_DOOM OR DISCIPLINE?_
AMOS viii. 4-ix.
We now enter the Third Section of the Book of Amos: chaps. vii.-ix.
As we have already treated the first part of it--the group of four
visions, which probably formed the prophet's discourse at Bethel,
with the interlude of his adventure there (vii.-viii. 3)[344]--we may
pass at once to what remains: from viii. 4 to the end of the book.
This portion consists of groups of oracles more obscure in their
relations to each other than any we have yet studied, and probably
containing a number of verses which are not from Amos himself. They
open in a denunciation of the rich, which echoes previous oracles,
and soon pass to judgments of a kind already threatened, but now with
greater relentlessness. Then, just as all is at the darkest, lights
break; exceptions are made; the inevitable captivity is described no
more as doom, but as discipline; and, with only this preparation for
a change, we are swept out on a scene, in which, although the land
is strewn with the ruins that have been threatened, the sunshine of
a new day floods them; the promise of restoration is given; Nature
herself will be regenerated, and the whole life of Israel planted on
its own ground again.
Whether it was given to Amos himself to behold this day--whether
these last verses of the book were his "Nunc Dimittis," or the hope
of a later generation, which found his book intolerably severe,
and mingled with its judgments their own new mercies--we shall try
to discover further on. Meanwhile there is no doubt that we start
with the authentic oracles of the prophet. We know the ring of his
voice. To the tyranny of the rich, which he has so often lashed, he
now adds the greed and fraud of the traders; and he paints Israel's
doom in those shapes of earthquake, eclipse and famine with which
his own generation had recently become familiar. Note that in this
first group Amos employs only physical calamities, and says nothing
of war and captivity. If the standard which we have already applied
to the growth of his doctrine be correct, these ought therefore to
be counted among his earlier utterances. War and captivity follow in
chap. ix. That is to say, this Third Section follows the same line of
development as both the First and the Second.
1. EARTHQUAKE, ECLIPSE AND FAMINE.
AMOS viii. 4-14.
_Hear this, ye who trample the needy, and would put an end to_[345]
_the lowly of the land, saying, When will the New-Moon be over, that
we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, that we may open corn_ (_by
making small the measure, but large the weight, and falsifying the
fraudulent balances; buying the wretched for silver, and the needy
for a pair of shoes!_), _and that we may sell as grain the refuse
of the corn!_ The parenthesis puzzles, but is not impossible: in
the speed of his scorn, Amos might well interrupt the speech of the
merchants by these details of their fraud,[346] flinging these in
their teeth as they spoke. The existence at this date of the New-Moon
and Sabbath as days of rest from business is interesting; but even
more interesting is the peril to which they lie open. As in the
case of the Nazirites and the prophets, we see how the religious
institutions and opportunities of the people are threatened by
worldliness and greed. And, as in every other relevant passage of the
Old Testament, we have the interests of the Sabbath bound up in the
same cause with the interests of the poor. The Fourth Commandment
enforces the day of rest on behalf of the servants and bondsmen. When
a later prophet substitutes for religious fasts the ideals of social
service, he weds with the latter the security of the Sabbath from all
business.[347] So here Amos emphasises that the Sabbath is threatened
by the same worldliness and love of money which tramples on the
helpless. The interests of the Sabbath are the interests of the poor:
the enemies of the Sabbath are the enemies of the poor. And all this
illustrates our Saviour's saying, that _the Sabbath was made for man_.
But, as in the rest of the book, judgment again follows hard on sin.
_Sworn hath Jehovah by the pride of Jacob, Never shall I forget their
deeds._ It is as before. The chief spring of the prophet's inspiration
is his burning sense of the personal indignation of God against crimes
so abominable. God is the God of the poor, and His anger rises, as
we see the anger of Christ arise, heavy against their tyrants and
oppressors. Such sins are intolerable to Him. But the feeling of their
intolerableness is shared by the land itself, the very fabric of
nature; the earthquake is the proof of it. _For all this shall not the
land tremble and her every inhabitant mourn? and she shall rise like
the Nile in mass, and heave and sink like the Nile of Egypt._[348]
To the earthquake is added the eclipse: one had happened in 803, and
another in 763, the memory of which probably inspired the form of this
passage. _And it shall be in that day--'tis the oracle of the Lord
Jehovah--that I shall bring down the sun at noon, and cast darkness
on the earth in broad day._[349] _And I will turn your festivals into
mourning, and all your songs to a dirge. And I will bring up upon all
loins sackcloth and on every head baldness, and I will make it like the
mourning for an only son, and the end of it as a bitter day._
But the terrors of earthquake and eclipse are not sufficient for
doom, and famine is drawn upon.
_Lo, days are coming--'tis the oracle of the Lord Jehovah--that I
will send famine on the land, not a famine of bread nor a drouth of
water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah. And they shall wander
from sea to sea, and from the dark North to the Sunrise shall they
run to and fro, to seek the word of Jehovah, and they shall not find
it; ... who swear by Samaria's Guilt_--the golden calf in the house
of the kingdom at Bethel[350]--_and say, As liveth thy God, O Dan!
and, As liveth the way to Beersheba! and they shall fall and not rise
any more_. I have omitted ver. 13: _in that day shall the fair maids
faint and the youths for thirst_; and I append my reasons in a note.
Some part of the received text must go, for while vv. 11 and 12 speak
of a spiritual drought, the drought of 13 is physical. And ver. 14
follows 12 better than it follows 13. The oaths mentioned by Bethel,
Dan, Beersheba, are not specially those of young men and maidens,
but of the whole nation, that run from one end of the land to the
other, Dan to Beersheba, seeking for some word of Jehovah.[351] One
of the oaths, _As liveth the way to Beersheba_,[352] is so curious
that some have doubted if the text be correct. But strange as it may
appear to us to speak of the life of the lifeless, this often happens
among the Semites. To-day Arabs "swear _wa hyât_, 'by the life of,'
even of things inanimate; 'By the life of this fire, or of this
coffee.'"[353] And as Amos here tells us that the Israelite pilgrims
swore by the way to Beersheba, so do the Moslems affirm their oaths
by the sacred way to Mecca.
Thus Amos returns to the chief target of his shafts--the senseless,
corrupt worship of the national sanctuaries. And this time--perhaps
in remembrance of how they had silenced the word of God when he
brought it home to them at Bethel--he tells Israel that, with all
their running to and fro across the land, to shrine after shrine in
search of the word, they shall suffer from a famine and drouth of
it. Perhaps this is the most effective contrast in which Amos has
yet placed the stupid ritualism of his people. With so many things
to swear by; with so many holy places that once were the homes of
Vision, Abraham's Beersheba, Jacob's Bethel, Joshua's Gilgal--nay,
a whole land over which God's voice had broken in past ages, lavish
as the rain; with, too, all their assiduity of sacrifice and prayer,
they should nevertheless starve and pant for that living word of the
Lord, which they had silenced in His prophet.
Thus, men may be devoted to religion, may be loyal to their sacred
traditions and institutions, may haunt the holy associations of the
past and be very assiduous with their ritual--and yet, because of
their worldliness, pride and disobedience, never feel that moral
inspiration, that clear call to duty, that comfort in pain, that
hope in adversity, that good conscience at all times, which spring
up in the heart like living water. Where these be not experienced,
orthodoxy, zeal, lavish ritual, are all in vain.
2. NEMESIS.
AMOS ix. 1-6.
There follows a Vision in Bethel, the opening of which, _I saw
the Lord_, immediately recalls the great inauguration of Isaiah.
He also _saw the Lord_; but how different the Attitude, how other
the Word! To the statesman-prophet the Lord is _enthroned_,
surrounded by the court of heaven; and though the temple rocks to
the intolerable thunder of their praise, they bring to the contrite
man beneath the consciousness of a life-long mission. But to Amos
the Lord is _standing_ and alone--to this lonely prophet God is
always alone--and His message may be summed up in its initial word,
_Smite_. There--Government: hierarchies of service, embassies,
clemencies, healings, and though at first devastation, thereafter
the indestructible hope of a future. Here--Judgment: that Figure of
Fate which terror's fascinated eye ever sees alone; one final blow
and irreparable ruin. And so, as with Isaiah we saw how constructive
prophecy may be, with Amos we behold only the preparatory havoc, the
levelling and clearing of the ground of the future.
_I have seen the Lord standing over the Altar, and He said, Smite the
capital_--of the pillar--_that the very thresholds_[354] _quake, and
break them on the head of all of them!_ It is a shock that makes the
temple reel from roof-tree to basement. The vision seems subsequent
to the prophet's visit to Bethel; and it gathers his whole attack
on the national worship into one decisive and irreparable blow.
_The last of them will I slay with the sword: there shall not flee
away of them one fugitive: there shall not escape of them a_ single
_survivor!_ Neither hell nor heaven, mountain-top nor sea-bottom,
shall harbour one of them. _If they break through to Sheol, thence
shall My hand take them; and if they climb to heaven, thence shall
I bring them down. If they hide in Carmel's top, thence will I find
them out and fetch them; and if they conceal themselves from before
Mine eyes in the bottom of the sea, thence shall I charge the Serpent
and he shall bite them; and if they go into captivity before their
foes_--to Israel as terrible a distance from God's face as Sheol
itself!--_thence will I charge the sword and it shall slay them; and
I will set Mine eye upon them for evil and not for good_.
It is a ruder draft of the Hundred and Thirty-Ninth Psalm; but the
Divine Pursuer is Nemesis, and not Conscience.
_And the Lord, Jehovah of the Hosts; Who toucheth the earth and it
melteth, and all its inhabitants mourn, and it rises like the Nile,
all of it_ together, _and sinks like the Nile of Egypt; Who buildeth
His stories in the heavens, and His vault on the earth He foundeth;
Who calleth to the waters of the sea and poureth them forth on the
face of the earth--Jehovah_ of Hosts _is His Name_.[355]
3. THE VOICES OF ANOTHER DAWN.
AMOS ix. 7-15.
And now we are come to the part where, as it seems, voices of another
day mingle with that of Amos, and silence his judgments in the chorus
of their unbroken hope. At first, however, it is himself without
doubt who speaks. He takes up the now familiar truth, that when it
comes to judgment for sin, Israel is no dearer to Jehovah than any
other people of His equal Providence.
_Are ye not unto Me, O children of Israel--'tis the oracle of
Jehovah--just like the children of Kushites?_ mere black folk and far
away! _Did I not bring up Israel from Egypt, and the Philistines from
Caphtor, and Aram from Ḳir?_ Mark again the universal Providence which
Amos proclaims: it is the due concomitant of his universal morality.
Once for all the religion of Israel breaks from the characteristic
Semitic belief that gave a god to every people, and limited both his
power and his interests to that people's territory and fortunes. And
if we remember how everything spiritual in the religion of Israel,
everything in its significance for mankind, was rendered possible only
because at this date it broke from and abjured the particularism in
which it had been born, we shall feel some of the Titanic force of the
prophet, in whom that break was achieved with an absoluteness which
leaves nothing to be desired. But let us also emphasise, that it was by
no mere method of the intellect or observation of history that Amos was
led to assert the unity of the Divine Providence. The inspiration in
this was a moral one: Jehovah was ruler and guide of all the families
of mankind, because He was exalted in righteousness; and the field in
which that righteousness was proved and made manifest was the life and
the fate of Israel. Therefore to this Amos now turns. _Lo, the eyes of
the Lord Jehovah are on the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from
the face of the ground._ In other words, Jehovah's sovereignty over the
world was not proved by Israel's conquest of the latter, but by His
unflinching application of the principles of righteousness, at whatever
cost, to Israel herself.
Up to this point, then, the voice of Amos is unmistakable, uttering
the doctrine, so original to him, that in the judgment of God Israel
shall not be specially favoured, and the sentence, we have heard
so often from him, of her removal from her land. Remember, Amos
has not yet said a word in mitigation of the sentence: up to this
point of his book it has been presented as inexorable and final. But
now to a statement of it as absolute as any that has gone before,
there is suddenly added a qualification: _nevertheless I will not
utterly destroy the house of Jacob--'tis the oracle of Jehovah_.
And then there is added a new picture of exile changed from doom to
discipline, a process of sifting by which only the evil in Israel,
_all the sinners of My people_, shall perish, but not a grain of
the good. _For, lo, I am giving command, and I will toss the house
of Israel among all the nations, like_ something _that is tossed in
a sieve, but not a pebble_[356] _shall fall to earth. By the sword
shall die all the sinners of My people, they who say, The calamity
shall not reach nor anticipate us._[357]
Now as to these qualifications of the hitherto unmitigated judgments
of the book, it is to be noted that there is nothing in their language
to lead us to take them from Amos himself. On the contrary, the last
clause describes what he has always called a characteristic sin of his
day. Our only difficulties are that hitherto Amos has never qualified
his sentences of doom, and that the change now appears so suddenly that
the two halves of the verse in which it does so absolutely contradict
each other. Read them again, ver. 8: _Lo, the eyes of the Lord Jehovah
are on the sinful nation, and I will destroy it from off the face of
the ground--nevertheless destroying I shall not destroy the house of
Jacob: 'tis the oracle of Jehovah._ Can we believe the same prophet to
have uttered at the same time these two statements? And is it possible
to believe that prophet to be the hitherto unwavering, unqualifying
Amos? Noting these things, let us pass to the rest of the chapter.
We break from all shadows; the verses are verses of pure hope. The
judgment on Israel is not averted; but having taken place her ruin is
regarded as not irreparable.
_In that day_--the day Amos has threatened of overthrow and ruin--_I
will raise again the fallen hut of David and will close up its
breaches, and his ruins I will raise, and I will build it up as in the
days of old_,[358] _that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all
the nations upon whom My Name has been called_--that is, as once their
Possessor--_'tis the oracle of Jehovah, He who is about to do this_.
The _fallen hut of David_ undoubtedly means the fall of the kingdom
of Judah. It is not language Amos uses, or, as it seems to me, could
have used, of the fall of the Northern Kingdom only.[359] Again,
it is undoubted that Amos contemplated the fall of Judah: this is
implicit in such a phrase as _the whole family that I brought up
from Egypt_.[360] He saw then _the day_ and _the ruins_ of which
ver. 11 speaks. The only question is, can we attribute to him the
prediction of a restoration of these ruins? And this is a question
which must be answered in face of the facts that the rest of his book
is unrelieved by a single gleam of hope, and that his threat of the
nation's destruction is absolute and final. Now it is significant
that in face of those facts Cornill (though he has changed his
opinion) once believed it was "surely possible for Amos to include
restoration in his prospect of ruin," as (he might have added) other
prophets undoubtedly do. I confess I cannot so readily get over the
rest of the book and its gloom; and am the less inclined to be sure
about these verses being Amos' own that it seems to have been not
unusual for later generations, for whom the daystar was beginning to
rise, to add their own inspired hopes to the unrelieved threats of
their predecessors of the midnight. The mention of Edom does not help
us much: in the days of Amos after the partial conquest by Uzziah
the promise of _the rest of Edom_ was singularly appropriate. On the
other hand, what interest had so purely ethical a prophet in the mere
addition of territory? To this point we shall have to return for our
final decision. We have still the closing oracle--a very pleasant
piece of music, as if the birds had come out after the thunderstorm,
and the wet hills were glistening in the sunshine.
_Lo, days are coming--'tis the oracle of Jehovah--when the ploughman
shall catch up the reaper, and the grape-treader him that streweth the
seed._ The seasons shall jostle each other, harvest following hard
upon seed-time, vintage upon spring. It is that "happy contention
of seasons" which Josephus describes as the perpetual blessing of
Galilee.[361] _And the mountains shall drip with new wine, and all the
hills shall flow down. And I will bring back the captivity of My people
Israel, and they shall build the waste cities and dwell_ in them, _and
plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof, and make gardens and eat
their fruits. And I will plant them on their own ground; and they shall
not be uprooted any more from their own ground which I have given to
them, saith Jehovah thy God._[362] Again we meet the difficulty: does
the voice that speaks here speak with captivity already realised? or is
it the voice of one who projects himself forward to a day, which, by
the oath of the Lord Himself, is certain to come?
* * * * *
We have now surveyed the whole of this much-doubted, much-defended
passage. I have stated fully the arguments on both sides. On the one
hand, we have the fact that nothing in the language of the verses,
and nothing in their historical allusions, precludes their being by
Amos; we have also to admit that, having threatened a day of ruin,
it was possible for Amos to realise by his mind's eye its arrival,
and standing at that point to see the sunshine flooding the ruins and
to prophesy a restoration. In all this there is nothing impossible
in itself or inconsistent with the rest of the book. On the other
hand, we have the impressive and incommensurable facts: _first_, that
this change to hope comes suddenly, without preparation and without
statement of reasons, at the very end of a book whose characteristics
are not only a final and absolute sentence of ruin upon the people,
and an outlook of unrelieved darkness, but scornful discouragement of
every popular vision of a prosperous future; and, _second_, that the
prophetic books contain numerous signs that later generations wove
their own brighter hopes into the abrupt and hopeless conclusions of
prophecies of judgment.
To this balance of evidence is there anything to add? I think there
is; and that it decides the question. All these prospects of the
future restoration of Israel are absolutely without a moral feature.
They speak of return from captivity, of political restoration, of
supremacy over the Gentiles, and of a revived Nature, hanging with
fruit, dripping with must. Such hopes are natural and legitimate to
a people who were long separated from their devastated and neglected
land, and whose punishment and penitence were accomplished. But they
are not natural to a prophet like Amos. Imagine him predicting a future
like this! Imagine him describing the consummation of his people's
history, without mentioning one of those moral triumphs to rally his
people to which his whole passion and energy had been devoted. To me
it is impossible to hear the voice that cried, _Let justice roll on
like waters and righteousness like a perennial stream_, in a peroration
which is content to tell of mountains dripping with must and of a
people satisfied with vineyards and gardens. These are legitimate
hopes; but they are the hopes of a generation of other conditions and
of other deserts than the generation of Amos.
If then the gloom of this great book is turned into light, such a
change is not due to Amos.
FOOTNOTES:
[344] See Chapter VI., Section 3.
[345] The phrase is uncertain.
[346] Wellhausen thinks that the prophet could not have put the
parenthesis in the mouth of the traders, and therefore regards it as
an intrusion or gloss. But this is hypercriticism. The last clause,
however, may be a mere clerical repetition of ii. 6.
[347] Isa. lviii. See the exposition of the passage in the writer's
_Isaiah_ xl.-lxvi. (Expositor's Bible Series), pp. 417 ff.: "Our
prophet, while exalting the practical service of man at the expense
of certain religious forms, equally exalts the observance of the
Sabbath; ... he places the keeping of the Sabbath on a level with the
practice of love."
[348] _She shall rise_, etc.--The clause is almost the same as in ix.
5_b_, and the text differs from the LXX., which omits _and heave_. Is
it an insertion?
[349] Literally _in the day of light_.
[350] That is, Samaria is used in the wider sense of the kingdom, not
the capital, and there is no need for Wellhausen's substitution of
Bethel for it.
[351] This in answer to Gunning (_De Godspraken van Amos_, 1885),
Wellh. _in loco_, and König (_Einleitung_, p. 304, _d_), who reckon
vv. 11 and 12 to be the insertion: the latter on the additional
ground that the formula of ver. 13, _in that day_, points back to
ver. 9; but not to the _Lo, days are coming_ of ver. 11. But thus
to miss out vv. 11 and 12 leaves us with greater difficulties than
before. For without them how are we to explain the _thirst_ of ver.
13. It is left unintroduced; there is no hint of a drought in 9
and 10. It seems to me then that, since we must omit some verse,
it ought to be ver. 13; and this the rather that if omitted it is
not missed. It is just the kind of general statement that would be
added by an unthinking scribe; and it does not readily connect with
ver. 14, while ver. 12 does do so. For why should youths and maids
be specially singled out as swearing by Samaria, Dan and Beersheba?
These were the oaths of the whole people, to whom vv. 11 and 12
refer. I see a very clear case, therefore, for omitting ver. 13.
[352] LXX. here gives a mere repetition of the preceding oath.
[353] Doughty: _Arabia Deserta_ I. 269.
[354] Since it is the capital that has been struck, and the command
is given to break _the thresholds on the head of all of them_, many
translate _lintels_ or _architraves_ instead of _thresholds_ (_e.g._
Hitzig, and Guthe in Kautzsch's _Bibel_). But the word סִפִּים always
means thresholds and the blow here is fundamental.
[355] LXX. adds _of Hosts_: on the whole passage see next chapter.
[356] We should have expected _a grain_, but the word צְרֹור only
means small stone: cf. 2 Sam. xvii. 13. The LXX. has here σύντριμμα,
fracture, ruin. Cf. _Z.A.T.W._, III. 125.
[357] The text has been disturbed here; the verbs are in forms not
possible to the sense. For תַּגִּישׁ read either תָּשׂיג with Hitzig
or תִּגַּשׁ with Wellhausen. תַּקְדִּים, Hiph., is not impossible in
an intransitive sense, but probably Wellhausen is right in reading
Pi, תְּקַדֵּם. The reading עדינו which the Greek suggests and
Hoffmann and Wellhausen adopt is not so appropriate to the preceding
verb as בעדינו of the text.
[358] The text reads _their breaches_, and some accordingly point
סֻכַּת _hut_, as if it were the plural _huts_ (Hoffmann, _Z.A.T.W._,
1883, 125; Schwally, _id._, 1890, 226, n. 1; Guthe in Kautzsch's
_Bibel_). The LXX. has the sing., and it is easy to see how the
plur. fem. suffix may have risen from confusion with the following
conjunction.
[359] This against Cornill, _Einleitung_, 176.
[360] iii. 1.
[361] III. _Wars_, x. 8. With the above verses of the Book of Amos Lev.
xxvi. 5 has been compared: "your threshing shall reach to the vintage
and the vintage to the sowing time." But there is no reason to suppose
that either of two so natural passages depends on the other.
[362] LXX. _God of Hosts_.