The Sentence of Death: This section is only arbitrarily broken into subunits for the purpose of convenience. Actually it constitutes a whole in the form of a funerary lament, and it begins (v. 2) and ends (vv. 16–17) with wailing over the dead. In addition, the proclamation of the divine name begins (v. 3, Adonai Yahweh), divides (v. 8, Yahweh), and ends (v. 16, Yahweh Elohim Sebaoth Adonai) the lament. But the theme is the same throughout: Israel’s death, brought on by its failure to honor Yahweh by true worship and just dealings in its courts of law. Verses 2–3 and 11 presage the result of verse 17. Verses 4 and 6 anticipate verses 14–15. Verse 7 sounds the theme of verses 10–13 and 15. Verses 16–17 form the final sentence of death handed down by the divine judge because of all the sins mentioned in verses 4–12, 15. The whole hangs together as one unit. We shall divide it only to make it easier to analyze.
5:1–9 The pronoun I is a separate Hebrew word in verse 1, emphasizing the fact that it is Yahweh who speaks in verses 1–2, just as at the end of the unit, in verses 16–17. Chillingly, what the divine voice does is to utter a funeral lament over the people. Israel is dead. Though it yet lives in Amos’s day, its death is a foregone conclusion and already mourned. An unnamed enemy (cf. 2:14–16; 3:11) will invade its land, totally defeat its armed troops, verse 3, and leave its dead on the ground, with no restoration possible, verse 2. Israel is a virgin, its life yet incomplete in the land God has given it (cf. Judg. 11:39–40), but it shall die unfulfilled and forsaken.
Israel’s military units were divided into groups of thousands and hundreds (cf. 1 Sam. 22:7; 2 Sam. 18:1), but having some left after the battle, verse 3, does not indicate the existence of a remnant. An army so diminished was totally defeated. Israel was as good as dead.
The fact that in the prophecies of Amos Yahweh is the one who mourns over his fallen people is evidence of his love for them. As is so often the case in the holy history, God’s reaction to the people’s sin is not wrath but grief (cf. Gen. 6:6), and judgment on them is carried out in the sorrow of a disappointed lover (cf. Matt. 23:37–38 and parallel). We shall encounter the same tenderness in 7:1–6, and it is a good note to keep in mind when interpreting Amos’s judgment oracles.
Verses 4–5 continue the divine speech and point out to Israel what it should have done. Scholars have interpreted these verses in a variety of ways—as irony, as spoken only to the under classes; as offers of hope for the future—but their meaning is similar to that set forth in 4:4–13: Israel’s worship at its cult sites has been totally false, without ever involving any true communion with God, and those sites of worship will be destroyed. So what Israel should have done was to seek that true communion. Israel should have sought Yahweh, who alone could give it life. To seek the LORD normally had the meaning of going to the sanctuary where saving blessing could be found (cf. Ps. 24:6; 27:8; 105:4). Yahweh is now substituted for the cultic site.
Beersheba is added to the two cult sites of Bethel and Gilgal previously mentioned (4:4). It was located in the far south of Judah and was originally connected with the religion of the patriarchs (Gen. 21:31; 26:23–25; 46:1). But it was also a place of pilgrimage for those in the northern kingdom (cf. 8:14; 2 Kgs. 23:8). Amos’s condemnation of Israel’s worship at its sanctuaries is all-encompassing.
To reinforce what has been said in the first-person Yahweh speech of verses 4–5, Amos reminds his listeners, in verse 6, of what they have always heard from Israelite sacred tradition—that Yahweh alone is the source of Israel’s life, but that he is also a consuming fire (cf. Deut. 4:24; 9:3; Isa. 33:14; 2 Thess. 1:7; Heb. 10:27, 31; 12:29) who will brook no disregard of his holy will or of the honor due his name.
Then in verse 7, Amos states why Bethel will be destroyed: because its inhabitants have turned justice to “wormwood” (RSV; NIV reads bitterness) and cast righteousness to the ground, thereby making of their worship a sham. The participle beginning verse 7 connects it with Bethel in verse 6, as in the RSV. The lines in the Hebrew order read, “. . . Bethel, who turns to wormwood justice.”
Wormwood was a bush that grew in the southern part of Judah and in Transjordan. Though not poisonous, its pulp had a bitter taste, and Amos is drawing on a medicinal metaphor. Justice, by which Amos means the legal restoration of those wronged and oppressed, was to be the medicine that healed Israel’s society (cf. Exod. 23:6–8; Lev. 19:15; Deut. 1:17; 10:17; 16:19–20). Instead, it has been turned into a foul-tasting draught. Righteousness throughout the Old Testament (and the New) is a relational term, standing for the fulfillment of the demands of a relationship. Israel was always required by God to show mercy to the poor and helpless (Exod. 22:21–27; 23:9; Lev. 19:33–34; Deut. 24:19–22)—that was the requirement of its relationship with them. Instead, its upper classes have ignored their obligation, as if throwing it to the ground. Because verses 6–7 charge Bethel specifically with such sins, Amos probably preached this oracle in that city, and it is no wonder therefore that he comes into conflict with Amaziah, the king’s priest at that worship site (7:10–17).
The inhabitants of Bethel can turn justice into wormwood, but they are dealing with a God who can turn blackness into dawn or day into night, verse 8. Indeed, this is the God who created in the beginning by controlling the chaotic waters of the sea (cf. Gen. 1; Ps. 104:5–9). As in the hymn of 4:13, God’s lordship over all creation is celebrated and the sacred name is proclaimed. In verse 8, Yahweh is his name specifies with whom Israel has to deal and that will lead in verse 16 to the proclamation of God’s lordship over all the hosts of heaven and earth. Israel will be met by a God who can destroy it, verse 9. It has missed its opportunity to seek God and live, forfeited its calling to serve God and prosper.
5:10–13 Many commentators have maintained that the text of Amos 5:1–17 has many later additions. Verses 6, 8–9 should be omitted as secondary, they say, as should verse 13 and the connecting For at the beginning of verse 12. Separate oracles are then left in verses 7, 10–11, 12–13, 16–17, and 14–15. Others make 5:7, 10–12, 16–17 one oracle, while some rearrange the text to form an oracle consisting of 5:12, 11 a, 16b, 17. We have, instead, taken 5:1–17 as a unit, dividing it into subunits only for the purpose of convenience of exposition. Finally the task of the interpreter is to try to make sense of the canonical text as it now stands.
In this section, in which the prophet himself speaks, the subject is the fate of the righteous in Israel, and the thought of the verses might be summarized by a quotation from Ps. 11:3 RSV: “ If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” For Amos, the foundation of justice in Israelite society was supposed to be in its courts of law. Such courts were made up of the male elders of each city, who met together to hear the case presented by a plaintiff against one accused, along with their witnesses. The court met in the city gate, which was a fortified building set into the wall of the city, and which had rooms or recesses on its interior side in which benches were set (cf. Deut. 21:19; 25:7; Ruth 4:11). All elders could speak in the court (cf. Job 32:12), and they were expected to uphold the innocent and decree punishment for the guilty (cf. Prov. 24:23–25). They were the final recourse given to the poor and helpless in Israelite society.
These verses tell us, however, how corrupt the courts had become. There were elders still left in the northern kingdom who spoke the truth and sought justice for the innocent, verse 10, but they were drowned out by a sea of dissenting voices that catered to the rich and accepted bribes for their deceit, verse 12. Indeed, the just elders became objects of such hatred, scorn, and social ostracism in their society that they were forced into unwilling silence, not out of cowardice but out of the inability to make their voices heard above the roar of the avaricious, verse 13: That thought brackets this section, in verses 10 and 12. The picture reminds one of those shouted down and not allowed to speak on “politically correct” university campuses in the United States, or of those whose influence is rejected by some group because they do not toe the party line (cf. Isa. 29:21). Or most tellingly, the picture reminds one of the mob that shouted, “Crucify him,” when innocence stood before them (Mark 15:13–14).
As an example of the poor being trampled in the courts by the powerful and corrupt, Amos mentions the exacting of fines of grain from poor farmers, verse 11a, b (cf. Prov. 17:26; Exod. 21:22). The rich then sold such grain commercially and used the proceeds to build houses for themselves out of stone—an art learned from the Phoenicians in the time of Solomon (cf. l Kgs. 5:17; 6:36; Isa. 9:10)—rather than out of the clay bricks that crumbled so easily. And they could afford vineyards with the best layouts in the choicest locations (cf. Isa. 5:1).
The tables would be turned, however, Amos proclaims, for the corruptions of human courts were breaches of Israel’s covenant with its Lord (cf. Deut. 16:18–20)—“rebellions” (v. 12, NIV: offenses) against the rule of the one whose name was “Yahweh,” verse 8, LORD of the hosts of heaven and earth, verse 16. The consequence would be the falling of covenant curses upon the people: an unnamed enemy would overwhelm them, and they would not enjoy the fruits of their greed, verse 11 (cf. Deut. 28:30, 38–41). They had gotten rich at the expense of the poor; now others would become rich at their expense.
The repetition of therefore in verses 11 and 13, a word that normally introduces the announcement of the judgment pronounced by God, points toward a climax in the final announcement of that judgment in verse 16, which also begins with “therefore.” As in verse 2, the judgment is death. As Calvin remarks in his commentary on this passage’s picture of the silencing of those who speak the truth, “When licentiousness has arrived to this pitch, it is certain that the state of things is past recovery, and that there is no hope of repentance or of a better condition” (Calvin, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, p. 271).
5:14–15 Once again Amos reminds his hearers of the traditions embodied in the Yahweh faith of the past. In verses 4–5, they were reminded that they were to seek the presence of their Lord in their worship and not substitute for that presence false and empty ritual (cf. Isa. 48:1). Here the prophet reminds them that they were to seek good in their society, especially by rendering justice (cf. “justice, and only justice” Deut. 16:20 RSV) in their courts of law.
When Amos or the other authors of the OT speak of seeking “good” (cf. Ps. 34:12–14; 37:3; Isa. 1:16–17; see also Rom. 12:9), they have in mind no set of virtues or standards outside of God. The “good” in Hebrew thought was what Yahweh commanded, and it was good because he commanded it. No ethical code, no set of religious rules, no ideals existed apart from their grounding in the will of God. Life could be had only in relationship with the source of life, and apart from trusting and loving and obedient communion with the Lord, life was impossible. Thus, in the great assize of Matt. 25:31–46, no act is good in itself and deserving of life. Rather it is good, only because it is an act done toward Jesus. At the heart of biblical faith is not a code of ethics, but a personal relationship with God.
The Israelite was commanded to “love” the Lord (cf. Deut. 6:5), as is the Christian (Mark 12:30 and parallels), but part of that love is to be exercised by justice toward one’s neighbor, as Deuteronomy so vividly spells out throughout its pages, and as Jesus emphasized when he joined the second great commandment to the first (Mark 12:31 and parallels). This is the age-old tradition, present from the first in biblical faith, which Amos recalls in verses 14–15.
Such love does not coerce God, of course, who will “be gracious to whom [he] will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom [he] will show mercy” (Exod. 33:19 RSV). Because God’s grace and favor are always undeserved and cannot be commanded by any imperfect human love or obedience, Amos states that God’s promise of undeserved help was always conditional in the past, verse 15 (perhaps). We are always “unworthy servants” (Luke 17:10), and never earn the right to be among even a remnant when God judges the earth. Of that too Amos reminds his listeners, verse 15d.
The Israelites knew no condition, however. These two verses give us a picture of what Amos’s hearers believed and of what their tradition from the past had told them. They assumed that God was with them, though they corrupted both their worship and their courts. They assumed God would always be gracious to them and no evil would come upon them (cf. 6:3; 9:10), verse 14. But there is no softening of the sentence of death in these verses. Amos cites the past only in order to contrast it more forcefully with the words that follow in verses 16–17.
5:16–17 The oracle of 5:1–17 ends here, as it began in verse 2, with the words of the Lord, and with the picture of a funeral lamentation over the corpse of the unjust and apostate virgin Israel. Three times the word wailing is repeated (see the RSV for the reading of the original Hebrew). We hear the repetition of “Ho! Ho!”—the Hebrew of “Alas!” (RSV). The sound of grief echoes through Israel’s open squares and narrow streets, across its fields and down the rows of its vineyards. Professional mourners are not numerous enough to bewail all of Israel’s dead (cf. Jer. 9:17), and so even the farmers have to join voices with the mourning women, verse 16. But finally all will fall victim to the sentence of death, for Israel has made an enemy of its God, and that God now comes in judgment. God will never again pass by (cf. 8:8). Now God comes into Israel’s midst to destroy it.
Additional Notes
5:5 For Gilgal will surely go into exile: God’s absolute judgment on Gilgal is emphasized by an alliteration in the Hb.: gilgāl gālōh yigleh.
And Bethel will be reduced to nothing: Hosea 4:15 and 5:8 continue this condemnation of Bethel by naming it “Beth Aven,” that is, “house-of-nothing” or “house-of-wickedness.” For the Hb., evil was equivalent to nothingness, void, chaos, nonbeing, as contrasted with God’s gift of life, order, being.
