_THE FALSE PEACE OF RITUAL_
AMOS iv. 4-vi.
The next four groups of oracles[287]--iv. 4-13, v. 1-17, v. 18-27
and vi.--treat of many different details, and each of them has its
own emphasis; but all are alike in this, that they vehemently attack
the national worship and the sense of political security which it
has engendered. Let us at once make clear that this worship is the
worship of Jehovah. It is true that it is mixed with idolatry, but,
except possibly in one obscure verse,[288] Amos does not concern
himself with the idols. What he strikes at, what he would sweep away,
is his people's form of devotion to their own God. The cult of the
national God, at the national sanctuaries, in the national interest
and by the whole body of the people, who practise it with a zeal
unparalleled by their forefathers--this is what Amos condemns. And
he does so absolutely. He has nothing but scorn for the temples and
the feasts. The assiduity of attendance, the liberality of gifts,
the employment of wealth and art and patriotism in worship--he tells
his generation that God loathes it all. Like Jeremiah, he even
seems to imply that God never instituted in Israel any sacrifice
or offering.[289] It is all this which gives these oracles their
interest for us; and that interest is not merely historical.
It is indeed historical to begin with. When we find, not idolatry, but
all religious ceremonial--temples, public worship, tithes, sacrifice,
the praise of God by music, in fact every material form in which
man has ever been wont to express his devotion to God--scorned and
condemned with the same uncompromising passion as idolatry itself, we
receive a needed lesson in the history of religion. For when one is
asked, What is the distinguishing characteristic of heathenism? one is
always ready to say, Idolatry, which is not true. The distinguishing
characteristic of heathenism is the stress which it lays upon
ceremonial. To the pagan religions, both of the ancient and of the
modern world, rites were the indispensable element in religion. The
gifts of the gods, the abundance of fruits, the security of the state,
depended upon the full and accurate performance of ritual. In Greek
literature we have innumerable illustrations of this: the _Iliad_
itself starts from a god's anger, roused by an insult to his priest,
whose prayers for vengeance he hears because sacrifices have been
assiduously offered to him. And so too with the systems of paganism
from which the faith of Israel, though at first it had so much in
common with them, broke away to its supreme religious distinction.
The Semites laid the stress of their obedience to the gods upon
traditional ceremonies; and no sin was held so heinous by them as the
neglect or infringement of a religious rite. By the side of it offences
against one's fellow-men or one's own character were deemed mere
misdemeanours. In the day of Amos this pagan superstition thoroughly
penetrated the religion of Jehovah, and so absorbed the attention of
men, that without the indignant and complete repudiation of it prophecy
could not have started on her task of identifying morality with
religion, and of teaching men more spiritual views of God. But even
when we are thus aware of ceremonialism as the characteristic quality
of the pagan religions, we have not measured the full reason of that
uncompromising attack on it, which is the chief feature of this part
of the permanent canon of our religion. For idolatries die everywhere;
but everywhere a superstitious ritualism survives. It continues with
philosophies that have ceased to believe in the gods who enforced it.
Upon ethical movements which have gained their freedom by breaking away
from it, in the course of time it makes up, and lays its paralysing
weight. With offers of help it flatters religions the most spiritual
in theory and intention. The Pharisees, than whom few parties had at
first purer ideals of morality, tithed mint, anise and cummin, to the
neglect of the essence of the Law; and even sound Christians, who
have assimilated the Gospel of St. John, find it hard and sometimes
impossible to believe in salvation apart from their own sacraments, or
outside their own denominational forms. Now this is because ritual is
a thing which appeals both to the baser and to the nobler instincts of
man. To the baser it offers itself as a mechanical atonement for sin,
and a substitute for all moral and intellectual effort in connection
with faith; to the nobler it insists on a man's need in religion of
order and routine, of sacrament and picture. Plainly then the words
of Amos have significance for more than the immediate problems of his
day. And if it seem to some, that Amos goes too far with his cry to
sweep away all ceremonial, let them remember, besides the crisis of
his times, that the temper he exposes and seeks to dissipate is a rank
and obdurate error of the human heart. Our Lord, who recognised the
place of ritual in worship, who said, _Thus it behoveth us to fulfil
all righteousness_, which righteousness in the dialect of His day
was not the moral law, but man's due of rite, sacrifice, tithe and
alms,[290] said also, _I will have mercy and not sacrifice_. There is
an irreducible minimum of rite and routine in worship; there is an
invaluable loyalty to traditional habits; there are holy and spiritual
uses in symbol and sacrament. But these are all dispensable; and
because they are all constantly abused, the voice of the prophet is
ever needed which tells us that God will have none of them; but let
justice roll on like water, and righteousness like an unfailing stream.
For the superstition that ritual is the indispensable bond between
God and man, Amos substitutes two other aspects of religion. They are
history as God's discipline of man; and civic justice, as man's duty
to God. The first of them he contrasts with religious ceremonialism
in chap. iv. 4-13, and the second in chap. v.; while in chap. vi. he
assaults once more the false political peace which the ceremonialism
engenders.
1. FOR WORSHIP, CHASTISEMENT.
AMOS iv. 4-13.
In chap. ii. Amos contrasted the popular conception of religion as
worship with God's conception of it as history. He placed a picture
of the sanctuary, hot with religious zeal, but hot too with passion
and the fumes of wine, side by side with a great prospect of the
national history: God's guidance of Israel from Egypt onwards. That
is, as we said at the time, he placed an indoors picture of religion
side by side with an open-air one. He repeats that arrangement here.
The religious services he sketches are more pure, and the history he
takes from his own day; but the contrast is the same. Again we have
on the one side the temple worship--artificial, exaggerated, indoors,
smoky; but on the other a few movements of God in Nature, which,
though they all be calamities, have a great moral majesty upon them.
The first opens with a scornful call to worship, which the prophet,
letting out his whole heart at the beginning, shows to be equivalent
to sin. Note next the impossible caricature of their exaggerated
zeal: sacrifices every morning instead of once a year, tithes every
three days instead of every three years.[291] To offer leavened
bread was a departure from the older fashion of unleavened.[292] To
publish their liberality was like the later Pharisees, who were not
dissimilarly mocked by our Lord: _When thou doest alms, cause not
a trumpet to be sounded before thee, as the hypocrites do in the
synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men._[293]
There is a certain rhythm in the taunt; but the prose style seems
to be resumed with fitness when the prophet describes the solemn
approach of God in deeds of doom.
_Come away to Bethel and transgress,
At Gilgal exaggerate your transgression!
And bring every morning your sacrifices,
Every three days your tithes!
And send up the savour of leavened bread as a thank-offering,
And call out your liberalities--make them to be heard!
For so ye love_ to do, _O children of Israel:
Oracle of Jehovah._
_But I on My side have given you cleanness of teeth in all your
cities, and want of bread in all your places--yet ye did not return
to Me: oracle of Jehovah._
_But I on My side withheld from you the winter rain,_[294] _while it
was still three months to the harvest: and I let it rain repeatedly
on one city, and upon one city I did not let it rain: one lot was
rained upon, and the lot that was not rained upon withered; and two
or three cities kept straggling to one city to drink water, and were
not satisfied--yet ye did not return to Me: oracle of Jehovah._
_I smote you with blasting and with mildew: many of your gardens and
your vineyards and your figs and your olives the locust devoured--yet
ye did not return to Me: oracle of Jehovah._
_I sent among you a pestilence by way of Egypt:_[295] _I slew with
the sword your youths--besides the capture of your horses--and I
brought up the stench of your camps to your nostrils--yet ye did not
return to Me: oracle of Jehovah._
_I overturned among you, like God's own overturning of Sodom and
Gomorrah, till ye became as a brand plucked from the burning--yet ye
did not return to Me: oracle of Jehovah._
This recalls a passage in that English poem of which we are again and
again reminded by the Book of Amos, _The Vision of Piers Plowman_. It
is the sermon of Reason in Passus V. (Skeat's edition):--
"He preved that thise pestilences · were for pure synne,
And the southwest wynde · in saterday et evene
Was pertliche[296] for pure pride · and for no poynt elles.
Piries and plomtrees · were puffed to the erthe,
In ensample ze segges[297] · ze shulden do the bettere.
Beches and brode okes · were blowen to the grounde.
Torned upward her tailles · in tokenynge of drede,
That dedly synne at domesday · shal fordon[298] hem alle."
In the ancient world it was a settled belief that natural calamities
like these were the effects of the deity's wrath. When Israel suffers
from them the prophets take for granted that they are for the people's
punishment. I have elsewhere shown how the climate of Palestine lent
itself to these convictions; in this respect the Book of Deuteronomy
contrasts it with the climate of Egypt.[299] And although some, perhaps
rightly, have scoffed at the exaggerated form of the belief, that God
is angry with the sons of men every time drought or floods happen,
yet the instinct is sound which in all ages has led religious people
to feel that such things are inflicted for moral purposes. In the
economy of the universe there may be ends of a purely physical kind
served by such disasters, apart altogether from their meaning to man.
But man at least learns from them that nature does not exist solely
for feeding, clothing and keeping him wealthy; nor is it anything else
than his monotheism, his faith in God as the Lord both of his moral
life and of nature, which moves him to believe, as Hebrew prophets
taught and as our early English seer heard Reason herself preach. Amos
had the more need to explain those disasters as the work of the God
of righteousness, because his contemporaries, while willing to grant
Jehovah leadership in war, were tempted to attribute to the Canaanite
gods of the land all power over the seasons.
What, however, more immediately concerns us in this passage is its
very effective contrast between men's treatment of God and God's
treatment of men. They lavish upon Him gifts and sacrifices. He--_on
His side_--sends them cleanness of teeth, drought, blasting of their
fruits, pestilence, war and earthquake. That is to say, they regard
Him as a being only to be flattered and fed. He regards them as
creatures with characters to discipline, even at the expense of their
material welfare. Their views of Him, if religious, are sensuous and
gross; His views of them, if austere, are moral and ennobling. All
this may be grim, but it is exceeding grand; and short as the efforts
of Amos are, we begin to perceive in him something already of the
greatness of an Isaiah.
And have not those, who have believed as Amos believed, ever been the
strong spirits of our race, making the very disasters which crushed
them to the earth the tokens that God has great views about them?
Laugh not at the simple peoples, who have their days of humiliation,
and their fast-days after floods and stunted harvests. For they
take these, not like other men, as the signs of their frailty and
helplessness; but as measures of the greatness God sees in them, His
provocation of their souls to the infinite possibilities which He has
prepared for them.
Israel, however, did not turn even at the fifth call to penitence,
and so there remained nothing for her but a fearful looking forward
to judgment, all the more terrible that the prophet does not define
what the judgment shall be.
_Therefore thus shall I do to thee, O Israel: because I am going to
do this to thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. For, lo, He that
formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth to man
what His thought is, that maketh morning darkness, and marcheth on
the high places of earth, Jehovah, God of Hosts, is His Name._[300]
2. FOR WORSHIP, JUSTICE.
AMOS v.
In the next of these groups of oracles Amos continues his attack on
the national ritual, and now contrasts it with the service of God in
public life--the relief of the poor, the discharge of justice. But
he does not begin with this. The group opens with an elegy, which
bewails the nation as already fallen. It is always difficult to mark
where the style of a prophet passes from rhythmical prose into what
we may justly call a metrical form. But in this short wail, we catch
the well-known measure of the Hebrew dirge; not so artistic as in
later poems, yet with at least the characteristic couplet of a long
and a short line.
_Hear this word which I lift up against you--a Dirge, O house of
Israel_:--
_Fallen, no more shall she rise,_
_Virgin of Israel!_
_Flung down on her own ground,_
_No one to raise her!_
The _Virgin_, which with Isaiah is a standing title for Jerusalem and
occasionally used of other cities, is here probably the whole nation
of Northern Israel. The explanation follows. It is War. _For thus
saith the Lord Jehovah: The city that goeth forth a thousand shall
have an hundred left; and she that goeth forth an hundred shall have
left ten for the house of Israel._
But judgment is not yet irrevocable. There break forthwith the only
two promises which lighten the lowering darkness of the book. Let the
people turn to Jehovah Himself--and that means let them turn from the
ritual, and instead of it purge their civic life, restore justice in
their courts and help the poor. For God and moral good are one. It
is _seek Me and ye shall live_, and _seek good and ye shall live_.
Omitting for the present all argument as to whether the interruption
of praise to the power of Jehovah be from Amos or another, we read
the whole oracle as follows.
_Thus saith Jehovah to the house of Israel: Seek Me and live. But
seek not Bethel, and come not to Gilgal, and to Beersheba pass not
over_--to come to Beersheba one had to cross all Judah. _For Gilgal
shall taste the gall of exile_--it is not possible except in this
clumsy way to echo the prophet's play upon words, "Ha-Gilgal galoh
yigleh"--_and Bethel_, God's house, _shall become an idolatry_. This
rendering, however, scarcely gives the rude force of the original;
for the word rendered idolatry, Aven, means also falsehood and
perdition, so that we should not exaggerate the antithesis if we
employed a phrase which once was not vulgar: _And Bethel, house of
God, shall go to the devil!_[301] The epigram was the more natural
that near Bethel, on a site now uncertain, but close to the edge
of the desert to which it gave its name, there lay from ancient
times a village actually called Beth-Aven, however the form may
have risen. And we shall find Hosea stereotyping this epigram of
Amos, and calling the sanctuary Beth-Aven oftener than he calls it
Beth-El.[302] _Seek ye Jehovah and live,_ he begins again, _lest He
break forth like fire, O house of Joseph, and it consume and there
be none to quench at Bethel._[303] ...[304] _He that made the Seven
Stars and Orion,_[305] _that turneth the murk_[306] _into morning,
and day He darkeneth to night, that calleth for the waters of the
sea and poureth them out on the face of the earth--Jehovah His Name.
He it is that flasheth out ruin_[307] _on strength, and bringeth
down_[308] _destruction on the fortified._ This rendering of the
last verse is uncertain, and rightly suspected, but there is no
alternative so probable, and it returns to the keynote from which the
passage started, that God should break forth like fire.
Ah, _they that turn justice to wormwood, and abase_[309]
_righteousness to the earth! They hate him that reproveth in the
gate_--in an Eastern city both the law-court and place of the popular
council--_and him that speaketh sincerely they abhor_. So in the
English mystic's Vision Peace complains of Wrong:--
"I dar noughte for fere of hym · fyghte ne chyde."[310]
_Wherefore, because ye trample on the weak and take from him a present
of corn,_[311] _ye have built houses of ashlar,_[312] _but ye shall not
dwell in them; vineyards for pleasure have ye planted, but ye shall
not drink of their wine. For I know how many are your crimes, and
how forceful_[313] _your sins--ye that browbeat the righteous, take
bribes, and bring down the poor in the gate! Therefore the prudent in
such a time is dumb, for an evil time is it_ indeed.
_Seek good and not evil, that ye may live, and Jehovah God of Hosts be
with you, as ye say_ He is. _Hate evil and love good; and in the gate
set justice on her feet again--peradventure Jehovah God of Hosts may
have pity on the remnant of Joseph._ If in the Book of Amos there be
any passages, which, to say the least, do not now lie in their proper
places, this is one of them. For, firstly, while it regards the nation
as still responsible for the duties of government, it recognises them
as reduced to a remnant. To find such a state of affairs we have to
come down to the years subsequent to 734, when Tiglath-Pileser swept
into captivity all Gilead and Galilee--that is, two-thirds, in bulk,
of the territory of Northern Israel--but left Ephraim untouched. In
answer to this, it may, of course, be pointed out that in thus calling
the people to repentance, so that a remnant might be saved, Amos may
have been contemplating a disaster still future, from which, though
it was inevitable, God might be moved to spare a remnant.[314] That
is very true. But it does not meet this further difficulty, that the
verses (14, 15) plainly make interruption between the end of ver. 13
and the beginning of ver. 16; and that the initial _therefore_ of the
latter verse, while it has no meaning in its present sequence, becomes
natural and appropriate when made to follow immediately on ver. 13. For
all these reasons, then, I take vv. 14 and 15 as a parenthesis, whether
from Amos himself or from a later writer who can tell? But it ought
to be kept in mind that in other prophetic writings where judgment
is very severe, we have some proof of the later insertion of calls to
repentance, by way of mitigation.
Ver. 13 had said the time was so evil that the prudent man kept
silence. All the more must the Lord Himself speak, as ver. 16 now
proclaims. _Therefore thus saith Jehovah, God of Hosts,_[315] _Lord:
On all open ways lamentation, and in all streets they shall be
saying, Ah woe! Ah woe! And in all vineyards lamentation,_[316] _and
they shall call the ploughman to wailing and to lamentation them
that are skilful in dirges_--town and country, rustic and artist
alike--_for I shall pass through thy midst, saith Jehovah._ It is
the solemn formula of the Great Passover, when Egypt was filled with
wailing and there were dead in every house.
The next verse starts another, but a kindred, theme. As blind as
was Israel's confidence in ritual, so blind was their confidence in
dogma, and the popular dogma was that of the _Day of Jehovah_.
All popular hopes expect their victory to come in a single sharp
crisis--a day. And again, the day of any one means either the day he
has appointed, or the day of his display and triumph. So Jehovah's
day meant to the people the day of His judgment, or of His triumph:
His triumph in war over their enemies, His judgment upon the heathen.
But Amos, whose keynote has been that judgment begins at home, cries
woe upon such hopes, and tells his people that for them the day of
Jehovah is not victory, but rather insidious, importunate, inevitable
death. And this he describes as a man who has lived, alone with wild
beasts, from the jungles of the Jordan, where the lions lurk, to the
huts of the desert infested by snakes.
_Woe unto them that long for the day of Jehovah! What have you to do
with the day of Jehovah? It is darkness, and not light. As when a man
fleeth from the face of a lion, and a bear falls upon him; and he comes
into his home_,[317] _and_, breathless, _leans his hand upon the wall,
and a serpent bites him._ And then, as if appealing to Heaven for
confirmation: Is it not so? _Is it not darkness, the day of Jehovah,
and not light? storm darkness, and not a ray of light upon it?_
Then Amos returns to the worship, that nurse of their vain hopes,
that false prophet of peace, and he hears God speak more strongly
than ever of its futility and hatefulness.
_I hate, I loathe your feasts, and I will not smell the savour of your
gatherings to sacrifice._ For with pagan folly they still believed that
the smoke of their burnt-offerings went up to heaven and flattered the
nostrils of Deity. How ingrained was this belief may be judged by us
from the fact that the terms of it had to be adopted by the apostles
of a spiritual religion, if they would make themselves understood, and
are now the metaphors of the sacrifices of the Christian heart.[318]
_Though ye bring to Me burnt-offerings and your meal-offerings I will
not be pleased, or your thank-offerings of fatted calves, I will not
look at them. Let cease from Me the noise of thy songs; to the playing
of thy viols I will not listen. But let justice roll on like water, and
righteousness like an unfailing stream._
Then follows the remarkable appeal from the habits of this age
to those of the times of Israel's simplicity. _Was it flesh- or
meal-offerings that ye brought Me in the wilderness, forty years,
O house of Israel?_[319] That is to say, at the very time when God
made Israel His people, and led them safely to the promised land--the
time when of all others He did most for them--He was not moved to
such love and deliverance by the propitiatory bribes, which this
generation imagine to be so availing and indispensable. Nay, those
still shall not avail, for exile from the land shall now as surely
come in spite of them, as the possession of the land in old times
came without them. This at least seems to be the drift of the very
obscure verse which follows, and is the unmistakable statement of the
close of the oracle. _But ye shall lift up ... your king and ... your
god, images which you have made for yourselves;_[320] _and I will
carry you away into exile far beyond Damascus, saith Jehovah--God of
Hosts is His Name!_[321] So this chapter closes like the previous,
with the marshalling of God's armies. But as there His hosts were
the movements of Nature and the Great Stars, so here they are the
nations of the world. By His rule of both He is the God of Hosts.
3. "AT EASE IN ZION."
AMOS vi.
The evil of the national worship was the false political confidence
which it engendered. Leaving the ritual alone, Amos now proceeds to
assault this confidence. We are taken from the public worship of
the people to the private banquets of the rich, but again only in
order to have their security and extravagance contrasted with the
pestilence, the war and the captivity, that are rapidly approaching.
_Woe unto them that are at ease in Zion_[322]--it is a proud
and overweening ease which the word expresses--_and that trust
in the mount of Samaria! Men of mark of the first of the
peoples_--ironically, for that is Israel's opinion of itself--_and
to them do the house of Israel resort!_...[323] _Ye that put
off the day of calamity_[324] _and draw near the sessions of
injustice_[325]--an epigram and proverb, for it is the universal
way of men to wish and fancy far away the very crisis that their
sins are hastening on. Isaiah described this same generation as
drawing iniquity with cords of hypocrisy, and sin as it were
with a cart-rope! _That lie on ivory diwans and sprawl on their
couches_--another luxurious custom, which filled this rude shepherd
with contempt--_and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the
midst of the stall_[326]--that is, only the most delicate of
meats--_who prate_ or _purr_ or _babble to the sound of the viol,
and as if they were David_ himself _invent for them instruments of
song;_[327] _who drink wine by ewerfuls--waterpotfuls--and anoint
with the finest of oil--yet never do they grieve at the havoc of
Joseph!_ The havoc is the moral havoc, for the social structure of
Israel is obviously still secure.[328] The rich are indifferent to
it; they have wealth, art, patriotism, religion, but neither heart
for the poverty nor conscience for the sin of their people. We know
their kind! They are always with us, who live well and imagine they
are proportionally clever and refined. They have their political
zeal, will rally to an election when the interests of their class
or their trade is in danger. They have a robust and exuberant
patriotism, talk grandly of commerce, empire and the national
destiny; but for the real woes and sores of the people, the poverty,
the overwork, the drunkenness, the dissoluteness, which more affect a
nation's life than anything else, they have no pity and no care.
_Therefore now_--the double initial of judgment--_shall they go into
exile at the head of the exiles, and stilled shall be the revelry of
the dissolute_--literally _the sprawlers_, as in ver. 4, but used
here rather in the moral than in the physical sense. _Sworn hath the
Lord Jehovah by Himself--'tis the oracle of Jehovah God of Hosts: I
am loathing_[329] _the pride of Jacob, and his palaces do I hate, and
I will pack up a city and its fulness._[330]... _For, behold, Jehovah
is commanding, and He will smite the great house into ruins and the
small house into splinters._ The collapse must come, postpone it as
their fancy will, for it has been worked for and is inevitable. How
could it be otherwise? _Shall horses run on a cliff, or the sea be
ploughed by oxen_[331]--_that ye should turn justice to poison and
the fruit of righteousness to wormwood! Ye that exult in Lo-Debar
and say, By our own strength have we taken to ourselves Ḳarnaim._ So
Grätz rightly reads the verse. The Hebrew text and all the versions
take these names as if they were common nouns--Lo-Debar, _a thing
of nought_; Ḳarnaim, _a pair of horns_--and doubtless it was just
because of this possible play upon their names, that Amos selected
these two out of all the recent conquests of Israel. Karnaim, in
full Ashteroth Karnaim, _Astarte of Horns_, was that immemorial
fortress and sanctuary which lay out upon the great plateau of Bashan
towards Damascus; so obvious and cardinal a site that it appears
in the sacred history both in the earliest recorded campaign in
Abraham's time and in one of the latest under the Maccabees.[332]
Lo-Debar was of Gilead, and probably lay on that last rampart of
the province northward, overlooking the Yarmuk, a strategical point
which must have often been contested by Israel and Aram, and with
which no other Old Testament name has been identified.[333] These two
fortresses, with many others, Israel had lately taken from Aram; but
not, as they boasted, _by their own strength_. It was only Aram's
pre-occupation with Assyria now surgent on the northern flank,
which allowed Israel these easy victories. And this same northern
foe would soon overwhelm themselves. _For, behold, I am to raise
up against you, O house of Israel--'tis the oracle of Jehovah God
of the hosts_[334]--_a Nation, and they shall oppress you from the
Entrance of Hamath to the Torrent of the 'Arabah._ Every one knows
the former, the Pass between the Lebanons, at whose mouth stands Dan,
northern limit of Israel; but it is hard to identify the latter. If
Amos means to include Judah, we should have expected the Torrent of
Egypt, the present Wady el 'Arish; but the Wady of the 'Arabah may
be a corresponding valley in the eastern watershed issuing in the
'Arabah. If Amos threatens only the Northern Kingdom, he intends some
wady running down to that Sea of the 'Arabah, the Dead Sea, which is
elsewhere given as the limit of Israel.[335]
The Assyrian flood, then, was about to break, and the oracles close
with the hopeless prospect of the whole land submerged beneath it.
4. A FRAGMENT FROM THE PLAGUE.
In the above exposition we have omitted two very curious verses, 9
and 10, which are held by some critics to interrupt the current of
the chapter, and to reflect an entirely different kind of calamity
from that which it predicts. I do not think these critics right, for
reasons I am about to give; but the verses are so remarkable that it is
most convenient to treat them by themselves apart from the rest of the
chapter. Here they are, with the verse immediately in front of them.
_I am loathing the pride of Jacob, and his palaces I hate. And I
will give up a city and its fulness_ to ...(perhaps _siege_ or
_pestilence_?). _And it shall come to pass, if there be left ten men
in one house, and they die,_[336] ... _that his cousin_[337] _and
the man to burn him shall lift him to bring the body_[338] _out of
the house, and they shall say to one who is in the recesses of the
house_,[339] _Are there any more with thee? And he shall say, Not one
... and they shall say, Hush!_ (_for one must not make mention of the
name of Jehovah_).
This grim fragment is obscure in its relation to the context. But
the death of even so large a household as ten--the funeral left to a
distant relation--the disposal of the bodies by burning instead of
the burial customary among the Hebrews[340]--sufficiently reflect
the kind of calamity. It is a weird little bit of memory, the
recollection of an eye-witness, from one of those great pestilences
which, during the first half of the eighth century, happened not
seldom in Western Asia.[341] But what does it do here? Wellhausen
says that there is nothing to lead up to the incident; that before
it the chapter speaks, not of pestilence, but only of political
destruction by an enemy. This is not accurate. The phrase immediately
preceding may mean either _I will shut up a city and its fulness_,
in which case a siege is meant, and a siege was the possibility
both of famine and pestilence; or _I will give up the city and its
fulness_..., in which case a word or two may have been dropped,
as words have undoubtedly been dropped at the end of the next
verse, and one ought perhaps to add _to the pestilence_.[342] The
latter alternative is the more probable, and this may be one of the
passages, already alluded to,[343] in which the want of connection
with the preceding verses is to be explained, not upon the favourite
theory that there has been a violent intrusion into the text, but
upon the too much neglected hypothesis that some words have been lost.
The uncertainty of the text, however, does not weaken the impression
of its ghastly realism: the unclean and haunted house; the kinsman
and the body-burner afraid to search through the infected rooms,
and calling in muffled voice to the single survivor crouching in
some far corner of them, _Are there any more with thee?_ his reply,
_None_--himself the next! Yet these details are not the most weird.
Over all hangs a terror darker than the pestilence. _Shall there be
evil in a city and Jehovah not have done it?_ Such, as we have heard
from Amos, was the settled faith of the age. But in times of woe it
was held with an awful and a craven superstition. The whole of life
was believed to be overhung with loose accumulations of Divine anger.
And as in some fatal hollow in the high Alps, where any noise may
bring down the impending masses of snow, and the fearful traveller
hurries along in silence, so the men of that superstitious age
feared, when an evil like the plague was imminent, even to utter the
Deity's name, lest it should loosen some avalanche of His wrath. _And
he said, Hush! for_, adds the comment, one _must not make mention of
the name of Jehovah_.
This reveals another side of the popular religion which Amos has been
attacking. We have seen it as the sheer superstition of routine;
but we now know that it was a routine broken by panic. The God who
in times of peace was propitiated by regular supplies of savoury
sacrifice and flattery, is conceived, when His wrath is roused and
imminent, as kept quiet only by the silence of its miserable objects.
The false peace of ritual is tempered by panic.
FOOTNOTES:
[268] See above, pp. 82 ff. and pp. 89 ff.
[269] With the LXX. באשור for באשדוד.
[270] שד (ver. 10).
[271] Singular as in LXX., and not plural as in the M.T. and English
versions.
[272] Juvenal, _Satires_, I.
[273] _Vision of Piers Plowman._ Burgages=tenements.
[274] Or _The Enemy, and that right round the Land!_
[275] _In Damascus on a couch: on a Damascus couch: on a
Damascus-cloth couch:_ or _Damascus-fashion on a couch_--alternatives
all equally probable and equally beyond proof. The text is very
difficult, nor do the versions give help. (1) The consonants of
the word before _a couch_ spell _in Damascus_, and so the LXX.
take it. This would be in exact parallel to the _in Samaria_ of
the previous half of the clause. But although Jeroboam II. is
said to have recovered Damascus (2 Kings xiv. 28), this is not
necessarily the town itself, of whose occupation by Israel we have
no evidence, while Amos always assumes it to be Aramean, and here
he is addressing Israelites. Still retaining the name of the city,
we can take it with _couch_ as parallel, not to _in Samaria_, but
to _on the side of a diwan_; in that case the meaning may have been
_a Damascus couch_ (though as the two words stand it is impossible
to parse them, and Gen. xv. 2 cannot be quoted in support of this,
for it is too uncertain itself, being possibly a gloss, though it
is curious that as the two passages run the name Damascus should be
in the same strange grammatical conjunction in each), or possibly
_Damascus-fashion on a couch_, which (if the first half of the
clause, as some maintain, refers to some delicate or affected
posture then come into fashion) is the most probable rendering. (2)
The Massoretes have pointed, not _bedammeseq_ = _in Damascus_, but
_bedemesheq_, a form not found elsewhere, which some (Ges., Hitz.,
Ew., Rev. Eng. Ver., etc.) take to mean some Damascene stuff (as
perhaps our Damask and the Arabic _dimshaq_ originally meant, though
this is not certain), _e.g._ _silk_ or _velvet_ or _cushions_. (3)
Others rearrange the text. _E.g._ Hoffmann (_Z. A. T. W._, III. 102)
takes the whole clause away from ver. 12 and attaches it to ver. 13,
reading _O those who sit in Samaria on the edge of the diwan, and in
Damascus on a couch, hearken and testify against the house of Jacob_.
But, as Wellhausen points out, those addressed in ver. 13 are the
same as those addressed in ver. 9. Wellhausen prefers to believe that
after the words _children of Israel_, which end a sentence, something
has fallen out. The LXX. translator, who makes several blunders in
the course of this chapter, instead of translating ערשׂ couch, the
last word of the verse, merely transliterates it into ἱερεῖς!!
[276] Cf. vi. 4: _that lie on ivory diwans and sprawl on their
couches_.
[277] Van Lennep, _Bible Lands and Customs_, p. 460.
[278] See p. 205, _n._ 4.
[279] The words for hook in Hebrew--the two used above, צִנּוֹת and
סִירות; and a third, חוֹחַ--all mean originally _thorns_, doubtless
the first hooks of primitive man; but by this time they would signify
metal hooks--a change analogous to the English word _pen_.
[280] Cf. Isa. xxxvii. 29; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11. On the use
fish-hooks, Job xl. 26 (Heb.), xli. 2 (Eng.); Ezek. xxix. 4.
[281] The verb, which in the text is active, must be taken in the
passive. The word not translated above is הַהַרְמוֹנָה _unto the
Harmôn_, which name does not occur elsewhere. LXX. read εἰς τὸ ὄρος
τὸ Ῥομμάν, which Ewald renders _ye shall cast the Rimmon to the
mountain_ (cf. Isa. ii. 20), and he takes Rimmon to be the Syrian
goddess of love. Steiner (quoted by Wellhausen) renders _ye shall
be cast out to Hadad Rimmon_, that is, _violated as_ קדשֹות Hitzig
separates ההר from מונה, which he takes as contracted from מענה, and
renders _ye shall fling yourselves out on the mountains as a refuge_.
But none of these is satisfactory.
[282] I have already treated this passage in connection with Isaiah's
prophecies on women in the volume on Isaiah i.-xxxix. (Expositor's
Bible), Chap. XVI.
[283] Cf. chap. vi. 4.
[284] v. 11.
[285] vi. 8, 11.
[286] Cf. what was said on building above, p. 33.
[287] See p. 141.
[288] v. 26.
[289] v. 25.
[290] Another proof of how the spirit of ritualism tends to absorb
morality.
[291] Ver. 4: cf. 1 Sam. i.; Deut. xiv. 28. Wellhausen offers
another exegesis: Amos is describing exactly what took place at
Bethel--sacrifice on the morning, _i.e._ next to the day of their
arrival, tithes on the third day thereafter.
[292] See Wellhausen's note, and compare Lev. vii. 13.
[293] Matt. vi. 2.
[294] גֶשֶׁם: _Hist. Geog._, p. 64. It is interesting that this
year (1895) the same thing was threatened, according to a report in
the _Mittheilungen u. Nachrichten des D.P.V._, p. 44: "Nachdem es
im December einigemal recht stark geregnet hatte besonders an der
Meeresküste ist seit kurz vor Weihnachten das Wetter immer schön u.
mild geblieben, u. wenn nicht weiterer Regen fällt, so wird grosser
Wassermangel entstehen denn bis jetzt (16 Febr.) hat Niemand Cisterne
voll." The harvest is in April-May.
[295] Or in the fashion of Egypt, _i.e._ a thoroughly Egyptian
plague; so called, not with reference to the plagues of Egypt, but
because that country was always the nursery of the pestilence. See
_Hist. Geog._, p. 157 ff. Note how it comes with war.
[296] Apertly, openly.
[297] Men.
[298] Undo.
[299] _Hist. Geog._, Chap. iii., pp. 73 f.
[300] This and similar passages are dealt with by themselves in Chap.
XI.
[301] Cf. LXX.: Βαιθὴλ ἔσται ὡς οὐχ ὑπάρχουσα.
[302] The name Bethel is always printed as one word in our Hebrew
texts. See Baer on Gen. xii. 8.
[303] Wellhausen thinks _at Bethel_ not genuine. But Bethel has been
singled out as the place where the people put their false confidence,
and is naturally named here. LXX.: τῷ οἴκῳ Ἰσραήλ.
[304] Ver. 7 is plainly out of place here, as the LXX. perceived, and
therefore tried to give it another rendering which would make it seem
in place: ὁ ποιῶν εἰς ὕψος κρίμα, καὶ δικαιοσύνην εἰς γὴν ἔθηκεν.
So Ewald removed it to between vv. 9 and 10. There it begins well
another oracle; and it may be that we should insert before it הוי, as
in vv. 18, vi. 1.
[305] Literally _the Group_ and _the Giant_. כימה, Kimah, signifies
group, or little heap. Here it is rendered by Aq. and at Job ix. 9
by LXX. Ἀρκτοῦρος; and here by Theod. and in Job xxxviii. 31, _the
chain_, or _cluster, of the group_ Πλειάδες. The Targ. and Pesh. always
give it as Kima, _i.e._ Pleiades. And this is the rendering of most
moderns. But Stern takes it for Sirius with its constellation of the
Great Dog, for the reason that this is the brightest of all stars, and
therefore a more suitable fellow for Orion than the dimmer Pleiades can
be. כסיל, the Fool or Giant, is the Hebrew name of Ὠρίων, by which the
LXX. render it. Targum ניפלא. To the ancient world the constellation
looked like the figure of a giant fettered in heaven, "a fool so far as
he trusted in his bodily strength" (Dillmann). In later times he was
called Nimrod. His early setting came at the time of the early rains.
Cf. with the passage Job ix. 9 and xxxviii. 31.
[306] The abstract noun meaning _deep shadow_, LXX. σκιά, and
rendered _shadow of death_ by many modern versions.
[307] So LXX., reading שׁבר for שׁד; it improves the rhythm, and
escapes the awkward repetition of שׁד.
[308] So LXX.
[309] Possible alternative: _make stagnant_.
[310] _Vision of Piers Plowman_, Passus IV., l. 52. Cf. the whole
passage.
[311] Uncertain; Hitzig takes it as the apodosis of the previous
clause: _Ye shall have to take from him a present of corn_, _i.e._ as
alms.
[312] See above, p. 33.
[313] Cf. "Pecca fortiter."
[314] As, for instance, the prophet looks forward to in iii. 12.
[315] _God of Hosts_, perhaps an intrusion (?) between אדני and יהוה.
[316] I have ventured to rearrange the order of the clauses, which in
the original is evidently dislocated.
[317] Lit. _the house_.
[318] Eph. v. 2; etc.
[319] No one doubts that this verse is interrogative. But the
Authorised Eng. Ver. puts it in a form--_Have ye brought unto Me?_
etc.--which implies blame that they did not do so. Ewald was the
first to see that, as rendered above, an appeal to the forty years
was the real intention of the verse. So after him nearly all critics,
also the Revised Eng. Ver.: _Did ye bring unto Me?_ On the whole
question of the possibility of such an appeal see above, pp. 100
ff., and cf. Jer. vii. 22, which distinctly declares that in the
wilderness God prescribed no ritual to Israel.
[320] Ver. 26 is very difficult, for both the text and the rendering
of all the possible alternatives of it are quite uncertain. (1) As to
the _text_, the present division into words must be correct; at least
no other is possible. But the present order of the words is obviously
wrong. For _your images_ is evidently described by the relative
clause _which you have made_, and ought to stand next it. What then
is to be done with the two words that at present come between--_star
of your god_? Are they both a mere gloss, as Robertson Smith holds,
and therefore to be struck out? or should they precede the pair of
words, צלמיכם כיון, which they now follow? This is the order of
the text which the LXX. translator had before him, only for כון he
misread רֵיפָן or רֵיוָן: καὶ ἀνελάβετε τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ Μωλὸχ καὶ τὸ
ἄστρον τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑμῶν Ῥαιφάν [Ῥεφάν, Q], τοὺς τύπους αὐτῶν [om. AQ]
οὓς ἐποιήσατε ἑαυτοῖς. This arrangement has the further evidence in
its favour, that it brings _your god_ into proper parallel with _your
king_. The Hebrew text would then run thus:--
[אלהיכם כוכב] ואת מלככם סכות את ונשאתם
לכם עשיתם אשר צלמיכם כיון
(2) The translation of this text is equally difficult: not in the
verb ונשאתם, for both the grammar and the argument oblige us to
take it as future, _and ye shall lift up_; but in the two words
סכות and כיון. Are these common nouns, or proper names of deities
in apposition to _your king_ and _your god_? The LXX. takes סכות as
= _tabernacle_, and כיון as a proper name (Theodotion takes both as
proper names). The Auth. Eng. Ver. follows the LXX. (except that it
takes _king_ for the name _Moloch_). Schrader (_Stud. u. Krit._,
1874, 324; _K.A.T._, 442 f.) takes them as the consonants of Sakkut,
a name of the Assyrian god Adar, and of Kewan, the Assyrian name for
the planet Saturn: _Ye shall take up Sakkut your king and Kewan your
star-god, your images which_... Baethgen goes further and takes both
the מלך of מלכיכם and the צלם of צלמיכם as Moloch and Ṣelam, proper
names, in combination with Sakkut and Kewan (_Beitr. z. Sem. Rel._,
239). Now it is true that the Second Book of Kings implies that the
worship of the host of heaven existed in Samaria before its fall (2
Kings xvii. 16), but the introduction into Samaria of Assyrian gods
(among them Adar) is placed by it after the fall (2 Kings xvii. 31),
and besides, Amos does not elsewhere speak of the worship of foreign
gods, nor is the mention of them in any way necessary to the argument
here. On the contrary, even if Amos were to mention the worship of
idols by Israel, would he have selected at this point the Assyrian
ones? (See, however, Tiele, _Revue de l'Histoire des Religions_,
III., p. 211, who makes Koun and the planet Keiwan purely Phœnician
deities.) Some critics take סכות and כיון as common nouns in the
construct state. So Ewald, and so most recently Robertson Smith
(_O.T.J.C._, 2): _the shrine of your king and the stand of your
images_. This is more in harmony with the absence from the rest of
Amos of any hint as to the worship of idols, but an objection to it,
and a very strong one, is that the alleged common nouns are not found
elsewhere in Hebrew. In view of this conflicting evidence it is best
therefore to leave the words untranslated, as in the text above. It
is just possible that they may themselves be later insertions, for
the verse would read very well without them: _And ye shall lift up
your king and your images which you have made to yourselves_.
[321] The last clause is peculiar. Two clauses seem to have run into
one--_saith Jehovah, God of Hosts_, and _God of Hosts is His Name_.
The word שמו = _His Name_, may have been added to give the oracle the
same conclusion as the oracle at the end of the preceding chapter;
and it is not to be overlooked that שמו at the end of a clause
does not occur elsewhere in the book outside the three questioned
Doxologies iv. 13, v. 8, ix. 6. Further, see below, pp. 204 f.
[322] _In Zion_: "very suspicious," Cornill. But see pp. 135 f.
[323] I remove ver. 2 to a note, not that I am certain that it is
not by Amos--who can be dogmatic on such a point?--but because the
text of it, the place which it occupies, and its relation to the
facts of current history, all raise doubts. Moreover it is easily
detached from the context, without disturbing the flow of the
chapter, which indeed runs more equably without it. The Massoretic
text gives: _Pass over to Calneh, and see; and go thence to Hamath
Rabbah, and come down to Gath of the Philistines: are they better
than these kingdoms, or is their territory larger than yours?_
Presumably _these_ _kingdoms_ are Judah and Israel. But that can
only mean that Israel is the best of the peoples, a statement out
of harmony with the irony of ver. 1, and impossible in the mouth of
Amos. Geiger, therefore, proposes to read: "Are you better than these
kingdoms--_i.e._ Calneh, Hamath, Gath--or is your territory larger
than theirs?" But this is also unlikely, for Israel's territory was
much larger than Gath's. Besides, the question would have force only
if Calneh, Hamath and Gath had already fallen. Gath had, but it is
at least very questionable whether Hamath had. Therefore Schrader
(_K.A.T._, 444) rejects the whole verse; and Kuenen agrees that if we
are to understand Assyrian conquests, it is hardly possible to retain
the verses. Bickell's first argument against the verse, that it does
not fit into the metrical system of Amos vi. 1-7, is precarious; his
second, that it disturbs the grammar, which it makes to jump suddenly
from the third person in ver. 1 to the second in ver. 2, and back to
the third in ver. 3, is not worth anything, for such a jump occurs
within ver. 3 itself.
[324] Davidson, _Syntax_, § 100, R. 5.
[325] חמם שׁבת; LXX. σαββάτων ψευδῶν, on which hint Hoffmann renders
the verse: "you that daily demand the tribute of evil (cf. Ezek.
xvi. 33), and every Sabbath extort by violence." But this is both
unnecessary and opposed to viii. 5, which tells us no trade was done
on the Sabbath. שבת is to be taken in the common sense of sitting
in judgment (rather than with Wellhausen), in the sense of the
enthronement of wrong-doing.
[326] To this day, in some parts of Palestine, the general fold into
which the cattle are shut contains a portion railed off for calves
and lambs (cf. Dr. M. Blanckenhorn of Erlangen in the _Mittheilungen
u. Nachrichten_ of the D.P.V., 1895, p. 37, with a sketch). It must
be this to which Amos refers.
[327] Or perhaps _melodies_, _airs_.
[328] Of course, it is possible that here again, as in v. 15 and 16,
we have prophecy later than the disaster of 734, when Tiglath-Pileser
made a great _breach_ or _havoc_ in the body politic of Israel by
taking Gilead and Galilee captive. But this is scarcely probable,
for Amos almost everywhere lays stress upon the moral corruption of
Israel, as her real and essential danger.
[329] מתאב for מתעב.
[330] Some words must have dropped out here. For these and the
following verses 9 and 10 on the pestilence see pp. 178 ff.
[331] So Michaelis, יָם בְּבָקָר for בִּבְקָרִים.
[332] Gen. xiv. 5; 1 Macc. v. In the days of Eusebius and Jerome (4th
century) there were two places of the name: one of them doubtless the
present Tell Ashtara south of El-Merkez, the other distant from that
fourteen Roman miles.
[333] Along this ridge ran, and still runs, one of the most important
highways to the East, that from Beth-Shan by Gadera to Edrei. About
seven miles east from Gadera lies a village, Ibdar, "with a good
spring and some ancient remains" (Schumacher, _N. Ajlun_, 101).
Lo-Debar is mentioned in 2 Sam. ix. 45; xvii. 27; and doubtless the
Lidebir of Josh. xiii. 26 on the north border of Gilead is the same.
[334] With the article, an unusual form of the title. LXX. here
κύριος τῶν δυνάμεων.
[335] 2 Kings xiv. 25. The Torrent of the 'Arabah can scarcely be
the Torrent of the 'Arabim of Isa. xv. 7 for the latter was outside
Israel's territory, and the border between Moab and Edom. The LXX.
render _Torrent of the West_, τῶν δυσμῶν.
[336] Here there is evidently a gap in the text. The LXX. insert καὶ
ὑπολειφθήσονται ὁι κατάλοιποι; perhaps therefore the text originally
ran _and the survivors die_.
[337] Or _uncle_--that is, a distant relative, presumably because all
the near ones are dead.
[338] Literally _bones_.
[339] LXX. τοῖς προεστηκόσι: evidently in ignorance of the reading or
the meaning.
[340] The burning of a body was regarded, as we have seen (Amos
ii. 1), as a great sacrilege; and was practised, outside times of
pestilence only in cases of great criminals: Lev. xx. 14; xxi. 9;
Josh. vii. 25. Doughty (_Arabia Deserta_, 68) mentions a case in
which, in Medina, a Persian pilgrim was burned to death by an angry
crowd for defiling Mohammed's tomb.
[341] The Assyrian inscriptions record at least three--in 803, 765, 759.
[342] As in Psalm lxxviii. 50. הִסְגִּיר, to give up, is so seldom
used absolutely (Deut. xxxii. 30 is poetry and elliptic) that we may
well believe it was followed by words signifying to what the city was
to be given up.
[343] Pp. 141 f.