chiz­e­dek the ears of man heard the de­nun­ci­a­tion of the dou­ble stan­dard of na­tional jus­tice and moral­ity. For the first time in their his­tory He­brew ears heard that their own God, Yah­weh, would no more tol­er­ate crime and sin in their lives than he would among any other peo­ple. Amos en­vi­sioned the stern and just God of Samuel and Eli­jah, but he also saw a God who thought no dif­fer­ently of the He­brews than of any other na­tion when it came to the pun­ish­ment of wrong­do­ing. This was a di­rect at­tack on the ego­is­tic doc­trine of the “cho­sen peo­ple,” and many He­brews of those days bit­terly re­sented it.

97:4.3Said Amos: “He who formed the moun­tains and cre­ated the wind, seek him who formed the seven stars and Orion, who turns the shadow of death into the morn­ing and makes the day dark as night.” And in de­nounc­ing his half-re­li­gious, time­serv­ing, and some­times im­moral fel­lows, he sought to por­tray the in­ex­orable jus­tice of an un­chang­ing Yah­weh when he said of the evil­do­ers: “Though they dig into hell, thence shall I take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down.” “And though they go into cap­tiv­ity be­fore their en­e­mies, thence will I di­rect the sword of jus­tice, and it shall slay them.” Amos fur­ther star­tled his hear­ers when, point­ing a re­prov­ing and ac­cus­ing fin­ger at them, he de­clared in the name of Yah­weh: “Surely I will never for­get any of your works.” “And I will sift the house of Is­rael among all na­tions as wheat is sifted in a sieve.”

97:4.4Amos pro­claimed Yah­weh the “God of all na­tions” and warned the Is­raelites that rit­ual must not take the place of righ­teous­ness. And be­fore this coura­geous teacher was stoned to death, he had spread enough leaven of truth to save the doc­trine of the su­preme Yah­weh; he had in­sured the fur­ther evo­lu­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek rev­e­la­tion.

155:6.2You have come out from among those of your fel­lows who choose to re­main sat­is­fied with a re­li­gion of mind, who crave se­cu­rity and pre­fer con­for­mity. You have elected to ex­change your feel­ings of au­thor­i­ta­tive cer­tainty for the as­sur­ances of the spirit of ad­ven­tur­ous and pro­gres­sive faith. You have dared to protest against the gru­el­ing bond­age of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion and to re­ject the au­thor­ity of the tra­di­tions of rec­ord which are now re­garded as the word of God. Our Fa­ther did in­deed speak through Moses, Eli­jah, Isa­iah, Amos, and Hosea, but he did not cease to min­is­ter words of truth to the world when these proph­ets of old made an end of their ut­ter­ances. My Fa­ther is no re­specter of races or gen­er­a­tions in that the word of truth is vouch­safed one age and with­held from an­other. Com­mit not the folly of call­ing that di­vine which is wholly hu­man, and fail not to dis­cern the words of truth which come not through the tra­di­tional or­a­cles of sup­posed in­spi­ra­tion.

135:6.3He came from the herds­men, like Amos. He was dressed like Eli­jah of old, and he thun­dered his ad­mo­ni­tions and poured forth his warn­ings in the “spirit and power of Eli­jah.” It is not sur­pris­ing that this strange preacher cre­ated a mighty stir through­out all Pales­tine as the trav­el­ers car­ried abroad the news of his preach­ing along the Jor­dan.

97:9.20New life ap­peared as Je­hoash and his son Jer­oboam de­liv­ered Is­rael from its en­e­mies. But by this time there ruled in Samaria a gang­ster-no­bil­ity whose depre­da­tions ri­valed those of the Da­vidic dy­nasty of olden days. State and church went along hand in hand. The at­tempt to sup­press free­dom of speech led Eli­jah, Amos, and Hosea to be­gin their se­cret writ­ing, and this was the real be­gin­ning of the Jew­ish and Chris­tian Bibles.

97:8.3But five hun­dred years of the over­lord­ship of alien rulers was too much for even the pa­tient and long-suf­fer­ing Jews. The proph­ets and priests be­gan to cry: “How long, O Lord, how long?” As the hon­est Jew searched the Scrip­tures, his con­fu­sion be­came worse con­founded. An olden seer prom­ised that God would pro­tect and de­liver his “cho­sen peo­ple.” Amos had threat­ened that God would aban­don Is­rael un­less they re-es­tab­lished their stan­dards of na­tional righ­teous­ness. The scribe of Deuteron­omy had por­trayed the Great Choice—as be­tween the good and the evil, the bless­ing and the curse. Isa­iah the first had preached a benef­i­cent king-de­liv­erer. Jeremiah had pro­claimed an era of in­ner righ­teous­ness—the covenant writ­ten on the tablets of the heart. The sec­ond Isa­iah talked about sal­va­tion by sac­ri­fice and re­demp­tion. Eze­kiel pro­claimed de­liv­er­ance through the ser­vice of de­vo­tion, and Ezra prom­ised pros­per­ity by ad­her­ence to the law. But in spite of all this they lin­gered on in bond­age, and de­liv­er­ance was de­ferred. Then Daniel pre­sented the drama of the im­pend­ing “cri­sis”—the smit­ing of the great im­age and the im­me­di­ate es­tab­lish­ment of the ev­er­last­ing reign of righ­teous­ness, the Mes­sianic king­dom.