Amos and his contemporary Hosea were active in the middle of the eighth century B.C. Although Amos was from Judah, both prophets spoke primarily to the northern kingdom, Israel. A few years later Isaiah and Micah would address the southern kingdom, Judah, with a similar message.
Amos probably began his ministry a few years before Hosea and completed his prophecy within the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel. Hosea began his prophecy in the last years of that king and continued into the turbulent years leading up to the collapse of the northern kingdom. Hosea’s ministry apparently ended near the destruction of Israel’s capital, Samaria, in 722 B.C.
The long reign of Jeroboam II (786–746 B.C.) was a time of prosperity for Israel, as it was for Judah during the contemporary reign of Uzziah (783–742 B.C.). Israel and Judah were able to subdue neighboring nations and extend their borders nearly to the outlines of Solomon’s kingdom (2 Kin. 14:25; cf. 1 Kin. 8:65). The larger powers of Egypt and Assyria were preoccupied with problems closer to home, so that Palestine was free from foreign domination, though this was soon to change.
With the extended territory and conditions of peace, Israel and Judah enjoyed increased trade and the revenue generated by controlling major trade routes. Archaeological evidence confirms the wealth of Samaria during this period. Israel and Judah were at their economic and political peak.
Such a climate was bound to breed optimism and a confidence in the prospects for the future. The nation doubtless regarded its prosperity as a sign of God’s favor and a confirmation of their policies and practices. The prophets Amos and Hosea gave a vastly different evaluation of the situation and predicted the catastrophe which would come with surprising quickness.
After the death of Jeroboam II, Israel fell into political chaos. Jeroboam’s son Zechariah was assassinated after only six months on the throne. His assassin, Shallum, ruled for one month before falling to the sword of Menahem.
In addition to the internal collapse, external conditions spelled disaster for Israel. The Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 B.C.) proved to be a vigorous ruler, able to subdue enemies close to home and extend Assyria’s influence far beyond. His conquests were also different in character from earlier Assyrian exploits, which were mainly tribute gathering raids.
Now Assyria was bent on full conquest. Any nations that failed to submit faced deportation, a policy which Tiglath-Pileser III pursued more consistently than any previous ruler.
In 734 B.C. Tiglath-Pileser III attacked the Philistine cities, then moved against Israel, and took Damascus in 732 B.C. The Assyrians took most of Israel’s land outside the Samaritan highlands and deported the population (2 Kin. 15:29). At this time Hoshea murdered Pekah and surrendered to the Assyrians. A few years later Shalmaneser V (727–722 B.C.) became the new Assyrian king. Hoshea used the change of throne as an opportunity to withhold tribute. The Assyrian retaliation came in 724 B.C. Samaria fell in 722 B.C., the population was deported, and the northern kingdom of Israel was no more.
Contrary to the egalitarian tendencies of the covenant stipulations and the tribal league, conditions under the monarchy had brought extremes of wealth and poverty. This was particularly true in Israel, where the native Canaanite population with its feudal background had a much stronger influence than in Judah. Amos in particular rails against the breakdown of the social structure and the constant injustices.
Syncretism characterized the religious order of the day. The worship of the Canaanite God Baal diluted Israel’s worship of Yahweh to a great extent. Baal, meaning “Lord” or “husband,” was the name commonly given to the Canaanite storm God, Hadad. He was often represented as a bull, the symbol of fertility. The bull images built by Jeroboam I at Dan and Bethel (1 Kin. 12:28–33) no doubt provided another occasion for assimilating the worship of Yahweh to the worship of Baal.
Canaanite religion, like most in the ancient world, connected Gods and Goddesses with forces in the natural world and considered that their course could be influenced by the devotion and rituals of worshipers. Religion then takes on a magical quality as an attempt to manipulate the Gods, which is characteristic of perverted religion in any place and time. Rituals aim to ensure the foundations for life, such as the rain necessary for crops in Palestine and the success of animal and human reproduction.
Along with this was the view that sexual relations between Gods and Goddesses are responsible for some of the initial and continuing processes in nature. Based on this idea and concept of imitative magic, sacred prostitution was a prominent part of the cult. Worshipers would engage in sexual intercourse with cult prostitutes at the shrines, hoping to influence the Gods to do likewise and thus ensure continuing fertility.
Religious devotion was hardly lacking in this age. The question was the quality of that devotion. Certainly the acts of Yahweh were celebrated in the cult, but too often these were taken as a sign of unconditional support for the status quo. The covenant obligations were either blurred or understood as completely fulfilled by the rituals (Amos 5:21–24).
On the specific conditions that Amos addresses, Wolff includes some helpful comments in his introduction to the book. Other commentators include similar portraits.
After the military success in the early part of Jeroboam’s reign, Israel experienced the period of economic prosperity which is assumed in many of Amos’s oracles. Commerce became extremely active (8:5a), and trade was practiced on an international scale (3:9). Deceitful business practices increased profits (8:5b). Building activity flourished (3:15). Houses became more numerous and more substantial than ever before in Israel (3:15b; 5:11; 6:8), and they were elaborately furnished (3:10, 12b, 15b; 6:4a). Viniculture and cattle raising became geared to demanding customers (5:11b; 6:4b) since the thirst for pleasure manifest in rollicking feasts had to be accommodated (4:1; 6:4, 6). New music was composed (6:5).
Sexual immorality increased (2:7b). The cults participated in the economic boom: sacrificial offerings proliferated (4:4–5; 5:21–22); the feasts were celebrated with ebullient singing and instrumental music (5:23).
The converse of this development was social upheaval. The rich became richer while the poor became poorer. Such early capitalism quickly led to expropriation of the holdings of the smaller landowners. The ancient Israelite land rights were superceded by Canaanite practice. Slavery for debt took on vicious forms (2:6; 8:6). The socially underprivileged were exploited (2:7a; 4:1; 8:4). Their rights were violated through intimidation of witnesses and bribery of judges (2:7a; 5:10, 12).Thus in the shadow of world politics following the great foreign policy successes of Jeroboam II, luxury and injustice alike abundantly flourished; in the east, border incidents had once again begun to occur. Such is the time of Amos around 760.1
There is general agreement that Amos’s ministry lasted for a relatively short time, sometime in the period of 760 to 750 B.C. Although it has been common to regard Amos as a fairly poor man, a shepherd who supplemented a meager income with seasonal work in western Judah, many scholars now take the position that he was an owner or a manager in the agricultural business.2
The name Amos, meaning literally “load, burden,” is used for no one else in the Old Testament, and the prophet is not mentioned elsewhere. So we are totally dependent on the Book of Amos itself for any information about the prophet.
Amos’s home was Tekoa in the southern kingdom of Judah. The village and area called Tekoa was twelve miles south of Jerusalem and extended twenty miles east to the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea. The present name of the village is Tekua. The elevation was more than 2,700 feet above sea level and sank 4,000 feet to the east, into the chasm of the Dead Sea. It was a bleak area, a waste and a wilderness.
Sir George Adam Smith vividly described the conditions and atmosphere of the Tekoa territory.
When you climb the hill of Tekoa, and, looking east, see those fifteen miles of chaos, sinking to a stretch of the Dead Sea, you begin to understand the influence of the desert on Jewish imagination and literature. It gave the ancient natives of Judaea, as it gives the visitor of today, the sense of living next door to doom; the sense of how narrow is the border between life and death; the awe of the power of God, who can make contiguous regions so opposite in character. The desert is always in the face of the prophets, and its howling of beasts and dry sand blow mournfully across their pages the foreboding of doom.3
These were the geographical conditions of Amos’s home area affecting both his personality and his perception.
Amos asserted that he was neither a full-time prophet nor a prophet’s son (7:14). That is, he was not a professional prophet as others of his time. Rather, we glean three other things. He was a shepherd (1:1), but note that the word used is not the common word for shepherd but one used for a person in the sheep business who owned flocks of sheep. He also was a cattleman. Here the Hebrew word used in 7:14 implies one who had large herds in addition to flocks. The third part of his vocation was growing and harvesting fig trees that grew in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. Thus we see that Amos was occupied with a threefold vocation when he received his call to function as a prophet for a brief time, probably during a time when his business travels took him to the northern kingdom of Israel.4
Though Amos was not professionally trained as a prophet, he was specifically and specially called by God to speak His word to Israel. He is an example of the biblical principle that the need before a God-sensitive person blossoms into action from the gift of God within him or her. Knowing Amos’s background makes his prophetic excellence all the more astounding as the work of God. The greatness of Amos was that he was willing to allow God to use him as His mouthpiece.
There are three distinct portions of the prophecy of Amos. The first two chapters are a series of messages to foreign nations and concluding with an oracle of judgment focused on Israel. This coherent unit employs the very effective method of rallying Amos’s audience with partisan feelings about other nations before his incisive “And as for you Israel” thrust of judgment on the northern kingdom. In the second section, chapters 3–6, the prophet’s basic concerns about Israel were made clear. The people have exploited the poor. Dishonest business dealings by the merchants are abhorrent. The law and the courts have been corrupted. Surface religion hides the deeper loss of authentic faith. The third section of the prophecy of Amos, chapters 7–9, consists of a series of five visions. Between the visions are inserted oracles and the conflict between Amos and his adversary Amaziah, who speaks on behalf of the organized religion of the time. The Book of Amos concludes with a short section, 9:11–15, containing positive messages of hope.
A few years ago the division in the church between the pietists and social activists was both pronounced and divisive. Today, dynamic local churches and effective denominations are discovering that this nonbiblical dichotomy is perilous. An in-depth preaching and teaching of Amos gives us an opportunity to speak to the irreverence of irrelevant personal faith that is insensitive to social injustice, but also to the need for social mission to be both motivated and empowered by God and not just political or humanitarian motives. The vivid similes, metaphors, and parabolic images of Amos provide the focus for impelling and imaginative communication of the gospel. Contemporary communication of Amos gives us a propitious privilege of proclaiming the whole gospel for the wholeness of honest personal faith and holy living that confronts and seeks to change the injustices of society.
Keeping in mind that this is primarily a commentary for preachers and teachers, I will divide the prophecy of Amos into sections that might well provide the content for a series of messages or classes. Some will cover a large portion of the material, while others will focus on shorter, more salient passages. The important thing is to keep the listener’s attention with an arresting progression while at the same time making incisive application for our own day.
AMOS 1:1–2
1:1 The words of Amos, who was among the sheepbreeders of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.
2 And he said:
“The LORD roars from Zion, And utters His voice from Jerusalem;
The pastures of the shepherds mourn, And the top of Carmel withers.”—Amos 1:1–2
This superscription of the Book of Amos provides the preacher/ teacher an opportunity to do a character study of Amos. We immediately are struck by the unpretentious phrase, “the words of Amos,” contrasted with the voice of the Lord in verse 2. The gift of prophecy was given to one who was not a professional prophet to articulate the message of the voice of the Lord. At this point we are not given an account of Amos’s call to prophecy. That comes later in 7:14–15. What we are told now is that he heard in his soul the roar of the Lord from Zion, the utterance of His voice from Jerusalem. What the Lord said to Amos, the judgments He roared in his consciousness, the visions He vividly portrayed in Amos’s mind’s eye, and the promises He graciously entrusted to Amos became the content of His message. With all that Amos could say with prophetic authority, “Thus says the LORD” (v. 3).
Now, let’s consider what these introductory verses tell us about the man who became the mouthpiece for the voice of the Lord.
Amos was a layman. By his own admission, he was not a professional prophet born in the line of the prophets. Amos made his living in the sheep business as a herdsman. The Hebrew word n?q?d means more than a shepherd, r??eh; it is used for one who owned flocks of sheep and was a sheep breeder. In 7:14 we learn that Amos also was a cattleman with large herds. In addition, he was a fruit farmer of a kind, growing and harvesting a type of fig that grew in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, in the eastern territory of Tekoa (7:14). As a sheep breeder, cattleman, and fruit farmer, he was certainly among the prominent men of the territory.
Amos’s character and personality were shaped by the desolate, rugged territory of Tekoa. (Note material on Tekoa in the Introduction to Amos.) He did not spend his life in the relative comforts of city life or in the ambience of institutional religion. Devoid of either, his experience of Yahweh in the desert regions of Tekoa was rooted in the promises and demands of the covenant. Though Amos lived in the country, he was well educated in the Torah. From the Scriptures he drew a keen sense of loyalty to God, justice, morality, and righteousness. Many have suggested that he served as a jurist in deciding cases of justice in his small hometown. This explains Amos’s language in presenting his case against Israel.
Amos’s business took him to the northern kingdom where he sold his wool, cattle, and fruit. On these journeys he was disturbed by the evidences of dissolute living, dishonesty, and injustice. His visits to Bethel shocked his spiritual sensitivity. There he saw the evidence of Baal worship syncretized with Yahweh. The priesthood was corrupt and indifferent to the issues of justice. In the nation as a whole, the poor were getting poorer and the rich richer.
The phrase “which he saw concerning Israel” (1:1) means more than mere observation. The verb for “saw” is h?zâ, used for the reception of visions, designates the special insight of the prophetic mode of seeing. Amos saw what was happening in Israel from God’s perspective and indignation.
On one of Amos’s visits to Bethel, his God-sensitive indignation boiled over. The messages he delivered were later written down when he returned to Tekoa, after being driven from the northern kingdom. In Amos we meet a resolute man of God who had courage in the face of immense opposition. He lived up to his name. Amos means “Burden” or “Burden-bearer.” The burden the prophet carried was that a holy God demands moral holiness from His people.
The date of Amos (see Introduction) is made clear by the references to “the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake” (1:1). Scholars dispute the exact dates that these kings reigned, but the range of options is within one decade. The following picture uses the dates given by Wolff. The reigns of Uzziah and Jeroboam began about 787 B.C. Jeroboam II died in 747/46 B.C. and Uzziah about 735 B.C. In his later years, Uzziah became ill, and Jotham assumed the regency in 757/56 B.C. (2 Kin. 15:5). The fact that Jotham is not mentioned in verse 1 indicates that Amos’s prophetic ministry was during Uzziah’s reign prior to Jotham. Also the references in Amos’s oracles to the military successes of Jeroboam II and then to the threats of the Arameans and Amorites in 1:3 and 1:13 places the date of Amos’s ministry around the end of the first three decades of Jeroboam II or about 760 B.C.1
Archaeological studies also affirm this date. “Two years before the earthquake,” Wolff reminds us, “Stratum VI at Hazor shows evidence of destruction caused by a great earthquake, traces of which have also been uncovered in archaeological work at Samaria. Independently of the exegetical considerations … the excavators have dated this earthquake circa 760.”2 This would suggest a date somewhere around 762 B.C. for Amos’s prophetic activity.
At that time of outward success and prosperity contrasted with spiritual apostasy, moral decay, and social injustice, Amos heard the voice of the Lord. The two poetic couplets of verse 2 emphasize that it was Yahweh Himself who spoke, and what He spoke spelled judgment and devastation. “The Lord roars.” Usually in a Hebrew sentence, the verb comes before the subject. Amos reverses the order. The divine name comes first and then the verb, thus making it all the more emphatic who it is who roars. It is none other than Yahweh of the burning bush, of the parting of the Red Sea, of the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night in the wilderness, of Sinai, of the covenant, of the Law. Further, it is supremely Yahweh present in the Most Holy Place in the temple in Jerusalem. A God of mercy and forgiveness, yes, but also a God of righteousness. And His character was being denied and His holiness contradicted. His roar is one of condemnation and judgment. The people had gone too far. They mocked His covenant, denied His commandments, and habitually sinned against Him.
The Hebrew construction n?tan qôl (literally “give voice”) often implies thunder.3 But instead of thunder that is the portent of rain, just the opposite will follow the thunder—like the roar of Yahweh. It will produce the judgment of a destructive drought. The devastation will be from the pastures to the plentiful forests of Carmel. The metaphor communicates the totality of the destruction of the nation. Samaria fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C., a little more than three decades after Amos’s preaching.
And so the Book of Amos opens with an informative who, where, when, and an intimidating why. It is the why of Yahweh’s roar that lingers. In fact, if we will listen, the same roar is sounded today. It is the roar of a holy God in righteous judgment on His people. His wrath and grace must never be separated. Both must be kept in balance as we study Amos. It is out of grace that God judges His people. And it is only after we have heard the roar of His judgment and repented that fresh grace can be received. What makes God roar in judgment of Christians and the church today? Or, more personally, in your life and mine? If we were to make a list, we would find some of the same things that made Him roar over Israel. That is what makes a study of Amos so relevant for today … and disturbing. And yet, if we will approach the study with honesty and openness, we will experience the grip of the Lord’s holiness on us and will be able to change what needs to be changed.
AMOS 1:3–2:16
Recently, Time magazine featured a disturbing article entitled, “An Outbreak of Bigotry.”1 The subheading made an alarming statement and asked a searching question. “Everyone says it’s only human nature to despise one’s neighbor. If that’s true, what can governments around the world do to control such hatred?”
The article took the reader on a soul-rending trip around the world illustrating the resurgence of prejudice and violence. As the world tour of contemporary hatred proceeded, I was dismayed by the epidemic of ethnic hatred sweeping the world. Jewish cemeteries in France and Italy are being desecrated. Turks in Bulgaria are the victims of persecution. Koreans in Japan are denied Jobs, housing, and dignity. Africa’s Hutu and Tutsi tribes continue to slaughter one another. In India a local custom called cruelty is reviving ancient animosity between the upper-caste and the untouchables with intensified brutalities.
I put the magazine down with “What is this world coming to?” indignation. There was no possibility of smacking my lips with American pride. We have made strides, to be sure. But fresh in my memory was a Friday evening spent empathizing with the congregation of a synagogue nearby that had been desecrated with swastikas. The same “Skinheads” who had done that also marched up and down the street outside the sanctuary of my church hollering obscenities during Sunday morning worship. The proclivity of human nature to feel superior to others and express hostility and even brutality is still around in every nation.
The contemporary resurgence of bigotry makes our study of the first two chapters of Amos more than a review of bygone ethnic hatreds. In fact, like Israel, we may be surprised to discover that the word of the Lord is not just meant for others, but for us!
Amos was a brilliant communicator. Under the influence of the Spirit of God, he knew how to win and then confront his audience. His inaugural message recorded in 1:3–2:16 needs to be considered as a whole. Only then do we sense the full impact on his audience. Some agree that it was delivered as a single address.
Step by step, Amos exposes the sins of the nations encircling Israel. We can imagine these exposures brought cheering approval. As he was winning their attention, we doubt that any of them realized he was moving closer and closer to them. The first three nations condemned were merely political enemies, the next three were closer kin, and finally the spotlight was on Israel herself! In God’s evaluation His chosen people were no better than other nations when it came to inhumane cruelty and violence.
The eight oracles in Amos’s initial message were delivered in what is called “messenger speech.” The prophet proclaims what God gave him to say quoting Him verbatim in the first person. God is clearly identified in the repetition of the divine words. Eight times the “Thus says the LORD” punctuates Amos’s message with divine authority (1:3, 6, 9, 11, 13; 2:1, 4, 6).
Yahweh asserts His sovereignty over the world as the judge of the nations. Douglas Stuart reminds us that all the oracles in Amos’s opening message
rest on a shared theological assumption: there is one God, Yahweh, who has power over the whole earth, and whose righteousness will not tolerate unrighteousness on the part of any nation. In other words, Yahweh is not merely the God of Israel or Judah, but has an implicit covenantal relationship with all nations, through which he expects obedience to a basic sort of “international law” and in recognition of which He will enforce that covenant’s sanctions against those who rebel against it.2
Yahweh has basic standards for human relations and will not forever tolerate any nation’s barbarity and brutality. All nations will be held accountable for what has been done to deface His image in human beings. He has placed a conscience in all people and will judge all the nations regardless of whether or not they believe in Him.
Each of the eight oracles begins with the words, “For three transgressions . . . and for four.” This phrase communicates the divine patience for repeated crimes that are piled on the judgment scale and then one that overloads and tips the scale making God’s punishing intervention unavoidable. The fourth, the untenable sin, is exposed in each oracle. This sin forces God to say to the nation, “I will not turn away its punishment,” and declares a judgment which is irrevocable.
The term used for the punishable transgressions is p?s??? m, meaning “crimes.” Wolff suggests that the word serves as a legal technical term to characterize and summarize particular cases. In Amos these cases involve infraction of property and personal rights, deeds that deliberately violate communal standards.3
3 Thus says the LORD:
“For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because they have threshed Gilead with implements of iron.4 But I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, Which shall devour the palaces of Ben-Hadad.
5 I will also break the gate bar of Damascus, And cut off the inhabitant from the Valley of Aven, And the one who holds the scepter from Beth Eden.
The people of Syria shall go captive to Kir,”
Says the LORD.—Amos 1:3–5
Damascus was the capital of the city-state of Aram in eastern Syria bordering Israel on the northeast. Aram was a constant foe of Israel in the border wars of the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. David conquered the Arameans (2 Sam. 8:6), but they subsequently broke free during Solomon’s reign (1 Kin. 11:23–25). The Arameans persistently antagonized Israel through the years.
What Damascus did to the Transjordan Israelite region to the south called Gilead was the “fourth” crime that tipped the scales of Yahweh’s patience. The cruelty and violence of Damascus against Gilead is described by the metaphor of threshing. “They have threshed Gilead” (1:3). The image describes the process of dragging a grinding sledge over the sheaves to separate the grain from the chaff. Yahweh uses this image to depict the savage methods of warfare. In Amos’s day, the sledge was made of boards with the underside studded with metal prongs or knives. The image implies not only the crushing of Gilead by Damascus but the cruel treatment of those taken as prisoners.
Yahweh will send a devouring fire into the house of Hazael and the palaces of Ben-Hadad as punishment. The names signify contemporary eighth century B.C. Aramean rulers known under the dynastic names of Hazael and Ben-Hadad. In addition to the judgment conflagration, the inhabitants of Syria will be defeated and carried off into foreign exile. This actually happened when Tiglath-Pileser III sacked the area and deported those left alive. The Assyrian ruler’s annals describe what took place. “I destroyed 592 towns of the 16 districts of the country of Damascus, rendering them like hills over which the flood had passed.”4
As we reflect on this first oracle, several points need underlining. Yahweh is Lord over all the nations, not just His chosen people. His anger is especially roused by human cruelty. Disregard for the value and dignity of human life will not go unpunished. And Yahweh will use the unfolding drama of the struggle of nations to accomplish His purposes. Damascus crushed Gilead like sheaves under a threshing sledge, but as Longfellow reminds us,
Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind
exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with
exactness, grinds He all.5
With this first oracle Amos was off to a good start. We can picture the cheering affirmation his audience gave to this judgment of an ancient archenemy. So much for openers. Amos is just warming up.
6 Thus says the LORD:
“For three transgressions of Gaza, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because they took captive the whole captivity
To deliver them up to Edom.7 But I will send a fire upon the wall of Gaza, Which shall devour its palaces.
8 I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, And the one who holds the scepter from Ashkelon;
I will turn My hand against Ekron, And the remnant of the Philistines shall perish,”
Says the Lord GOD.9 Thus says the LORD:
“For three transgressions of Tyre, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because they delivered up the whole captivity to Edom, And did not remember the covenant of brotherhood.10 But I will send a fire upon the wall of Tyre, Which shall devour its palaces.”
—Amos 1:6–10
The judgment of Gaza and Tyre continues Yahweh’s condemnation of man’s inhumanity to man. This time the focus is on kidnapping people to be sold on the international trade market as slaves. Gaza represents not only the city, but the Philistine state, located between Palestine and Egypt in the southeastern corner of the Mediterranean. On the main trade route, it was in a position to engage in the profitable business of selling captured Hebrews to the Edomites. Tyre was a Phoenician coastal port city-state in the eastern Mediterranean and located northwest of Israel about 100 miles from Jerusalem. The Tyrians had despoiled Israelites of their goods and sold them to the Edomites (Joel 3:4–6).
The judgment against Gaza was “because they took captive the whole captivity to deliver them up to Edom” (1:6). “Whole captivity,” g?lût š?l?mâ, refers to the total conscription of entire villages.6 People were used as things, objects of trade with blatant inhumanity. This was clearly forbidden by Mosiac Law (Ex. 21:16). Now Yahweh judges Gaza for a sin outlawed among His chosen people.
Sinful Gaza will receive the same punishment as Damascus. The Philistine city’s walls will afford no more protection than did the walls of the Syrian cities against the Assyrians. Ashdod and Ashkelon, two of the five chief Philistine cities, would fare no better. Ekron, the most northern of the principal Philistine cities, was also given a special dishonorable mention: I will turn My hand against Ekron. Yahweh’s hand denotes overwhelming strength. This will be turned against the city. Most final is the fact that all the “remnant of the Philistines shall perish” (1:8).
Once again we check subsequent history to see how it all happened. Gaza was held siege by Alexander the Great for five months, and when it fell its inhabitants were slaughtered. Each time it was rebuilt, it was besieged, first by Jonathan Maccabeus, then by his brother Simon, and finally devastated by Alexander Janneus in 96 B.C. Subsequent revivals brought little relief from constant turbulence.
As for Ashdod, it was captured by the Assyrians in 711 B.C. Ashkelon also knew little peace. It was twice taken by Jonathan Maccabeus and subsequently set on fire by the Jews. It was the birthplace of Herod the Great. Ekron resisted Sennacherib in 701 B.C. in vain and was destroyed.
Tyre’s sin was that it captured and sold Israelite slaves to Edom and “did not remember the covenant of brotherhood” (v. 9). This probably refers to the cooperative relationship that existed between the Phoenicians and the Israelites, established with Hiram by David (2 Sam. 5:11) and carried on by Solomon (1 Kin. 5:1, 11) and Ahab (1 Kin. 16:31). Instead of honoring that treaty, Tyre became a center for the trading of Israelite slaves to the Edomites. The punishment mentioned in verse 10 probably refers to the siege by Nebuchadnezzar which lasted thirteen years, 586–573 B.C. Also, it should be noted that in 332 B.C., when Tyre fell to Alexander the Great, 30,000 Tyrians were sold into slavery. What was done to the Israelites centuries before also happened to Tyrians!
These two oracles forcefully carried on the central thrust of Yahweh’s concern for human rights and dignity. He did not create anyone to be a slave of another. He meant for none of His children to be in bondage. We shudder when we trace the history of slavery through the centuries and remember that a little more than a century ago a civil war was fought in our own nation over the issue of slavery! That is about twenty-six centuries after Amos and eighteen centuries after Christ. We learn so little, so late!
11 Thus says the LORD:
“For three transgressions of Edom, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because he pursued his brother with the sword, And cast off all pity;
His anger tore perpetually, And he kept his wrath forever.12 But I will send a fire upon Teman, Which shall devour the palaces of Bozrah.”
13 Thus says the LORD:
“For three transgressions of the people of Ammon, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because they ripped open the women with child in Gilead, That they might enlarge their territory.14 But I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah, And it shall devour its palaces, Amid shouting in the day of battle, And a tempest in the day of the whirlwind. ! ~15 Their king shall go into captivity, He and his princes together,”
Says the LORD.—Amos 1:11–15
Amos now moves closer home with Israel from the Mediterranean coast to two nations east of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. Edom was east of the Jordan and south of the Dead Sea. Ammon was further north and directly east of Israel. The two nations were known for unusual cruelty and inhuman violence.
For a comprehensive survey of the background of the conflict between Edom and Israel, the descendants of Esau and Jacob, please see the commentary on Obadiah. It will be helpful to our readers to have a review of the historic development of the intense hatred of Edom for Israel.
Here in Amos’s oracle against Edom the main issue is fratricide: “because he pursued his brother with the sword” (1:11). Dating back to Esau and Jacob, Edom and Israel were “brother” nations. However, from the time the Edomites refused Moses passage through to the Promised Land, to the hostility and warfare that persisted through the years, Edom expressed wrath against Israel. The problem with the rough-hewn, fierce, and combative Edomites was not that they had other Gods, but that they had no God at all. Without God and any moral accountability, they “cast off all pity.” There was no expressed need for God’s mercy and therefore no imperative to show mercy to others. Instead, Edom “kept his wrath forever” (v. 11).
There is a great difference between the wrath of God and the Godless wrath of people. God’s wrath is a part of His grace. He cares unreservedly and therefore confronts anything that robs us of our full potential in our relationship with Him, our true selves created in His image, our relationship with others in which we are called to be to them what He has been to us, and our relationship to the natural world He has given us to enjoy as stewards. God’s wrath does not smolder in lasting resentment; it flames with purity and gives us an opportunity to change.
Human wrath, however, smolders like a refuse dump heap in which the resentments and prejudices of the years have been layered. It is not a righteous indignation based on the soul-sized issues of justice and righteousness, but rather, a burning hatred rooted in collective memories of personal slights and hurts and in the codified hostilities of group prejudice. At its foundation is the assumption of the right to judge others and mete out punishments. Human wrath is playing God.
Smoldering wrath constantly seeks a costly revenge and retaliation. It usually does greater harm to us than to others. A more recent Amos underlined this in a radio routine for the comedy team of Amos and Andy. Andy proposed that he was going to get even with a person he didn’t like who always slapped him across the chest.
Amos asked, “What are you going to do about it?”
Andy said that he was ready for his erstwhile friend. “I’ve put a stick of dynamite in my vest pocket,” he said. “The next time he slaps me on the chest, he’ll get his hand blown off.”
Amos’s silence made the point: Andy failed to see that the same charge that would blow off his enemy’s hand would blow out his own heart. As Harry Emerson Fosdick commented to a lady filled with smoldering wrath for what her sister had done to her, “Hate is like burning your house down to get rid of a rat.”
When I was a boy, I was given an Australian boomerang. It was fun flinging it out and watching it return. One time I made the mistake of not watching for the boomerang’s return. Distracted momentarily, it returned and hit the back of my head with a painful thud.
The boomerang of Edom’s wrath came in a succession of defeats that spelled the eventual demise of the Edomites as a people. From the late sixth to the fourth century B.C., the Nabateans, an Arab tribe, occupied Edom and its capital, Petra. In 312 B.C. Alexander the Great’s general, Antigonus, conquered the Edomites. They were displaced and scattered throughout southern Palestine. Later, in the second century B.C., the Edomites endured further defeats from Judas Maccabeus. Josephus accounts for the complete ruination by Alexander Janneus of the remaining Edomites who had settled in the Negeb, also known as Idumea. Origen, in the third century A.D., wrote of the Edomites as a people whose name and language had perished from history.
Ammon’s wrath was even more ferocious than Edom. The “fourth” transgression that precipitated the punishment of Yahweh was that they executed pregnant women and tore them open to kill their fetuses. This was done not only to ensure no growth in the population of Gilead but to create panic in the remaining women about becoming pregnant.
A counterpart in our own day would be the careless practice of what might be called contraceptive abortion in which the unborn are murdered because of an unwanted pregnancy. The abortion clinic’s scalpel is no less sharp than the Ammonite’s sword.
The Ammonites were a vicious people who occupied the rugged territory on the edge of the deeper border on Gilead’s east and south. They, too, were related to Israel, having descended from Ben-Ammi, Lot’s second son. Since the days of the Judges, they had sought to take parts of the fertile land of Gilead. In Amos’s day they were once again attempting aggressive incursion in border wars because of Jeroboam II’s attempts to reestablish the borders between Gilead and Ammon (2 Kin. 14:25, 28). The memory, however, of the atrocities of Ammon remained.
Yahweh’s punishment will be decisive. Rabbah, the Ammonite capital, would be destroyed by fire, and the king and princes would be carried into exile. The prophecy came to pass when Ammon was crushed by the Assyrians and became a vassal state. The nation of Ammon collapsed under attack by the Babylonians in the sixth century B.C. and was virtually depopulated.
Craigie has a helpful summary of Ammon.
Ammon’s sin, like that of Edom, is an example of man-kind’s inhumanity to fellow human beings. And yet, for all the horror of Edom’s acts, those of Ammon are even more reprehensible. They employed their violence against the defenseless and the unborn. And for all the macho bragging with which they must have celebrated their violent deeds, those Ammonites have survived in history as the exemplars of cowardice. Upon those without defense, they raised their bloodthirsty swords. And Amos is convinced that such cowards must stand under the judgment of God.7
2:1 Thus says the LORD:
“For three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because he burned the bones of the king of Edom to lime.2 But I will send a fire upon Moab, And it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth;
Moab shall die with tumult, With shouting and trumpet sound.3 And I will cut off the judge from its midst, And slay all its princes with him,”
Says the LORD.—Amos 2:1–3
From Amos’s home territory of Tekoa, he could look southeast across the Dead Sea to the shores of Moab. It was bordered on the south by Edom. The Moabites were descendants of Moab, Lot’s son, and therefore closely related to the Ammonites.
The Moabites’ crime that provoked Yahweh occurred during a battle between them and the Edomites. The Moabites exhumed from a tomb the bones of a former Edomite king and burned them until they were lime powder. The totality of the destruction is stressed. Wolff follows the Targum in interpreting la??? d (“to lime”) to mean that the Moabites had turned these royal ashes into a substance to whitewash stones or buildings. Says Wolff, “The mere fact that the remains of a human being were so desecrated, that a man had been treated as material, was of itself sufficient cause for Amos’s indictment.”8
Just as the Ammonites committed an outrage against the unborn, the Moabites’ offense was against the dead. The bones of the dead were a sacred memory of a person. The ultimate desecration of a person’s memory was to exhume his bones and display them for ridicule. Moab had even gone further in burning the bones into calcium oxide.
We wonder if this paradigmatic crime was motivated by the widely held belief that the bones of the dead would be refleshed and resurrected. Perhaps the Moabites wanted to be sure that a formidable enemy might never return to do battle with them. Most likely, the motive was to hassle the living by desecrating their dead.
We are jarred out of our reflections of eighth century B.C. atrocities by what happened recently in Carpentras in southern France. Four vandals invaded a Jewish burial ground before dawn one day and dragged a woman’s body halfway out of her grave and exhumed the corpse of an 81–year-old man recently buried and impaled it on an umbrella. Copycat crimes followed in a wave of anti-Semitism. We are happy, at least, that the desecrators had not read about and emulated the ancient Moabites.
Staying in the modern era for a moment longer, we can imagine the outrage if the Ku Klux Klan exhumed the body of Martin Luther King, Jr. and burned the remains in effigy. Feel the shock waves of rage that would follow because of the desecration of the memory of that great and courageous leader!
Now back to Moab. Yahweh’s punishment again is fire. Kerioth, the site of the sanctuary of Chemosh, the God of the Moabites, would be destroyed. The people of Moab will die in tumult (2:2). Ša?ôn signifies the “uproar” (RSV) of armies of attacking troops and the clashing of an attack. The judge, šôp??, and the princes, š?r? m, probably meaning the king and his court, will be slain (v. 3).
The issue of the Lord’s judgment was not just the desecration of the bones of a dead king, but the inhuman assault on the feelings of the living. Inflicting pain on others by ridicule and maligning what is sacred to them is judged and punished by God.
4 Thus says the LORD:
“For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because they have despised the law of the LORD, And have not kept His commandments.Their lies lead them astray, Lies which their fathers followed.
5 But I will send a fire upon Judah, And it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem.”
—Amos 2:4–5
Now God, through the voice of Amos, really comes close to home. The noose twined so carefully around the necks of pagan enemies now twines around Judah, the southern kingdom. The oracle against Judah is different in several ways. It is shorter than all the previous ones except the accusation against Edom. Also, it represents a salient shift from sins against humanity to sins against Yahweh Himself, His covenant, and His commandments. And the Lord speaks not only in the first person but refers to Himself in the third person as the object of Judah’s growing apostasy—to despise the Law of the Lord was to deny the Lord.
We can surmise that some in Amos’s audience took prejudiced delight in hearing Judah included in the indictment of foreign nations. Since the division of the kingdom in Solomon’s time, tension, criticism, hostility, and conflict had grown. Judah was quick to denounce the apostasy of Israel. Now Judah was being given its comeupannce. “Long overdue!” some of Amos’s listeners probably said with pious self-justification.
The accusations of Yahweh against Judah could not have been more pointed. His chosen, called, and cherished people in Judah had come to the place where they despised the Law of the Lord. The crucial issue is covenant disobedience. This led to breaking the Torah and to idolatry. They followed after “fakes” k?z?b? m. For generations their fathers had followed pagan Gods rather than trusting only in Yahweh.
The judgment of Yahweh on Judah will be the same as on pagan nations. “I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem” (2:5). The point is that Yahweh considered covenant disloyalty, idolatry, and apostasy as serious as the crimes of inhuman cruelty, slavery, killing of unborn children, and desecration of the bones of the dead. The destruction of Jerusalem finally came in 586 B.C.
Don’t miss the fact that this oracle of judgment was delivered by a citizen of Judah. Amos was confronting the sins of his own people. This must have had an impact on his audience. It made what he had to say about Israel all the more difficult to evade.
6 Thus says the LORD:
“For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because they sell the righteous for silver, And the poor for a pair of sandals.7 They pant after the dust of the earth which is on
the head of the poor, And pervert the way of the humble.A man and his father go in to the same girl, To defile My holy name.
8 They lie down by every altar on clothes taken in
pledge, And drink the wine of the condemned in the house of
their God.9 “Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, Whose height was like the height of the cedars, And he was as strong as the oaks;
Yet I destroyed his fruit above
And his roots beneath.10 Also it was I who brought you up from the land of
Egypt, And led you forty years through the wilderness, To possess the land of the Amorite.11 I raised up some of your sons as prophets, And some of your young men as Nazirites.
Is it not so, O you children of Israel?”
Says the LORD.12 “But you gave the Nazirites wine to drink, And commanded the prophets saying, ‘Do not prophesy!’
13 “Behold, I am weighed down by you, As a cart full of sheaves is weighed down.14 Therefore flight shall perish from the swift, The strong shall not strengthen his power, Nor shall the mighty deliver himself;
15 He shall not stand who handles the bow, The swift of foot shall not escape, Nor shall he who rides a horse deliver himself.16 The most courageous men of might
Shall flee naked in that day,”
Says the LORD.—Amos 2:6–16
Amos’s audience may well have thought he was done when he finished with Judah. Just before they had time to applaud his message about the sins of other nations, he thrust further. We can almost sense the dramatic surprise when he said, “For three transgressions …” And the audience waited wondering, “Who’s next?” The name “Israel” must have been like a clap of thunder. Amazement followed shock waves rippling across the crowd. Amos certainly had their attention when he went on with prophetic authority speaking the word of the Lord, “… and for four, I will not turn away its punishment!” (2:6).
The first charge is against selling the innocent and the poor into debt-slavery. “Because they sell the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals” (v. 6). The word righteous (?add? q) means “innocent,” one who in a court of law has been declared not guilty. In the case in point, one accused of owing a debt is judged and found not guilty. And yet, he is sold into debt-slavery. This requires either disregarding the judgment of the court or bribing a judge who, after finding the accused not guilty, would rule that he should be sold into debt-slavery anyway. In either case, justice would be denied and a farce made of the courts.
The poor did not fare any better than the innocent. The needy, ?ebyôn, signifies a person in need of help. Those who had incurred a debt of as little as the price of a pair of sandals could be indentured into debt-slavery. Again the courts were either totally ignored or the judges bribed.
The issue is the use of innocent and helpless fellow Israelites as things and not as persons. This kind of inhumanity was worse than the Phoenicians selling Israelites to the Edomites! Amos had prepared his audience well for that shocking implication.
Verse 7 continues the exposure of the exploiters of the poor. “They pant after the dust of the earth which is on the head of the poor.” Regarding the initial verb, most commentators follow the Septuagint and read “they trample,” taking the original Hebrew root here as šûp rather than š??ap. The meaning is that the influential and rich trampled the head of the poor into the dust. “And pervert the way of the humble.” To pervert, n??â derek (hiphil), means to abrogate the course of justice, in this case, for the humble, ??n?w? m, the oppressed. The perpetrators would be the proud and the arrogant. Proverbs 22:22 strikes the same note, “Do not rob the poor because he is poor, nor oppress the afflicted at the gate.”
We pause to evaluate our own lives and our churches in the light of God’s indictment of Israel. Our faith is measured by how we relate to the poor and oppressed. Christ came to preach the Gospel to the poor (Luke 4:18). He ministered to the disadvantaged, and He made our eternal life contingent on feeding the hungry and clothing the naked (Matt. 25:31–46).
Throughout Christian history vital spiritual power has been linked with intentional care for the poor and needy. It is safe to say that no Christian is fulfilling his or her calling without an active involvement in ministry to the poor. In addition to financial contributions to agencies for organized relief and assistance, we all need to get directly engaged in the care, assistance, and rehabilitation of several individuals and families who are poor or oppressed by circumstances.
In my congregation in Hollywood many of the members had their lives transformed by hands-on ministry with the hungry, homeless, and disadvantaged.
As I mentioned earlier, our Lighthouse Ministry fed hundreds of hungry people every Sunday afternoon on the church campus. The food was prepared and served by members. But one of the secrets of the success of the program was that they sat down and talked with those they serve. Nameless street persons became known by name and were cared for as persons.
This was no “soup for a sermon” ministry. Rather, the Bread of Life is shared in deep conversations. Many who were fed physically and spiritually later became Christians. In addition to fulfilling the Lord’s call to care for the poor, many of our members found a new joy in their own walk with the Lord. This personal ministry made our members more committed to working to change the deeper causes of poverty and hunger.
In Israel, the mistreatment of the poor and oppressed was directly related to the people’s misplaced worship and devotion. They put their trust in the fertility cults of Baal. A part of Baal worship was “sacred” prostitution. It was believed that copulation with the temple prostitutes would result in fertility in their flocks and herds as well as success in the growth of crops.
As we discovered in our study of the Book of Hosea, when the Israelites crossed over Jordan from the wilderness to claim the Promised Land, they were unprepared for agricultural life. They soon observed that the Canaanites depended on Baal worship for their prosperity and had shrines to the fertility God in their fields. Adopting Baal worship in combination with worship of Yahweh began the addiction to syncretism, which had become entrenched by Amos’s time.
Cult prostitution flourished in this syncretism. This, too, has its contemporary manifestations. A shocking evidence of it was recently reported in the Los Angeles Times.
A Los Angeles couple was found guilty of prostitution, although they claimed they were following the tenets of the Church of the Most High Goddess. According to the woman, her sex acts with hundreds of men were her legitimate duties as high priestess of the allegedly 5,000–year-old Egyptian religion.
During the trial, the husband compared himself to Jesus Christ and Mormon leader Joseph Smith, who, he said, were persecuted because their beliefs contradicted social norms of their times. He said he revived the religion in 1984 after receiving a revelation from God.
The couple said that in their religion, the sins of men are absolved through sex with the church’s priestess. They did not say how women’s sins were absolved, however. Besides the absolution of sin through sex, a $150 donation to the church showed a manallegiance to the church.
The practice of cult prostitution in Israel in confronted by Yahweh in verse 7b. “A man and his father go in to the same girl, to defile My holy name.” This probably does not mean incest or a father and son off on a sexual foray, but that fathers and sons alike were engaged in using cult prostitutes in worship of Baal. The commandments and the covenant were being denied and Yahweh’s name, His presence, power, and authority were being defiled.
Added to that (v. 8), clothes taken from the poor in pledge of the payment of a debt were being offered to the Baal gods on the pagan altars. The wine taken from those condemned to debt-slavery was being drunk in the temples.
Very significant. Baal worship had neither moral requirements nor responsibilities. What Yahweh would not permit was flaunted in the temples of the permissive Baal gods. The same equivocation is perpetrated in every age by God’s people when they find His spiritual and moral standards too stringent. Another God, an easy religion that strokes our proclivities and prejudices, is found to worship because there is no accountability.
In verse 9 Yahweh asserts that it was none other than He who has been scorned and denied. “It was I who destroyed the Amorite before them.” Amorite is synonymous with Canaanite. Yahweh led the battle and gave victory over the Canaanites who were strong and well-rooted “like the height of the cedars … as strong as the oaks.” As He led the conquering Israelites, He completely defeated the enemy, “his fruit above and his roots beneath.”
In verse 10 Yahweh continues to review His acts in Israel’s salvation history. He alone made possible the Exodus, the provision and protection in the wilderness, and the possession of the Promised Land.
As the young nation settled in Canaan, the Lord not only sought to bless His people with their material needs as the source and sustainer of all, but He raised up prophets or Nazirites to be seers and guides for the people’s development as a holy nation (v. 11). The name Nazirite means one separated, consecrated to God for a certain specified period. The detailed list of the requirements is found in Numbers 6. One requirement was to not drink wine or strong drink nor eat any product of the vine during the time of his separation.
Yahweh’s charge against Israel is that the people blatantly resisted the authority of the Nazarites to prophesy and actually enticed them to drink (v. 12). All this was part of the rebellion that had infected His people.
The thrust of the oracle against Israel is now very clear. Yahweh actively showed His strength to help a weak people become strong. The tragedy was that they used their strength to oppress the weak. Yahweh was Israel’s defender; now they exploited the defenseless.
Yahweh’s punishment of Israel’s rebellion is detailed in Amos 2:13–16. We need to look carefully at the translation of verse 13, “Behold, I am weighed down by you, as a cart full of sheaves is weighed down.” The Hebrew verb in both clauses is active and not passive. The RSV thus translates, “Behold, I will press you down in your place, as a cart full of sheaves presses down.” The rare verb, ?ûq (hiphil), is rendered by Wolff as “break open,” as a cart of sheaves breaks open the earth beneath its wheels, suggesting the image of an earthquake. Stuart thinks the verb more likely means “bog down,” as a heavily loaded cart sometimes grinds to a halt.9
In any case, the time of Yahweh’s punishment will be inescapable. The remaining verses of the oracle describe the plight. There will be no safe refuge even for fast runners, the strong will be weak, archers will not be able to take a stand, soldiers will not be able to defend themselves, and cavalry troops (or charioteers) will not be able to save themselves. Even those with heart, l?b (in v. 16 denoting the vital center of strength and courage), will flee naked in sheer panic. This is a startling description of what actually happened in 722 B.C. during the siege of Samaria and the subsequent destruction of the northern kingdom by Assyria.
Now we come full circle back to our own times. The accounts of hatred, prejudice, and inhumanity in our day make Amos’s inaugural message more than a study of eighth century B.C. history. Unfortunately, many of the relational sins described for the Israelites, we do also—we have not progressed very far.
We ponder what is the “fourth” sin of our own society. Then we reflect on what it is for the church as a whole and for your church and mine in particular. Like Israel, we will be held accountable in greater measure. Has our experience of salvation through Christ put people and their needs top on our agenda? Does our zeal for social righteousness outstrip the agnostic humanitarian or the nonbelieving social worker?
Any responsible teaching or preaching of this passage must lead to an even more startling conclusion than Amos’s confrontation of Israel when his audience least expected it. There is a ninth oracle for our own audience today. In it we must list the relational and social sins of neglect in our own churches and in our own lives.
AMOS 3:1–4:3
We come now to the second and main unit of Amos’s prophecy. This unit spans chapters 3–6 and contains the major themes of his message. It is a collection of oracles, unified around the central thrust that there is an awesome challenge and cost to being chosen. Amos 3:1–8 clearly establishes the cause and effect of Israel’s election and her accountability to her God.
Verses 1–2 serve as a kind of topic statement for the entire unit of chapters 3–6. PRIVILEGE AND PURPOSE 3:1 Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying: 2 “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” —Amos 3:1–2 The American Express Company has the slogan, “Membership has its privileges.” In an ultimate sense, our election by God has life’s greatest privileges. To be elected by the sovereign grace of God is to be chosen and called to be His person, to be the focus of His love, providential care, and timely interventions. The privilege of belonging to God also has rigorous responsibilities. We are elected to fulfill God’s purposes. Our lives are to be a theocracy under His reign. We are to seek first to know and to do His will and to glorify Him as Lord of all. Israel was elected to be a nation of chosen people. Amos 3:1 summarizes the whole sweep of their salvation history. They were God’s holy people, belonging first and foremost to Him. He called them out of Egypt, liberated them from bondage, blessed them with the Exodus, and brought them to the Promised Land. However, through the years Israel forgot that her privilege was inseparably related to accomplishing God’s purpose. The word of the Lord spoken by Amos against Israel was for their defection from that purpose. Verse 2 puts the responsibility of election in the most personal language. “You only have I known of all the families of the earth.” The word know implies the most intimate relationships. Yahweh cherished Israel with tender love and mercy. His saving grace establishes the ground for special accountability. Based on this accountability (“therefore”), the following statement communicates the certitude of punishment for all of Israel’s iniquities. An iniquity is a long-standing, persistent, compulsive sin despite warnings and opportunities to change. At base, Israel’s sin was the refusal to be Yahweh’s family and obey Him as Father of the nation. The nation was a rebellious child caught in the bind of a continuing tantrum against Yahweh’s authority. As Christians we, too, have a magnificent salvation history: liberation from bondage through the cross, an exodus to new life in Christ, a promised land of the abundant life, and countless blessings each step of the way. The danger is we can become so faithlessly familiar with all that is ours we forget we are not our own. We need Paul’s bracing reminder, “For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your Spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:20). Glorifying God is our vocation, our calling. This includes personal piety and social righteousness. Churches can become proud of their heritage and miss the call to obedience now. This happens when great memories of what God did leads us to pride and precludes humbly discovering what He wants to do in and through us today. Focusing on our past experiences with God keeps us from experiencing God now. Life with God is a daily walk. TO WALK OR NOT TO WALK? 3 Can two walk together, unless they are agreed? 4 Will a lion roar in the forest, when he has no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he has caught nothing? 5 Will a bird fall into a snare on the earth, where there is no trap for it? Will a snare spring up from the earth, if it has caught nothing at all? 6 If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid? If there is calamity in a city, will not the LORD have done it? —Amos 3:3–6 These questions establish the relationship of cause and effect. The first, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth questions deal directly with Israel as God’s chosen family, and the intervening four emphasize from nature the point that every visible effect has a cause. “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” (3:3). The word agreed is really “met” in the Hebrew, y??ad (niphal). Two people who take a walk must meet together to begin the walk. There must be a starting place, a shared pace, and a shared destination. This is the cause of the effect of the walk. Israel had been called as God’s chosen family to walk with Him. He extricated His people out of Egypt so He could meet them at Sinai to begin to walk with them as His holy nation, His bride. The terms of that walk were clearly defined in the covenant and the commandments. The destination of the walk was not just the promised land, but consistent companionship with Him through history. The simile of life in God being like a walk with God was a part of Israel’s sacred history. Abraham, Enoch, and Moses were said to have “walked with God.” Then after the meeting of Sinai, God said, “Walk in My statutes, walk in My commandments, walk in My way.” Walking humbly with God meant walking attentively and responsively to what God said as He walked with His people. They were not to run ahead or lag behind, but to keep His pace with Him, moving toward His goal. The watchword was, “This is My way, walk in it.” Thus the question, “Can two walk together unless they have met?” stresses the point that Israel’s daily walk with God was not being consistently renewed. The starting place for a Christian’s walk with God is Calvary. We meet Him at the foot of the cross. George Whitfield never forgot the place and time when he began his walk of faith. Whenever he returned to Oxford, he went directly to a certain tree where he first experienced grace and was born again. Wherever he was in England or America, his daily walk was renewed with the memory of that hallowed place of commitment. John Bunyan also consistently remembered how he began his walk with God. “I was made to see, again and again, that God and my soul were friends by His blood; yea, I saw that the justice of God and my sinful soul could embrace and kiss each other, through His blood. This was a good day to me; I hope I shall never forget it.” The old hymn expresses this liberating experience of beginning to walk with the Lord: At the cross, at the cross, Where I first saw the light, And the burden of my heart rolled away, It was there by faith I received my sight, And now I am happy all the day.1 The image of the Christian life being a walk is firmly rooted in the messages of Paul and John. Paul called the Ephesians “to have a walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness” (Eph. 4:1–2). He called the saints to “walk by faith” (2 Cor. 5:7), to “walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5:16), to “walk in love” (Eph. 5:2), and to “walk as children of the light” (Eph. 5:8). God in Immanuel is the companion of our walk. “As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving” (Col. 2:6–7). For the apostle John, walking in Christ meant walking in the light of truth. Fellowship with the Lord and with our fellow walkers in faith requires honesty and openness. “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:6–7). From the meeting place of Calvary, we walk in the light of the presence and truth of Christ, God with us, and daily our pace and direction is righted with confession and forgiveness. We must meet the Lord in the morning if we want to walk with Him through the day. And each day’s walk will lead us on in the Lord’s plan and purpose for our lives. Recently, a friend asked me, “How’s your walk? Is your walk consistent with your talk?” A good question to ask every day. It is easy to veer off on our own, breaking fellowship with the Lord, and heading off in a wrong direction. James Sammis put it more poetically but no less directly in his poem that has been set to music of a favorite hymn: When we walk with the Lord In the light of His Word, What a glory He sheds on our way! While we do His good will He abides with us still, And with all who will trust and obey. This was exactly what Israel refused to do. They had ceased to walk with Yahweh. They would not meet Him daily for a renewal of the true covenant. That was the cause of the effect that they no longer walked in His ways. EXAMPLES OF CAUSE AND EFFECT Now Amos draws on his rich experience with nature to drive home the inseparable linkage between this cause and its effect. He asks four questions. As a tender of sheep and a breeder of livestock, he knew the danger of a lion hungry for its prey. “Will a lion roar in the forest, when he has no prey?” (3:4). The roar frightens the prey away from the flock so the lion can corner it and kill it. The second question, “Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he has caught nothing?” The roar is the effect of the cause that the lion has secured the prey in its den and warns other animals to beware coming near. This is in keeping with the shepherd’s old maxim, “If a lion roars, he has just made a catch.”2 In verse 5, Amos uses ornithological metaphors but with the same cause and effect intent. “Will a bird fall into a snare on the earth, where there is no trap for it?” Stuart translates, “Does a bird fall into a ground trap if the snare has not been set?”3 Wolff identifies the word môq?š as a wooden missile, a throwing stick that was used to ground a flying bird. “There is evidence,” says Wolff, “that the boomerang and the throwing stick were common hunting weapons in the ancient Near East, being used primarily to catch birds.”4 Whatever the instrument, it was the cause of the effect of catching the bird. The second device for catching birds was a net, pa? (folding net). The point is the same: If the net was not set up, the bird would not be snared. “Will a snare spring up from the earth, if it has caught nothing at all?” Of course not. The bird in the net trips the closure of the net. But it had to be set—the cause—if it is to catch the bird—the effect. Questions six and seven in verse 6 return to humankind and present the frightening effect of Israel no longer walking with God. “If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid?” Amos now moves closer to his central goal of alerting Israel to the danger of Yahweh’s judgment on her apostasy. A trumpet blast by a city’s watchman was to give warning and arouse the people of an approaching danger. The result follows the cause. Amosprophecy was a trumpet blast of warning of the approaching accountability with Yahweh. And now the key question: “If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it?” Yahweh will be behind the scenes in Israel’s forthcoming calamity because she rejected the call to walk humbly with Him. He will use the course of events involved in Israel’s international affairs to bring His judgment on His people. Calamity in the city, in our lives, through other people, or because of our sins, are sometimes used by the Lord to alert us to the fact that we have refused to walk humbly with Him toward His destination for us. When trouble strikes, it is a trumpet call to reestablish our walk with Him. Of course, sometimes we get into trouble because we are walking with the Lord doing what love requires. But we know the difference between corrective trouble and persecution for righteousness sake. Our daily conversations during our walk with the Lord make that abundantly clear. The question, “Lord what are you trying to say to me in what’s happening to me?” never goes unanswered—if we are listening. Often I exercise on a walking machine. It goes at a steady pace, alternating the speed for aerobic results. You have to walk at the pace determined or you will fall off the machine. One day I thought, “How like walking with the Lord this is! We either go at His pace or not at all.” Toki Niyashima has written a version of the 23rd Psalm that should be a daily motto for those who want to walk with the Lord: The Lord is my Pace-setter, I shall not rush; He makes me to stop and rest for quiet intervals. He provides me with images of stillness, Which restore my serenity. He leads me in the ways of efficiency through calmness of mind. And His guidance is peace. Even though I have a great many things to accomplish each day, I will not fret, for His presence is here. His timelessness, His all importance, will keep me in balance He prepares refreshment and renewal in the midst of my activity, By enriching my mind with His oil of tranquility. My cup of joyous energy overflows. Surely harmony and effectiveness shall be the fruits of my hours For I shall walk in the pace of my Lord, and dwell in His house forever.5 A CLEAR CALL AND A READY RESPONSE 7 Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets. 8 A lion has roared! Who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken! Who can but prophesy? —Amos 3:7–8 The final couplet of questions (eight and nine) is given by Amos to witness to his own prophetic calling and ready response. Verses 7–8 are sometimes dealt with as a separate oracle unrelated to the seven previous questions. My view is that they serve as an example of creative cause and effect from the prophet’s own experience. Unashamedly, he longs for all of Israel to respond to the cause of Yahweh’s call with the effect of reverence and obedience. His statement is in defense of his prophetic authority but exemplifies the way all of Yahweh’s people should walk with Him. Amos asserts that the Lord does nothing without revealing both the what and the why to His servants, the prophets. Not a single thing, event, or certain matter, d?b?r, is done. Yahweh reveals His plan, sôd, to the prophets. He explains His actions and uses the prophets to interpret their meaning. Amos heard the roar of God’s word. The prophet responded with authentic awe and true repentance. The Lord spoke to Him and revealed His judgment. He could not disobey the calling to prophesy to God’s people of the impending danger. As with any effective communicator, Amos lived his message. He asked Israel to do no more than he was willing to do himself. God called and he responded. God spoke and he delivered the message. Amos modeled the challenge and cost of being chosen. Nothing less was required of Israel. And from this side of Calvary even more is expected of us. Jesus said, “For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more” (Luke 12:48). THE MESSAGE COMMITTED TO AMOS FOR SAMARIA 9 “Proclaim in the palaces at Ashdod, And in the palaces in the land of Egypt, and say: ‘Assemble on the mountains of Samaria; See great tumults in her midst, And the oppressed within her. 10 For they do not know to do right,’ Says the LORD, ‘Who store up violence and robbery in their palaces.’ ” 11 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: “An adversary shall be all around the land; He shall sap your strength from you, And your palaces shall be plundered.” 12 Thus says the LORD: “As a shepherd takes from the mouth of a lion Two legs or a piece of an ear, So shall the children of Israel be taken out Who dwell in Samaria— In the corner of a bed and on the edge of a couch! 13 Hear and testify against the house of Jacob,” Says the Lord GOD, the God of hosts, 14 “That in the day I punish Israel for their transgressions, I will also visit destruction on the altars of Bethel; And the horns of the altar shall be cut off And fall to the ground. 15 I will destroy the winter house along with the summer house; The houses of ivory shall perish, And the great houses shall have an end,” Says the LORD. 4:1 Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, Who oppress the poor, Who crush the needy, Who say to your husbands, “Bring wine, let us drink!” 2 The Lord GOD has sworn by His holiness: “Behold, the days shall come upon you When He will take you away with fishhooks, And your posterity with fishhooks. 3 You will go out through broken walls, Each one straight ahead of her, And you will be cast into Harmon,” Says the LORD. —Amos 3:9–4:3 Amos 3:9–4:3 contains the message committed to the prophet to declare to Samaria, the capital city of the northern kingdom. The unit has four oracles closely intertwined around the central theme of the sins of the city. We are immediately impressed by Amos’s boldness and courage in the first oracle. The sheepherder of Tekoa was empowered by his encounter with the Lord and the word he was given to prophesy. With fearless authority Amos calls for messengers to be sent to the palaces of Ashdod,6 a leading Philistine city, and to the palaces of Egypt. The summons is to come and see what is happening in Samaria. “Assemble on the mountains of Samaria” (3:9). The city was built by kings Omri and Ahab back in the ninth century B.C. on a mountain more than 300 feet above a plain. The plain also was encircled by other mountains or hills. Great fortification walls surrounded the city, known for its wealth and military strength. From Yahweh’s perspective, Amos saw something more than the sumptuous security of the city. He sees “great tumults in her midst, and the oppressed within her” (v. 9b). Though the structures of the strongholds of Samaria were impressive, a closer look revealed great tumults, chaos, panic, and disorder. The construction great tumults, m?hûmôt rabbôt, also can mean the confusion caused by unrestrained and wanton revelry as in orgies out of control. The oppression, ??sûq? m, was the subjugation of the poor and helpless by the powerful and rich. Samaria was Vanity Fair, Sin City, obsessed with sexual lust and sensualism. Tragically, Samaria’s leaders thought what they were doing was right! They had drifted so far from the covenant and the commandments that they were completely without moral standards. “ ‘For they do not know to do right,’ says the LORD, ‘who store up violence and robbery in their palaces’ ” (3:10). Having lost all moral perspective, they filled their storehouses with the proceeds of their exploitation and robbery of the poor. Craigie comments, “The archeological excavations of Samaria have revealed great storehouses in the palace complex; perhaps the prophet mocks these structures in saying that the citizens of Samaria ‘store up violence and robbery.’ ”7 Verse 11 declares Yahweh’s judgment of people who contradicted so blatantly their calling as His people. An adversary will invade the whole land, and in Samaria the rich will have done to them what they were doing to the poor. Their houses will be plundered. It will be more than a “calamity in the city” (v. 6) but a total denuding and destruction. It is not revealed who the adversary will be. From the grim perspective of history, we know that it was Assyria. The next oracle (vv. 12–15) is a mixture of the inevitability of God’s judgment and what He will do to rescue some of His people from annihilation. Amos draws on his shepherd’s experience to show the unavoidability of what will occur. “As a shepherd takes from the mouth of a lion two legs or a piece of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be taken out” (3:12). The example is based on a specific statute governing what should be done when a shepherd allows a sheep entrusted to his care by another to be killed by a beast of prey. The obligation of restitution is nullified as long as the shepherd can supply evidence (Ex. 22:10–13). Two pieces of bone from the legs or the tip of an ear was sufficient proof that the sheep was killed by a beast of prey and not stolen by the shepherd. The proof was to establish that the loss was unavoidable.8 The explanation of this example is easier than the application to Israel. What seems to be intended is the extent of the destruction of the nation will be total. Israel will die as a national power. What is left in the mouth of her adversary of prey will only be a remnant of the people. They will be taken out of Samaria in the exile. The general sense of the next picture is clear, although the specifics are disputed. Concerning those who lived in luxury, only fragments of their wealth will be left. Those who had beds and couches while the poor slept and sat on the ground will be stripped of the accoutrements of their acquisitive accumulation. They will go into exile with barely the clothing on their backs. Next the people are reminded that they are bêt ya??q?b, the house of Jacob, under the bond of the covenant and Yahweh’s people. Once again the theme of the challenge and cost of being chosen is sounded. Even though wealth and military might delude them into believing they were one of the great nations of the world, they would lose their assumed pride. They sinned against their God and would be punished. They wanted to be like other nations; soon they would be no nation at all. The most serious of Israel’s sins was Baal worship at the altars of Bethel (v. 14). Yahweh will destroy those altars on which pagan sacrifices were being made. The people thought of the altars as places of expiation and atonement. Now there would be neither. Even the horns of the altar will be cut off. The reference is reminiscent of an earlier practice of giving asylum to a fugitive who reached the sanctuary and grasped the horns of the altar. Now there would be no refuge. Israel would be treated as a murderer who, according to ancient covenant Law was to be taken by force away from the horns and executed (Ex. 21:12–14; cf. 1 Kin. 1:50; 2:28). There will be no place for the people to flee. The altars on which they syncretized Baal with Yahweh would not help them. A further judgment on the rich who gouged the poor would be the destruction of both their winter and summer houses (3:15). Seasonal residences were a sign of wealth. The great houses of Samaria were adorned with ivory. Ivory plaques were found in the archeological excavations of Samaria. These elegant houses were razed when the city fell in 722 B.C. HOLY COWS The next part of Amos’s prophecy against Samaria probably took place in the palace precincts. He addresses the elite women of the upper crust of society of the capital city. They were the wives of wealthy landowners, court dignitaries, and businessmen. These women were pampered, overfed, and self-indulgent. What they forgot was that all they wore and owned actually belonged to God. They were holy women belonging to God though doing everything possible to deny their election and covenant responsibilities. Now the shock. Amos addressed these high and mighty ladies as “cows of Bashan” (4:1). Background on the term heightens our appreciation of the wave of indignation that must have been like thunder and lightning rumbling and flashing through the self-satisfied ambience of Amos’s audience. As a cattle breeder, Amos knew about the cows of Bashan. The territory was a fertile plain situated in Transjordan on both sides of the middle and upper Yarmuk at an altitude of about 1,500 feet. The plateau lying east of the Sea of Galilee had lush pasture used for fattening cattle. Ezekiel 39:18 calls these cattle “fatlings.” They demanded a great deal of special care, water, and pasture. To call a group of women fat cows certainly would get their attention and their wrath. Perhaps these women were overweight while the poor and oppressed went hungry, but they also were pampered and coddled. While they were abusive to the poor and crushed the needy, they reveled in drunken debauchery. “Bring wine,” they say, “and let’s get drunk!” Amos announces that God took a solemn oath to punish them for how they denigrated their calling as holy women and dehumanized the less fortunate. The judgment of Yahweh that Amos announces is that “He will take you away with fishhooks, and your posterity with fishhooks” (v. 2). Most translators assume an indefinite subject in this verse. Stuart translates, “When they will pick you up with hooks.”9 Although the NKJV translates both instruments with “fishhooks,” the Hebrew uses two different terms. Only the second clearly refers to fishing: the words s? rôt dûgâ indicate some type of fishing instrument, but hardly an angling hook. Probably what is meant is a type of harpoon or lance used like a cattle prod. That would fit the image of the cows of Bashan. The other term may refer to hooks used to move dead cattle or to ropes.10 Then the picture is the removing of the dead bodies of the women after the siege and destruction of the city. Dead or alive the women along with others would be dragged out of the city. The meaning of Harmon in 4:3 is uncertain. It can mean the dumping place for dead bodies or life in the exile. Our application is that covenant loyalty to God demands social responsibility for the needs of people. A vital part of being chosen means active involvement in ministry to the poor, hungry, and disadvantaged. There is no escape from this calling or from the Lord’s judgment when we neglect it. We are left with some haunting questions: Have we claimed our calling? Is God first in our lives? Is our purpose to glorify Him in everything? Are people and their needs top in our agenda? If we were to ask a close friend or member of our family what he or she thinks are our top priorities, what would he or she say? What tangible evidence is there in our lives that we have accepted the challenge and cost of being chosen? CHAPTER FOUR—GODLESS WORSHIP AND WORSHIPLESS LIVING AMOS 4:4–13 Scripture Outline Godless Worship (4:4–5) Worshipless Living (4:6–13) Nothing Happens Without God’s Permission With the stark realities of the abusive social attitudes and behavior of the people of Samaria freshly imprinted on his mind, Amos left the city. Perhaps he was disbarred from the city for a time because of his confrontation with the self-indulgent establishment. Amos just could not divide faith from social responsibility. Now he saw that Yahweh’s people had neither. Faith had been replaced by religious customs, and social responsibility by careless neglect and greedy misuse of the poor and needy. Amos’s soul flamed with divinely inspired indignation. He could not tolerate the faithless religion of people who no longer knew Yahweh and who had no moral integrity. Everything he saw going on in Israel as a whole was judged in the light of the people’s brash disregard for the basics of social justice. We can empathize. Get in touch with the feelings you have when you talk with a pietistic Christian whose lifestyle totally contradicts his glib talk. We all have a few people like that in our lives. I know lots of them. One comes to mind. His relationships are strained, his marriage is in a shambles, and he owns a great deal of slum property from which he gets richer each year. When people cannot or will not pay their rent, he simply takes the front door off until they pay up. It is difficult for me to listen to this man talk about Jesus. And we all have had experiences with churches that have little or no ministry to the disadvantaged. I spoke at one recently. It was a traditional denominational church with all the right liturgy, beautiful buildings, and slick programs for the already convinced. What is lacking is evangelism and mission. Large endowments sustain the budget, but the church is going to die unless it reaches out to the surrounding city. It was difficult for me to see anything right in a church that was so wrong in its disregard for people who desperately need Christ. It is a religious institution made up of people who do not really know the Lord. Now multiply your feelings of indignation about Christians and churches like those I have mentioned by the acute compassion you feel about the suffering in our society, and you begin to allow your heart to beat with the passionate heart of Amos. With the sins of Samaria on his heart, he could not appreciate the carnival-like ceremonial celebrations at the sanctuaries of Bethel and Gilgal. The prophet was at one of those national sanctuaries when he gave the message contained in Amos 4:4–13, probably in Bethel. Verses 4–5 are what he said to the pilgrims as they entered the sanctuary. It was a seething parody on Psalm 95:6–7. Verses 6–13 represent the cohesive message he proclaimed to the teeming crowds gathered in Bethel for the festival that seems to be in progress. This section of Amos provides the communicator an excellent opportunity to deal with two closely related themes: Godless worship and worshipless living. GODLESS WORSHIP 4 “Come to Bethel and transgress, At Gilgal multiply transgression; Bring your sacrifices every morning, Your tithes every three days. 5 Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, Proclaim and announce the freewill offerings; For this you love, You children of Israel!” Says the Lord GOD. —Amos 4:4–5 Imagine yourself with Amos in Bethel, the holy place of the sanctuary in the south of Israel, directly north of Jerusalem. The area is teeming with pilgrims who traveled great distances for an annual festival. They brought with them animals to sacrifice as well as the tithes of their harvests as offerings. The atmosphere is a combination of the excitement of a convention, the hoopla of a carnival, and the raucous jostling of an overcrowded picnic. The air is electric with the enthusiasm of the people who had come to celebrate their traditions and ceremonies. We enter into the excitement. Ah, to be at Bethel! The place where Jacob dreamed of a ladder reaching from heaven to earth and where he tithed his possessions in gratitude for his mysterious encounter with the God of Abraham and Isaac. Bethel had been a sacred place of Canaanite worship. But after the conquest of the Promised Land, it became a worship center for the Israelites (Judg. 20:18). Samuel judged there (1 Sam. 7:16), and after Solomon died and the kingdom was divided, it became the rival sanctuary of Jerusalem for the people of the northern kingdom. The royal family worshiped there, and it was called “the king’s sanctuary” (Amos 7:13). We stand with Amos outside the sanctuary watching the gathered crowd prepare to enter. At any moment we expect the priest to come and call the people to worship with the traditional words of Psalm 95:6–7: O come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand. Before the priest appears to give this call to worship, which Amos knew would be a travesty of contradiction to what he knew was going on in Israel’s defection from knowledge of God and faithfulness to Him in social righteousness, the prophet boldly steps forth and with commanding presence gives a more honest and realistic call. “Come to Bethel and transgress, at Gilgal multiply transgressions” (4:4). Again Amos shocked and stunned his audience. He could not have used a more harsh term than transgress to describe what the people were planning to do in the sanctuary. The word transgress (p?ša?) means “to break with.”1 It is the same root used to describe the plot of Joseph’s brothers to kill him (Gen. 50:17) or for rebellion. Amos uses the word here to jar the people with the fact that it is a sin to carry on with rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices, when they have not obeyed Yahweh. The religious observances were totally separated from true worship of Him and obedience to Him. Nothing is more Godless than worship that follows traditional procedures without an encounter with God Himself or any accountability to His commandments or obedience to His moral requirements. The rituals for the festival were firmly set. Amos lists them with a tone of disdain because the true spiritual and moral quality of the nation belittles the significance of the rituals. Sacrifices were made every morning. Three days after arriving at the festival, tithes of harvest were to be made (v. 4). In violation of Leviticus 2:11 and 6:14–17, leaven was burned in the burnt offerings. Free-will offerings beyond the tithe were pretentiously presented to call attention to the generosity of the giver rather than praise to Yahweh. The festivities of slaughtering animals, burnt offerings, attention-getting tithes, and self-serving free-will offerings in the sanctuary had little to do with dedication of the pilgrims’ lives to Yahweh. Without truly seeking Him, the traditional rituals actually became an outward sign of transgression, breaking away from Yahweh. “And you love it!” Amos shouts. “But where is your love for Yahweh expressed in obedience to Him?” Amos implies. Suddenly we are jarred out of our experience with Amos at Bethel and brought back to the realities of our own time. Surely there is no application of what we observed in that bizarre festival to our personal or corporate worship! But can we be so sure? Are there times when we pray our prayers with rote regularity when our hearts and lives are A.W.O.L. from serving God? We all have known times when our disobedience to God’s revealed will makes our prayers empty and trite. And we have experienced the dichotomy between saying He is Lord and not following His guidance in ministry to people’s needs. We humans have an immense ability to tolerate contradictions between our faith and our actions. It becomes a way of life. We live in two worlds: the faith we talk and sing about and the life we live. The other day I met with a group of businesspeople. We discussed the things in our lives that make it difficult to be faithful and obedient to Christ. The last man to share cut to the core of the issue. “I have too many commitments competing with my ultimate commitment. I’m going in a hundred directions. I think about the Lord only in a crisis. And when I do, I’m afraid I’ve developed the fine art of evading His scrutiny of my life. I guess I fear really opening myself by asking how much that I’m doing is what He wants me to do. Oh, I still go to church, but I feel distant from the very Lord I am supposed to be worshiping.” A woman confessed the same problem in a different way. “What do you do with wandering attention? When I pray, I can’t keep my mind on God for more than a few minutes. I drift off into all sorts of worries, fears, and fantasies. Even in worship at church, I’m there but I’m not really there. Strange thing—my mind wanders off to the very things I resist turning over to God.” Another woman presented a very different perspective. She and her husband have accumulated great wealth. “I’ve suddenly grown very weary of our endless round of social activities. I want my life to count for something. I want to connect my faith to my life and then do something to make a difference in the problems of our community.” She has made and is making a great impact with her giving and her leadership in organized efforts of Christian social mission. I cannot help but wonder why she is more of an exception than the rule for many today. When we take Amos seriously we must evaluate the worship life of the church. Often our traditions, ordered liturgies, cherished procedures, familiar words, and stained glass sanctuaries give us a religious feeling that might be a substitute for an authentic encounter with God. We meet a God below God and not the Holy God to whom we are accountable. True worship must expose our deepest personal needs to healing and the aching social ills of our community to a call to ministry. Without the context of reality, there is no cutting edge, no application, no radical obedience. The ebb and flow between worship and life keeps worship from being simply an emotional mood triggered by familiar procedures. WORSHIPLESS LIVING 6 “Also I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities. And lack of bread in all your places; Yet you have not returned to Me,” Says the LORD. 7 “I also withheld rain from you, When there were still three months to the harvest. I made it rain on one city, I withheld rain from another city. One part was rained upon, And where it did not rain the part withered. 8 So two or three cities wandered to another city to drink water, But they were not satisfied; Yet you have not returned to Me,” Says the LORD. 9 “I blasted you with blight and mildew. When your gardens increased, Your vineyards, Your fig trees, And your olive trees, The locust devoured them; Yet you have not returned to Me,” Says the LORD. 10 “I sent among you a plague after the manner of Egypt; Your young men I killed with a sword, Along with your captive horses; I made the stench of your camps come up into your nostrils; Yet you have not returned to Me,” Says the LORD. 11 “I overthrew some of you, As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, And you were like a firebrand plucked from the burning; Yet you have not returned to Me,” Says the LORD. 12 “Therefore thus will I do to you, O Israel; Because I will do this to you, Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” 13 For behold, He who forms mountains, And creates the wind, Who declares to man what his thought is, And makes the morning darkness, Who treads the high places of the earth— The LORD God of hosts is His name. —Amos 4:6–13 Up to this point in this unit, Amos has confronted Israel’s Godless worship. Now in a message that spans verses 6 through 13, he addresses worshipless living. The basic theme is that the people urgently needed to return to God and prepare to meet Him. They refused to see the connection of recent calamities to Yahweh’s call to return to Him. The tragedies should have been a megaphone call to truly worship and serve the Lord again. In essence, Amos’s prophetic message here is, “What will it take to wake you up? What disaster will it take for you to see the vital connection between what has happened and Yahweh’s judgment on you?” Yahweh’s text, which He repeats five times for emphasis and illustrates with vivid examples, is, “Yet you have not returned to Me.” Let’s briefly look at each of these five national calamities: 1. Verse 6: There had been a famine in the land. “Cleanness of teeth” means hunger. A lack of bread had hit “all your places.” No particular famine is focused, but a general period of hard times. These times should have motivated Israel to return to (šûb ?ad) the Lord. Stuart points out that the expression šûb ?ad is a synonym for šûb ?el, “a standard expression for turning from idolatry and polytheism (Deut. 4:28) to orthodox faithfulness to Yahweh.”2 2. Verses 7–8: Widespread and prolonged drought produced no more repentance than the famine. The cities that received rain did not return to the Lord with gratitude, while those who had a drought did not connect it to Yahweh’s judgment. The people had become insensitive to Yahweh’s control of nature and their lives. 3. Verse 9: A blight from a hot east wind dried up the grain prematurely and caused the green grain to turn brown because of the invasion of worms. “Blight (or scorching) and mildew” are mentioned as part of the covenant warnings and invitation to repentance in Deuteronomy 28. The people did not heed the signs of the blight or of the attack of the locust on the vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees. Still they did not repent and return to Yahweh. 4. Verse 10: Israel also should have seen the dire warning of plagues and war. Both were clearly mentioned as covenant curses against those who break the covenant (Deut. 28:49–57). The plague “after the manner of Egypt” may refer to the exodus plagues sent on Egypt to force the Pharaoh to release the Israelites. Plague is also used in parallelism with sword. Here the young men of Israel, the elite troops, probably the chariot corps, fell by the sword along with their horses. The stench of the decay reached the nostrils of the people, but still they did not repent and return to the Lord. 5. Verse 11: In warfare some of the cities of Israel were overthrown like Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19). However, like a log pulled away from a fire, the nation had been saved. And yet, these interventions of Yahweh did not change their stubborn infidelity to Him. These five illustrations of Yahweh’s judgment in the past prepare for the confrontation of verse 12. All that the Lord has been doing have been warnings. They have not produced repentance, and now, instead of a few miseries affecting only a few people, Yahweh will unleash full punishment of the whole nation. Therefore, “Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” (4:12). If Israel will not meet God with humble repentance, she will meet Him in judgment. I think this was still a further appeal for the people to return to Him, like the call, “Seek Me and live” (5:4). Verse 13 follows with a magnificent self-disclosure of Yahweh’s might and majesty. He is in control of everyone and all things. He shapes the mountains, creates the spirit of man (rûa?, “wind,” also “spirit, breath”), reveals His thoughts (“his plan,” ???ô ), His will, and His law. Yahweh asserts His power above the false gods of the Baal cults. He alone can control the revolution of the earth around the sun for He is sovereign of the whole universe. The “high places of the earth” refer to claims made for Baal Shamem who was touted as taking the high places of the land. Yahweh, not a diminutive Canaanite false god, is Lord over all creation. “The Lord GOD of hosts is His name.” Yahweh is not one God in the pantheon of syncretistic religion, but the only God of heaven and earth. When Israel lost the sense of awe and wonder of true worship, she began to lose everything else. NOTHING HAPPENS WITHOUT GOD’S PERMISSION This unit of Amos brings us again into direct confrontation with the God of the Bible. Nothing happens without His permission. He is not a helpless God who sits wringing His hands watching the affairs of the world. Nor is He impotent against the forces of evil or human rebellion. His ultimate will is that we know, love, and serve Him. The only way to live at peace with Him is to worship Him in the ups and downs, the joys and difficulties, the delights and the discouragements of life. God will never give us more than we can take while trusting in His strength. He will use our problems to help us grow as persons. When we become arrogant, He will break our pride by what we go through. Life’s troubles can function as signpost warnings. Worshiping the Lord in all things opens us to receive judgment when that is needed. Consistent fellowship with the Lord helps us know what He is seeking to give us in the ever-changing drama of our lives. Daily, moment by moment, God-centered worship makes for worshipful living. God is constantly calling us to worship Him. This requires a contrite spirit and truthfulness about our lives. “The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him” (John 4:23). CHAPTER FIVE—REQUIEM AND THE REMNANT AMOS 5:1–17 Scripture Outline The Death of the Nation (5:1–2) The Hope of the Remnant (5:3–9) No Eulogy (5:10–17) Application 5:1 Hear this word which I take up against you, a lamentation, O house of Israel: 2 The virgin of Israel has fallen; She will rise no more. She lies forsaken on her land; There is no one to raise her up. 3 For thus says the Lord God: “The city that goes out by a thousand Shall have a hundred left, And that which goes out by a hundred Shall have ten left to the house of Israel.” 4 For thus says the LORD to the house of Israel: “Seek Me and live; 5 But do not seek Bethel, Nor enter Gilgal, Nor pass over to Beersheba; For Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, And Bethel shall come to nothing. 6 Seek the LORD and live, Lest He break out like fire in the house of Joseph, And devour it, With no one to quench it in Bethel— 7 You who turn justice to wormwood, And lay righteousness to rest in the earth!” 8 He made the Pleiades and Orion; He turns the shadow of death into morning And makes the day dark as night; He calls for the waters of the sea And pours them out on the face of the earth; The LORD is His name. 9 He rains ruin upon the strong, So that fury comes upon the fortress. 10 They hate the one who rebukes in the gate, And they abhor the one who speaks uprightly. 11 Therefore, because you tread down the poor And take grain taxes from him, Though you have built houses of hewn stone, Yet you shall not dwell in them; You have planted pleasant vineyards, But you shall not drink wine from them. 12 For I know your manifold transgressions And your mighty sins: Afflicting the just and taking bribes; Diverting the poor from justice at the gate. 13 Therefore the prudent keep silent at that time, For it is an evil time. 14 Seek good and not evil, That you may live; So the LORD God of hosts will be with you, As you have spoken. 15 Hate evil, love good; Establish justice in the gate. It may be that the LORD God of hosts Will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. 16 Therefore the LORD God of hosts, the Lord, says this: “There shall be wailing in all streets, And they shall say in all the highways, ‘Alas! Alas!’ They shall call the farmer to mourning, And skillful lamenters to wailing. 17 In all vineyards there shall be wailing, For I will pass through you,” Says the LORD. —Amos 5:1–17 Amos turned the festival at Bethel into a wake for a dead nation. Though his funeral address (5:1–17) was given three decades before the actual death of Israel, he speaks of the nation as if the final demise had taken place. And yet, in the midst of his verbal requiem there flashes hope for a remnant that will survive. Amos’s prophecy alternates between the helplessness of that nation to avoid the end of the nation and the hope of a remnant being part of a new beginning. Israel may be finished, but God is not finished with His people. THE DEATH OF THE NATION Amos begins by announcing what he is going to say. His message will be a lament or elegy, q? nâ, for Israel. A funeral sermon! Like his previous attention-arresting opening lines of previous oracles, he once again startles and jars his audience. Verse 1 is a call to announce a recent death. Then suddenly, the name of who has died is disclosed. The house of Israel! The audience is addressed as the corpse over whom the lament is to be given. A similar method was used by a Highland Scots pastor who preached a funeral sermon for his church as his Sunday morning message. Without mentioning the name of the church, he extensively described why and how the church had died. At the end of his sermon he said, “The church of which I have been speaking is this church! And death will surely come unless we ask the Good Lord to revive us and give us a new beginning.” The pastor’s text was from Revelation 3:1, “You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.” Amos held out no such hope for the revival of Israel as a nation. In verse two he speaks of Israel, once the virgin bride of Yahweh, as fallen; she will not rise as a national power again. She is forsaken. No one will be able to resuscitate the dead nation. THE HOPE OF THE REMNANT There will be no hope except for a small remnant that will be saved. Amos shifts into the messenger speech of prophecy in verse 3 to give this thin ray of hope. “The city that goes out by a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which goes out by a hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.” Those who go out are the people who will not survive the destruction at the end. Only a tenth will be saved to be part of the remnant. In verse 4 Yahweh announces the only way to be part of that remnant. “Seek Me and live” has the ring of a final call to repentance and return to the Lord. The call is followed by a clear warning that He would not be found in the syncretistic shrines of Israel. If Amos gave this word from the Lord at Bethel, we can imagine the stir caused by the words, “Do not seek [Me at] Bethel.” Yahweh was not there in the pretentious rituals, the polytheism, and the apostasy. Nor were the people to enter Gilgal in search for Yahweh. The very site that reminded the people of their inheritance of the promised land would be destroyed by an invader and the altar carried off as part of the victor’s booty. Beersheba, once hallowed as the worship place of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, was a place of assurance of the companionship of God. It, too, had fallen into the disgrace of apostasy. “Dongo to Beersheba looking for Me,” Yahweh says. The call to seek the Lord and not the degraded worship at the national shrines is reiterated in verse 6. Truly seeking the Lord was the only hope of surviving the devouring fire of the wrath of Yahweh that would destroy all of Israel including the shrine at Bethel. Amos interrupts his prophetic announcement of the word of Yahweh to include a hymn sung at the festivals and familiar to his audience. He uses the hymn to establish the authority and power of the One for whom he is speaking. The hymn declares that Yahweh created the stars (Pleiades and Orion) and has power over life and death (5:8). NO EULOGY Amos then contrasts the glory of Yahweh with the sinfulness of His people (vv. 10–13). This is a strange twist for a funeral oration. Instead of dwelling on the laudable qualities of the deceased, Amos lists Israel’s social unrighteousness. All the charges the prophet previously made are now exposed as the cause of the nation’s death. The poor were exploited. They were taxed for the aggrandizement of the wealthy and powerful. It was an evil time of bribery and the passing of hush money for even the prudent to keep silent about the injustice. The rich who profited at the expense of the poor and oppressed built stone houses and planted desirable vineyards. But with the death of the nation, these unrighteous people will not live in their houses or drink of the wine from their vineyards. After the panic-producing declaration, Amos again turns to the hope of a remnant surviving the destruction of the nation. Now the admonition is described differently to emphasize that seeking the Lord means departing from social evil. “Seek good and not evil” (v. 14). Seeking God and practicing social righteousness are inseparable. Verses 16–17 conclude Amos’s funeral address with a grim picture of the wailing over the death of the nation. There will be wailing in all the streets. The grief will be so profound that there will not be enough professional wailers to express the grief. Even farmers from outside the cities will be called to add their voices to the multitude of anguished cries. The final words are most terrifying of all. “ ‘For I will pass through you,’ says the LORD” (v. 17). He will be the angel of death Himself. There will not be a passover as in Egypt. Instead of being protected, the people will be destroyed. No imagery could be more alarming and denigrating to Amos’s proud listeners. APPLICATION Amos’s funeral address has great preaching and teaching value for the Christian communicator. It vividly describes our condition prior to Christ, it sounds a call for repentance, and it gives us the authentic test of regeneration. 1. Like Israel of old, our human condition prior to conversion is death. We are the spiritually dead among the living. Paul described this to the Ephesians. “We were dead in trespasses” (Eph. 2:5). 2. Christ, the very life of God, came that we might have life. His whole message and ministry could be focused on the words, “Seek Me and live” (Amos 5:4). Through His death and resurrection and indwelling presence, He offers us abundant life now and eternal life forever. In response, we must repent, receive Him as Lord, and relinquish our own control. When Christ takes up residence in us, we truly come alive. We are resurrected out of the grave of sin. We are regenerated into new people, new creatures of the new creation. 3. The authentic test of our regeneration is that we “seek good and not evil” (5:14), we hate evil and love good and establish justice. Our righteousness is in Christ by faith. This is our liberating motivation for seeking righteousness in all our relationships and in society. The practice of righteousness is a sure sign that we have been born again. “He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous” (1 John 3:7). Love is the litmus test. And that love is expressed by sharing our faith and working for social justice. The spiritual and physical needs of people become the passion of our lives. CHAPTER SIX—NO PLACE TO HIDE AMOS 5:18–27 Scripture Outline Escaping a Lion and Meeting a Bear (5:18–20) What Does This Mean for Us Today? No Place to Hide (5:21–27) Hiding in Religion (5:21–27) Loved by the Inescapable God Harry became a famous escape artist. He found that he could draw large crowds and eventually earn fame and fortune by his feats of escape. He began with handcuffs, then straightjackets, then tightly nailed boxes, and finally vaults made by the best safe manufacturers in the world. Only after Harry Houdini’s death in 1926 were his secrets disclosed by his assistants. Houdini’s slogan was, “I only got into situations I could control and from which I could escape.” Most of us have a Houdini in our souls—the escape artist who at times seeks to escape from God. The Houdini Christian is one who looks like he or she is locked into commitment to God but always has an escape route. ESCAPING A LION AND MEETING A BEAR Amos spoke to Israel at a time when the people were seeking to escape God. As we have seen, they lacked evidence of justice and righteousness in their national life and in their daily living. They longed for the day of the Lord, thinking it would be an intervention of God to save them from their enemies. While trying to escape from the covenant claim of God on their national and personal lives, they took for granted the blessings of God. Amos warned them not to be so cocky about the day of the Lord. 18 Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD! For what good is the day of the LORD to you? It will be darkness, and not light. 19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion, And a bear met him! Or as though he went into the house, Leaned his hand on the wall, And a serpent bit him! 20 Is not the day of the LORD darkness, and not light? Is it not very dark, with no brightness in it? —Amos 5:18–20 Yahweh was tracking Israel. The more the people tried to run from Him, the more they ran into Him. As they tried to escape from repentance for their personal and social unrighteousness, they would meet Him first as a lion. When they narrowly escaped that encounter and ran in another direction, they met him as a bear. Hosea uses the same images of a lion and a bear in Hosea 13:7–8. In Hosea the bear was one who had been denied her cubs, just as Yahweh was denied His people through their apostasy. Amos adds a somber dimension to the pursuit by Yahweh. In the end, those who persistently ran from Him would be bitten by a serpent. The day of the Lord will be a day of accounting and judgment for the escape artists of Israel. But before that day of reckoning, Yahweh still pursued. “Seek God and live … do good and live!” WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR US TODAY? Again, we must ask the now familiar question of this commentary, “What does this mean to us?” The answer is, “Plenty! More than we might expect and probably more than we want.” Few texts have as much to say both to the preacher/teacher and to the hearer. Point one: We are all escape artists when it comes to God. Some of us have never really met Him and spend our lives trying to escape an encounter with Him. Others of us have met Him and yet want to avoid a complete surrender of our wills to Him. Still others of us have resisted the implications of really knowing Him. We fear the cost of being faithful and obedient disciples in our relationships and our responsibilities in the sores of suffering in our society. And then there are those of us who have heard a specific call to costly commitment and have been running away ever since. We hear a lot about love/hate relationships. This passage of Amos confronts us with our love/escape complex when it comes to our relationship with God. We feel both the longing to know God and the fear of what His love will demand. As a young boy, I huddled around the radio with my family to listen to the sportscaster give blow-by-blow accounts of the boxing matches of Joe E. Lewis. Some say he was the greatest boxer who ever lived. Late in the 1930s, he was challenged by Billy Kahn, a boxer from Pittsburgh. Kahn boxed by backing up and landing a punch at the most opportune time. His fellow boxers called him “the runner” because he would not stand and confront his opponent. Before Lewis’s bout with Kahn, a sportswriter asked him if he would be able to beat Billy Kahn with Kahn’s running technique. Lewis answered, “He can run, but he can’t hide!” The same is true for us. We can try to run from God, but we can’t hide. Running from Him is like being in a hail of mirrors—everywhere we turn we see not our face but His! NO PLACE TO HIDE Point two: There is no place to hide. There is no escaping our inescapable God … no place to go where He will not be there waiting for us. The psalmist experienced both the omnipotence and the omnipresence of God. He knew there was no place to hide from Him. He made the astounding discovery that the Lord of all creation knew Him personally. He also discovered that God pursued. O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,” even the night shall be light about me; indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You. —Psalm 139:1–12 Francis Thompson came to the same conclusion after a long run as a fugitive from God. He was raised in a Christian home but feared the cost of being a disciple of Christ. He studied for the priesthood, then medicine, flunking out of both because of laziness. The only thing he got out of his study of medicine was an addiction to narcotics. He would do anything to get his daily fix: hold horses, clean the dung off the streets, sell matches, or clean boots. And all the while, he was running from God. However, Thompson had a hidden talent for putting his thoughts and feelings into poetry. One day, he sent off to a newspaper publisher one of his poems about God’s pursuit of him. The publisher and his wife were so impressed that they began a search all over London for the anonymous poet—they had to find the genius who had written those lines. When they found him, they saw a man broken in body and spirit. He had no shirt under his rumpled coat. His worn shoes gave him little protection from the icy streets. He wore no gloves to protect his hands from the cold as he had written his lines. What he had written expressed his sense of the impossibility of escaping the inescapable God. Eventually, Francis Thompson became a Christian and is now recognized as one of the great poets of English literature. His poem, “The Hound of Heaven,” has gained immortal status because it expresses the heart of every person who has run or is running from God. I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped; And shot, precipitated, Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat—and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet— “All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”1 The words, “all things betray thee, who betrayest Me,” linger with uncomfortable impact. We meet God as lion and bear whenever we evade the demands of personal and social righteousness. Fleeing from the lion who confronts us with who we really are, we try to take refuge in religious activity. Sometimes what we do for God becomes our false god and an effort to escape Him. Then we meet the bear who tells us that nothing will work right without true righteousness. Helmut Thielicke once said, “Whoever lets God in only halfway is always the one who is cheated. He would be better off not to do it all.” But God does not give up easily with the halfhearted. Just when we get settled into self-righteous complacency, we hear the demanding voice of the bear roaring through the prophet Amos from Bethel. 21 “I hate, I despise your feast days, And I do not savor your sacred assemblies. 22 Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings. 23 Take away from Me the noise of your songs, For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments. 24 But let justice run down like water, And righteousness like a mighty stream. 25 “Did you offer Me sacrifices and offerings In the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? 26 You also carried Sikkuth your king And Chiun, your idols, The star of your Gods, Which you made for yourselves. 27 Therefore I will send you into captivity beyond Damascus,” Says the LORD, whose name is the God of hosts. —Amos 5:21–27 HIDING IN RELIGION There is no more seemingly effective way to hide from God than in religion. When Amos came to Bethel, he called it for what it was—an evasion of righteousness. God was not impressed by the piping of pious songs and psalms while the people forgot their responsibilities to their fellow women and men, as they ground the poor into the mire and loaded the overburdened with misery. Burnt offerings that were to be an outward sign of total dedication to God were a religious mockery; peace offerings affirming fellowship with God were contradicted by the people’s unwillingness to obey Him. What God wanted was inner righteousness, an inward moral commitment to do what He had declared was right. He demanded that this inward righteousness be expressed in justice, righteousness in action. And so, in the midst of Israel’s covenant confidence that had led into complacency and complicity with social injustice, Yahweh roared, “But let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream” (v. 24). Yahweh did not want a high mountain trickle or a little rivulet of righteousness and justice, but a rushing white-water river, running fast and pure. And Yahweh wanted something more. He wanted Israel’s worship cleansed of the pollution of foreign idols and false gods. Verse 26 identifies the Gods of the Assyrians that the Israelites had added to the worship of Yahweh in an effort to pacify the potential invader. In that day, truce settlements were sealed by the dominant nation leaving behind images of its Gods in the shrines of the subservient nation. Trying to buy time in her uneasy relationships with Assyria, Israel had placed at Bethel an image of Sikkuth, from the Assyrian tabernacle of Molach. Chiun, the star God of the Assyrians, was placed in Israel’s constellation of Gods along with Yahweh. And added to all that petulant polytheism was the ever present syncretism with Baal worship. Now we can see why Yahweh was tracking down His people. What was happening in their lives and their society was directly related to their escape into false religion. The forms of their religion were keeping them from Him! The same thing happens to us when we add our false gods to our worship of the Lord God. Our Gods of success, affluence, materialism, popularity, political loyalties, and even our religious work compete for first place in our lives. Sometimes we even seek God’s strength to continue our obligation to our secondary Gods. Soon our lack of commitment to the Lord as our first love shows in our lack of love for others. That is when the Lord starts tracking us, meeting us at every turn of our fast-paced run from Him. Life begins to fall apart in one setback after another. We go from pillar to post, failure to failure, difficulty to disappointment. We escape from one problem only to meet another. The lion and the bear confronting us with who we are! We thought we had closure with Him when we said we believed in Him, joined the church, and began acting religious. Like Houdini, we thought we had God in a box from which we could escape. We think we are finished with God, but He has only begun with us. He wants to remold our character, reshape our personalities, and reorder our priorities. Most of all He wants inner righteousness and outer justice. It is when we really see the demands God makes on His chosen people that we start running. We may stay in the same place, but our minds and hearts are running away. (We will have more to say about that in the commentary on Jonah.) LOVED BY THE INESCAPABLE GOD The fact that God meets us at the pass of every wrong path, every shrine to a false god, every misguided loyalty, and every expression of self-serving unrighteousness is really comforting. What if He did not care enough to pursue us; what if when we ran from God we were not caught? T. S. Eliot wrote, “And at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”2 And we will know something else. We will know that we are loved. Why else would God have dogged our steps, pursued us indefatigably? Life’s greatest disappointment, the most monumental despair would be to think God would let us escape. It is a sublime moment of truth with God that the metaphor of the lion, the bear, and the serpent is superseded with another image. Between us and the confrontive lion and the pursuing bear and the death-imposing serpent stand the Lamb. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” And we look again at the faces of the lion and the bear and realize what we had not seen before. The face of the Lamb had always been there if we would only stop running long enough to see. CHAPTER SEVEN—A JUDGMENT TO FIT THE CRIME AMOS 6:1–14 Scripture Outline True Leadership (6:1–7) The Root Cause (6:8–14) We come now to the last segment of the second major section of Amos’s prophecy. He has left the principal shrines of Israel and returned to Samaria. The last time he was in Samaria, he confronted the rich women of the establishment. In case we were tempted to think this was a chauvinist attack on women, we need to brace ourselves for what Amos says to their husbands. He speaks with decisive directness about their luxurious, self-indulgent, and irresponsible life-styles. Here is a picture of the rottenness at the core of Israel’s leadership. The judgment of the exile would more than fit the crime. 6:1 Woe to you who are at ease in Zion, And trust in Mount Samaria, Notable persons in the chief nation, To whom the house of Israel comes! 2 Go over to Calneh and see; And from there go to Hamath the great; Then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are you better than these kingdoms? Or is their territory greater than your territory? 3 Woe to you who put far off the day of doom, Who cause the seat of violence to come near; 4 Who lie on beds of ivory, Stretch out on your couches, Eat lambs from the flock And calves from the midst of the stall; 5 Who sing idly to the sound of stringed instruments, And invent for yourselves musical instruments like David; 6 Who drink wine from bowls, And anoint yourselves with the best ointments, But are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. 7 Therefore they shall now go captive as the first of the captives, And those who recline at banquets shall be removed. —Amos 6:1–7 Amos never ceases to amaze us with his ability to catch the attention of his audience. Back in Samaria, he opens his message with a woe to those who are at ease in Zion, Jerusalem. This appealed to the national prejudice and rivalry of the leaders of Samaria against the southern kingdom. Just about the moment they thought this fiery prophet from Tekoa might not be so bad after all, Amos included them in his woe and thrust his lance at these notable persons who associated with Israel’s monarchy either by family ties or by employment. They were the power brokers with the perks of power that brought them authority, adulation, and the ability to fix and collect taxes which they used for their own advantage. This power structure was riding high, falsely secure in military power and victories over Syria. People paid them obsequious attention, for nothing could happen without their approval. Amos came to them with an obsequy for the impending death of the nation: “Woe to you … who trust in Samaria” (6:1). The verb trust (b??a?) is used to expose the false optimism and sense of security and carefree arrogance of the leaders. They were looking at themselves through their own clouded vision and not the eyes of Yahweh, their God. Amos proclaimed to them how the Lord of all nations saw the littleness of their assumed greatness. Amos lumps Israel into a very unfavorable category of subjugated city-states. Calneh and Hamath were Aramean city-states now under Israel’s power as major cities of conquered Syria. Judah controlled Gath, one of the five principal cities of the Philistines. Now the clincher rhetorical questions: “Are you better than these kingdoms? Or is their territory greater than your territory?” (v. 2). The response of the leaders probably was “Yes, of course!” Amos’s response to his own question is given in the rest of chapter 6. Israel will be invaded, Samaria will be destroyed, and these proud leaders will be the first to be carried off in an exile. Verse 3 seems to be the prophet’s response to the scoffing ridicule and disbelief given by his audience to what seemed to them to be an absurd comparison of Samaria to the subjugated city-states he cited. Amos notices this and gives another woe in direct response. “Woe to you who put far off the day of doom, who cause the seat of violence to come near.” N?dâ (pi?l) means “to banish or cast out violently or hatefully.” The leaders totally rejected Amos’s prophecy. This lack of fear of oncoming doom allowed them to continue in their violence or abusive treatment of the poor and oppressed (5:12). While they persisted in this mistreatment of the underprivileged, the leaders carried on their own lives of ease and affluence. Verses 4–6 paint the picture. They loll on beds of ivory. On these couches, they are sprawled out in a drunken stupor. Their diet is made up only of the tenderest meat from young lambs. “Calves from the midst of the stall” means veal meat from the calves kept in stalls for fattening. As they stuffed themselves with this gourmet food, the Samarian nobles noisily chanted their drinking songs with improvised musical instruments like zithers to add to the rollicking revelry. We assume that neither the instruments nor those who played them had the quality of David’s instruments played by the gatekeepers in praise (1 Chr. 23:5). Wine is not even drunk with the refinement of goblets but straight from the bowls. Expensive ointments covered their soft bodies, the scents further exhilarating their senses. But these senses were also dulled by the opulence. The notable leaders were not leaders at all. They grasped for political power but abdicated their responsibility as leaders. While they indulged themselves, the affliction (literally “ruin,” š?ber, cf. Lev. 26:13, 19, 26 for the same root in verbal form) of Joseph, Ephraim, caused them no grief or concern. The leaders demanded preferential treatment and recognition. In verse 7, with his customary irony, Amos says that they will be recognized, indeed, by being the first to be led off as captives. They will be at the head of the defeat march into captivity. TRUE LEADERSHIP Applying this passage to us prompts us to think about the awesome responsibility of leadership. A nation, church, or Christian movement can rise no higher than its leadership. Followers also seek the level of commitment of their leaders. They either rise to great heights or sink to terrible lows depending on the spiritual and moral quality of the leadership. The despicable thing about the leaders of Samaria was not just their self-indulgent lifestyles, but that they did not grieve for the affliction of their people. Their power could have been used to correct many of the causes of their suffering. The taxation system they imposed could have been relieved. They could have instituted programs to feed the hungry and to create work for the poor. They could have led the way for righteousness and justice in the land. But the apostasy and immorality in the nation was a reflection of their own antinomianism. Hosea later said, “like priest, like people.” Amos would well have said, “Like leaders, like people.” Amos’s description of the self-serving notables of Samaria contrasts with Jesus’ requirements for leadership. His power for leadership is not squandered. It is given to those who will be servant-leaders. The Master was abundantly clear, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles Lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. —Matthew 20:25–28 Servant-leaders recognize they exist for their people’s growth in greatness rather than their people existing to make them great. Too often in churches this gets turned around. Pastors sometimes act as if their churches belong to them and their congregations are to make them great. Rather, shepherds are to care for their sheep. Their safety and feeding is the shepherd’s entrusted responsibility. Early in my ministry a seasoned old saint asked me, “Would you rather be a great pastor or the pastor of a great congregation?” The question has been a good corrective through the years, especially in the heady atmosphere of the distorted “star” system of contemporary media ministry. I will never forget a comment by a woman in a church I served years ago, “Ogilvie, we were here before you came, and we’ll be here after you leave, and we’ll follow your leadership with loyalty so long as we sense that you are following Christ. So lead us on to the next step of glory He has in store for us!” With her colorful way of putting things, this woman was right on all counts. I was there for their growth, not my glory. Reading the Book of Amos at least once a year should be a required discipline for leaders of all kinds. It is a bracing reminder that leadership is by divine appointment and those He allows the privilege of positions of authority, He can also depose. THE ROOT CAUSE 8 The Lord GOD has sworn by Himself, The LORD God of hosts says: “I abhor the pride of Jacob, And hate his palaces; Therefore I will deliver up the city And all that is in it.” 9 Then it shall come to pass, that if ten men remain in one house, they shall die. 10 And when a relative of the dead, with one who will burn the bodies, picks up the bodies to take them out of the house, he will say to one inside the house, “Are there any more with you?” Then someone will say, “None.” And he will say, “Hold your tongue! For we dare not mention the name of the LORD.” 11 For behold, the LORD gives a command: He will break the great house into bits, And the little house into pieces. 12 Do horses run on rocks? Does one plow there with oxen? Yet you have turned justice into gall, And the fruit of righteousness into wormwood, 13 You who rejoice over Lo Debar, Who say, “Have we not taken Karnaim for ourselves By our own strength?” 14 “But, behold, I will raise up a nation against you, O house of Israel,” Says the LORD God of hosts; “And they will afflict you from the entrance of Hamath To the Valley of the Arabah.” —Amos 6:8–14 Amos now moves from his own analysis of Israel’s problem to deliver the words of the Lord about the real root of the evil among His people. Yahweh swears by Himself, for there is no higher authority. He swears by His life, without which nothing can exist. He tells the people that the real cause of the problem is pride. “I abhor the pride of Jacob.” Jacob here means the whole of Israel. It was the pride of the people manifested in arrogance that caused all of the other sins. Like a deadly cancer, pride ate away the soul of God’s people. Pride motivated their defection from Him. In pride they put their confidence in other Gods, military might, and the strongholds of Samaria. The Lord hates the palaces of the city because they are material signs of Israel’s swaggering self-confidence. And this unacknowledged and unconfessed pride is the cause of Yahweh’s abandonment of the people to the hands of an enemy He will use as the agent of His punishment. Any great tragedy is best explained in how it effects one family. Amos does that (vv. 9–10) by showing how a particular family will go through the ordeal of the siege and invasion of the city. All the men in the house die. A kinsman (the Hebrew is “uncle”), will come to remove the bodies. He will ask a person still alive in the house if there are any others left alive. The answer is, “None.” Another person overhearing the conversation will say, “Silence! For we dare not mention the name of the Lord.” Silence, h?s, was a word spoken at the approach of the Lord (Hab. 2:20; Zeph. 1:7; Zech. 2:13). The warning against speaking the name of the Lord is for the people to know that it is Yahweh who punished them, not just an invading army. This will be the awesome realization. They will not be able to escape Yahweh’s judgment by blaming an enemy nation. The Lord will punish, and only He can forgive. And the stark reality of Israel’s pride is that the rich who live in great houses and the poor who live in little houses will all suffer alike (v. 11). All because of Israel’s prideful denial of God’s justice and righteousness. In so doing the people have contradicted the divine order of life. Amos points to their foolishness with two seemingly absurd questions in verse 12. Reading babb?q?r y?m for babb?q?r? m, the rhetorical questions are, “Do horses run on rocks?” “Does one plow the sea with oxen?” (RSV). The obvious answer to such foolish questions is, “No!” In the same way, it is utter folly and obdurate stupidity to go against what God has commanded. And yet that is exactly what Israel has done in substituting gall and bitterness for righteousness and wormwood, poison for justice. The people deranged God’s order and went contrary to His design for humankind. If pride leads to arrogance … stupidity is not far behind. In essence, Amos is saying that to deny righteousness and justice is like denying the law of gravity by jumping off a cliff. Arrogance was also expressed in not giving God glory for military victories that He caused to prosper (v. 13). Two towns under Syrian rule were taken by Israel in a campaign by Jeroboam II. Lo Debar was in Gilead, about three miles east of the Jordan and twelve miles south of the Sea of Galilee. Karnaim was north and east in Bashan. We wonder why Amos selected these towns. Some commentators suggest that he was playing on the meaning of the names, l??d?b?r implying “Nothing,” and qarn?yim meaning “horns.” Perhaps Amos was saying, “Your strength has been for nothing.” What is certain is that the prophet was saying that Israel’s pride in previous military victories will not help in the forthcoming invasion. Verse 14 completes the ironic twist at the end of this section. Israel is proud of her military expansion. It happened just as the prophet Jonah had prophesied (2 Kin. 14:25) from “the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of Arabah.” Lebo-Hamath represented Israel’s northern boundary and the Wadi Arabah at the south end of the Dead Sea the southern boundary. These are exactly the extent that the invasion and occupation of the enemy will cover. Israel’s entire territory will be captured in a complete defeat. And again, Yahweh will be behind it all. “Behold, I will raise up a nation against you.” Israel functioned as if Yahweh was no longer in charge of her life. Her proud refusal to practice the basics of righteousness and justice, her rebellion, and her growing apostasy said she no longer took Him seriously. But Yahweh could not be set aside. Within about thirty years, Israel fell. Samaria was destroyed. Boastful arrogance was changed into baneful anguish. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, but woe be to the nation that substitutes pride for grateful praise. Or any person, church, or group today! CHAPTER EIGHT—VISIONS THAT DEMAND A RESPONSE AMOS 7:1–17 Scripture Outline God Changes His Mind (7:1–6) Crooked Saints (7:7–9) Sealing of the Opposition (7:10–17) The Amaziah Complex The third and final section of the Book of Amos, spanning the last three chapters, contains five visions and five promises. The five visions and the prophet’s encounter with the Lord about them have an obvious and ominous progression. They move from grace, to Israel’s rejection of that grace, to judgment, and then to punishment (Amos 7:1–9:10). Then the last five verses give the Lord’s promises of hope for the restoration of His people. The visions can provide the basis of one message or class session or can be presented as a series. I have done it both ways. When using the series approach, I have found it effective to do the first two visions as a unit, and each of the last three as separate units. Whatever the method, it is important to stress the flow of Amos’s dynamic interaction with the Lord about Israel and the consequences of her refusal to repent and to accept His forgiveness. The visions are living proof of Amos’s conviction that “Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). These visions were given to Amos over the brief period he prophesied in Israel. Some of them became the content of messages. Sadly, the first two got no response, and the third received a violent response. The last two were proclaimed to deaf ears. In the visions and the Lord’s interpretations to Amos, we behold a mighty God of righteousness who is unable to wink at unrighteousness. He is willing to reverse His punishment because His prophet shares His compassion for His people, longing for them to repent and accept His grace. In the end He reluctantly metes out the necessary judgment. And after the visions, we sense that the Lord can hardly wait to reveal to His prophet that though Israel as the prophet knew her was finished, He was not finished with her. The Lord always has a plan for finally bringing the best out of the worst we have done. GOD CHANGES HIS MIND 7:1 Thus the Lord GOD showed me: Behold, He formed locust swarms at the beginning of the late crop; indeed it was the late crop after the king’s mowings. 2 And so it was, when they had finished eating the grass of the land, that I said: “O Lord GOD, forgive, I pray! Oh, that Jacob may stand, For he is small!” 3 So the LORD relented concerning this. “It shall not be,” said the LORD. 4 Thus the Lord GOD showed me: Behold, the Lord GOD called for conflict by fire, and it consumed the great deep and devoured the territory. 5 Then I said: “O Lord GOD, cease, I pray! Oh, that Jacob may stand, For he is small!” 6 So the LORD relented concerning this. “This also shall not be,” said the Lord GOD. —Amos 7:1–6 Amos’s first two visions and the prophet’s prayer to the Lord about them brought him to an awesome discovery. The Lord can change His mind! In the first vision, the Lord shows Amos the plague of locusts He is preparing in punishment for Israel’s apostasy and unrighteousness. It is to be in the late spring after the first crop had been harvested. Since the first harvest was in, the plague of the locust would not mean a total devastation and complete famine. The full wrath of Yahweh was not being unleashed. He was giving Israel a warning of what would come unless the people repented. In Amos’s intercessory prayer to Yahweh, we see another dimension of the prophet. We feel his compassion and tenderness. He is profoundly moved by what might happen to Israel. “O Lord GOD, forgive, I pray! Oh, that Jacob may stand, for he is small!” (7:2). Don’t miss the pathos, the heartrending anguish of that urgent intercession. And most of all, don’t miss Yahweh’s response. He relented, changed His mind, was converted from His original just punishment. The next vision that prompted Amos’s further intercession is of a fire of judgment on Israel. It is a sweeping conflagration of the land, a fire that would be so devouring that it “consumed the great deep” (v. 4). It would be inextinguishable. That means a fire that even water cannot put out. It would happen in midsummer when the fields were dry and would burn like a wildfire across all of Israel. Once again Amos cries out to the Lord for merciful forgiveness. The words of the prophet’s prayer are similar to those in response to the first vision. A second time the Lord relents and changes His mind. Imagine the excitement in Amos’s voice when he told Israel about these visions. Scholars have questioned whether these visions were really shared with the people or were simply pages from his diary. We know he retold the third vision about the plumb line. Why not the warnings of the first two and the monumental good news of another chance? News about God changing His mind would be hard to keep. It should have brought a nationwide repentance and a return to Yahweh. But the people’s souls were calloused with pride. It was an evil time (Amos 5:13). We pause to reflect about both the power of intercessory prayer and the forgiveness of God. In his fellowship with God, Amos became an agent of asking for what God wanted to give. God did not desire the destruction of His people. He consistently sought another way. God’s change of mind does not indicate that He vacillates. He would not have put it into Amos’s heart to ask for forgiveness for Israel if that had not been His greater desire all along. Intercession for others is an expression of profound trust in God and love for them. We long to bring them and God together again. But effective intercessory prayer requires listening to God to know how to pray. After adoration, confession, and thanksgiving in our prayers, the next step is to spread out before the Lord the need of others. Then it is time to be quiet so He can clarify what He wants to give or do. After that, we can intercede boldly. Even then, however, we have no assurance that people will want what God wants for them. And He will never cross the picket line of the will. If people do not want what He wills for them, He will not negate their freedom to choose not to be loved. Frightening, yes. But thank God for those who do respond. Amos’s prayer, “O Lord God, forgive!” was prayed centuries later by Christ on the Cross. Then the Savior did what Amos could not do. He became the sacrifice in answer to His own prayer. The cosmic atonement of Calvary was the result. And now the suffering Savior is the living, reigning Lord who guides our prayers and intercedes on our behalf. We look back at Amos prior to the new dispensation and gratefully realize what an assurance it is to live on this side of Calvary and Pentecost. Only that makes it possible to see ourselves and others around us in the proud eighth century B.C. Israelites and know that for the same sins, if we will repent, forgiveness will be given. Amos’s next vision helps us to see what may need to be confessed. CROOKED SAINTS 7 Thus He showed me: Behold, the Lord stood on a wall made with a plumb line, with a plumb line in His hand. 8 And the LORD said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said: “Behold, I am setting a plumb line In the midst of My people Israel; I will not pass by them anymore. 9 The high places of Isaac shall be desolate, And the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste. I will rise with the sword against the house of Jeroboam.” —Amos 7:7–9 The drawing of an ancient Egyptian plumb line helps us to envision the kind Amos saw in his visions. He would have been familiar with this type of plumb line from his observation of masons at work. This drawing is based on an Egyptian original. Two ledges of wood were joined, one above the other, at right angles to a plank. The line was attached to the top of the plank and passed through a hole in the upper ledge. If the line touched the edge of the lower ledge when stretched taut by the weight of the plumb, the wall was properly built “in plumb.” The plumb line was in use in Egypt as a builder’s tool as early as the first half of the third millennium B.C. Reproduced in the —Amos 7:1–6 Amos’s first two visions and the prophet’s prayer to the Lord about them brought him to an awesome discovery. The Lord can change His mind! In the first vision, the Lord shows Amos the plague of locusts He is preparing in punishment for Israel’s apostasy and unrighteousness. It is to be in the late spring after the first crop had been harvested. Since the first harvest was in, the plague of the locust would not mean a total devastation and complete famine. The full wrath of Yahweh was not being unleashed. He was giving Israel a warning of what would come unless the people repented. In Amos’s intercessory prayer to Yahweh, we see another dimension of the prophet. We feel his compassion and tenderness. He is profoundly moved by what might happen to Israel. “O Lord GOD, forgive, I pray! Oh, that Jacob may stand, for he is small!” (7:2). Don’t miss the pathos, the heartrending anguish of that urgent intercession. And most of all, don’t miss Yahweh’s response. He relented, changed His mind, was converted from His original just punishment. The next vision that prompted Amos’s further intercession is of a fire of judgment on Israel. It is a sweeping conflagration of the land, a fire that would be so devouring that it “consumed the great deep” (v. 4). It would be inextinguishable. That means a fire that even water cannot put out. It would happen in midsummer when the fields were dry and would burn like a wildfire across all of Israel. Once again Amos cries out to the Lord for merciful forgiveness. The words of the prophet’s prayer are similar to those in response to the first vision. A second time the Lord relents and changes His mind. Imagine the excitement in Amos’s voice when he told Israel about these visions. Scholars have questioned whether these visions were really shared with the people or were simply pages from his diary. We know he retold the third vision about the plumb line. Why not the warnings of the first two and the monumental good news of another chance? News about God changing His mind would be hard to keep. It should have brought a nationwide repentance and a return to Yahweh. But the people’s souls were calloused with pride. It was an evil time (Amos 5:13). We pause to reflect about both the power of intercessory prayer and the forgiveness of God. In his fellowship with God, Amos became an agent of asking for what God wanted to give. God did not desire the destruction of His people. He consistently sought another way. God’s change of mind does not indicate that He vacillates. He would not have put it into Amos’s heart to ask for forgiveness for Israel if that had not been His greater desire all along. Intercession for others is an expression of profound trust in God and love for them. We long to bring them and God together again. But effective intercessory prayer requires listening to God to know how to pray. After adoration, confession, and thanksgiving in our prayers, the next step is to spread out before the Lord the need of others. Then it is time to be quiet so He can clarify what He wants to give or do. After that, we can intercede boldly. Even then, however, we have no assurance that people will want what God wants for them. And He will never cross the picket line of the will. If people do not want what He wills for them, He will not negate their freedom to choose not to be loved. Frightening, yes. But thank God for those who do respond. Amos’s prayer, “O Lord God, forgive!” was prayed centuries later by Christ on the Cross. Then the Savior did what Amos could not do. He became the sacrifice in answer to His own prayer. The cosmic atonement of Calvary was the result. And now the suffering Savior is the living, reigning Lord who guides our prayers and intercedes on our behalf. We look back at Amos prior to the new dispensation and gratefully realize what an assurance it is to live on this side of Calvary and Pentecost. Only that makes it possible to see ourselves and others around us in the proud eighth century B.C. Israelites and know that for the same sins, if we will repent, forgiveness will be given. Amos’s next vision helps us to see what may need to be confessed. CROOKED SAINTS 7 Thus He showed me: Behold, the Lord stood on a wall made with a plumb line, with a plumb line in His hand. 8 And the LORD said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said: “Behold, I am setting a plumb line In the midst of My people Israel; I will not pass by them anymore. 9 The high places of Isaac shall be desolate, And the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste. I will rise with the sword against the house of Jeroboam.” —Amos 7:7–9 The drawing of an ancient Egyptian plumb line helps us to envision the kind Amos saw in his visions. He would have been familiar with this type of plumb line from his observation of masons at work. This drawing is based on an Egyptian original. Two ledges of wood were joined, one above the other, at right angles to a plank. The line was attached to the top of the plank and passed through a hole in the upper ledge. If the line touched the edge of the lower ledge when stretched taut by the weight of the plumb, the wall was properly built “in plumb.” The plumb line was in use in Egypt as a builder’s tool as early as the first half of the third millennium B.C. Reproduced in the Thus He showed me: Behold, the Lord stood on a wall made with a plumb line, with a plumb line in His hand. And the LORD said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said: “Behold, I am setting a plumb line In the midst of My people Israel; I will not pass by them anymore. 9 The high places of Isaac shall be desolate, And the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste. I will rise with the sword against the house of Jeroboam.” —Amos 7:7–9 The drawing of an ancient Egyptian plumb line helps us to envision the kind Amos saw in his visions. He would have been familiar with this type of plumb line from his observation of masons at work. This drawing is based on an Egyptian original. Two ledges of wood were joined, one above the other, at right angles to a plank. The line was attached to the top of the plank and passed through a hole in the upper ledge. If the line touched the edge of the lower ledge when stretched taut by the weight of the plumb, the wall was properly built “in plumb.” The plumb line was in use in Egypt as a builder’s tool as early as the first half of the third millennium B.C. Reproduced in the Figure 1 Adapted from Views of the Biblical World: 3 Later Prophets, © 1960 by the International Publishing Company Ltd., Jerusalem. Figure 1 Adapted from Views of the Biblical World: 3 Later Prophets, © 1960 by the International Publishing Company Ltd., Jerusalem. Figure 2 Adapted from Views of the Biblical World: 3 Later Prophets, © 1960 by the International Publishing Company Ltd., Jerusalem. other drawing are plumb weights from the time of the Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt (20th-l8th century B.C.). Something like these plumbs were in use in Amos’s day. The only refinement was that, following the Iron Age, the weights were made of metal. Amos’s vision was of the Lord standing on a wall that had been made with a plumb line. If the plumb line was anything like the ancient Egyptian one pictured in this drawing, then it was probably placed against the wall at the top where Amos saw the Lord standing. The plumb line was being used to test the alignment of the wall perpendicular to the horizon. Figure 1 Adapted from Views of the Biblical World: 3 Later Prophets, © 1960 by the International Publishing Company Ltd., Jerusalem. Figure 2 Adapted from Views of the Biblical World: 3 Later Prophets, © 1960 by the International Publishing Company Ltd., Jerusalem. other drawing are plumb weights from the time of the Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt (20th-l8th century B.C.). Something like these plumbs were in use in Amos’s day. The only refinement was that, following the Iron Age, the weights were made of metal. Amos’s vision was of the Lord standing on a wall that had been made with a plumb line. If the plumb line was anything like the ancient Egyptian one pictured in this drawing, then it was probably placed against the wall at the top where Amos saw the Lord standing. The plumb line was being used to test the alignment of the wall perpendicular to the horizon. Figure 1 Adapted from Views of the Biblical World: 3 Later Prophets, © 1960 by the International Publishing Company Ltd., Jerusalem. Figure 2 Adapted from Views of the Biblical World: 3 Later Prophets, © 1960 by the International Publishing Company Ltd., Jerusalem. other drawing are plumb weights from the time of the Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt (20th-l8th century B.C.). Something like these plumbs were in use in Amos’s day. The only refinement was that, following the Iron Age, the weights were made of metal. Amos’s vision was of the Lord standing on a wall that had been made with a plumb line. If the plumb line was anything like the ancient Egyptian one pictured in this drawing, then it was probably placed against the wall at the top where Amos saw the Lord standing. The plumb line was being used to test the alignment of the wall perpendicular to the horizon. In the vision, the Lord asked Amos what he saw. The prophet’s response was, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord’s words were decisive, “Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of My people Israel; I will not pass by them anymore” (7:8). Why? Because Israel was out of plumb. It was not perpendicular to the horizon of the Lord’s covenant and commandment. The wall of Israel was not straight according to righteousness and justice. The symbolism was pointed. Israel was leaning so far out of the plumb of God’s will that the “wall” was dangerous. It must be destroyed for safety. I have entitled this section of our commentary “Crooked Saints,” purposely creating a double entendre to get at the deeper meaning of this vision of Israel … and of some churches and Christians today. A saint is a person who is chosen and called by God to be His person. Saint means “holy, belonging to God.” But saints can also be crooked, out of plumb, dangerously leaning away from being perpendicular to the horizon of God’s will. They can also be downright crooked in the usual meaning of dishonest, and still be saints. But not without the Lord’s plumb line being lowered. Sometimes at the end of a radio or television drama an announcer will say, “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.” My words introducing a message on the plumb line and crooked saints would be, “Any resemblance to persons in eighth-century B.C. Israel or Christians today is clearly intended!” Crooked really means “not straight; leaning; out of plumb, or not straightforward in conduct, tricky, dishonest irregular.” So a crooked saint is someone who belongs to God but whose life is inconsistent with his or her beliefs. That takes in just about all of us. Every day, every moment, in each situation and in every relationship God stands by the wall with a plumb line in His hand; and every day He notes any divergence from plumb, from the straight. Is the divergence getting worse? When is the wall of our life dangerous for others? Search me, O God, my actions try and let my life appear As seen by Your all searching eye to mine, my ways make clear. The first note of the kingdom of God is righteousness. How do our walls stand by that plumb line? Are they in line or off the straight, out of the perpendicular. We need to see what we are, what we could be, and realize that we need not stay the way we are. The plumb line of God exposes the leaning of dichotomy between being blessed and being a blessing, between outward worship of God and true knowledge of God, between our faith and our works, and between being holy and holy living. God set a living, ever-present plumb line in history in the Incarnation. Christ is our plumb line. And the walls of our lives are constantly being measured by Him. He is both the Chief Cornerstone and the One who measures us by His plumb line of absolute love, forgiveness, service, purity, and honesty. The good news is that He is the Master Builder of our character and not only shows us what is out of plumb but helps us straighten the wall. We do not have to remain as crooked saints. But sometimes we refuse to admit our wall is crooked. I have often wondered if the reason that God decided not to pass by Israel again was that the thing He found most out of plumb was the people’s lack of response to the first two visions. They would not repent when He offered to relent. The worst thing ever to be out of plumb for a saint is the unwillingness to accept forgiveness. That pride, coupled with the refusal to return to righteousness and justice, brought forth the announcement that the wall of Israel would be destroyed. SEALING OF THE OPPOSITION 10 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. 11 For thus Amos has said: ‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword, And Israel shall surely be led away captive From their own land.’ ” 12 Then Amaziah said to Amos: “Go, you seer! Flee to the land of Judah. There eat bread, And there prophesy. 13 But never again prophesy at Bethel, For it is the king’s sanctuary, And it is the royal residence.” 14 Then Amos answered, and said to Amaziah: “I was no prophet, Nor was I a son of a prophet, But I was a sheepbreeder And a tender of sycamore fruit. 15 Then the LORD took me as I followed the flock, And the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to My people Israel.’ 16 Now therefore, hear the word of the LORD: You say, ‘Do not prophesy against Israel, And do not spout against the house of Isaac.’ 17 “Therefore thus says the LORD: ‘Your wife shall be a harlot in the city; Your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword; Your land shall be divided by survey line; You shall die in a defiled land; And Israel shall surely be led away captive From his own land.’ ” —Amos 7:10–17 When Amos told Israel about the vision of the plumb line and especially about the implications for the destruction of the sanctuaries and the sword against King Jeroboam II, the prophet’s opposition was sealed in determination to get rid of him. Amaziah, the high priest, had been waiting for his moment. The prophet had gone too far this time. He not only had threatened the high priest’s position at Bethel, the king’s sanctuary, but had made a treasonous threat against the king. Never mind that the prophet claimed to be speaking the word of the Lord. Strange. Of all the people in Israel who should have been alarmed by a direct word from Yahweh, it should have been the head of the religious establishment. But then, down through history religious leaders from popes to pastors have sometimes been the least responsive to revival or reform—these threaten their vested interests. Amaziah was quick to get word to Jeroboam II about the fiery prophet from Judah and his judgment against the king. Note how he twisted Amos’s announcement of the Lord’s words that He would rise with the sword against the house of Jeroboam. That could mean Jeroboam’s court or his posterity in years to come. (Israel’s final king Hoshea was, indeed, of the lineage of Jeroboam II.) But Amaziah’s carefully reworded message to the king was, “Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive from their own land” (7:11). Amazing how we can misconstrue things when we want a desired response. We are not told whether Amaziah’s inflammatory message earned him an audience with the king. What we do know is that the high priest of Israel’s polluted religion confronted Amos with authority as if he spoke for the crown. “Go, you seer! Flee to the land of Judah. There eat bread, and there prophesy. But never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is the royal residence” (7:12–13). In other words: “Go back to where you belong, you foreigner! Let the people of Judah support you as one of their professional prophets, but don’t ever appear at Bethel again with your prophecies. Be careful, Bethel is the king’s sanctuary, and he’s liable to be there to deal with you himself.” Strong words from a power-hungry priest who did not know Yahweh. But Amaziah met his match in Amos. The prophet was not only a good communicator but an excellent debater. He immediately took the wind out of puffed-up Amaziah. One by one, Amos deflated the priest’s accusations. He said he never had claimed to be a professional prophet. What he had claimed was that the Lord “took” him, grasped him, and conscripted him to prophesy in Israel. He was there by Yahweh’s authority, not his own. Then, right there, eyeball to eyeball with Amaziah, Amos began to prophesy. Amaziah had tried to silence Amos with ridicule and fear. Amaziah’s name meant “The Lord is strong.” And yet the priest had done everything he could to weaken the Lord’s cause in Israel. Deluded with syncretism and polytheism, he polluted Israel’s faith. Amaziah did not want God’s truth and demands for righteousness proclaimed in Israel. What he had not counted on was a word from Yahweh Himself. And what a scathing word it was! After the forthcoming defeat of Israel and the destruction of Bethel, Amos said, Amaziah would be sent into exile. His wife, left with no resources to continue the sumptuous lifestyle he had provided, would fall into prostitution. The priest’s sons and daughters would be killed during the invasion, and he would languish in the captor’s land (v. 17). Not a pretty picture. It fits with Amos’s previous prophecy that Israel’s leaders would be the first in the defeat march of exiles out of their own land. THE AMAZIAH COMPLEX We all know people with an Amaziah complex. The complex is made up of a combination of control, defensiveness, and pride. People who have this complex are master manipulators and power brokers and will use people against one another to get their own way. Many of those who suffer from this spiritual malady are religious but do not know God or have a deep communion with Him. They usually say they believe in Him, but they resist His claims on their lives. And when the demands of righteousness are proclaimed, they can cheer if it does not invade their own priorities. There are always a few Amaziahs in most churches. Often, they seek positions of leadership. But before we begin to single them out, we need to get in touch with the ways the complex may have invaded our own psyches. A good test is to question how we might have responded to Amos’s visions, especially the plumb line. The only sure antidote to the Amaziah complex is to let the plumb line fall on our lives every day in honest, open prayer. Then our cry will be, “Lord, forgive!” That is the one thing Amaziah would not do; and the one thing we will never outgrow. We are called to be saints in plumb with a new commitment to pray for opportunities to practice our gift of righteousness. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning said, it is a “gift with a gauntlet in it.” CHAPTER NINE—WHEN HYPOCRISY BECOMES A HABIT AMOS 8:1–14 Scripture Outline The Ripened End (8:1–10) The Ripening of Hypocrisy (8:1–10) A Famine of Hearing the Words of the Lord (8:11–14) Amos’s visions follow the seasons of the year. The vision of the locust depicted late spring, and the vision of the conflagration was set in summer. The third vision of the plumb line came soon after, measuring, in addition to Israel’s overall condition, the lack of repentance in response to the Lord’s warnings and willingness to relent of His just punishment of His people. The account of Amaziah’s efforts to get rid of Amos illustrated just how out of plumb Israel was leaning. That the high priest of the land wanted to silence the voice of God through the prophet shows the extent of the nation’s apostasy and rebellion. Now the fourth vision of the basket of ripened fruit points to early fall, late August or early September. The purpose of the vision is to show that Israel’s sin had ripened and the spoilage was inevitable. The famine of hearing is the Lord’s judgment on this ripened rebellion. And the cause of it all was an insidious spiritual hypocrisy. THE RIPENED END 8:1 Thus the Lord GOD showed me: Behold, a basket of summer fruit. 2 And He said, “Amos, what do you see?” So I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the LORD said to me: “The end has come upon My people Israel; I will not pass by them anymore. 3 And the songs of the temple Shall be wailing in that day,” Says the Lord GOD— “Many dead bodies everywhere, They shall be thrown out in silence.” 4 Hear this, you who swallow up the needy, And make the poor of the land fail, 5 Saying: “When will the New Moon be past, That we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, That we may trade wheat? Making the ephah small and the shekel large, Falsifying the scales by deceit, 6 That we may buy the poor for silver, And the needy for a pair of sandals— Even sell the bad wheat?” 7 The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: “Surely I will never forget any of their works. 8 Shall the land not tremble for this, And everyone mourn who dwells in it? All of it shall swell like the River, Heave and subside Like the River of Egypt. 9 “And it shall come to pass in that day,” says the Lord GOD, “That I will make the sun go down at noon, And I will darken the earth in broad daylight; 10 I will turn your feasts into mourning, And all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on every waist, And baldness on every head; I will make it like mourning for an only son, And its end like a bitter day. —Amos 8:1–10 In this fourth vision the Lord shows Amos a basket of ripened fruit. The k?lûb was a wicker basket filled with q?yi?, ripened fruit. The word q?yi? does not mean “summer” as it is rendered in most English translations. Only by implication can we call it “summer fruit,” fruit that has been ripened in the summer and harvested in early fall. The word is used in Jeremiah 40:10–12 as the yield of the harvest. The vision was probably of a basket of ripened figs with which Amos was familiar. Amos is asked what he saw. “A basket of ripened fruit,” he replied. The Lord’s interpretive statement introduces a homonymic play on words. “The end has come upon My people Israel” (8:2). End, q??, comes from the root q??a?, “to cut off,” and was pronounced identically with q?yi?, “ripened fruit.” Though the words came from different roots, they sounded identical. Diphthongs had contracted by Amos’s time.1 So the point of the vision was to declare that Israel’s rebellion had ripened. The harvest of their disobedience was the judgment of Yahweh. When q?? is used for people it means the end of life. A fig removed from the tree was dead and would eventually spoil. Israel’s refusal to return to the Lord now had brought her to the point of no return. Yahweh’s word of judgment is pronounced with finality, “I will not pass by them anymore.” Verse 3 underlines the finality of death. The songs in the temple will turn into the wailing of funereal lamentation. There will be so many corpses that the cemeteries will not be able to contain them, and the judgment of death will be even greater by the shame of no burial. The implications of this vision for us today must be communicated with utmost care. When is an individual, a church, or a ministry ripened fruit? Does resistance to God finally result in an irreversible end? Certainly physical death ends the possibility of repentance and new life. We will spend eternity separated from God unless we accept His love, forgiveness, and eternal life through Christ before our physical demise. The frightening thing is that it is possible to resist the overtures of God’s love so long that our wills can become hardened. We need to teach and preach the danger of becoming ripened fruit by never confessing Christ as Lord. Whenever I have risked sounding old fashioned by asking people if they are sure where they will spend eternity, I have usually had some very modern nonbelievers on the verge of becoming ripened fruit respond, repent, and accept the gift of eternal life. Often when we preach or teach, there are traditional church people present who have never surrendered their lives to Christ. Years of running their own lives place them in the danger of duality—pretending to be Christians on the outside but unconverted on the inside. We need to take seriously the plight of agnostics in our churches—people who do not know Christ personally. Then, too, there are people who have consistently resisted the Master’s mandate of ministry. His words startle and shock us: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). Our pious claims of righteousness by faith must be combined with seeking and doing His will in our relationships and in responsibilities to care for the poor, hungry, and disadvantaged. Some years ago, I talked with a pastor in the Midwest about his urban parish. He had been called to a church that was almost dead. Few people attended worship, the church school had dwindled, giving was down, and there was no evidence of care for the unreached people in the neighborhood. The church officers resisted the pastor’s new leadership and vision. When we met, he was brokenhearted and filled with a sense of failure. “My officers simply do not want Christ to be Lord of their lives or their church!” he said with discouragement. After several long visits, we prayed that the Lord would raise up new officers who would be open to lead the church in a dynamic new thrust of evangelism and mission. We also prayed that the pastor would have the courage to boldly preach the two-legged gospel of personal commitment and social righteousness. He returned to his parish determined to do that. Four years later I visited the church to lead a renewal conference. I was amazed at the revived spirit of the church. The church officers I saw were alive in Christ and on the move. The church had become a beacon of hope in its urban surroundings. People from the neighborhood were being reached by an effective program of personal evangelism and caring programs to meet their social needs. “What made the difference?” I asked. “A whole new breed of leaders,” the pastor replied. Then his face darkened with sadness. “There’s only a few of the officers left who were here four years ago. I feel very sad that I was not able to penetrate their hardened hearts. All I did was preach the gospel and the biblical calling of the church. It was more than some of them wanted. Many of them have gone to other churches, and others are sitting on the sidelines. There was never a typical church battle or split. They simply said ‘No’ to renewal and to the city. I really love them and wish I had been able to reach them. The more I tried, the more entrenched they became. So, one by one, the congregation, now filled with new life, elected officers who were Christ-centered and filled with hope for the future of this church.” This is not a church renewal success story. It is a contemporary account of how some church leaders almost buried their church. The church might have become one more urban parish with an empty church building standing in a changing neighborhood as a monument to past glory. We all know churches where this has happened because religious people who did not know God or even want Him said “No” to Him too long. And think of the parachurch movements that have fizzled out because the lodestar leader became a falling star. They did not heed the warning of the Lord or friends. There was a time when the spiritual sickness could have been healed, but not without the leadership admitting they were out of touch with the Lord and reality. Resistance to the Lord took a long time to ripen, but in the end the movement was a basket of ripened fruit. When we do not heed the Lord’s warnings and the exposure of what is wrong by His plumb line, we face the eventuality of becoming q?yi? who are brought to the q??. It is crucial for us to face the danger of resisting God’s best for us for too long. THE RIPENING OF HYPOCRISY We run the danger of becoming ripened fruit through the long process of persistent hypocrisy. Israel’s religious hypocrisy ripened and now would be cut off. The image of the ripened fruit is hypocrisy at its final stage. Spoilage and putrefaction began. Decomposition was not far off. The vision of the basket of ripened fruit suddenly hits home with contemporary force. We all suffer from the danger of duality, of pretending to be pious while our actions contradict our words. In Amos’s time, religious hypocrisy had ripened into blatant rebellion. Verse 4 begins a series of indictment oracles in which the vision of the ripened fruit is illustrated by specific charges of this hypocrisy. The initial imperative “Hear this,” or “Listen to this,” introduces this unit and covers various indictments for breaking the covenant that led to a fully ripened hypocrisy. The first indictment repeats a previous charge. Those who pretended to be religious were the very ones who “swallow up” or “trample” (RSV), š??ap (“exploit”), the needy with the result, as we have observed previously, that the poor were made to “fail” (i.e., dying of starvation, being sold into slavery, or living in an impoverished state). The sin was against Yahweh’s people, thus, against Him. These hypocrites were those who strictly kept the New Moon festival and the Sabbath (v. 5). The festival was a covenant holiday (see Num. 10:10; 28:11; 1 Sam. 20:24–25; 2 Kin. 4:23; Is. 1:13; Hos. 2:11). During the New Moon festival, just as on the weekly Sabbath, no business was to be conducted. While this prohibition was kept impeccably, these religious hypocrites cheated the poor as soon as the festival or the Sabbath was over. They used exploitive methods strictly forbidden by the Law (Lev. 19:35–; Deut. 25:13–15). Weights and measures, so crucial to the economic order of the nation, were being falsified in the sale of grain, wheat, and produce. The ephah, a dry measure of 36.92 liters, or 65 pints, or about the size of our bushel today, was distorted by placing an object in it other than the commodity being weighed. If grain was being measured, the ephah would therefore contain less grain. The shekel (not to be confused with the coin by the same name) was a weight used on a scale. It was a limestone ball flattened at the bottom that weighed about 11.46 grams. If these weights were enlarged or made heavier, the purchase price would be fraudulently raised. The shekels were no longer “just weights” (Lev. 19:36) but had become “deceitful weights” (Deut. 25:13, 15). “Falsifying the balances by deceit” (Amos 8:6) meant to bend out of shape the cross beam of the scale, thus tampering with the scales themselves. All this was done to take advantage of the buyer, especially the poor and needy. The merchants sold contaminated wheat from the bins mixed in with the good wheat. Furthermore, profiting at the expense of the poor, the rich merchants used the money they had earned dishonestly in dealings with the poor to buy them for slavery. In verse 7, Yahweh swears by an oath that He will never forget these practices of the hypocrites. In Amos 4:2 Yahweh swore by His holiness, and in 6:8 He made an oath by Himself. Here in 8:7 He swears “by the pride of Jacob” (ga?ôn ya??q?b). The phrase can mean one of two things. It could refer to the land of Israel (Ps. 47:4), the Promised Land. Or, it could mean the arrogance of Israel, in which case Yahweh’s oath was more unchangeable than Israel’s persistent, unchanging refusal to reform. In either case, Yahweh’s oath is definite: He will not forget what His people had done to distort the privilege of being chosen and called to be His people. The consequence of Yahweh’s oath is made clear in a rhetorical question in verse 8: “Shall the land not tremble for this, and everyone mourn who dwells in it?” Israel’s end will be like an earthquake, the land will swell up, heave, and subside like the rising and falling of the River Nile. The judgment also will be like the eclipse of June 15, 763 B.C., which was still fresh in the memories of Amos’s hearers. The sun will “go down at noon” and the earth “will darken in broad daylight” (v. 9). There will be profound fear and anxiety as the earth trembles and day is turned into night. The whole cosmos will seem to be in opposition to the people who turned away from the Almighty Creator and Lord of all Creation. Israel’s arrogant hypocrisy will be turned into funereal lament (v. 10). Feasts that celebrated the light of God’s truth and sovereignty will be turned into dark dirges of despair. Festal robes will be replaced by sackcloth. Instead of shaving only the forelock, the men will shave their entire heads as a sign of grief. The anguish will be like a family that loses its only son and knows that the blessing of posterity has been taken away. Further, the day of judgment will be like the end of a bitter day in which not even the morning will bring relief from the remorse. A FAMINE OF HEARING THE WORDS OF THE LORD 11 “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord GOD, “That I will send a famine on the land, Not a famine of bread, Nor a thirst for water, But of hearing the words of the LORD. 12 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 shall not find it. 13 “In that day the fair virgins And strong young men Shall faint from thirst. 14 Those who swear by the sin of Samaria, Who say, ‘As your God lives, O Dan!’ And, ‘As the way of Beersheba lives!’ They shall fall and never rise again.” —Amos 8:11–14 By far the greatest manifestation of the judgment of God on Israel’s unrepentant hypocrisy will be a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. Note that it will not be a famine of the words of the Lord, but a famine of hearing. Hypocrisy has ripened to the place that the people no longer seek God’s words, nor do they listen when He speaks. A virus of unresponsiveness has debilitated the audio nerve in the souls of the people. For years the people did not want to hear God; now He will grant their desire. This is a tragic state for a people who had believed that “man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3). Through the centuries, God fed His people with the nourishment of His guidance and correction. He satisfied their spiritual hunger with His presence and power. By the middle of the eighth century B.C. they were determined to live by bread alone, much of it gained by unrighteous methods and at the expense of the poor. The judgment of God would be that they will know the worst famine of all—not being able to hear His words when He does speak. In this famine of hearing, the people will react like starving people. Verse 12 is a vivid description of how people react when they are physically starving. Television news programs bring into homes and hearts the stark reality of people who are starving. As we watch the tragedy of physical hunger, particularly in parts of Africa, we are forced to see the stages of starvation. The progression is frightening to watch. It starts with agitation and a frantic search for even a scrap of food. Acrimony grows between people. Then the hungry move from place to place desperately looking for some source of food and water. Soon apathy sets in. An absent stare is seen in eyes that are set in dark, hollow sockets. As apathy takes over, the starving people sink to the ground. Atrophy begins. Then the terrible grip of the monster of hunger causes them to writhe in pain. And finally, there is death. Now note the similarity of the spiritual starvation of the Israelites when they experience the famine of hearing the words of God. “They shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but shall not find it” (v. 12). Wolff comments, The range of the roaming is described in the most far-reaching terms. “From sea to sea” surely does not here mean from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean, but is intended to designate the uttermost boundaries of the earth, as in Psalm 72:8 and Zechariah 9:10. If the intention here were to delimit the boundaries of Palestine, one would not expect “from the north to the east” in the parallel colon. One must rather think here of those vast regions into which the people of God were scattered. The peculiar combination of north and east is most easily understood in this way.2 Verses 13–14 spell out further implications and the deeper causes of the famine of hearing in Israel. The vigorous youth of the people will faint from thirst, and thus the future of the nation will be in jeopardy. The cause of the famine is that young and old swear by and give loyalty to false gods. The issue is that images to false gods are worshiped in Israel’s shrines. The leaders of Samaria had fostered this sin. The reference to Dan, a shrine in the north of Israel, probably means the bull images set up there (1 Kin. 12:29). Beersheba was a worship shrine in Judah visited by pilgrims (Amos 5:5) where syncretism of Yahweh with Canaanite Gods was practiced. This finally caused the famine of hearing. We can identify the famine of hearing in our own time. Mark the similarity to the famine of food. When people substitute hypocrisy for a dynamic relationship with God, there is an unsatisfied spiritual hunger. They go through the same process as in physical starvation. First agitation, then acrimony, followed by criticism and negativism. They run to and fro in search of meaning. Every religious movement, cult, cause, or activity is sought after as a source of feeding the terrible emptiness inside. Then there is the hollow look of discouragement and despair. And, long before the pulse stops, there is spiritual death. The phrase “words of the Lord” is synonymous with both communion with Him and communication from Him. We cannot live without either. But we try. We seek to fill our spiritual hunger with substitutes. Our needs are great. We long for affirmation, but our real need is for love. We yearn for recognition, but our greater need is for an assurance that we belong to God. We lust after the material blessings of life, but our most profound need is to know that we are a blessed child in our heavenly Father’s family. We search for meaning in a satisfying vocation, but our real need is to know that we are called by God to live for Him. Beneath all our surface needs is the one great need for God Himself. Only communion with Him and communication from Him will give us security, stability, and strength. Does God send a famine of hearing today? Is it possible to block the ears of our minds and of our hearts to His words of grace and guidance, His demands of righteousness and justice in our personal lives and society for so long that we become spiritually deaf for a time? I think so. God gave us freedom of will. We can debilitate our spiritual audio nerve by disuse or misuse. Or it can be harmed by the din of the demanding noise of people who become diminutive Gods or by the clamor of a frantic life. We simply do not take time to listen to God anymore. When a spiritual hunger gnaws at our inner being, we begin to try to stuff the emptiness with nutritionless food. Then as the anxiety grows, we panic as spiritual starvation sets in. That is the critical moment when we either keep on starving ourselves or cry out to God for the healing of the plugged ears of our souls and ask Him to feed us again with His words. Thankfully, the same God who sent a famine of hearing because Israel refused to repent, came in Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life. The Savior gave us an awesome promise, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matt. 5:6). When we want God as much as a starving person longs for food and a parched person for water, we will be satisfied. If our dominant desire is for righteousness with God and His righteousness in all our relationships and responsibilities, He will answer our prayer. Our self-imposed famine of hearing need not cause our spiritual death. Righteousness with God through the atonement of Christ’s blood is a gift. We do not need to starve to death spiritually. Accepting the gift by faith opens us to the continual feeding through the Word of God, Christ Himself, God with us. He promises to satisfy our deeper spiritual hungers. In daily, moment-by-moment prayer, He enables us to glorify the Father and baptizes and anoints us with the Spirit. We hear the words of the Lord in study of the Scriptures. He leads us in radical obedience to righteousness. Our heart ears are constantly sensitized to His commands. We can avoid a self-imposed hunger by a daily quiet time. We will starve without it. Many do starve when spiritual food is available. There is not a famine of the words of God in America. We can turn on the radio at almost any time, day or night, and hear a biblical exposition. Christian television, despite the eccentric practices of some televanglists, offers the words of God. With varying degrees of effectiveness, the gospel is being preached and taught in all kinds of churches. Bible study groups are available. Daily devotional guides are in abundance. Yet, many people starve for the words of God. The difficulty is in the willingness to hear. This portion of Amos gives us an opportunity to help people identify their hunger and evaluate why they may not be listening. We may fear hearing what the Lord has to say. The words of the Lord may call for a greater commitment to righteousness than we are ready to live. We may not be ready to do what love demands. Our task as communicators is to portray the true satisfaction of having our spiritual hungers satisfied and lead our people in specific prayers of healing of the audio nerve of their souls. Recently, I met with a group of people who knew they were spiritually starving and desperately wanted to be fed by the words of the Lord. They were a vivid contrast to many audiences I speak to around the nation where people look like they are listening but are suffering from a self-imposed famine of hearing. I spoke to the inmates of the Chino Women’s Prison at Chino, California. My message was about how Christ meets our deepest needs and how to turn our lives over to His Lordship. After my brief talk, I began to give an invitation, but before I finished, the women were out of their seats streaming down the aisles to give their lives to Christ. They knew they were spiritually hungry. Failure and brokenness had unplugged their ears. How unlike the famine of hearing among so many self-satisfied, self-righteous people who would rather starve to death spiritually than admit their need. Inner agitation and anxiety grow as the spiritual hunger pangs intensify. Outward personality patterns develop, and relationships are filled with stress and strain. The call of obedient discipleship is resisted. There is no peace, serenity, or vision. At this point in our exposition of Amos, it is helpful to pause to assist our listeners to get in touch with their spiritual hungers and to sound a recall to the daily disciplines of Bible study and prayer and to faithfully live the guidance the Lord gives. Some time ago, when I preached on this portion of Amos, I put the following morning commitment and evening evaluation in the bulletin for people to begin and end the days of the following week. Morning commitment: As a person made right with God by grace through Christ, I commit today to be a day of righteous living. My dominant desire, above all else, will be to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness in my decisions, ethics, and morality. I am willing to be made willing to prayerfully listen to the Lord for guidance for what I am to say and do. Lord, heal my heart ears! Evening evaluation: Today, did I express righteousness or deny it? In what ways did I listen intently for the Lord’s clarification of what righteousness demanded? Did I balk at the Lord’s guidance or blunder on in running my own life? I accept forgiveness for any willful independence so that tomorrow can be different. Tomorrow is another day and a fresh chance to trust and obey. As the Lord gives the day, He will show the way. He will fill my hunger and thirst for righteousness. In a class setting or small group discussion it is creative to give people an opportunity to report on what happened to them with this experiment of listening. Or, with a congregation, to request that members write us sharing their experiences. Also, it is effective to have someone witness in a worship service about the difference intentional listening has made in his or her life. Our challenge is to expose the warning of the vision of the ripened fruit and the impairment of the audio nerve of the soul. A sermon or class lesson on the eighth chapter of Amos should include both, but with an incisive application to our time, coupled with practical steps of what our people can do to avoid what happened to Israel. This will make eighth century B.C. history a startling call to repentance and new commitment today. If we do not learn from the failures of the past, we will repeat them. CHAPTER TEN—BEHOLD YOUR GOD AMOS 9:1–15 Scripture Outline God Keeps His Promises (9:1) God Is Inescapable (9:2–4) Our God Is Mighty (9:5–6) False Pride and Fallacious Prejudice (9:7–10) Promises of Hope (9:11–15) Living with Hope Hope does not exist in a vacuum. It is not rootless optimism, unfounded yearning, or ungrounded wishing. Authentic hope comes from God. It is based on His nature and promises. Amos chapter 9 gives us a basis of lasting hope. As you scan the chapter, you may think I am referring to the last five verses on the five promises of the restoration of Israel. Not so. The entire chapter animates hope. We behold God who makes and keeps His promises. He follows through on His promises of judgment as well as His subsequent promises of a new beginning. His righteousness and grace are inseparable. God is absolutely reliable in both. Because He is, we have a solid source of profound hope. There is a unity to this final chapter of Amos. We are called to behold our God. We behold Him as a God with whom we cannot trifle, a God who is inescapable, a God who is sovereign over all nature and all nations. A God who is Lord of the future. GOD KEEPS HIS PROMISES 9:1 I saw the Lord standing by the altar, and He said: “Strike the doorposts, that the thresholds may shake, And break them on the heads of them all. I will slay the last of them with the sword. He who flees from them shall not get away, And he who escapes from them shall not be delivered. —Amos 9:1 Amos’s fifth vision is of the Lord who keeps His promises. He had promised judgment if Israel would not heed His warnings and repent. Now in this final vision He stands at the altar, the very center of the nation’s life. It was there that Israel’s primary loyalty to God had been compromised with pretense, hypocrisy, and apostasy. Syncretism with foreign Gods had disavowed their historic monotheism. The altar should have been a place where they claimed their peace with the one true God. It was meant to be the dynamic center of the nation’s total life. Instead, it had become the emanating source of the pollution of the moral, economic, and political life of the nation. The altar of the vision symbolized the rotten core of an apostate people. The Lord had patiently and repeatedly issued His recall for His people to return to Him, but with obdurate petulance they had not returned. The result is that the altar, the temple, and the nation itself will be destroyed. The Lord stands on (ni???b ?al; cf. 7:7) the altar, symbolizing His supremacy over the false and distorted worship of Israel. Note that Amos uses the word Adonai, ??d?n?y, rather than the name Yahweh. This probably expresses the prophet’s reverence for the invisibility of God and communicates his vision of a manifestation of the presence of God. Adonai means “sovereign” and “king.” Perhaps Amos wanted to underline the supremacy of God, the Sovereign One, over Israel’s kings who offered sacrifices on the altar. We are not told what the manifestation of God looked like. What we are told is what He said to Amos. The top of the central pillar would be shaken, as in an earthquake. Kaptôr means the pillar top, and sipp? m means the stone bases of the door posts. The temple would be demolished from the top of the key pillar to the foundations. It would fall on the heads of all worshipers and priests. The co-mingling of worship and feasting inside the temple following the Canaanite custom is implied as opposed to the prescribed orthodox Israelite tradition of feasting outside in the temple courts.1 Even if some of the reveling worshipers escape when the temple topples, they will not survive. The judgment of the Lord, which begins with the temple, will pervade the land. The heart of Israel’s problem was the heart. The distortion of their worship of God had permeated the heart of the nation. Greed, unrighteousness, and injustice were pumped like virulent poison into the bloodstream of an apostate people. Outward conduct was caused by contradicted convictions. Everything was wrong because the nation was not right with God. Nothing works right when we alter the worship of the altar. It is true for us as individuals and for our churches. God demands absolute obedience. The severity of God’s judgment of the temple may shock us. Actually, it is a source of hope. God gave Israel repeated opportunities to repent and return to Him. He had told the people what would happen if they refused. What kind of God would we have if He nagged His people with warnings He never meant to enforce? Or, to put it more personally for us, what if we presume on the grace of God because we do not really think He will judge? He becomes an indulgent grandfather whom we think we can manipulate. We smile at His stern warnings but think He will never hold us accountable. We operate on the assumption that there will never be a reckoning in this life or beyond. We become like a teenager I talked to recently. He resists authority at every level. “My dad’s been threatening me with punishment for years, but he’s too soft to follow through. So I just listen, let what he says go in one ear and out the other, and go do what I want.” His attitude is like many people’s response to God. And sadly, that attitude is not just the problem of the pagan but also the proclivity of some Christians. When we lose all accountability to God, we also lose a sense of hope. If we assume that God does not mean what He says when He holds us to His best for us, how can we be sure that His promises of blessings will be reliable? True security is submitting to God’s authority, committing each day to discern and do His will, accepting His corrective judgment, and claiming His forgiveness. And that is exactly what Israel refused to do. GOD IS INESCAPABLE 2 “Though they dig into hell, From there My hand shall take them; Though they climb up to heaven, From there I will bring them down; 3 And though they hide themselves on top of Carmel, From there I will search and take them; Though they hide from My sight at the bottom of the sea, From there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them; 4 Though they go into captivity before their enemies, From there I will command the sword, And it shall slay them. I will set My eyes on them for harm and not for good.” —Amos 9:2–4 Further interpreting Amos’s vision, the Lord declares that His judgment is inescapable. There will be no place to hide, as we noted earlier. Verses 2–4 are an awesome contrast to the psalmist’s assurance in Psalm 139 of the omnipresence of God. What eighth century B.C. Israel would not say was, “Search me, O God, and know my heart … and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23–24). Mark the same progression of thought about trying to escape an inescapable God in the Psalm and in Amos 9:2–4. As a result of the refusal to repent, there would be no eluding of the grasp of Yahweh’s judgment. Hell, Sheol, the place of the departed dead, would provide no protection. Note Proverbs 15:11, “Hell and Destruction are before the LORD; so how much more the hearts of the sons of men.” Death will be no escape from the Lord. Nor will an ascent into the farthest regions of the cosmos. The hand of Yahweh, the power that controls everything, will bring the unrepentant down. The top of Mount Carmel will not be a safe hiding place from the indefatigable searching pursuit of the Lord. Mount Carmel was falsely thought to be the realm of the Canaanite God, Baal Carmel. Elijah had exposed the erroneous belief in Baal’s power (1 Kin. 18:17–46). And the false god would be equally impotent to hide the defectors from the Lord in the eighth century B.C. northern kingdom. The bottom of the sea will offer no protection, and even the sea serpent will be subject to Yahweh’s command. And finally, being carried away into captivity by an invading enemy will provide no safety. As we will see in our commentary on Jonah, some of the Israelites had a funnel-like concept of providence, that Yahweh’s power was limited to the geographical territory of Israel and Judah. We can imagine that some of the people said, “What’s the worst that can happen? Defeat and captivity? At least then we will be out of the sphere of Yahweh’s judgment.” Serious miscalculation. Yahweh was going to use even Israel’s enemy to execute His judgment. Israel’s apostasy and rebellion have gone so far that the Lord says these soul-shaking words, “I will set My eyes on them for harm and not for good” (v. 4). Years later, similar words were spoken to Jerusalem through the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 21:10). Both prophets sounded these words of judgment before the exile of their respective nations. It was after the fall of Jerusalem and years of exile passed that the Lord said to the remnant of Judah, After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. —Jeremiah 29:10–13 Today, this magnificent Jeremiah text of hope needs to be used in context. It is a promise for those who have accepted the Lord’s judgment and have repented. God has plans, a future, and a hope for those who have gone through failure or have endured trials and have come to trust in Him completely. I had repeated Jeremiah 29:11 for thirty-five years and had preached on it often, but I heard it sound in my soul with greater power one day when I was alone, flat on my back and helpless after a hiking accident on the northwest coast of Scotland. My leg was badly crushed, and my cries for human help had gone unheeded as I dragged myself for nearly three hours. When I gave up and accepted that I might not be rescued, my pleas for the Lord’s help were answered when, with the ears of my heart, I heard this verse as if for the first time. Prior to hearing the Lord’s word, I had surrendered my plans and dreams for my life, confessed my failures, and praised the Lord for all He had done. Whether I made it or not, I knew I was the Lord’s forever. “I have plans for you … a future … a hope!” I heard as I drifted into the blur of excruciating pain and then unconsciousness. Sometime after, I was found by a doctor who “happened” to be out walking with his son and daughter. I had experienced authentic hope when I was helpless. The long months in bed convalescing and then the tedious process of learning to walk again were both used by the Lord to help me continue the deepening process that had begun in my fresh encounter with Him after the accident. My own plans for my work for Him had to be surrendered so I could hear His plans. False gods of professional pride, success, and control had to be faced and removed from subtle syncretism with the Lord. We all get sucked into the seduction of the secondary, all the good things we do for the Lord that eventually compete with Him for first place in our lives. Busyness for the Lord is a beguiling false god if it keeps us from daily, hourly, communion with Him and moment-by-moment guidance in His plans for us. Sometimes He uses our problems and difficulties to get our attention. We get the most out of suffering when it brings us to deeper trust and a new commitment to Him as our only hope. For that we need a fresh vision of the majesty and might of the Lord. OUR GOD IS MIGHTY 5 The Lord GOD of hosts, He who touches the earth and it melts, And all who dwell there mourn; All of it shall swell like the River, And subside like the River of Egypt. 6 He who builds His layers in the sky, And has founded His strata in the earth; Who calls for the waters of the sea, And pours them out on the face of the earth— The LORD is His name. —Amos 9:5–6 God is not only inescapable, He is mighty. Amos follows the Lord’s disclosure of His omnipresence with a magnificent declaration of His omnipotence. Israel’s faith had degenerated until Yahweh was little more than a cult deity. Their vision of God was too small, limited, constricted. Amos uses a familiar hymn of praise to Yahweh to soar in exaltation, extolling His power over nature and the events of history. He is “the Lord GOD of hosts” (v. 5). He is the Commander of the armies (??b??ôt) of angels who carry out His plans. The words, “He who touches the earth and it melts” meant that Yahweh’s power could be displayed in an earthquake that causes people to mourn. With the earthquake comes the undulation of the earth like the annual rising and subsiding of the Nile River of Egypt (cf. Amos 8:8). Yahweh controls His creation because He is builder and founder of both heaven and earth. Creation is likened to a house or palace in which ma ??lâ, a kind of “upper room,” is used for heaven, and ??guddâ, or “storeroom,” is used for the earth.2 By Yahweh’s power water is drawn from the sea and is poured out on the earth in rain. Who is this mighty God? The hymn ends with the refrain, “the LORD is His name” (v. 6). This hymn may not impress our sophisticated ears so used to seismographic calculations of earthquakes, refined predictions of the tides, and seeding of rainless clouds so they will burst in a rainstorm. And yet, the more we understand the more we should be motivated to praise the Creator and Sustainer of the earth and universes within universes. Most wondrous of all, He created us to know and love Him. And the greatest miracle of all is our transformation through Christ, His cross, the resurrection, and His indwelling presence. This should lead us to unfettered praise and not unbending pride. FALSE PRIDE AND FALLACIOUS PREJUDICE 7 “Are you not like the people of Ethiopia to Me, O children of Israel?” says the LORD. “Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, The Philistines from Caphtor, And the Syrians from Kir? 8 “Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are on the sinful kingdom, And I will destroy it from the face of the earth; Yet I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” Says the LORD. 9 “For surely I will command, And will sift the house of Israel among all nations, As grain is sifted in a sieve; Yet not the smallest grain shall fall to the ground. 10 All the sinners of My people shall die by the sword, Who say, ‘The calamity shall not overtake nor confront us.’ —Amos 9:7–10 We sense that Amos repeated this then familiar hymn to prepare his listener for the bracing truth that follows in verses 7–8. Yahweh, who is Lord of all creation, is also the Lord of all nations. And Israel, having denied both its privilege and responsibility, will be judged more severely than other nations. Stuart comments decisively, “In effect Amos says, ‘That hymn you love shows how Yahweh controls the universe and metes out His judgment among the nations. But you have wrongly assumed that this judgment would always benefit you and harm others. Now you must realize that you also deserve the wrath of which the hymn speaks.’ ”3 Two rhetorical questions in verse 7 put Israel in her place. In essence, the Lord asks first, “Are you more important to Me than the people of Ethiopia?” The Nubians (kušiyy? m) were a small, obscure black nation in Africa. And second, “You are proud of your exodus from Egypt? Your enemies the Philistines and the Syrians each had one too.” The Philistines came from Caphtor on Crete, and Kir is unknown. It must have been shocking for the Israelites to hear that Yahweh had been involved in the history of two nations they had categorized as their enemies. Perhaps they could not be so sure of Yahweh’s protection. The questions were a carefully placed blow to the people’s pride. Were they not the darlings of the Almighty? Verse 8 makes it clear that Israel is the focus of Yahweh’s attention alright, but as a sinful kingdom deserving destruction. Amos alone uses the term “the sinful kingdom.” The article stresses the apostasy, unrighteousness, and rebellion of the northern kingdom. However, there is a thin ray of hope that pierces the darkness of the judgment. There will be a remnant saved. Some scholars suggest that the “sinful kingdom” refers to the monarchy and the house of Jacob to the people. What is most significant, however, is that Yahweh had a future planned for His people. He always has plans for working His purposes out in ways beyond our imagination. This, too, is a basis of hope. The theme of the remnant is carried on in verses 9–10 in the metaphor of a sieve. Yahweh will sift His people as “in a sieve” (rare word, k?b?râ). What is sifted is ??rôr, translated in the NKJV as “grain” and in the RSV as “pebble.” The metaphor is somewhat confusing since, on a threshing floor, the grain falls through and the stubble remains. That would make the image of the pebble more likely. In that case the pebbles remain and the grain would fall through. What remains in the sieve will be saved. What is important is the point of the metaphor: a remnant will be saved from death, but sinners, transgressors, will die by the sword. These are the people who have refused to heed Yahweh’s warnings, saying, “The calamity shall not overtake us nor confront us” (v. 10). The basic meaning of the word for sin, ?????—to miss the mark, is implied. It is the unwillingness to submit to God’s call to righteousness and justice, and having heard His judgment still persist both in the sin and a determination not to acknowledge it and repent. Again, the theme of hope gleams through the dark clouds of Israel’s judgments. God offers grace to those who confess their sins. The greatest sin is to persist in saying we have no sin. This was the problem of the Pharisees. After healing the man born blind, Jesus spoke about spiritual sight with the Pharisees as His target audience. “For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind” (John 9:39). Those who could not admit that they needed spiritual sight, therefore would remain blind. “Are we blind also?” the Pharisees asked, seeking to trap Jesus. He responded, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains” (John 9:41). The desire to see ourselves as Christ sees us and to allow Him to put His finger on what needs to be changed is the secret of spiritual power for personal growth and exhilarating discipleship. He is never finished with us nor are we ever finished growing. Amos has confronted us with the danger of pride, arrogance, and self-righteousness. He calls us to live on the growing edge of absolute honesty and humble repentance in the never-ceasing challenge of living out our righteousness with God in our relationship and responsibilities for justice in our society. PROMISES OF HOPE 11 “On that day I will raise up The tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, And repair its damages; I will raise up its ruins, And rebuild it as in the days of old; 12 That they may possess the remnant of Edom, And all the Gentiles who are called by My name,” Says the LORD who does this thing. 13 “Behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD, “When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, And the treader of grapes him who sows seed; The mountains shall drip with sweet wine, And all the hills shall flow with it. 14 I will bring back the captives of My people Israel; They shall build the waste cities and inhabit them; They shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them; They shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them. 15 I will plant them in their land, And no longer shall they be pulled up From the land I have given them,” Says the LORD your God. —Amos 9:11–15 These five promises of the restoration of Israel pulsate with hope-animating power. The same God who promised judgment for those who would not repent promises a new beginning for a remnant. After the Exile, the people will be restored to their land and will live in prosperity and plenty. Before we consider these promises, we must acknowledge that many scholars do not consider these last five verses to be a part of Amos’s original prophecy. It is reasoned that, because of what seems to be a change in tone and theological content, this section was a later addition, probably from a Judean source. In addition to the change in tone, this conviction is based on the reference to “the tabernacle of David” (9:11) and to the possession of the remnant of Edom that occurred after the Babylonian exile of Judah. None of these arguments seem conclusive. There is an obvious change of tone, from judgment to hope. However, if the Lord “took” (7:15) Amos to prophesy judgment on Israel with precise vision about how that judgment would be carried out years later, why should it be difficult to accept that the Lord could also reveal to the prophet the vision of the restoration? I think Amos was charged with both tasks and having accomplished prophecy of judgment with unswerving incisiveness, went on to predict aspects of the restoration. Amos spoke in the context of Yahweh’s covenant relationship with Israel, and that restoration was necessary to accomplish His long-range purpose for His people. Without this we must assume that Yahweh only revealed His wrath to Amos and nothing of His plan for after the Exile. This seems unlikely, especially when the prophet was given the vision of the remnant. As for the Judean authorship, we must not forget that Amos was from the southern kingdom. Amos displayed extensive knowledge of international affairs, and, except for the brief time he prophesied in the northern kingdom, spent his life in Judah. His prophecy against Judah (2:4–5) reveals his knowledge of the growing spiritual apostasy in his own land. As a part of that prophecy Amos did, in fact, predict the destruction of Jerusalem (2:5). That brings us to the reference to “the tabernacle of David” in verse 11 of the closing passage. The Hebrew word translated here as “tabernacle” is sukkâ, meaning “booth.” Its use here could mean the temple, the dynasty of David, the role of the king as intercessor in the Festival of Booths, and, as Stuart suggests, the city of Succoth, a pivotal center in David’s military operations. A good case can be made for the temple, and if so, it would be possible that Amos, who had a vision of the destruction of Jerusalem, could also have had a vision of the rebuilding of the temple. “The tabernacle of David, which has fallen down” is in a participial form and can also be translated “the falling tabernacle (booth) of David.” If the booth means the Davidic dynasty, it was already in a decrepit, tottering condition in Amos’s time. Along with the other prophets, Amos shared the Jerusalem traditions of the fulfillment of the Davidic ideal. Undoubtedly, he, too, looked forward to the coming David. The mention of the possession of Edom in verse 12 is used as a further argument for a later authorship of the final section of Amos. This is based on the reference in Obadiah 19. It should be noted, however, that the possession of Edom is predicted in Numbers 24:18. These reasons are in strong support of Amos’s authorship of 9:11–15. In the last analysis, however, what is most important is that it is part of the Bible, and the hope it contains is God’s word for us. There are five promises in this final section of Amos. The first is the tabernacle or booth of David. We have discussed some of the possible meanings of this term. Of these, the most plausible is that there will be a new day in which the northern and southern kingdoms will be reunified under a new David. Beyond the judgment of the Exile, there will be a new time of rebuilding. The brokenness of the chosen people would be healed. The second promise is that the new kingdom will “possess” or have power over all old enemies. “That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name” (v. 12). Edom had been an old and constant enemy of the Israelites. The Edomites would finally be subdued and distress Israel no more. You will find a complete discussion of the Edomite problem and how this promise was fulfilled in the commentary on Obadiah. Here in Amos 9:12 the name Edom is a kind of synecdoche for the phrase “all the Gentiles,” or, more accurately, “all the nations” (kol-haggôyim) which parallels it. The phrase “called by My name” means, “which I control.” In the course of Israel’s defeat, Yahweh had displayed His power over the nations to effect His purposes and judgment. Now He will restore to Israel the blessing of power over these nations. The third promise is on prosperity and bounty for the land. “When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed” (v. 13). In the restored kingdom the land will be so fruitful that as the reaper is cutting grain the plowman will be preparing the ground for a new planting. At the time of harvesting the grape crop, before the harvesters finish, the next crop will be planted. Harvesters and planters will get in each other’s way as the land yields an almost constant harvest. Leviticus 26:5 will have come to pass, “Your threshing shall last till the time of vintage, and the vintage shall last till the time of sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.” The success of the grape harvest will be so great that it will seem like the mountains will drip and the hills will flow with grape juice. All of the hyperbolical statements convey the unlimited blessing of Yahweh. The judgment will be past. So the fourth promise is that the captives will be brought back to the land. The cities that have been devastated will be reinhabited and rebuilt. The people will settle down to a peaceful life able to pursue normal agriculture without fear of invaders and danger. Yahweh will make it all possible—“I will bring back ….” He is the source and sustainer of the restoration. The first person intensity of the promises is repeated in the fifth and final promise. “I will plant them in their land, and no longer shall they be pulled up from the land I have given them” (v. 15). The pronouns “I” and “their” communicate the bliss of the reestablished covenant between Yahweh and His chosen people. Once again the people will know that all they have and are is a gift from their only God. LIVING WITH HOPE The entire ninth chapter of Amos helps us behold our God and live with hope rooted in His promises. He is the God of righteousness who demands that we live righteously, and He is our judge. He will not accept second place in our lives or second-rate discipleship. He promises that there will be an accounting, daily, and at the end of our physical lives. We are accountable to Him for what we do with the blessings He bestows on us. His judgments and punishments are never an end in themselves. Our God is more concerned with reconciling us to Himself than retribution. He follows judgment with the promise of a new beginning. Amos has brought us to a renewed awareness of the cost of being chosen. We have been called to be saints, God’s holy people, and we have been appointed to live holy, righteous lives. The prophet brings us to the realization of the impossibility on our own of attaining righteousness with God or living righteously. After studying Amos, we are prepared to behold our God with new awe and wonder, for He has intervened to make us right with Himself and give us the power to live righteous lives. Now we behold God incarnate in Christ. His death on the Cross establishes the righteousness with God we could never earn or deserve. Amos brings us to Calvary with humility and repentance, for the righteousness the prophet proclaimed is now ours. And the fearless man of Tekoa has also put a warrant in our souls to live that righteousness with greater intentionality, without hypocrisy and pretense. Amos forces us to look in the mirror and repent and then to behold God in the face of Jesus Christ our righteousness. INTRODUCTION TO OBADIAH Obadiah is the shortest book in the Bible. It also is one of the most neglected books of the Bible in contemporary preaching and teaching. When friends learned that I was writing this commentary on the Minor Prophets, they wondered what preaching and teaching values I would find in Obadiah. One pastor went so far as to exclaim, “I’m anxious to read what you will do with grim ol’ Obadiah. Can’t imagine preaching anything positive or creative out of that angry tirade. Obadiah is ‘minor’ not only in length, but also in any inspiration for discipleship today!” I disagree. An exposition of Obadiah provides an excellent basis for treating three subjects of great importance and urgency. First, Obadiah forces us to identify our enemies. A vital aspect of spiritual maturity is having the right enemies. I find it helpful to begin a class lecture or a sermon on Obadiah with the question, “Who are your enemies?” The question leads naturally into some introductory paragraphs about the difference between people who are categorized as enemies simply because of what they have done or said to us and those who are enemies of God. There was no question in Obadiah’s mind about who was his enemy. The twenty-one verses of his prophecy are focused on the judgment of the Edomites. The ancient, smoldering animosity between the Israelites, the descendants of Jacob, and the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, were flamed into a blaze because Edom had aided an invader in the sacking of Jerusalem. The first sixteen verses of Obadiah’s message deal with condemnation of Edom in general and judgment for refusing to aid Israel in particular. A discussion of these first sixteen verses gives the expositor an opportunity to trace the feud between Israel and Edom. A necessary companion to Obadiah’s verses is Jesus’ teaching on enemies in the Sermon on the Mount. The Master did not tell us we should not have enemies but rather that we should love them, bless them, and pray for them. How can we do that? We cannot without a transformation. We need deliverance. The second major thrust in Obadiah’s prophecy is a prediction of a deliverance on Mount Zion. “But on Mount Zion there shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions” (v. 17). The deliverance prophesied was the return of the exiles to Jerusalem. An exposition of all the dynamics of that deliverance is a precursor of an ultimate deliverance that would take place on the cross. In that deliverance, the dividing wall of division between us and our enemies will be broken down. Most crucial of all, we will be given deliverance from the power of our real enemy—Satan. Christ defeated the enemy so we could be free to love our enemies. The third and final theme of Obadiah is that judgment and punishment is God’s prerogative. Edom will be destroyed. The last phrase of verse 21 provides a triumphant motto for our battles with the Enemy and our enemies: “The kingdom shall be the LORD’S.” This is our hope, strength, and confidence in conflict. God always has the final word, the decisive judgment, and the ultimate victory. We will develop all three of these themes in our verse-by-verse exposition of Obadiah. For now, my hope is that taking this approach to Obadiah will help you see how preaching and teaching from this little book can be a dynamic experience for both you and your listener. WHO WAS OBADIAH? We know little about Obadiah. There are thirteen Obadiahs mentioned in the Old Testament. Since no kings are mentioned at the beginning of the prophecy, it is difficult to identify him with certainty as one of the ones listed. Depending on the dating of Obadiah’s prophecy, four of the thirteen seem possible. An early dating would make a good candidate of the Obadiah who was an officer in Ahab’s house and hid prophets in a cave (1 Kin. 18:3–4). Another possibility would be the Obadiah who was sent out by Jehoshaphat to teach the Law in the villages of Judah (2 Chr. 17:7). Also, there was an Obadiah who participated in repairing the temple in Josiah’s time (2 Chr. 34:12). A later date after the Exile would suggest the priest named Obadiah during the reconstruction of Jerusalem under Nehemiah (Neh. 10:5). The fact that Obadiah’s father is not mentioned indicates that the prophet was not from a priestly or kingly line. What we do know about Obadiah is that he was fearlessly faithful to Yahweh and Israel, passionately abhorred the enemy of Edom, and firmly believed in the ultimate judgment of Godless nations. His central conviction is that God’s justice will triumph and be vindicated. DATE OF OBADIAH The date of Obadiah’s prophecy is widely disputed. The invasion of Jerusalem mentioned in verses 10–14 provides the only assistance in the prophecy itself concerning the date. The discussion of the date of Obadiah has revolved around which invasion of Jerusalem that Obadiah refers to. Some scholars suggest Shishak’s invasion of Jerusalem in 926 B.C. during the reign of Rehoboam. However, this is unlikely because Edom was not independent of Judah at that time and therefore could not have been part of the plundering of the temple and palace. A second possibility is the invasion and looting of Jerusalem by the Philistines and Arabians during the reign of Jehoram (848–841 B.C.). The Edomites had revolted and were bitter antagonists of Judah at this time. A third theory is that the invasion cited was the invasion by Jehoash of Israel in 790 B.C. The fourth option seems correct. In 586 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar invaded Jerusalem, and destroyed the palace and temple and razed the walls. The historic enmity between Israel and Edom reached a climax when the Edomites not only refused to help when the Babylonians crushed the city, but actually aided in the destruction and expressed their delight in the defeat of their centuries-old archenemy. Psalm 137, written in the Babylonian exile following the destruction of Jerusalem, provides a helpful cross reference. Edom is clearly identified as cheering participants in the razing of the holy city. “Remember, O Lord, against the sons of Edom the day of Jerusalem, who said, ‘Raze it, raze it, to its very foundation!’ ” (Ps. 137:7). Therefore, the approach we will take to Obadiah’s prophecy will be in the context that it was delivered after the 586 B.C. destruction of Jerusalem and during the Babylonian exile. AN OUTLINE OF OBADIAH I. A Vision of the Enemy: 1–16 A. Identifying the Enemy B. The Anatomy of the Enemy C. The Judgment of the Enemy II. Deliverance from the Enemy: 17–18 A. Deliverance on Mount Zion 1. After the Exile 2. After the Cross B. The Character of the Delivered 1. Holiness 2. Holy Living C. Possessing Our Possessions 1. Possessing the Prepossessor 2. Claiming What Is Ours D. Fire and Flame 1. The Fire that Destroys 2. The Fire that Purges and Illuminates III. Victory Over the Enemy: 19–21 A. Judgment Is the Lord’s B. The Kingdom Is the Lord’s CHAPTER ONE—A VISION OF THE ENEMY OBADIAH 1–16 Scripture Outline The Vision (1) The Anatomy of an Enemy of God (2–14) Pride and Arrogance (3–4) Plunder, Destruction, and Defection (5–7) Loss of Wisdom and Understanding (8–9) Violence and Gloating (10–14) The Day of the Lord for Edom (15–16) It is not wrong to have enemies. In fact, our spiritual maturity can be evaluated by the kind of enemies we have. The Bible does not condemn us for having enemies, but it does challenge us to be sure that our enemies are the self-appointed enemies of God. Often our enemies are simply those who have hurt us personally. When someone opposes us, disagrees with us, or thwarts what we want to do, he is categorized as an enemy. We have all had experiences with people who have misunderstood, misjudged, and misused us. We make enemies of people who do not like us or have gossiped about us. Sometimes, we slate as our enemies those who hold different political views, denominational backgrounds, cultural values, or lifestyles. Our obsession with petty enmity can keep us from confronting the true enemy. Our real enemy is the collusive force of evil rampant in the world. Jesus identified Satan as that enemy. He also exposed those who were possessed by Satan or ploys of his diabolical schemes. Satan is the anti-God spirit constantly seeking to recruit people and organize movements to oppose God and His purposes of righteousness and justice. Sometimes we feel that the enemy is winning, and we become discouraged in the seemingly endless battle against his virulent influence in society through Godless people. We shudder as we read the daily paper, which shows us the destructive power of evil seen in individual violence, organized crime, and atheistic materialism. Every day we observe from the close-range focus of television the ravages of pride, selfishness, and hatred. We cry out in our prayers, “How long, O God, how long, must we wait for You to banish evil and bring justice?” During those times of anguish it is helpful for us to look back over history and rejoice in God’s interventions. He has toppled arrogant despots, crushed Godless nations, exposed the proud, and destroyed evil movements. God is still in charge and is working out His purposes. And towering over the wrecks of time is the ultimate intervention of the cross and the assurance that “though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet.”1 Our conviction is strengthened through a careful study of Obadiah. The final verse of this short book thunders the truth, “The kingdom shall be the LORD’S.” Our God reigns—He always has the final word. On time, and in time, God constantly asserts His sovereignty and vindicates His people who humbly trust in Him. From this positive perspective we approach our exposition of Obadiah. We are reminded that our enemies are those who are determined to be God’s enemies, and we can claim deliverance far greater than the prophet envisioned. Leslie Allen underlines this positive perspective of the prophecy of Obadiah. The Christian, with a faith which sets value on loving one’s enemies, will at first sight find Obadiah an unwelcome teacher. It must be remembered that the New Testament continually upholds the principle of love, in tension with a concern for moral order and justice which eventually involves the destruction of God’s enemies (see Luke 19:27; 2 Thess. 1:7–10; Rev. 6:9–11). In the Old Testament the notion of a last judgment is brought forward into history and presented as something that God is doing now. Indeed, Obadiah gives the impression that Judah is living near the end time, as his use of “the day of the Lord” indicates. Moreover, for Obadiah what was at stake was not simply political rights or wrongs but religious ones; God was called upon to vindicate Himself even as He vindicated Judah. Vengeance wasn’t the point but vindication of God and of His oppressed people was. Nevertheless, feelings against Edom not unnaturally ran high in Judah. Here the prophet, in God’s name, is assuring frustrated and emotionally battered Jews that God cares and will put things right.2 No less an assurance is given to us in the twenty-first century. Obadiah, when read through the focused lens of Calvary, helps us to trust in God’s moral government and justice. THE VISION The prophecy of Obadiah begins with the words, “The vision of Obadiah. Thus says the Lord GOD concerning Edom (we have heard a report from the LORD, and a messenger has been sent among the nations, saying: ‘Arise, and let us rise up against her for battle’)” (v. 1). The vision given to Obadiah is not a pictorial one but a verbal account of what would take place in the destruction of Edom. At this point, it is helpful to retrace the origin and identity of the Edomites and their antagonism to the Israelites, which takes us back to Isaac and Rebekah and their twin sons, Jacob and Esau. Esau was born first, and Jacob second, but only moments apart, for Jacob came out of the womb with his hand holding Esau’s heel. From the beginning Esau was his father’s favorite, growing up to be a hunter, a man of the field. Like Isaac, Esau loved the thrill of the hunt, the freedom of adventure, the taste of game. By contrast, Jacob was Rebekah’s favorite. The Scripture tells us he was a peaceful man living in tents. Perhaps Esau was free in his spirit to emulate his father’s interests because Isaac had taken time to affirm Esau while Jacob hung around home longing to receive Isaac’s affirmation. The fundamental issue in Isaac’s family was which of the sons would have the birthright—the right of primogeniture. The firstborn was to assume his father’s place, property, and authority as the ruling member of the family at the time of his father’s death. Along with the birthright went the father’s blessing. Rebekah’s passionate wish was that both the birthright and the blessing be given to her favorite, Jacob, instead of Esau. She inbred her desire in Jacob so that he joined her in her plan to get him the birthright. One day when Esau came in from the fields famished after a day’s work, Jacob was cooking stew, and Esau, with youthful impetuosity, demanded some of it—saying that he would die if he did not eat immediately. “First sell your birthright,” Jacob retorted to Esau. Esau’s nonchalant attitude toward the birthright is indicated by his response. “Behold, I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” So, Esau sold the birthright and got a dish of stew—red stew. Edom means “red” … “Therefore his name was called Edom” (Gen. 25:30). The plot intensified some time later when Isaac sensed he was dying and wanted to give his blessing to Esau. He sent his firstborn out on a hunt for game for a savory dish. “Bring it to me that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die” (Gen. 27:4). Rebekah was listening. The moment she had been waiting for had come. Quickly she told Jacob to kill a choice kid from the flock, prepare the dish Isaac wanted, and receive the blessing and birthright intended for Esau. Together Rebekah and Jacob staged a deception. Jacob dressed in Esau’s clothes and put goat skins on his neck and hands so Isaac would think he was Esau. Jacob served Isaac the meal and duped Isaac into blessing him rather than Esau. Jacob received the birthright instead of Esau. Therefore may God give you Of the dew of heaven, Of the fatness of the earth, And plenty of grain and wine. Let peoples serve you, And nations bow down to you. Be master over your brethren, And let your mother’s sons bow down to you Cursed be everyone who curses you, And blessed be those who bless you! —Genesis 27:28–29 When Esau returned home he discovered what his mother and brother had done against him, and he begged for some blessing from Isaac. “Have you only one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father!” (Gen. 27:38). It is difficult to understand the severity of Isaac’s depreciation of Esau’s destiny. And yet what he predicted for Esau came true: Behold, your dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth, And of the dew of heaven from above. By your sword you shall live, And you shall serve your brother; And it shall come to pass, when you become restless, That you shall break his yoke from your neck. —Genesis 27:39–40 Thus a terrible grudge became the riverbed for the flow of competition, hatred, and jealousy between Jacob and Esau. Esau made plans to kill his brother as soon as Isaac died. Fortunately, Esau never succeeded. Later, the two brothers negotiated a solicitous, surface peace, which was never shared by their descendants. While the descendants of Jacob were called Israelites, the descendants of Esau were called Edom, or Edomites, from the name of the red pottage for which Esau had traded his birthright. Esau settled in a place called Mount Seir (Gen. 36:8–9). This was not just one mountain but a mountainous region inhabited by the Horites. It extended from the south of the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqabah. Eventually, the descendants of Esau dispossessed the Horites (Deut. 2:12). The Edomites became a people to match the rocky, ragged crags and serrated ridges of the Seir territory. They were a hard, earthy people, proud, cruel, and fierce. There is no evidence that they had any religion. Their problem was not syncretism with other Gods; they had no Gods at all. The only things that bordered on religious fervor was their concentrated, persistent, bitter hatred against Israel. They fostered and perpetuated an implacable feud with the descendants of Jacob that was expressed repeatedly throughout the evolving history of the two nations. During the wilderness wanderings of the people of Israel, Moses appealed to the Edomites to allow them to pass through their territory. With angry threats the Edomites refused. The animosity between the peoples deepened (Num. 20:14–21). Intermittent conflict ensued. Balaam prophesied Edom’s defeat (Num. 24:18). Later, Saul led Israel against the Edomites (1 Sam. 14:47), and David conquered them (2 Sam. 8:13–14; 1 Kin. 11:15–16). The Edomites rose to strength in the ninth century B.C. and, in confederation with the Ammonites and the Moabites, raided Judah while Jehoshaphat was king (2 Chr. 20:1–2). Then again, during the reign of Jehoram, they rebelled against Judah (2 Kin. 8:20–22). The angry bitterness between Edom and the people of Israel remained during the eighth century B.C. Amaziah recaptured Edom with great slaughter (2 Kin. 14:7). Subsequently, during Ahaz’s reign the Edomites raided Judah, taking captives. After 734 B.C. Edom was a vassal nation of Assyria and later of Babylonia. It was during the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. that the longstanding enmity with the Edomites reached a climax. The Edomites aided in the destruction of the city. It is in response to this that Obadiah prophesied judgment on Edom. He wrote in the early portion of the Exile following the destruction of Jerusalem. Commenting on the date of Obadiah’s prophecy, Douglas Stuart says, “It is the exilic period, particularly the early exile (580s or shortly thereafter) that meets the criterion best. Most importantly, four other Old Testament passages from the same early sixth-century period reflect the same sort of situation and perspective found in Obadiah: Ps. 137:7; Lam. 4:18–22; Ezek. 25:12–14; 35:1–15. These parallels echo the furious resentment expressed in Obadiah at the way the Edomites took advantage of Jerusalem’s subjugation by the Babylonians.”3 First Esdras 4:45 blames the Edomites for burning the Jerusalem temple. Though Esdras is not a reliable source, the composite evidence is that the Edomites shared in the destruction of Jerusalem and profited from it by looting and by taking southern Judean land. With that background, we are ready to consider Obadiah’s vision concerning Edom’s judgment. The word vision (??zôn) is a term for communication from God. The substance of the vision indicates that God’s message came to the prophet in the form of words. “We have heard a report from the LORD” (v. 1). It is not just Obadiah’s indignation over Edom that we are to hear, but God’s judgment. He had already judged His own people for their apostasy. Now as Lord of all nations, He levels His condemnation on the people of Edom. That is important to keep in mind. Otherwise we might well ask, “In the light of the bloodshed Judah had caused in Edom over the years, what right did Obadiah have to judge them or what they did to Jerusalem?” The fact that it is God who speaks through Obadiah, one who has experienced His judgment, gives a ring of reality to the prophet’s words. God was not playing favorites. As Peter Craigie points out, The essence of the book is that it contains the Lord’s word. And God was not partial; He had already judged His own people for their evil, and no less would He judge other nations. The essence of the theology throughout is that God is the Lord of human history; the evil acts of any nation, regardless of affiliation or national faith, invite divine judgment. And that theme, though delivered in Obadiah’s time, contains a timeless truth.4 It is significant that the word of the Lord to Obadiah is a call to the nations to rise up against Edom. “Arise, and let us rise up against her for battle.” There are times when God rallies the nations to put down a nation that has become an enemy of His righteousness. In the case of Edom, some five years after they aided the Babylonians in razing Jerusalem, they fell under the yoke of the Chaldeans. Malachi 1:3–4 and Jeremiah 49:7–22, along with the records of Josephus, make this plain. From the late sixth to the fourth century B.C., the Nabateans, an Arab tribe, occupied Edom and its capital, Petra. In 312 B.C. Alexander the Great’s general, Antigonus, conquered the Edomites. They were displaced and scattered throughout southern Palestine. Later, in the second century B.C., the Edomites endured further defeats from Judas Maccabeus. Josephus accounts for the complete ruination by Alexander Janneus of the remaining Edomites who had settled in the Negeb, also known as Idumea. Origen, in the third century A.D., wrote of the Edomites as a people whose name and language had perished from history. What God had told Obadiah in his vision of words came true. THE ANATOMY OF AN ENEMY OF GOD Analysis and close examination of Obadiah 2–14 gives us a clear picture of the component elements of what made Edom an enemy of God. The review provides a startling warning to nations today, but also serves as a stark reminder of what God abhors in us as individuals and as the church. Looking at Obadiah’s prophecy from this perspective broadens our exposition beyond a mere historical analysis of the sins of Edom. There is a series of oracles in verses 2–14 portraying the aspects of what God judges in Edom: (1) verses 2–4, pride and arrogance; (2) verses 5–6, greed and plunder; (3) verses 7–8, loss of wisdom and understanding (4) verses 10–14, violence and gloating over suffering of others. These form a natural progression for preaching and teaching this section of Obadiah. PRIDE AND ARROGANCE David Baker entitles the first oracle against Edom as, “Pride Goes Before Destruction.”5 This is an apt description of what caused Edom’s demise. “The pride of your heart has deceived you” (v. 3). That inner pride was based on outer securities and lack of accountability to God or any moral requirements. The outward cause of the pride of the Edomites was their assumption that their rocky, mountainous territory was impenetrable. “You who dwell in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; you who say in your heart, ‘Who will bring me down to the ground?’ ” In travels in this territory, I could see why the Edomites might have developed a sense of security against attack. As I rode on horseback, I could see how the rocks, clefts, chasms, and corridors between perpendicular sandstone rocks offered military protection for towns and outposts. The site of the fortress city of Petra can be reached only by passing through long narrow gorges in the impenetrable high rock formations. The pink hew to the sandstone makes the territory breathtakingly beautiful. We can imagine that the fortress and fortifications about 3,800 feet above sea level felt like the security of a soaring eagle. “ ‘Though you ascend as high as the eagle, and though you set your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down,’ says the LORD” (v. 4). Note the progression in the word picture. First, there is the soaring eagle reaching great heights. Then we picture the way an eagle relaxes and is carried almost motionless by the jet stream to even greater heights. We were created to soar like eagles. But Isaiah underlined the secret of the strength to really soar. “Those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles” (Is. 40:31). My observation of eagles is that they rest in their nests, then mount up with the strength of their great wings and soar to greater heights. The one thing the Edomites never did was wait on God, much less believe in Him. The author of Hebrews speaks of Esau as a “profane person” (Heb. 12:16). His descendants followed in his footsteps. Some scholars maintain that not only did the Edomites refuse to acknowledge Yahweh, but they had no Gods at all. The psalmist refers to the fool who says in his heart there is no God (Ps. 53:1). Edom seems to have been a nation of fools. Their God was themselves, their nation, and their fierce might. That is why pride reigned in their hearts as they cried, “Who shall bring me down?” G. Campbell Morgan said of the Edomites, “They were the very embodiment then of practical defiant Godlessness, expressing itself in the deification of self, and the conviction that self was sufficient, and that the fortresses which it had made for its own protection were enough to protect it against all opposition.”6 We think of the contemporary Edomites where deification of self leads to pride. Arrogance rules their lives. They are the materialists whose security is in human power and possessions. Accountable to no one but themselves, they perpetuate the cult of humanism. Bloated egoism results. There are no rules except those they set to control others. People are manipulated as things; accumulated accoutrements of success are touted as the meaning of life. Their motto is, “What’s good is what makes me feel great.” These are the truly dangerous people—the real enemies of God. And our enemies too, because their lack of accountability to anyone greater than themselves makes them willing tools of the archenemy, Satan. He is the instigator of the pride that eventually blocks out God and His righteousness. Yet it is the practical atheists who are even more dangerous. These are the people who simply live as if God does not exist. Life is lived on a flat horizontal level. They set their own goals and seek to achieve them on their own strength. Where the hard-core atheist is often a perpetrator of evil, the practical atheist is a passive participant. But God is not mocked. He brings down the arrogant, if not in their lifetime, in their death and in history’s evaluation of them. Louis XIV of France called himself “the great” and made the infamous assertion of pride, “I am the state!” His court was the most magnificent in Europe at the time. When he died, his funeral was spectacular. He had left behind orders to dramatize his greatness. He was placed in a gold coffin. The cathedral was dimly lit, with only one candle placed above his coffin. Thousands waited in hushed silence as Bishop Massilon was about to give an appropriate eulogy. Instead, slowly reaching down, he snuffed out the candle and said, “Only God is great!” Greatness is not measured in our achievement for our own glory but in the measure that we glorify God. Without that, life is an empty quest for human greatness. Mark Schorer’s analysis of Sinclair Lewis points up the emptiness of Lewis’s life without God. “In flight from himself, he tried to compensate by his immense vaudeville talent. He never got around to connecting his talent and his life so that he knew who he was. There was no inner certainty, no balance, no serenity, nothing between heaven and earth to which he could withdraw for quietude and healing. Because he never knew himself, he outraged himself.” The only lasting antidote to pride is praise. But without someone greater than the aggrandized self, there is no one and no thing to praise. Such was the condition of the Edomites and the basic cause of their lack of accountability to anyone, least of all God. Reinhold Niebuhr calls this the primal sin of pride in man. “His inclination to abuse his freedom, to overestimate his power and become everything is understood as the primal sin. It is because man is inevitably involved in this primal sin that he is bound to meet God first of all as judge, who humbles his pride and brings his vain imagination to naught.”7 PLUNDER, DESTRUCTION, AND DEFECTION The second oracle (vv. 5–7) predicts a plunder and destruction of Edom such as they had participated in doing to Judah and Jerusalem. Two rhetorical questions in verse 5 focus the completeness of Edom’s destruction by contrasting it to partial loss: Will not a robber steal until he has all he wants? Doesn’t a grape harvester leave some grapes? But in the ravage of Edom everything will be despoiled, and the land will be stripped bare. In contrast to the thief and the harvester’s denunciation, in Edom’s case the plunder will be total. Verse 6 says that the Edomites will be ransacked, and no hidden treasure will remain undiscovered by the conqueror. Baker points out the fact that in verse 5 God speaks to Edom but about him in verse 6, as one who is no longer there. The progression of the description is broken by laments starting with “Oh, how” (?êk), expressing shock and amazement over the extent of the judgment.8 Added to the physical destruction will be the defection of trusted friends. “All the men of your confederacy will force you to the border; the men at peace with you shall deceive you and prevail against you. Those who eat your bread shall lay a trap for you. No one is aware of it” (v. 7). Edom’s “confederacy” or “allies” (RSV, NIV) and friends (Hebrew, “men of peace”) will turn against her. Her armies will be deceived and will be lured out of their strongholds. The treacherous Edomites will suffer treachery by the hands of those on whom they had depended because of a quid pro quo established in the covenant-making ceremonies of eating bread together. This is an obvious play on words. The same Hebrew consonants in the word for “bread” (l?m) are also found in another word meaning “do battle.” Edom’s allies who have covenanted by breaking bread to fight with her would now fight against her. As we have noted, the Babylonians and later the Arab tribes turned against Edom. The Lord of the nations is able to turn His enemies against one another as part of His judgment. LOSS OF WISDOM AND UNDERSTANDING The third oracle presses the judgment of Edom even further. Everything in which Edom had false pride will be brought down—her fortification, the resources of her land, her security in allies, and now in this oracle, her wise men. Edom was noted for her wise men who were seers distinguished in folklore, the mysteries of life, and magic. An example of such wise men would be one of Job’s counselors, Eliphaz of Teman. His counsel to Job could be applied to his own nation. “Those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of His anger they are consumed” (Job 4:8–9). The trouble with Edom’s wise men in the sixth century B.C., however, was that they did not use their wisdom to check their leaders and their military arrogance. The wise men were to be seers and advisors to the “mighty men” (warriors) of Teman. (Teman was one of the chief cities of Edom, about five miles east of Petra.) Their supposed wisdom had become captive of the nationalistic spirit of Edom’s leaders. This vaunted wisdom devoid of reverence and understanding without knowledge of God had approved of violence against Israel. In the day of judgment these wise men of Edom would be deposed along with the warriors. VIOLENCE AND GLOATING The next oracle deals with the specific acts of violence in, and gloating over, the destruction of Jerusalem. “For your violence against your brother Jacob” (v. 10). The list of evils done to Judah and the people of Jerusalem is tantamount to a form of fratricide against Jacob—that is, all of Israel. We are reminded of the historic conflict between these two brother nations reaching back to the progenitors in Jacob and Esau. The “shame” of Edom is that she “stood on the other side” (vv. 10–11). The Edomites did not lift a hand to help when the Israelites were carried off into exile and as the Chaldeans cast lots for the spoils of the city. With hateful complicity, the Edomites acted as if they were “one of them.” The implication is that they gleefully aided in the looting of the city. The insult added to the injury was that the Edomites gloated over the captivity of the people of Judah in Babylon and the continuing destruction of the city. With mean spitefulness, they “gazed on their affliction” (v. 13). But the catalogue of the sins of the Edomites reaches a climax with the description of how they stood at the crossroads outside Jerusalem and captured the fleeing citizens of the city and turned them over to the invaders. Added to this, the Edomites apparently acted as quislings to the Chaldeans in rounding up the Israelites who were still hiding in the city. No mercy was shown by the Edomites. THE DAY OF THE LORD FOR EDOM The day of the Lord, the day of judgment, on all nations was close at hand. Verses 15 and 16 focus that day for Edom. The talion law of tit for tat will be applied to the Edomites: “As you have done, it shall be done to you; your reprisal shall return upon your own head.” The awesome thing is that the punishment of Edom matched their intent. They intended the complete destruction of the Israelites and that is what eventually happened to them. The imagery of verse 16 communicates that the destruction of Edom will be complete. “For as you drank on my holy mountain, so shall all the nations drink continually; yes, they shall drink, and swallow, and they shall be as though they had never been.” Jeremiah 25:15–28 explains the cup that is drunk. It is the cup of the Lord’s wrath against the nations in opposition to Him, first for Judah’s apostasy and then for the pagan nations. “For thus says the LORD God of Israel to me: ‘Take this wine cup of fury from My hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send you, to drink it’ ” (Jer. 25:15). In the light of that cross-reference we can understand Obadiah’s word of judgment for Edom. Because of what she had done, she was given the cup of God’s wrath to drink and swallow. And the prophecy that she would be as though she had never been came true in subsequent years. In these first 16 verses of Obadiah, we have been stirred by the awesome sovereign power of God over all nations. As Lord of history, He towers above individuals and nations. Any person or nation opposing Him in personal or nationalistic pride will be judged and punished. When we seek to identify our true enemies as the proud enemies of God, we also must admit that at times we are among them. Any review of the catalogue of the sins of Edom stirs within us an honest confession of pride in human strength, accomplishments, intellect, and learning. And we, too, have shared in the selfish glee over others’ weaknesses and failures. The hurt we have inflicted on others haunts us. What would happen to any of us if at this moment the talion law were leveled on us, “As you have done it, it shall be done to you!” We shudder as we think about that! It is then that we cling to the cross and our Deliverer and cry: Father look upon His anointed face And look on us only as seen in Him Look not upon our misusing of Your grace Our prayers so languid, our faith so dim, For between our sins and their reward We place the cross of Christ our Lord. CHAPTER TWO—DELIVERANCE FROM THE ENEMY—THEN AND NOW OBADIAH 17–18 Scripture Outline The First Deliverance (17–18) Deliverance on Calvary (17–18) Comparison of the Two Deliverances The Just and the Justifier The Only Qualification (17) The Second Major Difference The Third Dramatic Difference Claiming What Is Ours The Fire of Love 17 “But on Mount Zion there shall be deliverance, And there shall be holiness; The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions. 18 The house of Jacob shall be a fire, And the house of Joseph a flame; But the house of Esau shall be stubble; They shall kindle them and devour them, And no survivor shall remain of the house of Esau,” For the LORD has spoken. —Obadiah 17–18 Deliverance on Mount Zion! We read the words of this promise of liberation through the longing eyes of the captives in exile and then through our dilated vision of the ultimate deliverance on Calvary. A comparison of these two deliverances gives us an excellent opportunity to do justice to the Obadiah text, and at the same time show how its promise is a precursor of the lasting deliverance of the cross. The two deliverances are separated by more than 500 years. The post-Exile deliverance resulted in further wrath against Israel’s enemies; the deliverance of Calvary resulted in liberation from the wrath of God. They first produced an occasion for restitution of land taken by the enemy; the second affected a reconciliation to God. One issued in a holiness of reestablished traditions, the other the holiness of authentic God-centered character. The late sixth-century B.C. deliverance gave the Jews power to subdue their enemies; the deliverance of A.D. 33 overcame the influence of the arch-enemy, Satan, and gave the new Israel—the church—power to fulfill the command to love human enemies. With the initial deliverance, the house of Jacob and Joseph became a fire and a flame to burn the stubble of the enemy. In the final deliverance, the new creatures of the new creation are filled with the Light of the World and experience the passion of the fire of His Spirit. THE FIRST DELIVERANCE Verse 17 begins with the transitional conjunction but. It introduces the contrast of the judgment of Edom with the restoration of Israel. In the very place the Israelites were helpless refugees (p?lê?? m) at the hands of the Edomites, there will be deliverance (p?lê?â) by the intervention of the mighty hand of God. The clause of this promise is a direct quotation of Joel 2:32. Not only will there be a deliverance of the captives in exile, but there will be a deliverance of Mount Zion, the temple, and the holy city from the occupation of the Babylonians and the demeaning subjugation of the Edomites. Out of goodness and mercy, Yahweh will honor His covenant with Israel and restore His people. “And there shall be holiness” (v. 17). This can mean that God’s holy presence will return to the holy of holies of the reconstructed Temple, or it can mean a holiness in God’s people as a result of the deliverance. The masculine is used so the meaning is most likely a reference to the holiness of Mount Zion, not to Israel, where the feminine would have been used. It is the temple which was sanctified with the return of the presence of Yahweh. Regretfully, there was a distinct lack of renewed holiness, the sanctification of character, among the returning exiles, as Ezra attests. Their major concern was to claim the promise that they would “possess their possessions.” The word môr?šêhem, “their possessions,” is sometimes repointed as môr? šêhem, “their dispossessor.” “Pointed thus,” Allen says, “it provides a better link with the reference to the nations in the previous stanza and to Edom in the next.1 A similar phrase is used in Jeremiah 49:2 where the word is translated in the NKJV as “inheritance”: “Then Israel shall take possession of his inheritance.” Actually, Israel will possess both the dispossessors and the possessions taken by them, as the rest of the Obadiah prophecy promises. The dispossessor of Israel will be dispossessed, and the people of God will once again possess the inheritance of the Promised Land. This interpretation is supported by the textual variation in the Septuagint and in the Hebrew manuscript discovered at Murabbaat near the Dead Sea. Thus Allen translates, “The community of Jacob will regain territory from those who took it from them.”2 The covenant, which had been broken by Israel’s apostasy resulting in the punishment of Jerusalem’s fall in 586 B.C., would be restored. This actually took place under Zerubbabel in 537 B.C. when the people were returned to Jerusalem and in 515 B.C. when the temple was rebuilt. Verse 18 returns to Obadiah’s theme of the judgment of Edom. The remnant of the house of Jacob and Joseph, Jacob’s most distinguished son (i.e., the tribes of Judah), will be a fire and a flame for the burning of the stubble of Edom. The conflagration of the ancient foe will blaze until the destruction is complete, without survivors. In the Scriptures, the wicked are often compared to stubble, the cut stalks of grain left sticking up after a harvest which are burned off before replanting season. After the burning, the scorched ground leaves no trace of the consumed stubble. “For Yahweh has spoken,” says Obadiah, as if to assert the guarantee of the prophecy. DELIVERANCE ON CALVARY Without unduly spiritualizing verses 17 and 18, we are given a magnificent progression for a review of the cosmic deliverance of Calvary. Alexander Maclaren, a great expositor of another generation said of passages like this, Prophecies which were susceptible of … a historical and approximate fulfillment in the restoration of the Jews from Babylonian captivity, have a higher and broader and more real accomplishment in that great deliverance wrought by Jesus Christ, of which these earlier and partial and outward manifestations were themselves prophecies and shadows. So I make no apology for taking them as having their only real accomplishment in the office and working of Jesus Christ.3 In a similar way we could approach Micah 2:13, “The one who breaks open will come up before them; they will break out, pass through the gate, and go out by it; their king will pass before them, with the LORD at their head.” Or, Psalm 68:18, “You have led captivity captive,” when seen in the light of Paul’s reference to Christ in Ephesians 4:8: “When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men.” COMPARISON OF THE TWO DELIVERANCES The comparison of the post-exilic deliverance on Mount Zion and the deliverance of Calvary leads us into a vivid description of the liberating power of Christ’s atonement. He came to preach deliverance to the captives (Luke 4:18) and delivered us from the power of sin and Satan. Through the shedding of His blood, Christ the Liberator has delivered us from the wrath of God, His judgment upon all nations and peoples. In God’s heart, wrath and atonement are two sides of the same reality—His grace. He had to find a way of judging sin and justifying the sinner. Justification is the complete and unconditional exoneration of the sinner. The only way for God to accomplish that was to provide a just recompense for sin and an effective reconciliation of the sinner. He came in the Messiah, the suffering Servant, the Lamb of God. On Calvary, sin was judged and paid for. Christ suffered in humankind’s place for the primal sin of pride expressed in the arrogance of the Edomite and the rebellion of the Israelite, in all people separated or estranged from Him. THE JUST AND THE JUSTIFIER In Christ we meet God as both just and justifier. This is the exciting news Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. —Romans 3:23–26 Note the progression: righteousness, the just, the justifier, and faith. God’s righteousness is the consistent expression of His nature. He must judge any denial of His love, untruth in any form, and all distortions of His plan and purpose for humankind set forth in the Commandments. He cannot abdicate being just, the judge of all manifestations of pride that separate us from Him, that cause our gross misuse of others, and that wreak havoc in His creation. What can God do? The just must also be the justifier. We cannot help ourselves either through self-justification or self-punishment. Without denying His nature as the just, God must become the justifier. Out of unqualified and undeserved grace, our righteous God makes us right with Himself by both demanding atonement and providing it. He is both the just and the justifier in the sacrifice of Calvary. THE ONLY QUALIFICATION Faith is the only qualification for accepting and enjoying the free gift of this deliverance. But even that cannot be deserved or earned. It, too, is a gift. The same Lord who is just and the justifier is also the giver of the ability to respond. God enables us to accept our justification and claim our righteousness in Him. The primary gift of His Spirit at work in us is faith. By faith alone we claim that we are forgiven and reconciled with God. Now we can see the great difference between the deliverance of Obadiah 17 and the deliverance of Calvary. We do not escape the wrath of God only to delight to see it turned on our enemies. “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13). Instead of living in the gaols of self-centeredness, we are delivered to live out God’s goals for our lives. THE SECOND MAJOR DIFFERENCE So we see the second major difference between the two deliverances we are considering. God’s primary goal for our lives is to make us like His Son. He has assigned that responsibility to the Son Himself. When we confess Christ as Lord of our lives and invite Him to take up His post-resurrection residence in us, we begin the process of authentic holiness. Holiness is belonging to God, receiving the character transplant of His Son into our nature, and expressing His implanted nature summarized in the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22–23). The holiness manifested in the post-exilic deliverance was primarily the presence of God returned to the holy of holies of the reconstructed temple. Now, through the deliverance of Calvary, we are called to be the living temple of God in whom He dwells in the Spirit of His Son. THE THIRD DRAMATIC DIFFERENCE The third dramatic difference between the two deliverances is that we can claim both interpretations of the promise to possess our possessions. Consider the first: We can possess our dispossessor. Our dispossessor is really Satan. He is the one who seeks to demean our calling and our potential, discourages us in our efforts to be faithful and obedient to the Lord, disrupts our relationships with anger and hostility, and deranges life into chaos. He tries to rob us of peace, constantly directing us to no-exit cul-de-sacs of disobedience. Satan is the hassler, the huckster of disagreements with others, and the harbinger of self-condemnation. He wants to get us down on ourselves. He knows that soon we will transfer self-depreciation to blaming others. Satan is delighted when we make people our enemies. He gains a powerful position of anonymity and laughs with glee when we battle people rather than fighting for truth. On the Cross Christ dispossessed Satan as our dispossessor. He defeated his ruling power. Now there is One Name that he cannot abide, one sign and symbol He cannot resist: the name of Jesus Christ and the Cross. With both we can possess our archenemy, the dispossessor, Satan. Having done that, the alternative interpretation of possessing our possessions can be realized. We can claim all that is ours in Christ’s deliverance: atonement, assurance that we are forgiven even before we ask, freedom from guilt, the indwelling Spirit and His gifts (1 Cor. 12), daily and hourly guidance, peace in life’s chaos, and the assurance that death will only be a transition in our eternal life. Paul encouraged the Corinthians to possess their possessions: “All things are yours: … the world or life or death, or things present, or things to come—all are yours. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21–23). CLAIMING WHAT IS OURS Claiming all our possessions, we are empowered to confront our real enemy, Satan, and follow Christ’s call to love our enemies. He delivered us on the cross so we could live His revolutionary admonition to love and forgive with His divine “I AM” authority. He gave us a new commandment: You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. —Matthew 5:43–48 The stark difference between this challenge and Obadiah’s startles us. But only through the power of His deliverance and His indwelling Spirit are we able to live Christ’s awesome challenge. When we dare to try, our efforts are undergirded by His new law of multiplying returns: But love your enemies, do good, and lend hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Highest. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. —Luke 6:35–38 Who can live that way? No one … that is, apart from a consistent flow of God’s mercy through Christ. We cannot give what we do not have or have been unwilling to receive. But to have received mercy and forgiveness and not share them is to eventually come to a place of not being able to receive. It is here that the Minor Prophets and Jesus are of one voice. We dare not overlook Jesus’ words near the close of the Sermon on the Mount. Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” —Matthew 7:21–23 According to Matthew 25, our salvation is dependent on what we do to the hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, and imprisoned. “Inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me. And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt. 25:45–46). We have seen this mandate for mission in Amos and the other Minor Prophets. THE FIRE OF LOVE The sure sign that we have experienced the deliverance of Calvary is that we have a fire of love burning in us. This brings us to the final contrast of the deliverance in Obadiah and the deliverance of the Cross. The fire and flame of the house of Jacob were used to destroy Edom; the fire of Christ’s Spirit in us gives us a holy passion for a righteousness expressed in sacrificial service to others. Near the end of His ministry, He said, “I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished” (Luke 12:49–50). Jesus envisioned a new creation of people who would abide in Him and in whom He would abide. He knew that before that could happen He would have to go to the cross to die for the sins that keep people from both abundant and eternal life. Then He would rise from the dead in victorious defeat of death and Satan’s power. He would be loosed on the world as the ubiquitous, omnipresent Lord of the new creation He had come to establish. He knew that the love and forgiveness of His cross would raise His followers out of the graves of doubt, fear, and reservation. They would be ready for the fire He would set ablaze in their minds and hearts with His Spirit. It is significant that two of His followers who met Him as resurrected Lord exclaimed, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32). Like physical fire, Christ’s Spirit purifies, refines, radiates from us, and brings warmth to others through us. Christ’s fire sets us ablaze with convictions we cannot deny, with the will to obey that we cannot resist, and with love we cannot withhold. It is the fire of Christ’s Spirit that empowers us to love our enemies. At the same time His fire blazes in us with social righteousness. We do not become eccentric firebrands, but effective disciples branded with the fire of Christ’s character and concern for people who suffer. We have been delivered to be involved with Christ in changing people and battling injustice in our society. CHAPTER THREE—THE KINGDOM IS THE LORD’S OBADIAH 19–21 Scripture Outline The First Conviction (19–21) The Second Conviction The Third Conviction The Fourth Conviction The final three verses of Obadiah’s prophecy at first review seem to hold little for fruitful preaching and teaching. But look again. The last clause of the closing verse offers a key to the exposition of these three verses and for a dynamic message on the kingdom of God. It is a shout of acclamation, an outburst of triumphant faith. “The kingdom shall be the LORD’S!” THE FIRST CONVICTION First of all, this statement expresses Obadiah’s confidence that the prophecy he just made about the repossession of the land occupied by Edom and others will be accomplished. We look back over verses 19–21 from our perspective of history and realize that the prophet’s assurance was well-founded. All that he prophesied came true. God provides for what He guides. While the Israelites were enduring the captivity of the Exile, the Edomites occupied the towns of the Negeb, the southern portion of Judah. The very people who had been occupied by the Edomites later succeeded in conquering the Edomite territory. The Israelites of the lowlands (š?p?lâ) will drive out the Philistines and overcome Philistia as well (v. 19). Note Zephaniah 2:5 as a cross reference, “The word of the LORD is against you, O Canaan, land of the Philistines: ‘I will destroy you; so there shall be no inhabitant.’ ” It happened! But there’s more. The next conquests listed were accomplished in the second century B.C. when the Jews were under the Maccabees. The Israelites did indeed possess the “fields of Ephraim,” central Palestine, the district of Samaria and Benjamin took Gilead to the east. The returning exiles of the northern kingdom occupied the Canaanite territory, north to Zarephath, between Tyre and Sidon. The Jews who had been in captivity in Sepharad, or Sardis, the capital city of Lydia in Asia Minor, took possession of cities of the south, the Negeb. Verse 21 prophesies that “saviors” will rule over Edom from Mount Zion. The word saviors means judges who will lead the conquests and act as rulers. THE SECOND CONVICTION The second great conviction expressed by the assurance that “the kingdom is the LORD’S” is: our God reigns as Lord over all the nations. He composes and disposes. Yahweh is judge of all the nations. He used Edom and Babylonia to execute His judgment upon Jerusalem when, after repeated warnings, the people of Judah refused to repent. Yet, at the same time, He was faithful to His covenant with the Israelites and gave them a new beginning—He used the Israelites to bring down Edom. THE THIRD CONVICTION A third stirring conviction arising from the statement that “the kingdom is the LORD’S” is all that we have belongs to the Lord. This includes not only our possessions, but our projects, our relationships, and our responsibilities. God owns what we falsely enthrone. We all have our little kingdoms, our realms of responsibility. It is our proclivity to think that ultimately we are in charge and in control. What God seeks to do through us, we shift and want to do for Him and subtly place under our control. Soon pride and willfulness take over, and our service becomes a projection of our prideful egos. We want God’s help only to do things in our way. Soon we begin expressing, at least in attitude, “Lord, what’s Yours is mine,” then, “What’s mine is mine!” When I was a boy in Kenosha, Wisconsin, I used to play “King of the Mountain” on a hillside in a park. Whoever could maintain supremacy over the top of the hill was king of the mountain. One of the lads by the name of Arthur, a scrawny little guy with a lisp, never wanted to be king of the whole hillside. He marked off a small spot off to the side and would shout, “It’s not very big, but it’s mine!” Arthur’s words have come back to me often as I talked to husbands or wives who acted as if they owned their spouses, or parents who clutched at control of their children while raising them, and long after they became adults. I also hear the same possessiveness in Christians about tasks they believe God has given them to do. Church officers sometimes act as if their churches belong to them. Clergy are constantly in danger of forgetting that Christ is Lord of the church. The reminder that the kingdom is the LORD’S is actually a source of great relief. He provides the strength and wisdom to do His work. And He constantly shifts His strategy. Too often, we get into trouble when we insist on doing things the way we have always done them. But, under His control, He closes doors and opens others—He begins movements, and He ends them when they have accomplished His purpose. Frequently, we try to prop up and keep alive what He may have deemed no longer useful in His kingdom business. We are in the kingdom to do the King’s will. Staying in close communion with the King of our lives enables us to know what He wants, when He wants it, and how He wants it done. Prayer is not preying on God to tell Him what we want Him to do, but listening attentively to His orders. God inspires what He desires. THE FOURTH CONVICTION Finally, Obadiah’s description of assurance that the kingdom is the Lord’s is a petition of supplication for God’s reign on earth. The prophet joins with the other minor prophets in prophesying the kingdom of God as His ultimate plan and purpose for history. Joined with these prophecies were the predictions and longing expectations for the Messiah to come and reign as Lord of history. John the Baptist, as a forerunner of the Messiah’s ministry, declared, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). The central thrust of Jesus’ message was the kingdom of God. It was the theme of His parables. He taught His disciples to pray, “Thy kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10). He proclaimed the kingly rule, sovereignty, and Lordship of God over His people and all creation. The reign of God through Immanuel was manifested in Jesus’ deeds and miracles manifested in His power over the demons and healing the sick. When John the Baptist sent emissaries to Jesus to ask, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” Jesus answered, “Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them” (Luke 7:20, 22). The kingdom of God present in the Messiah was God’s thrust into history to break the power of evil and establish His reign in people’s hearts. Jesus taught that the kingdom was present in Him and yet coming, within us and yet in the midst of our lives; to be entered at the cost of total surrender and yet of more value than a pearl of great price. The Messiah went to the cross in full assurance that as suffering Servant and Lamb of God atoning for the sins of the world He would be raised up, be glorified, and return as King of the kingdom which He had taught and which was manifested in His ministry. And so we, in the post-resurrection, post-Pentecost period, are to repeat Obadiah’s ancient clause, the kingdom is the LORD’S, as a confession of faith in Christ as our Lord and a commitment of our lives to be a specific realm of His rule and of our hearts as the throne of His reign as controlling King of our intellect, emotions, and wills. From that command post, He guides us as we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. INTRODUCTION TO JONAH As expositors of the Scriptures, we all enjoy passages with a clear story line. And so do our listeners and readers. A historical account, a parable, or a dramatic encounter between a biblical character and God are welcome changes of pace. We can get inside the skins of people and identify with their struggles and discoveries with “you are there” intensity. Revelation of truth can be imparted relationally. Application, that ever-present challenge to a communicator of the Scriptures, comes more readily. Our words are given wings. Outlines flow more freely, giving us uncontrived pegs on which to hang the progression of thought that comes naturally. Of course, if we limited our expositions to passages with a story line, we and our listeners would be denied the richness of the etymological studies and theological formation provided by verse-by-verse exposition of the words of the Lord or the teaching of the prophets and apostles. These verses and passages become the cross-references for an in-depth interpretation of the story-line passages. The Book of Jonah is one of those accounts of a person’s encounter and struggle with God that is power-packed with theological truth and practical implications for people in every age. As we follow the story line, we find that analyzing Jonah is a look in the mirror, and we may not like what we see. We all have run away from God or His explicit guidance. And we all have run back to Him in times of need. We also remember the delight of running with God. But who hasn’t run ahead of Him, trying to use our prayers to tell Him what is best for us, others, and situations? THE PROPHET JONAH Jonah is mentioned only once in the Old Testament outside the Book of Jonah. Second Kings 14:25 identifies him as the son of Amittai and as a prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II (786–746 B.C.) in the northern kingdom. He lived in Gath-hepher in the Zebulun territory, better known as Galilee. The town is identified with Khirbet ez-Zurra, three miles northeast of Nazareth. Jonah’s prophecy expresses his nationalistic fervor. He prophesied that Jeroboam II would restore “the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah.” The king’s accomplishment of this expansion provides the occasion for the reference to Jonah in 2 Kings 14:25. The name Jonah means “dove.” A character and personality profile from the Book of Jonah suggest that perhaps the name hawk better describes him. He was an ardent nationalist and an isolationist. His truncated theology restricted the providence of God to the Israelites. The call to preach to the Assyrians was abhorrent to Jonah. THE BOOK OF JONAH There are varied and sharply differing theories of the nature of the Book of Jonah. Some suggest that it is simply a parable written by an unknown author and the use of the name for the principal character is coincidental. Others assert that an unknown author wrote it as a parable and simply used the name of the most obscure prophet he could find. The theory that the Book of Jonah is only a parable is often directly associated with the account of Jonah being swallowed by a whale. Those who discount this possibility reason that the whole book must be a parable with no actual historical roots. The Book of Jonah is handled in the same way as the parable of the Good Samaritan. Some disavow any historical grounds for the book because it is so different from conventional prophetic narratives. This theory may support the conviction that Jonah himself was not the author. If he were, the book is a very honest self-exposure, even confession, but the ending of the book indicates no transformation of Jonah’s obdurate resistance to God. If the prophet Jonah wrote it, he admitted denying his prophetic calling not only in his rebellion against God, but also in his reluctance to forth-tell what God had told him about His mercy. It is unlikely that an eighth century B.C. prophet would make himself the ploy of an account of disobedience and leave his reader dangling. My own theory is that the Book of Jonah was written by an unknown author about the historical prophet Jonah who lived in the eighth century B.C. This writer’s purpose was didactic, to impart spiritual and moral truth in biographical form. If the author had set out to write only a parable, chances are that he would have selected another name for his central character just so his readers would not confuse him with Jonah from Gath-hepher. So I would classify the book of Jonah as didactic biography. However, it is the message of the book of Jonah that is most important. Frankly, if as much time were spent interpreting the message as has been spent over the centuries debating in which literary category the book belongs, we would be closer to living the mercy and mission of God. The message of the Book of Jonah is one that is urgently needed in the church today. The book is more than just a whale of a story! The central theme is God’s nature of mercy for all humankind. THE DATE OF JONAH Since the Book of Jonah contains no list of kings, its date has been open to conjecture and no small amount of debate among scholars. Dates they have suggested range from the eighth to the third centuries B.C. The prophet Jonah lived during the first half of the eighth century B.C. during the reign of Jeroboam II, as we have noted, so the date would not have been before that. And its inclusion in the Book of the Twelve means that it could not have been later than the end of the third century B.C. Nineveh was conquered and destroyed by the Babylonians and the Medes in 612 B.C., so even a parable citing “that great city” (Jon. 1:2) seems untenable after that date. My conclusion is that the historical Jonah was called to go to Nineveh before the middle of the eighth century, and the Book of Jonah was written as a didactic biography sometime after that, but before 733 B.C., when Tiglath-Pileser III began his assaults on the northern kingdom, deporting captives to Assyria (2 Kin. 15:29). It would have been difficult for a Hebrew prophet to prophesy in Nineveh. If the book had been written later, the “wickedness” of Nineveh would probably have been focused on the Assyrian captivity. In the final analysis, the message of Jonah is not dependent on the date when it was written. It is sufficient to say that Nineveh was a symbol of wickedness, an enemy of Israel, and the last place Jonah would expect the Lord to send him to express mercy. A homiletical outline of the content of the Book of Jonah may be divided into four parts. These four sections may be used for a four-part message or lesson series or as the four major points of one sermon or class on the book of Jonah. As with the exposition of the other four prophets in this volume, our focus will be on communicating Jonah to contemporary congregations and classes. There are aspects of the reluctant prophet in all of us and in the contemporary church as a whole. The Lord will expose this raw nerve and heal it with His mercy. AN OUTLINE OF JONAH I. Running Away from God: 1:1–16 A. Jonah’s Call and Ours B. Tarshish and Nineveh—Rebellion or Response C. The Inescapable Presence D. When Narcissism Turns to Masochism E. Intervention II. Running Back to God: 1:17–2:10 A. Jonah’s Prayer B. Jonah’s Deliverance C. Back to the Beginning III. Running with God: 3:1–10 A. Recall to Missions B. The Success of the Mission C. The Results of the Mission IV. Running Ahead of God: 4:1–11 A. A Petulant Prophet B. A Merciful God C. Oh, for Pity’s Sake! CHAPTER ONE—RUNNING AWAY FROM GOD JONAH 1:1–16 Scripture Outline The Prophet of the Pocket Veto (1:1–3) Tarshish or Nineveh (1:1–3) Running Against the Wind (1:4–16) 1:1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.” 3 But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. —Jonah 1:1–3 Focus in your mind’s eye the people you find it most difficult to love. On the screen of your consciousness flash the faces of the persons, the types, and the groups of people of whom you are most critical and judgmental. Think of the personalities you dismiss, hoping to have little contact with or responsibility for them. These are people who have become enemies because of what they do, say, or believe. Now if these people or groups have declared themselves to be enemies of God or their behavior is blatantly anti-God, we feel all the more justified in our judgment of them and writing them off. That is what happened to Jonah. “The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai” (Jon. 1:1). So far so good. This sounds similar to other openings for the books of the Minor Prophets. Like the rest, Jonah received the word of the Lord. More than words, this was a profound experience of the Lord’s presence and power. Surely he shuddered with awe and wonder. Jonah’s call to be a prophet was reaffirmed and validated, his faithfulness and loyalty to Israel confirmed. Then, before Jonah could revel in his new encounter with God, shock waves exploded in his mind, his heart sank, and his strong will resistantly stiffened. The Lord told him what he was to do: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me” (1:2). “Nineveh, Lord?” he must have replied. “Surely you don’t mean that?! The capital city of the Assyrians? The center of Israel’s worst Gentile enemy?” A contest of wills between the prophet and Yahweh began. Jonah’s nationalistic fervor had been delighted by his previous assignment from the Lord. He prophesied that Jeroboam II would restore “the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the sea of Arabah” (2 Kin. 14:25). And Yahweh empowered Jeroboam to do it. Jonah witnessed the faithfulness of Yahweh firsthand. Why, then, would he be so shocked that the Lord would send him to Nineveh? Because Jonah believed that Yahweh was the exclusive God of the Hebrews. Palestine was His realm. Jonah could readily agree about the wickedness and sin of Nineveh. But what concern was that to him? And yet, there was a deeper reason Jonah balked at God’s call to go to Nineveh. He describes later what was going on in his mind: “For I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm” (4:2). These are an almost exact duplicate of the words Yahweh spoke to Moses about His nature (Ex. 34:6). Jonah knew his Scripture. The prophet stiffened his back against Yahweh’s command to go to Nineveh because he suspected that if they responded and repented, God would be merciful to them. This was the inner core of Jonah’s resistance. The last thing Jonah wanted to do was become an agent for the salvation of his arch enemies. THE PROPHET OF THE POCKET VETO Jonah was the prophet of the pocket veto. He was a strong-willed man who was now engaged in a power struggle with God. His pocket veto was not in his cloak but in his heart. Jonah was a faithful prophet as long as God wanted what Jonah wanted. But when God’s marching orders went contrary to Jonah, he would not do what he was told. We can empathize. Leslie Allen wrote, “A Jonah lurks in every Christian heart, whimpering his insidious message of smug prejudice, empty traditionalism and exclusive solidarity.”1 Let us consider what we struggle with God about. What is the command we find most difficult to hear? What instructions from God panic us? What prompts us to say, “Anything but that Lord!”? If He told us to go communicate His mercy to some person, some group, some type of human need, what assignment causes us to dig in our heels? TARSHISH OR NINEVEH? Jonah did arise as he had been told by the imperative of Yahweh. But when the prophet stepped out of his house at Gath-hepher, three miles north of what is now Nazareth, he had a choice. If he turned one way, it was about five hundred miles northeast to Nineveh, the abhorred capital of Israel’s Gentile enemy, Assyria. Or, Jonah could turn in the other direction, head west for Joppa on the Mediterranean coast, and catch a ship going to the farthest place from Nineveh he could imagine—and from the Lord. Jonah headed for Joppa and attempted to sail to Tarshish, a little fishing village around Gibraltar on the Atlantic coast of Spain. Nineveh or Tarshish? Obedience or escape? Nineveh was situated on the east bank of the Tigris River, north of the confluence of the Tigris and the Upper Zab. Modern excavations indicate a city of great size—the walls were eight miles in circumference. The broader reaches of the city, also thought of as part of the megalopolis, included Calah, eighteen miles south, Rosen, between Calah and Nineveh, and Rehoboth-ir, which means “broad places of the city.” For Jonah, Nineveh simply meant the center of Assyrian power —the place from which ruthless armies moved out to subdue and conquer. Assyria loomed as a threat to Israel’s safety and survival. Nineveh was the epitome of everything Jonah hated in the Gentile world. It was a synonym for Godless tyranny. It was an idolatrous, sin-ridden city in Jonah’s mind, and nothing was more repulsive or repugnant than going there to preach repentance. Jonah’s theology was dominated by a funnel concept of providence—that God’s power and control were limited to Palestine and the covenant people. Tarshish, on the other hand, represented for Jonah a place where he could escape Yahweh’s call. At Joppa he probably asked, “What’s the next ship to the farthest place you sail?” When he learned that one was about to sail for Spain, no price was too high to get a ticket and go on board. The quiet little village symbolized escape and freedom from the call and presence of God. At that time, a sea voyage to Tarshish took almost a year with stops at ports of call on the way. “What difference?” Jonah thought as it carried him further from Nineveh. He was in flight from Yahweh and any responsibilities. Most of us have our own Nineveh and Tarshish. One is the city of faithfulness and obedience; the other is a place of escape and equivocation. Our Ninevehs are those clear revelations of the will of God. Also, whatever or whomever our judgments have focused on as our enemy can be our Nineveh. Nineveh can be simply the Lord’s urging that we change our behavior or do some obedient action that demands more than we are ready to give. Whatever else, Nineveh is the call of God sounding in our hearts to put Him first, be His person, and accept our vocation to be servants in mission. But running off to our Tarshish can happen in our soul long before we physically head for a Joppa or board a ship to Spain. Some run away from God without ever leaving their geographical location. We can run away by so filling our lives with activities that time for God is squeezed out and ministry to people and involvement in social programs He has placed on our agendas are set aside. Some of us are running off in all directions but are not under God’s direction. At a class in our church in which I was teaching Jonah, I asked the people to write a short paragraph about their Ninevehs. For many, it meant being God’s faithful lay ministers where they were and expressing love, forgiveness, and reconciliation to others and specific involvement in mission in our city. One man was very direct as he confessed, “I’ve spent most of my life running away from God! I believe in Him and attend church regularly. You know of my giving and attendance at meetings like this class. People think of me as a ‘good Christian.’ But inside, deep in my heart, I think I may be trying to escape really doing His will. I live a frantically busy life, but this class on Jonah has made me wonder if I’m running in the wrong direction.” Tarshish can be inside our own souls! One couple wrote their response together: “Our marriage is our Tarshish. Help!” And a woman wrote, “Every time the announcement is made about the need for people to work on the AIDS Taskforce, I feel called, but it means giving up some deep-seated prejudices.” We dare not miss the startling implications of the call that sent Jonah running away from God. When we become Christians, God begins a character transformation of our narcissistic self-concern. He seeks to deploy us in the central business of the kingdom, to get us moving with Him in loving people and sharing our hope. We are all missionaries. We cannot clutch the gospel as our own private possession to help us accomplish our uncommitted goals. He has targeted us for personal evangelism and mission to the social pain and suffering of our cities. Life has its special times on the Joppa wharf when we decide whether or not to persist in going to our Tarshish. John Oxenham has put our choice of Tarshish or Nineveh into poetic but penetrating words: To every man there openeth A way, and ways and a way And the high soul climbs the highway And the low soul gropes the low And in between, on the misty flats The rest drift to and fro But to every man there openeth A high way and a low And every man decideth The way his soul shall go. RUNNING AGAINST THE WIND 4 But the LORD sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up. 5 Then the mariners were afraid; and every man cried out to his God, and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep. 6 So the captain came to him, and said to him, “What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God; perhaps your God will consider us, so that we may not perish.” 7 And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this trouble has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Please tell us! For whose cause is this trouble upon us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” 9 So he said to them, “I am a Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, “Why have you done this?” For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them. 11 Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you that the sea may be calm for us?”—for the sea was growing more tempestuous. 12 And he said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me.” 13 Nevertheless the men rowed hard to return to land, but they could not, for the sea continued to grow more tempestuous against them. 14 Therefore they cried out to the LORD and said, “We pray, O LORD, please do not let us perish for this man’s life, and do not charge us with innocent blood; for You, O LORD, have done as it pleased You.” 15 So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. 16 Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the LORD and took vows. —Jonah 1:4–16 Jonah thought he was finished with God, but God was not finished with the defecting prophet. The rebellious missionary bet his life on the false idea that he could flee the presence of God. He lost. After he had boarded the ship for Tarshish, he immediately went below to anesthetize himself with sleep. What he had forgotten was that Yahweh was Lord of the sea as well as the Promised Land. The broad reaches of the Mediterranean were as much under His control as Jonah’s beloved Israel. Verse 4 tells us that “the LORD sent out a great wind on the sea.” Sent is much too mild for h??? l. Threw or hurled like a javelin (1 Sam. 18:11; 20:33) would be better. The wind the Lord threw on the sea caused it to rage violently. The sea became tumultuous with white-capped, turbulent waves breaking over the ship. The mariners all cried out, each one to his own God (v. 5). Yahweh, the only and true God, was not implored to help because none of the sailors knew Him. The only person on board who did know Yahweh was asleep in the hull trying to sleep off the calling he had rejected. As Jonah slept, the sailors threw the cargo overboard in a frantic attempt to save the ship. When the various Gods of the seamen did not help, the captain remembered the passenger who boarded at Joppa. He went below to find Jonah (v. 6). With a sea captain’s directness he said, “What are you doing down here, you sleeper, get up and pray to your God. We’ve tried everyone else’s Gods; maybe yours will consider our plight and keep us from perishing.” Desmond Alexander notes the close similarity of the captain’s summons and Jonah’s summons from God.2 The words must have mocked the runaway prophet. Meanwhile, the sailors cast lots to find out who was the guilty person on board, who was the cause of the storm (v. 7). The idea behind this was that it was obvious that some God or Gods were angry about someone on the ship, and they were all being punished because of him. Even though the casting of lots clearly identified Jonah as the culprit, the sailors asked a series of questions (v. 8) that sounds like a prescribed interrogation of a ship’s court, as if the answers were to be duly entered in the log. Notice in verse 9 that Jonah bypasses the questions about his occupation, town, and country. He especially evades answering the question about his occupation as a prophet. In his own mind, he disqualified himself from that high calling. What follows is a sad exposure of a believer before pagans. Jonah told the ship’s crew that he was a Hebrew who feared God. Here fear has the meaning of worship and affiliation, much like a person today might say he is a Christian with little more meaning than that he is not a Buddhist or a Muslim. But Jonah does draw on his heritage to speak about Yahweh. There is a note of irony and pathos in the words he chooses to explain Yahweh. It is almost as if he spoke of the attributes of his God while at the same time feeling that he could not claim them for himself in the present crisis because of his defection. The declaration, “The LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land,” contradicted Jonah’s own assumption that he could escape God. The sailors latched onto Jonah’s declaration about his God and must have implored him to call on this God who made and controlled the sea. That brought a full disclosure from Jonah that he was running away from his God because he refused to obey his call to go to Nineveh. A contemporary wording of the sailor’s response (v. 10) might be, “With a God like you have described, why would you want to do that?” What a great evangelism opportunity Jonah missed. I have often speculated what might have happened if Jonah had repented of his defection right there on the spot and called for Yahweh to save him, the crew, and the ship. If he had, it is most likely that Yahweh would have intervened and calmed the storm. Everyone on the ship no longer would have had any other Gods before Yahweh. The ship could have put into the next port, and the grateful sailors could have sent Jonah on his way to Nineveh. But that is exactly what Jonah did not want. For Jonah to call on God for help would surely mean that He would reissue the call the prophet had vehemently turned down back at Gath-hepher only days before. It is tragic when refusal to do God’s will puts us out of commission spiritually. Great opportunities to witness to our faith are missed. And when the failures of Christians to live what they have previously said they believed are publicly exposed, there is a remarkable sadness in the secular world. As a man said recently during the media exposure of a prominent Christian leader, “I was starting to listen to what that guy said. It’s really disappointing to see that he couldn’t live it out in his own life.” By contrast to Jonah’s missed opportunity, we think of Paul centuries later on a ship floundering off the coast of Malta. There was no equivocation expressed by the apostle in the crisis. He took command of the situation and declared that God would save all those on board. Unashamedly he said that they would be saved because he had a mission to accomplish in Rome. He witnessed to what the angel of the Lord had said to him, “Do not be afraid, Paul; you must be brought before Caesar; and indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you.” Then Paul gave hope to the crew, “Therefore take heart, men, for I believe God that it will be just as it was told me” (Acts 27:23–25). Courage like that comes from consistent communion with God. That is what Jonah lacked because of his disobedience. If Jonah knew that the storm was God’s judgment on him, why didn’t he either set things right with God or get off the ship? Instead, Jonah made the sailors responsible. “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me” (v. 12). His narcissism on the ship was a hairbreadth from masochism, as it would be later in his life as well. When we spend our lives thinking only about ourselves and the times we cannot get our way, we tend to manipulate people to fulfill our self-defeating prophecy by inflicting pain on us. Note that the ship’s crew tried everything before complying with Jonah’s request to be thrown overboard. They tried to row to shore, but the sea got even more tempestuous (v. 13). Then it was they, not Jonah, who prayed to Yahweh (v. 14). It was an amazing prayer of confession and contrition to the Lord. After they did throw Jonah overboard, the sea ceased raging (v. 15). Then they knew that Yahweh was, indeed, sovereign of the sea. The sailors shuddered with awe and wonder, then made a sacrifice to Yahweh and followed it with vows. Seamen who had previously worshiped a sundry of false gods became people who worshiped Yahweh and vowed to serve Him. Strange twist. Jonah would not go to Nineveh to prophesy to the Gentiles there, but he is caught in a situation in his escape in which Gentile sailors believed in Yahweh because of his brief witness that Yahweh, the God of heaven, made the sea and the dry land. God intended to use the prophet regardless of his resistance. There was no escape. CHAPTER TWO—RUNNING BACK TO GOD JONAH 1:17–2:10 Scripture Outline Deliverance (1:17) Running to God in Prayer (2:1–10) During a review of what a fifth-grade church school class had studied, the teacher asked, “What is the Book of Jonah about?” “It’s about a whale,” one boy answered. This response would be the answer of most Christians, young and old. It would also be the answer of both ultra-conservative and liberal biblical expositors who are obsessed with proving or disproving the whale of the Book of Jonah. Elaborate arguments are arranged on both sides of the issue. The Book of Jonah, however, is much more than a whale of a story! DELIVERANCE “Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights” (Jon. 1:17). The subject of the first sentence is not the great fish, but the Lord. The point the author wants to make is that God provided a way of delivering Jonah. The salient thing is God’s intervention to save Jonah and reconscript him with the original call to go to Nineveh. This point is often lost in the volumes of scholarship on the Book of Jonah. On the one hand are the amateur ichthyologists who present extensive material on whales and the size of the stomachs of sperm whales, to prove that Jonah could have been swallowed by a whale and could have existed there for three days. The annals of maritime history also are searched extensively to find a nonbiblical example of someone who was swallowed by a whale and later survived to tell about it. Anyone who has read the commentaries of the past 100 years knows the frequent repetition of the account of James Bartley, who in 1891 claimed that he had fallen overboard from the Star of the East whaling ship, was swallowed by a whale, and, after a day and a night, escaped to recount his experience. What is missing is a record in the ship’s log or testimony from his shipmates that he did, indeed, fall overboard. But even if that account could be validated we would be no closer to the central theme of the Book of Jonah. My own studies of sperm whales indicate that a very large one could have swallowed Jonah, but an intervention from God would have been necessary to provide adequate oxygen and keep the stomach juices of the whale from beginning the decomposition of the digestive process. If the “three days and nights” is a Hebraism for a period of time and not necessarily seventy-two hours, it could be possible. But, after I finished my research, I asked myself: “What have I proved? That God delivered Jonah?” I already believed that before I began my time-consuming study. On the other hand, a large segment of biblical scholarship begins with the assumption that no one could survive in the belly of a whale for seventy-two hours. With equal vigor to those who try to prove that he could have survived, scholars have busied themselves with voluminous research to find data to prove that it would have been impossible. All this to support a deeper presupposition that the Book of Jonah is only a parable. I think the debate about whether or not Jonah was swallowed by a whale has swallowed up biblical expositors at both ends of the spectrum. Unfortunately, God’s deliverance of Jonah becomes secondary to the debate. The survival of Jonah after he was thrown overboard was miraculous. My breakthrough in accepting miracles occurred because God gave me the faith to accept the three greatest miracles of history: the Cross for the atonement and reconciliation of humankind; the Resurrection for the defeat of the power of death and Satan; and Pentecost for our transformation and regeneration. Accepting the Bible as the authoritative, inspired Word of God came as a result of a faith relationship with God Himself. But early on, I understood that what was more important than the miracles themselves was the power of God they revealed. God, who is Lord of all life, established the laws and order of nature and can supersede them. My limited observation of cause and effect must never limit what I think God could have done. And can do now! That is the crucial issue. The Father has entrusted all power to the reigning Christ, who continues to do today what He did as Jesus of Nazareth and as the baptizer with the Spirit in the apostolic age. The new birth, transformation, and regeneration are still the component parts of His greatest miracles today. And as part of Christ’s role as glorifier of the Father (Eph. 3:21), He continues to perform miracles of healing, intervention, and arrangement of circumstances. We are to expect miracles, never demand them, rejoice when, out of greater wisdom than ours, the Lord performs them, and resist the temptation to become so engrossed in analyzing the details of the miracles that we forget the Lord who graciously performed them for the Father’s glory and our growth. In this context, we can interpret Jonah 1:17 with the emphasis on God and His intervention to deliver Jonah. The circumstances of the miraculous intervention are not nearly as important as the far greater miracle God planned to perform in Nineveh. The miracle would not have been less astounding if Jonah was rescued by a large board floating by that served as a life raft to get the prophet safely to shore. And the basic thrust of verse 17 would have no less impact if we were told that the Lord gave Jonah supernatural strength to swim to shore. At one point the sailors on the boat thought they might be able to row to land (1:13), indicating that perhaps the ship was coasting near to land. But lest someone start to develop this into a full-blown theory, let me hasten to add that if Jonah swam to shore, it would have been God’s miracle, like the supernatural strength He entrusted to Samson. And even when our studies of sperm whales reveal that an exceptionally large one could have been the way Jonah was rescued, we need to resist the pride involved in thinking that we have preserved God’s reputation or the authority of the Bible. Again, the point is that God delivered the prophet Jonah. And for good reason. The miracle of Jonah’s rescue was not just to save the prophet before he drowned but to save Nineveh from drowning in sin. God’s miracles in our lives are for a greater purpose than our personal comfort or even survival, but so that we can get on with His agenda of serving Him and pressing on with evangelism and mission. RUNNING TO GOD IN PRAYER 2:1 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the fish’s belly. 2 And he said: “I cried out to the LORD because of my affliction, And He answered me. “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, And You heard my voice. 3 For You cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the floods surrounded me; All Your billows and Your waves passed over me. 4 Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight; Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’ 5 The waters surrounded me, even to my soul; The deep closed around me; Weeds were wrapped around my head. 6 I went down to the moorings of the mountains; The earth with its bars closed behind me forever; Yet You have brought up my life from the pit, O LORD, my God. 7 “When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the LORD; And my prayer went up to You, Into Your holy temple. 8 “Those who regard worthless idols Forsake their own Mercy. 9 But I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.” 10 So the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. —Jonah 2:1–10 Jonah had tried to run away from God. Now he ran back to God in prayer. The psalm of Jonah 2:1–9 describes his prayer. It is filled with moving expressions similar to the Psalms and the devotional sayings of his people. The psalm expresses Jonah’s rediscovery of Yahweh’s omnipresence and His grace to those who turn to Him in their distress. We have all known those desperate “God help me, please!” times when we have tripped and fallen flat on our faces while running away from Him. We make a mess of things. Life tumbles in on us. The Lord from whom we have been trying to escape becomes our only hope. We do not deserve His intervention or a second chance, but there is nothing left but to cry out for His help. Jonah’s prayer guides us as we admit our need for God in our distress. It is both a prayer of thanksgiving and a prayer for deliverance. Jonah was rescued from drowning, but he was not yet safely on shore. First, the prayer shows us how to pray in the midst of failure, when our distress has been caused by our own disobedience. Often that is when it is most difficult to pray because our self-condemnation makes us think that either we have no right to call on God or if we did, He would not listen. If an errant rascal like Jonah could pray while he was in affliction that he brought on himself, so can we. God meets us even in our self-imposed trouble. The second thing we learn from Jonah’s psalm is to thank the Lord for confronting us with our disobedience. The storm at sea convinced Jonah that he could not escape God. His rebellion was exposed. Actually it is a great source of hope for us to know that He will not let us continue forever in our personal brand of rebellion. It would be the worst possible bad news if we thought God did not care enough to catch us when we run from Him (note the commentary on Amos 5:19). Jonah honestly confesses that he is in the “belly of Sheol” (2:2) because of God’s intervention. The prayer he prayed was as he was drowning. Jonah expresses gratitude that instead of perishing in the storm caused by his efforts to escape God, he was cast into the sea so he could see the error of his ways and confess. Notice that there is no doubt in Jonah’s mind who was behind the storm or his being cast overboard. Yahweh did it. “For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me; all Your billows and Your waves passed over me” (v. 3). It was Yahweh’s action and Yahweh’s sea. When we are confronted by God’s exposure of some problem in our lives we have brought on ourselves, it is crucial to thank Him for loving us enough to do whatever was necessary to make us face what we have been doing. There is a measure of relief when things are brought to a crisis point, when we can no longer avoid them. It is like those times in a human relationship when conflict is finally recognized and addressed. We can see things as they are, out in the open, and do something about our part in the conflict. More profoundly, God does precipitate circumstances that expose us to what we are doing in our rebellion against Him or His will for us. But that does not mean an immediate release from the remorse. Jonah continues in verses 4–6a to relate what went through his mind as he was thrashing in the sea and eventually began to drown. He feels the abject despair of being cast hopelessly away from God’s presence and the despair of never again knowing the joy of worship in His presence in the temple. “I have been cast out of Your sight” means that God would condemn him to final judgment and death. The word ??k, “yet,” should be amended to read ?êk, “how.” “How will I look again toward Your holy temple?” This rendering is more consistent with Jonah’s despair as the deadly peril of drowning builds up. In verse 5, the waters encompass or surround the prophet. The verb ??pap, “surround,” is found in Psalm 18:4 and 116:3—surrounded by the cords of death. Plants at the bottom of the sea twisted around Jonah’s head. Verse 6 reveals Jonah down on the floor of the sea. “I went down to the moorings of the mountains.” The words “moorings of the mountains,” qi?bê h?r? m, mean the very foundation of the mountains as they existed under the primeval waters (note Deut. 32:22; Job 28:9; Ps. 24:2 for foundations or roots of the mountains). Jonah feels that he has reached the depths of Sheol from which there is no release. “The earth with its bars closed behind me forever.” It was believed that the world of the dead had an imprisoning door that once closed behind a person there could be no extrication. Jonah went down for the third time and gave up. The grave of the sea had him, or so he thought. Before we go on in the psalm of Jonah, we need to identify with the prophet’s despair in the depths of the sea. If we move to the next portion too quickly, we will miss what the psalm has to teach us about the treasures of the depths. God tracks us down and stops us in our runaway path from obedience, then confronts us with what we are doing. He also allows us to go through a time of death of our willfulness. As we pray we are aware of the hopelessness of changing either ourselves or the problem we created. This moment of hopelessness puts us through a death to self and in a good sense we give up. There is nothing we can do. We hit rock-bottom. And when we do, our surrender to God and His mercy is more than words. We cast ourselves into the arms of everlasting Mercy. That is when resurrection to a new beginning can happen. When Jonah gave up hope of surviving and could sink no lower, God intervened and saved him. “Yet You have brought up my life from the pit, O LORD, my God.” Jonah uses words reminiscent of the familiar language of Psalm 103:4, “Who redeems your life from destruction” (mišša?at, “out of the pit”). No wonder the psalmist said, “Bless the LORD, O my soul” (Ps. 103:1), and Jonah, “O LORD, my God” (Jon. 2:6). The prophet received the mercy that he was unwilling to preach about in Nineveh. “When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer went up to You, in Your holy temple” (2:7). Out of mercy, the Lord allowed Jonah to get to the point of fainting, hit ?a???p, when his life was ebbing away and he was about to lose consciousness, so that the prophet could desire Him more than life itself. I am reminded of a young man who went to Buddha to ask how to find God. Buddha took him down to the river. The young man thought the teacher was going to perform a ritual cleansing. Instead, Buddha immersed his head in the water for a dangerously long time while the young man thrashed in the water. Then Buddha let him up. “What were you thinking about when I held your head under water?” the teacher asked. “Air, air!” the novitiate gasped. “When you want God as much as you wanted air, you will find him.” Our conception of God is quite different. He finds us, and we search for Him because He has already found us. He brings us to the place where we admit we have no other hope but Him and no possibility of making it through a self-imposed major crisis unless He intervenes. He allows us to discover the gift of the darkness, death to self-willfulness, before He resurrects us out of our tomb. God did not heal Jonah’s spiritual sickness before the prophet realized just how sick he was. In verses 8–9, Jonah shares the treasures of what he learned in the depths. He was confronted with his willfulness and disloyalty. In the style of a prophet, he uses the third person they. It serves as a contrast to his own new commitment in verse 10. Verse 8 needs careful interpretation as it consists of only five words in the Hebrew: “Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own Mercy.” “Worthless idols,” hablêš?w??, is a compound also found in Deuteronomy 32:21 and Psalm 31:6 that carries a superlative impact—“uselessly worthless deceit”—and stands for idol.1 “Forsake,” ??zab, applies particularly to the people of God. And “mercy” here is ?esed, “steadfast love” or “loyalty.” “Mercy” is properly capitalized in the NKJV because it is used here as a synonym for God. So the lesson Jonah learned is that his disloyalty became an idol and it almost cost him his relationship with his God, who is consistently loyal and steadfast in mercy. It is a new Jonah who confesses loyalty to his God in verse 9. He will sacrifice to Yahweh, express his thanksgiving and pay his vows. His scrape with death brought him running back to God. With personal intensity he could say salvation is of the Lord. He was ready to obey and share with Nineveh the mercy he had experienced. “So the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land” (v. 10). We picture Jonah standing on the beach shuddering with awe because of what he had been through, the stench of the whale clinging to his clothes. One likely to sway the sophisticated, secular pagan of Nineveh? Not without Yahweh’s power and mercy. CHAPTER THREE—RUNNING WITH GOD JONAH 3:1–10 Scripture Outline A Second Time (3:1–3) The Greatness of Nineveh (3:3–4a) Nineveh Gets the Message (3:4b–7a) A King’s Theology (3:7b–10) 3:1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. 4 And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk. Then he cried out and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. 6 Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. 7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water. 8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9 Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish? 10 Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. —Jonah 3:1–10 Charles Spurgeon said, “Faith and obedience are bound up in the same bundle. He who obeys God, trusts God; and he who trusts God, obeys God.” When God first called Jonah to go to Nineveh, the son of Amittai simply could not trust that Yahweh was right in extending His mercy by giving the enemies an opportunity to repent. Jonah did not trust that God knew what He was doing. We have no reason to assume that Jonah had changed his basic prejudices about the Ninevites when his second call came. His harrowing scrape with death in the deep forced the prophet to trust God for his survival. The “death-water” conversion shocked Jonah into promising that he would obey God. And so, God began again with Jonah. The willful prophet ran away from God and, in a terrible crisis, ran back to God. Now for a time at least, Jonah ran with God, doing what he was told. Chapter 3 shows us the magnificent results that can happen when we cooperate with God. There is only one way to do anything—God’s way. Obedience is the secret of spiritual power. A SECOND TIME Chapter 3 opens with Jonah’s recall to mission. In 1:1 he was identified as Jonah “son of Amittai.” Here his parentage is dropped and “the second time” put in its place—the need for a second call is emphasized. The call has a different preposition. Previously Jonah was charged to cry against the city (1:2). Now he is instructed to preach to it (3:2). Perhaps Jonah’s experience at sea prepared him to communicate more mercy than before. While God did not change, He did have a somewhat more cooperative prophet to use now. This is indicated by the emphasis that Jonah “arose and went” (3:3), whereas before he “rose to flee” (1:3). This makes us wonder about ourselves: Has life, and particularly the discipline of God, made us more or less obedient, more or less flexible, to receive orders and run with Him? The Lord told Jonah that He would give Jonah the message to preach. The Lord promises the same for us today. He wants to guide the planning, the preparation, and the preaching of our messages. When we openly seek His direction He leads us to portions of Scripture and inspires the development of the sermon. He keeps us off our hobby-horses and presses us to proclaim the truth to our people. I am always amazed and delighted when a message planned the previous summer prompts a remark in February such as, did you know what we were going through this week? Have you bugged our home?” THE GREATNESS OF NINEVEH Verse 3 reminds us again that Nineveh was a “great” city; 1:2 is expanded here to “an exceedingly great city.” The words literally mean “a great city to God.” Our mission to our own cities should be motivated by the same designation. Through Jeremiah, God called the displaced Judeans in exile to seek the peace of their city, for in its peace they would find their peace (Jer. 29:7). Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and through the centuries of Christian history the cities have been a neglected mission field. William Booth said, “When I got the poor of London on my heart and a vision of what Christ could do, I decided He would have all of William Booth that there was.” Nineveh was important to God. Nineveh also is described as “a three-day journey in extent” (3:3). This phrase has been widely discussed. Some suggest that a day’s journey was about twenty-two miles, and therefore the reference is to the metropolitan district of Nineveh comprising Nineveh itself and the suburban cluster of villages of the city-state. Other scholars think that “three-day journey” could mean the custom of a three-day visit to a city: one day for arrival, followed by a day of visiting and business, and a day of departure. I much prefer the first theory because excavations of the walls of Nineveh itself have estimated a circumference of the city of at most seven and a half miles. In circumference the larger metropolitan area of Nineveh was more like sixty miles, or what might be called a three-day journey. This fits with verse 4a, “And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk.” This means that he began to preach when he arrived at the great metropolis, on the very first day. He did not delay announcing his divinely appointed message. NINEVEH GETS THE MESSAGE This message is condensed into only five Hebrew words in 4b. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Surely Jonah’s message was longer than this, but the emphasis here by the book’s author is that the prophet got right to the point. Jonah preached his decisive message as he walked into the center of the city, announcing what Yahweh gave him to say. He did not bother to discern whether people liked him or approved of his message. But look more closely at Jonah’s basic theme. “Forty days” had religious significance. It alerted Jonah’s listeners of a divinely appointed waiting time. The prophet’s declaration of what was to happen at the end of those forty days would have an effect of a ram’s horn warning of an approaching danger. Nineveh will be overthrown. Some commentators remind us that the verb h?pak, “overturn,” can also mean “return, turn around, transform, or repent.” Wolff calls this changing of Jonah’s message into an equivocal oracle impermissible and asserts that Jonah’s message was an unambiguous announcement of judgment that would be made by divine wrath.1 A message promising transformation to proud Nineveh would hardly have brought sackcloth and ashes. However, it must be noted that the author of Jonah was writing in Hebrew for readers who would catch the play on the word h?pak throughout chapter 3. I think Jonah’s message included both the warning of the overthrow of the city and a call to repentance. The account of Jonah’s encounter with Nineveh moves fast with crisp sentences that require us to read between the lines. Jonah must have been an imposing, fiery character to be able to stride into a sophisticated, powerful city like Nineveh and proclaim Yahweh’s message of judgment upon the sin and the wickedness of the city. But it was not the prophet’s rhetoric or oratory that swayed the city but Yahweh working through him. This is encouraging for us as communicators since the response to our messages is not our doing, but a gift of God’s Spirit. Yahweh does great things when we leave the results to Him. The response to Jonah’s terse, incisive message was astounding. The people believed God! Jonah’s message must have had a “Don’t argue with me; what I’m saying is Yahweh’s word to you” ring about it. Jonah was not in Nineveh to win a popularity contest! The Hebrew text clearly says that the Ninevites put their trust in God. The same words are used in Exodus 14:31 to describe Israel’s response for what Yahweh had done to release them from Egypt’s bondage. Faith is a gift only God gives, it is not a human achievement. The account of the endowed faith of the Ninevites would have had a profound impact on the readers of the Book of Jonah. They would be forced to see that faith in Yahweh was not their exclusive gift and it would expose their lack of faith. This is exactly what the author of the Book of Jonah intended! And the Ninevites put their repentance into action. Jonah’s message, empowered by the Spirit of Yahweh, must have been preached directly to the king in addition to the broad reaches of the city-state. The king led a city-wide movement of repentance of “the greatest to the least” of Nineveh (3:5). He sent out a decree calling all the people, including his court, to fast. The fast also included all the herds and flocks. The clarity of the king’s decree reflects that Jonah must have had personal influence on the monarch. The words of the decree echo exactly what Jonah’s expanded message must have been. “Cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?” (3:8–9). Who was this king? Douglas Stuart identifies Assur-dan III (773–756 B.C.), a contemporary of Jeroboam II of Israel, as a likely candidate. He concludes, There is, of course, absolutely no way to identify with confidence the king mentioned in Jonah 3:6. On the other hand, a king such as AsŠsurzdan III, during whose reign an agonizing confluence of omens and disasters (eclipse, earthquake, famine, rioting) had occurred, whose capital … may have been Nineveh, though this cannot be proved, and who was beset by international problems including continuing military failures again Urartu, was certainly the sort of king (among others) who might well have been predisposed to receive Jonah’s message sincerely as a chance for respite from his troubles. The Ninevites of the time of Assur-dan were certainly no strangers to “trouble” (r ?h; 1:2).2 Following this line of speculation, if the Book of Jonah was written near the end or clearly after Jeroboam II’s time in Israel, it would have been a stark comparison between the Assyrian king’s court and the court of Samaria that vigorously rejected Amos’s call to repentance (note commentary on Amos). What is especially important for us to note is the influence of the king of Jonah chapter 3 on the people. It causes us to reflect on our personal time with decision-makers in our congregations and communities. In addition to proclaiming the Word of God from our pulpits and classrooms, we need to spend quality time with leaders to listen to their needs and help them accept their ministries and discern how God wants to use them in their spheres of influence. There is no lasting renewal in a parish if we bypass these leaders and gravitate to others who might respond more readily. Also, high profile leaders in entertainment, politics, and business can be used by God to influence others. But they need encouragement. A president of a company needed this kind of caring. He had trouble connecting his faith with some of the policies of his company that were a contradiction to the gospel. A message I preached on corporate unrighteousness got under his skin. He asked me to come to his office. It was the first of many visits. Eventually the man took a righteous, but very unpopular, stand that caused shock waves in his industry. His decision encouraged Christians who worked for him, but also other executives who were given courage to take a stand. A well-known actor had never publicly acknowledged his Christian faith. He was a closet Christian. At the same time he was unsettled about his denial of his Lord. One evening at a community gathering, he broke free of his resistance and talked about what Christ meant to him. After the meeting he said to me, “Thought it was about time people knew where I stood. Thanks for helping me see my responsibility.” I had spent lots of personal time with him and had encouraged him to freely discuss his faith in Christ. Other Christians in the movie industry were challenged to speak out, and the man’s witness prompted his fans to think about what they believed. As spiritual leaders we have all had experiences with people of influence who resisted our help. Richard Nixon did not lack for spiritual counselors. If he had listened to some of them during the days of Watergate, he might have made the kind of open confession that would have rallied the support of the American people and led his party and the nation in repentance and spiritual renewal. But even this negative example is the flipside of the power of influence. In that vein, just imagine what would have happened to Jonah in Nineveh if the king had refused the stirrings of the Spirit of God in him? Jonah would probably have landed in jail. A KING’S THEOLOGY We are thankful for whatever personal or political crises the Assyrian king might have been facing that made him receptive to Jonah’s message. Jonah gave the king some profound theology during the prophet’s time with him. Jonah must have told him that repentance goes two ways: to Yahweh and from Yahweh. If the king and the people repented, turned from their wicked ways, God would turn from His just decision to overthrow the city. Only this kind of careful instruction in the theology of repentance could account for the amazingly insightful possibility the king held out to the people. “Let every one turn from his evil way.… Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?” (vv. 8–9). The same word is used for the people’s repentance and Yahweh’s repentance. God changed His mind in response to the people’s repentance. God is against sin but for us. We cannot fly in the face of His righteousness and justice. He warns us and persists in confronting us until we turn away from sin and accept His forgiveness. But even more awesome is that God instigates our ability to turn around and return to Him. So His repentance precedes as well as follows our repentance. And while this three-step process of election, repentance, and forgiveness is offered, we can reject it. In the instance of the king and the people of Nineveh, the full circle of repentance took place. Jonah was strategic in the process because he ran with God. What joy that must have given the prophet. Or did it? Jonah neither expected nor desired the response his preaching and teaching on repentance produced. CHAPTER FOUR—RUNNING AHEAD OF GOD JONAH 4:1–11 Scripture Outline Jonah’s Angry Prayer (4:1–3) A Three-Word Question (4:4–9) For Pity’s Sake! (4:10–11) Jonah suspected it all along. That is why he disobeyed the Lord’s call to go to Nineveh in the first place. Now the runner who ran away from God, who ran back to Him in the ocean depth, who ran with God in proclaiming His message to Nineveh, now ran way out ahead of God in questioning Yahweh’s forgiving mercy for the Ninevites. The son of Amittai never really tore up his pocket veto. He was back to his idolatrous ways. Jonah’s idol was Jonah! He was more committed to his concepts of how God should act than he was to God Himself. And all his protestations of love for Israel were only a projection of his devotion to himself. Clinging to the prejudiced presupposition that Yahweh was the exclusive God of the people of Israel, Jonah developed a theology that he would not even let God change. Jonah’s theology became an expression of his indomitable will. In essence, the hard inner core of Jonah said, “This is what I believe about God and not even He is going to change it!” This put Jonah in deep water indeed. In dire danger he called out for help, and the Lord rescued him. The prophet confessed his need but did not really repent. Looking back at his psalm in chapter two, we realize that Jonah said almost all the right words, but he continued to object to God extending His mercy to the Gentiles. At no point did Jonah say, “Yahweh, I was in terrible error when I objected to going to Nineveh. You are Sovereign, and I acknowledge Your power to do whatever you decide and to give your mercy to whomever You will.” Jonah’s problem was that he wanted to control God! And what do we do when we cannot get our own way? We get angry. Very angry. JONAH’S ANGRY PRAYER 4:1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. 2 So he prayed to the LORD, and said, “Ah, LORD, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. 3 Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!” —Jonah 4:1–3 Jonah’s prayer in 4:2–3 shows that he is just as willfully stubborn as he was when God called him back at Gath-hepher. What Jonah says to God is more of a diatribe than an expression of devotion. Repeating the words of Exodus 34:6 that he was taught from childhood becomes the basis of his audacity and not adoration. He knows God’s nature is immutable and that his punishments are mutable. Out of ?esed, “lovingkindness,” He would relent from r??â, “harm,” because the Ninevites repented. The strange, satiric twist is that Jonah feels that God’s repentance in response to Nineveh’s repentance is a great harm to him! Jonah’s anger was caused by his realization that he could not manipulate God. Jonah could not get the Almighty to repent, to change His mind, and to carry out Jonah’s will that the Ninevites be destroyed for their wickedness. For a willful, controlling person, there is nothing so abhorrent as not being able to control God. And so, he ran ahead of God. But out there alone, destructive anger turns into self-destructive despair. The only thing left that Jonah can control is whether he lives or dies. Jonah tries to exercise this last vestige of willfulness by pronouncing his own judgment on himself and demanding that God carry out the prophet’s self-inflicted sentence. “Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!” (4:3). Even in this, Jonah is trying to tell God what is best and what God should do about it. And that is idolatry at its worst. A THREE-WORD QUESTION 4 Then the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” 5 So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. 6 And the LORD God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah was very grateful for the plant. 7 But as morning dawned the next day God prepared a worm, and it so damaged the plant that it withered. 8 And it happened, when the sun arose, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he grew faint. Then he wished death for himself, and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9 Then God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” And he said, “It is right for me to be angry, even to death!” —Jonah 4:4–9 The Lord responds to Jonah’s death wish not with a long rebuke but with a question drenched in tender kindness that called the suicidal prophet to self-examination of his imperious willfulness. The question has only three words in it, eight in the English translation: “Is it right for you to be angry?” (4:4). God did have the right and cause to be angry with the Ninevites and chose to offer forgiveness. But who is Jonah to express anger when Yahweh chose not to destroy Nineveh? “Vengeance is Mine” (Lev. 19:18; Deut. 32:35). We play God when we continue to be angry at people and groups when God has pronounced His forgiveness. We take their punishment into our own hands. Whether in negative attitudes, vindictive words, or hostile destructive actions, we run out ahead of God in meting out what we think justice demands. And He asks, “Is that your right?” The question has only one answer, “No Lord, that is Your right, not mine!” Jonah would not answer the Lord’s question. His defiant attitude and actions indicate his reply. He went out to the east side of Nineveh and built himself a shelter and sat under it, peering out over the city hoping that the Lord might reverse His clemency. We should note the contrast between the sulking Jonah under a leafy booth and the king in the city fasting in sackcloth and ashes. We suspect that Jonah sat watching the city confident that the king and the people would soon return to their wickedness and this time the Lord would really destroy them. Yet, the Lord persists in His kindness to Jonah despite Jonah’s angry silence to His question. Yahweh causes a plant to grow to give the prophet further shade from the blasting sun. The plant was probably a caster oil tree that grows quickly and provides large leaves. The purpose of the shade tree is for more than Jonah’s comfort. The words “to deliver him from his misery” (4:6) can be interpreted in two ways. The verb deliver can be also rendered “to shade,” and misery can be translated “wickedness” or “trouble” as it is rendered elsewhere in Jonah (1:2 and 1:8). Alexander observes, “Consequently, it is possible to interpret the phrase as meaning either, ‘to shade him from his distress,’ referring to the sun (cf. RSV, GNB, NIV), or, ‘to deliver him from his wickedness,’ referring to Jonah’s unjustified anger (cf. JB).”1 So the gift of kindness in the shade tree was not only to keep Jonah out of the sun but to remind him of the goodness of God. Jonah is delighted with the shade but still is no more compassionate to Nineveh despite this evidence of God’s compassion for his “misery” or “wickedness.” We are struck with the irony. Since Jonah was unwilling to connect God’s graciousness to him with God’s graciousness to Nineveh, the Lord prepared a worm to attack and destroy the plant. When the sun rose, an east wind blew, reminiscent of the wind when Jonah was at sea. As the day proceeded, the sun grew in intensity until the prophet became faint. Jonah was angry over the loss of the plant, and once again he expresses his death wish. “It is better for me to die than to live” (4:8). The gift of the plant was God’s way of helping Jonah answer His penetrating question, “Is it right for you to be angry?” (4:4). The plant clearly symbolized to the prophet God’s mercy on Nineveh. God wanted Jonah to understand how wrong it was for him to be angry about His intervention to save the city. The death of the plant symbolized the removal of God’s mercy from Jonah in the blasting sun, just as he might have removed His mercy from Nineveh if He had followed the prophet’s desires. Jonah was thankful for the plant and should have been thankful for the kindness of God to Nineveh. Although he was angry when the plant died, he would have been delighted if the mercy of God would have been denied to Nineveh. God was trying to show Jonah just how confused his thinking was. The Lord’s new question really puts Jonah on the spot. “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” (v. 9). However the prophet answers, it should reveal to Jonah how wrong he is. If he says “no” it would be an admission that his anger over God’s mercy to Nineveh was wrong. If he said “yes” he would have to empathize with the Ninevites if the kindness of God was removed from them. Jonah’s answer, “It is right for me to be angry, even to death,” shows that he is not willing to live with a God who can give or take away grace to Gentile or Israelite alike. A terrible ambivalence in Jonah’s soul is revealed. He cannot abide the thought of God’s grace being extended to the Ninevites, and yet, he sees that he cannot live without that grace himself. He now sees that God will not let him have it both ways: mercy for Israel and judgment for the Gentiles. Since Jonah could not convince God that His kindness to all people who repent is wrong, the prophet wants to die. Jonah insists on winning the final round of his power struggle with the Lord. Jonah would rather die than admit he was wrong. Some years ago, I counseled a woman in profound grief. After years of conflict in her marriage, her husband committed suicide. He left a note saying that he killed himself because of her. She was left to live with the grief of his death and the imposed guilt he put on her. This was a terrible way to win the battle for control. If the man could not control his wife in life, he would control her in his death. Jonah saw his death as the only way to get away from God. Fleeing to Tarshish did not work. But Jonah thinks that death will give him separation from the God of pity whom he has now come to abhor because he could not control on whom that pity would be shown. FOR PITY’S SAKE 10 But the LORD said, “You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored, nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock? —Jonah 4:10–11 Yet, mercifully God does not give up on Jonah even though Jonah gave up on Him. In verses 10–11, God persists with a further attempt to communicate the contrast between the prophet’s lack of pity and His pity on Nineveh. Jonah’s pity on the plant was clearly a projection of his own self-pity. If he thought he had a right to this pity for himself, did not God have a right to pity Nineveh? Once again Nineveh is referred to as “that great city.” The size of the city is given as 120,000 persons. Some commentators suggest that the reference is to children—thus leading to population estimates ranging up to 600,000. Whatever the size, the whole population was indeed like children when it came to their religion. They could not distinguish between their many Gods on their left hand and Yahweh on their right. These Gentiles were spiritual minors compared to the more mature Israelites. The Ninevites were wicked because they did not know the Law of Yahweh. God showed pity on them. Should not those spiritually mature in Israel have the same pity? Or, had God’s people regressed into childlike behavior? In the person of Jonah, it was obvious they could not weigh truth and justice, God’s gracious nature and their call to have mercy on Gentiles, their belief in Yahweh as sovereign of the universe and the inclusiveness of His love for all people. In the final analysis, Jonah was so engrossed in self-pity that he had none to spare. Most of all, the prophet needed God’s pity. Yahweh’s pity, h/ûs, corresponds to His ?esed that Jonah said he knew about in 4:2. The issue was that the prophet wanted none of Yahweh’s ?ûs if it meant that he would have to express it to the Gentiles. The pity Nineveh needed from God, Jonah now needs even more because of his pitiless attitudes. His judgmentalism, issuing in petulant anger, was the result of not realizing that he, too, was being judged by God. If Jonah could have accepted God’s sovereign right to show pity on whomever He chose and repented of his efforts to control God, the prophet could have received the precious pity he lacked so much. The Book of Jonah ends abruptly without that crucial repentance from the unwilling prophet. What should have happened to Jonah? Jonah’s biographer left that question for Israel to answer. It is obvious that the author focused Israel’s exclusivism and blind nationalism in the prophet. He wanted the people of Israel to take an honest look in the mirror he provided and see themselves. Their own idolatry made them no better than the polytheistic Assyrians. They were blessed to be a blessing to the nations. They were denying both. The Book of Jonah deserves its place among the books of the Minor Prophets. Many of the same themes are declared: Yahweh is Sovereign of all the nations. His ?esed is not just for Israel. Nor is His judgment limited to other nations. Israel’s syncretism is as abhorrent as Assyria’s polytheism. And yet, to know Yahweh and not obey Him would seem to deserve a greater punishment and deeper repentance. The more profound the confessed sin, the more abundant would be the pity and mercy. That is what Jonah refused to acknowledge and what his biographer did not want Israel to miss. The application of the Book of Jonah to our personal lives and to the church as a whole is pointed and poignant. On the personal level, the Book of Jonah forces us to see our own power struggle with God. What has God called us to be or do that puts us into a contest of wills with Him? What challenges of obedience in our own inner spiritual formation or call to ministry have set us running away? Where are we right now? Are we in a Tarshish of escape or in a Nineveh of obedience? And what about the hard inner core of ego that has never been given over to God’s control? Was our conversion a radical transformation from self-centered willfulness or an effort to recruit God to help us accomplish our goals? Have the harrowing experiences of life broken our inner core of proud individualism, or are we essentially the same people we always were? After the crises are past, are we any more flexible and willing to discern and do God’s will? Are there people we resist loving or caring for because of their contradiction of our values, beliefs, or lifestyle? Who are our personal Ninevites? If the Lord said, “Arise, go …,” what would be most difficult to obey? Do we ever get so committed to our predictions of what some people or groups deserve that we take on the responsibility, actively or in thought, to program their punishment? Do we know anyone in a power struggle like Jonah’s? Are there vestiges of that struggle in us? For what do we need God’s pity? Who in our lives needs God’s pity through us? The Book of Jonah is no less challenging to the contemporary church. Often we desire to stay in the holy huddle when the next play calls for energetic evangelism and costly mission. Either our congregations are in mission or they are still a mission field. The little Book of Jonah packs a big punch into our exclusivism and judgmentalism about the pagan world. The gospel is not our private possession. Evangelism and mission are not an aspect of a well-rounded congregational program; they are the reason for all we do in worship, education, and fellowship. Churches, like individuals, can run away from God. It happens when traditions and customs become more important than our calling. We can get introverted into our own programs, buildings, and budgets. In every town or city there are hundreds, thousands, millions who do not know Christ. Our members must be called and equipped to be winsome, winning evangelists. And we dare not run away from the call of the city—your city or mine—that is as great to God as Nineveh of old. It is good to ask ourselves, then church officers, and then those vision shapers who determine how our congregations respond to obeying the Lord, “Where are we as a congregation? Back at Gath-hepher still wrestling with the call of God? In the hull of the ship asleep? In the depths trying to placate God so we can keep our agenda intact? Or, have we reached our Tarshish and think we’re in Nineveh?” There is nothing worse for a congregation than to have the mind-set of Tarshish in Nineveh. The question is: “Do we love the people of Nineveh?” What happens in our churches determines what happens throughout the city. The preaching and teaching of the grace of God can make the congregation a healing center, a place of authentic pity where people are loved and forgiven and set free of guilt and fear. Every time that liberating message is communicated, it should be coupled with a call to ministry for all members to be disciples of hope rather than controlling religious people who refuse to witness in Nineveh. A penetrating study of Jonah helps us get at our own and our people’s power struggle with God for control and what could happen if, instead of running away from Him or ahead of Him, we run with Him. Stephen Neill said, “The only reason for being a Christian is the ever-growing conviction that the Christian faith is true.”2 This happens when we meet Christ personally and experience His pity, His grace. Our power base changes from our will to His will for us. The hard inner core of self-control is surrendered to His control. When we invite Him to live in us, we experience the power of His indwelling Spirit and are free at last from our use of manipulative human power to evade His call. He not only shows us our Nineveh but gives us a continuous flow of grace to share there. The “greater than Jonah” will never leave us alone. A final thought: Michelangelo’s painting on the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican portrays the prophets, apostles, and patriarchs. Of all the faces he painted, none has a more radiant countenance than Jonah. We wonder if Michelangelo knew something we do not about what happened to Jonah after the sudden close of his biography. Or, perhaps the artist hoped that Jonah did indeed accept God’s pity and became a communicator of grace. We do not know. But what we do know is that our own portrait is not finished. And what it will be is dependent on the mercy we receive and give away in our Nineveh. BIBLIOGRAPHY HOSEA Andersen, Francis I. and Freedman, David Noel. Hosea. Anchor Bible. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980. Bright, John. A History of Israel. 2d ed. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972. Buss, Martin J. The Prophetic Word of Hosea: A Morphological Study. Berlin: Töpelman, 1969. Childs, Brevard S. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Fohrer, Georg. Introduction to the Old Testament. Translated by David E. Green. Nashville: Abingdon, 1968. Hubbard, David Allan. With Bands of Love: Lessons from the Book of Hosea. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968. Kidner, Derek. Love to the Loveless: The Message of Hosea. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1981. Knight, George A. F. Hosea. Torch Bible Commentaries. London: SCM, 1960. Mays, James Luther. Hosea. Old Testament Library. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969. Phillips, Harold Cooke. The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 6. Nashville: Abingdon, 1956. Smith, George Adam. The Book of the Twelve Prophets, vol. 1. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1928. Stuart, Douglas. Hosea—Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary. Waco, Tex.: Word, 1987. West, James King. Introduction to the Old Testament. 2d ed. New York: Macmillan, 1981. Wolff, Hans Walter. Hosea. Hermeneia. Translated by Gary Stansell. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974. JOEL Bright, John. A History of Israel. 2d ed. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972. Childs, Brevard S. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Craigie, Peter C. Twelve Prophets, vol. 1. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984. Fohrer, Georg. Introduction to the Old Testament. Translated by David E. Green. Nashville: Abingdon, 1968. Stuart, Douglas. Hosea—Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary. Waco, Tex.: Word, 1987. West, James King. Introduction to the Old Testament. 2d ed. New York: Macmillan, 1981. Wolff, Hans Walter. Joel and Amos. Hermeneia. Translated by Waldemar Janzen, S. Dean McBride, Jr., and Charles A. Muenchow. Edited by S. Dean McBride, Jr. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977. AMOS Bright, John. A History of Israel. 2d ed. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972. Childs, Brevard S. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Craigie, Peter C. The Old Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content. Nashville: Abingdon, 1986. _____. Twelve Prophets, vol. 1. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984. Fohrer, Georg. Introduction to the Old Testament. Translated by David E. Green. Nashville: Abingdon, 1968. Knierim, Rolf P. “ ‘I Will Not Cause It to Return’ in Amos 1 and 2.” In Canon and Authority: Essays in Old Testament Religion and Theology, edited by George W. Coats and Burke O. Long, pp. 163–175. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977. LaSor, William S., Hubbard, David A., and Bush, Frederic W. Old Testament Survey. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. Stuart, Douglas. Hosea—Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary. Waco, Tex.: Word, 1987. West, James King. Introduction to the Old Testament. 2d ed. New York: Macmillan, 1981. Wolff, Hans Walter. Joel and Amos. Hermeneia. Translated by Waldemar Janzen, S. Dean McBride, Jr., and Charles A. Muenchow. Edited by S. Dean McBride, Jr. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977. OBADIAH Allen, Leslie. The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah. The New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976. _____. Hosea—Malachi. London: Scripture Union, 1987. Baker, David W. “Obadiah.” In Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, pp. 19–44. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1988. Childs, Brevard S. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Craigie, Peter C. The Old Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content. Nashville: Abingdon, 1986. _____. Twelve Prophets, vol. 1. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984. Fohrer, Georg. Introduction to the Old Testament. Translated by David E. Green. Nashville: Abingdon, 1968. LaSor, William S., Hubbard, David A., and Bush, Frederic W. Old Testament Survey. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. Maclaren, Alexander. Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1982 reprint. Stuart, Douglas. Hosea—Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary. Waco, Tex.: Word, 1987. West, James King. Introduction to the Old Testament. 2d ed. New York: Macmillan, 1981. Wolff, Hans Walter. Obadiah and Jonah. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986. JONAH Allen, Leslie. Hosea—Malachi. London: Scripture Union, 1987. Alexander, T. Desmond. “Jonah.” In Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, pp. 45–131. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1988. Childs, Brevard S. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Craigie, Peter C. The Old Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content. Nashville: Abingdon, 1986. _____. Twelve Prophets, vol. 1. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984. Fohrer, Georg. Introduction to the Old Testament. Translated by David E. Green. Nashville: Abingdon, 1968. LaSor, William S., Hubbard, David A., and Bush, Frederic W. Old Testament Survey. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. Stuart, Douglas. Hosea—Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary. Waco, Tex.: Word, 1987. West, James King. Introduction to the Old Testament. 2d ed. New York: Macmillan, 1981. Wolff, Hans Walter. Obadiah and Jonah. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986.