It’s difficult to admit our own failures or to get our loved one to face theirs. One approach is to start by naming other people’s wrongs then slowly getting to own what’s closer to home, even if the crimes we are accused of are of the most serious kind.
This tactic is what we are introduced to today, perfected by the prophet Amos.
Amos shows up third among the Minor Prophets, but most scholars agree that he was actually the original, earliest one among the prophets whose words would be written down for the ages. In 1889, the biblical scholar E.E. Atkinson claimed that “Amos lays down, for the first time, the principles of a pure ethical monotheism... admired for the purity of his language, his beauty of diction, and his poetic art”.
Not much is known about Amos except that he is an outsider who tells truth to power, operating in a political moment of massive global shifts. He is introduced as a man of the earth - a sheep herder, and later as one who tends to trees - perhaps these vocations lend him the sharp eye to recognize subtle changes and call them out - which he does, with poetic power.
His prophecies begin today with specific geographical and biographical indications:
דִּבְרֵ֣י עָמ֔וֹס אֲשֶׁר־הָיָ֥ה בַנֹּקְדִ֖ים מִתְּק֑וֹעַ אֲשֶׁר֩ חָזָ֨ה עַל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֜ל בִּימֵ֣י ׀ עֻזִּיָּ֣ה מֶלֶךְ־יְהוּדָ֗ה וּבִימֵ֞י יָרׇבְעָ֤ם בֶּן־יוֹאָשׁ֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל שְׁנָתַ֖יִם לִפְנֵ֥י הָרָֽעַשׁ׃
“The words of Amos, a sheep breeder from Tekoa, who prophesied concerning Israel in the reigns of Kings Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam son of Joash of Israel, two years before the earthquake.”
Amos 1:1
Amos is identified as a native of Tekoa, which most identify as a small town in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, nor far from Jerusalem, although some place in the Galilee . It’s a significant difference since his entire prophetic messaging will target the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and its king, Jeroboam the Second, the most successful and powerful among the kings of the north. King Uzziah of Judah is mentioned here but not throughout the rest of the actual prophecies. So if Amos is an outsider from down South preaching to the people of the North- that’s a big deal.
The specific reigns of kings he mentions places him in the mid 8th century BCE, during the most successful and powerful years of Israel’s existence, but his prophetic eye already sees beyond the bounty, to the next days, and predicts that Israel will be destroyed because of their ethical failings and territorial greed.
And what about his framing of this opening sentence occurring ‘two years before the earthquake’?
Most readers locate it as the famous disaster that ravaged the Southern Kingdom during the reign of King Uzzia, sometimes linked to the king’s attempt to usurp the priestly power in the temple and thus cause divine rage. That earthquake is when Isaiah, the king’s cousin, began his career - so this would indeed place Amos as his contemporary - and an earlier prophetic voice.
But what’s really important about Amos is his understanding of the global shifts that are changing the rules that govern the reality of both kingdoms and the entire region. The power rising on the horizon is Assyria - the empire that will eventually redefine warfare and bring a mass scale exile and dislocation to the entire Middle East, with massive religious implications. Assyria would be the first world power to take over major regions and territories, claiming not only rule but also the dominance of their religious narratives.
Until that time, wars were mostly local, and the perception was that the local gods were connected to their people’s territories. When a nation won a war against its neighbors, it was the deity’s triumph over the other one. But the ascent of Assyria introduced a larger scale of force and divinity. There would be one nation with a supergod greater than all the local ones. What is the theological implication of this threat to YHWH or the other local gods?
Amos, and the other prophets that will follow him, introduce a radical, universal new notion: A Global God. YHWH IS the god of the entire world, in charge of everything behind the scenes, and it will be YHWH who will send Assyria, to punish the people of Israel for their transgressions, among the other local nations equally guilty of immorality and injustice. In other words - YHWH is not just the deity of Israel but is also in charge of and in relationship with the other nations of the world.
To demonstrate this new global order and the bigger picture that aligns all local nations together in the face of a common enemy, Amos does not begin his prophecies with words of protest directed at his people. He begins by addressing the wrongs of the other neighbors - the nations of the world.
This would be the equivalent of a Jewish journalist today, writing in Israel, starting to lament the current state of things by first blaming all the Arab nations and only then pointing a finger at what is Israel’s fault and responsibility for the conflict and whatever other problems exist.
Amos names the neighbors of Israel and Judah as guilty of cruelty and immorality - and only then turns to blame his own people for their injustice and greed.
First he names the crimes of Syria - Israel’s most fierce local foe with its capital in Damascus, than he goes on to name the faults of the Philistines, with their capital in Gaza, then the Phoneician Tyre, the Edomites, Ammonites and Moabites - and only then he turns his wrath towards Judah and Israel.
Imagine this man, standing at the center of Samaria, the Northern Kingdom’s capital, rousing his listeners by first naming the evil of their enemies before finally getting them to listen to his condemnation of their own societal faults.
The literary formula he uses is equally unique and compelling. Again and again he uses the same phrase -- The three transgressions of the nation -- and the fourth that will be the final blow. He begins with Damascus and then goes to Gaza - which in today’s political context is a haunting text:
כֹּ֚ה אָמַ֣ר יְהֹוָ֔ה עַל־שְׁלֹשָׁה֙ פִּשְׁעֵ֣י עַזָּ֔ה וְעַל־אַרְבָּעָ֖ה לֹ֣א אֲשִׁיבֶ֑נּוּ עַל־הַגְלוֹתָ֛ם גָּל֥וּת שְׁלֵמָ֖ה לְהַסְגִּ֥יר לֶאֱדֽוֹם׃
“YHWH Spoke:
For the three transgressions of Gaza,
For the fourh, I will not revoke the decree:
Because they exiled an entire population,
Which they delivered to Edom.”
Amos 1:6
Amos is alluding to specific trespasses, transgressions or historical battles between the Philistines and their neighbors, but it’s the literary format of ‘three and four’ that is the focus here, as in the rest of these first chapters.
Robert Alter unpacks the possible translations and meanings of this dramatic trope:
“In context, pesha’aim (“trespasses”) means something like “atrocities” or “crimes against humanity.”
....There are neither three nor four trespasses listed here that a reader can count. Rather, this is a common biblical idiom, occurring several times in Proverbs, with the sense, “a certain few, and even one more.” Because the three and four together add up to a formulaic seven, some have proposed that they indicate a totality. There is no way of knowing whether these dire prophecies about the surrounding nations were actually the beginning of Amos’s messages, but they certainly would have provided a means of drawing in the Israelite audience with something they wanted to hear before the prophet launched on a denunciation of that very audience. The formulaic repetition of these lines for one nation after another generates a kind of hypnotic drumbeat.”
But did this hypnotic drumbeat work? Did the people of Israel listen to the prophet and did any of them change their ways? It’s hard to tell.
One interesting note about the visions of Amos is that they are presented as predictions, imagining the future, they may actually be a retrospective -- written as the aftermath of Israel’s destruction, as a way to explain what happened and why the kingdom collapsed.
Either way, Amos continues to call people, then and now, to face tough truth, even when the crimes committed are against humanity, to resist greed, power and to pursue justice.
His words will penetrate the people’s hearts, one way or another, eventually, as he laments the loss of decency for the next nine chapters. Will we listen now?
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