_AMOS, HOSEA, AND THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL_
2 KINGS xiv. 23-29; xv. 8-12
"In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt
What makes a nation happy and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat."
MILTON, _Paradise Regained_.
"We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of Fate:
But the soul is still oracular: amid the market's din
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,
'They enslave their children's children who make compromise with
sin.'"
LOWELL.
Amos and Hosea are the two earliest prophets whose "burdens" have come
down to us. From them we gain a near insight into the internal
condition of Israel in this day of her prosperity.
We see, first, that the prosperity was not unbroken. Though peace
reigned, the people were not left to lapse unwarned into sloth and
godlessness. The land had suffered from the horrible scourge of locusts,
until every _carmel_--every garden of God on hill and plain--withered
before them.[313] There had been widespread conflagrations;[314] there
had been a visitation of pestilence; and, finally, there had been an
earthquake so violent that it constituted an epoch from which dates
were reckoned.[315] There were also two eclipses of the sun, which
darkened with fear the minds of the superstitious.[316]
Nor was this the worst. Civilisation and commerce had brought luxury in
their train, and all the bonds of morality had been relaxed. The country
began to be comparatively depleted, and the innocent regularity of
agricultural pursuits palled upon the young, who were seduced by the
glittering excitement of the growing towns. All zeal for religion was
looked on as archaic, and the splendour of formal services was regarded
as a sufficient recognition of such gods as there were. As a natural
consequence, the nobles and the wealthy classes were more and more
infected with a gross materialism, which displayed itself in
ostentatious furniture, and sumptuous palaces of precious marbles inlaid
with ivory. The desire for such vanities increased the thirst for gold,
and avarice replenished its exhausted coffers by grinding the faces of
the poor, by defrauding the hireling of his wages, by selling the
righteous for silver, the needy for handfuls of barley, and the poor for
a pair of shoes. The degrading vice of intoxication acquired fresh
vogue, and the gorgeous gluttonies of the rich were further disgraced by
the shameful spectacle of drunkards, who lolled for hours over the
revelries which were inflamed by voluptuous music. Worst of all, the
purity of family life was invaded and broken down. Throwing aside the
old veiled seclusion of women in Oriental life, the ladies of Israel
showed themselves in the streets in all "the bravery of their tinkling
ornaments of gold," and sank into the adulterous courses stimulated by
their pampered effrontery.
Such is the picture which we draw from the burning denunciations of the
peasant-prophet of Tekoa. He was no prophet nor prophet's son, but a
humble gatherer of sycomore-fruit, a toil which only fell to the
humblest of the people.[317] Who is not afraid, he asks, when a lion
roars? and how can a prophet be silent when the Lord God has spoken?
Indignation had transformed and dilated him from a labourer into a seer,
and had summoned him from the pastoral shades of his native
village--whether in Judah or in Israel is uncertain--to denounce the
more flagrant iniquities of the Northern capital.[318] First he
proclaims the vengeance of Jehovah upon the transgressions of the
Philistines, of Tyre, of Edom, of Ammon, of Moab, and even of Judah; and
then he turns with a crash upon apostatising Israel.[319] He speaks with
unsparing plainness of their pitiless greed, their shameless debauchery,
their exacting usury, their attempts to pervert even the abstinent
Nazarites into intemperance, and to silence the prophets by opposition
and obloquy. Jehovah was crushed under their violence.[320] And did they
think to go unscathed after such black ingratitude? Nay! their mightiest
should flee away naked in the day of defeat. Robbery was in their houses
of ivory, and the few of them who should escape the spoiler should only
be as when a shepherd tears out of the mouth of a lion two legs and a
piece of an ear?[321] As for Bethel, their shrine--which he calls
Bethaven, "House of Vanity," not Bethel, "House of God"--the horns of
its altars should be cut off. Should oppression and licentiousness
flourish? Jehovah would take them with hooks, and their children with
fish-hooks, and their sacrifices at Bethel and Gilgal should be utterly
unavailing. Drought, and blasting, and mildew, and wasting plague, and
earth-convulsions like those which had swallowed Sodom and Gomorrha,
from which they should only be plucked as a "firebrand out of the
burning," should warn them that they must prepare to meet their
God.[322] It was lamentable; but lamentation was vain, unless they would
return to Jehovah, Lord of hosts,[323] and abandon the false worship of
Bethel, Beersheba, and Gilgal, and listen to the voice of the righteous,
whom they now abhorred for his rebukes. They talked hypocritically about
"the day of the Lord," but to them it should be blackness. They relied
on feast days, and services, and sacrifices; but since they would not
give the sacrifice of judgment and righteousness, for which alone God
cared, they should be carried into captivity beyond Damascus: yes! even
to that terrible Assyria with whose king they now were on friendly
terms. They lay at ease on their carved couches at their delicate
feasts, draining the wine-bowls, and glistering with fragrant oils,
heedless of the impending doom which would smite the great house with
breaches and the little house with clefts, and which should bring upon
them an avenger who should afflict them from their conquered Hamath
southwards even to the wady of the wilderness.[324] The threatened
judgments of locusts and fire had been mitigated at the prophet's
prayer, but nothing could avert the plumb-line of destruction which
Jehovah held over them, and He would rise against the House of Jeroboam
with His sword.[325] We infer from all that Amos and Hosea say that the
calf-worship at Bethel (for Dan is not mentioned in this connexion[326])
had degenerated into an idolatry far more abject than it originally
was. The familiarity of such multitudes of the people with Baal-worship
and Asherah-worship had tended to obliterate the sense that the "calves"
were cherubic emblems of Jehovah; and were it not for some confusions of
this kind, it is inconceivable that Jehoram ben-Jehu should have
restored the Asherah which his father had removed. Be that as it may,
Bethel and Gilgal seem to have become centres of corruption. Dan is
scarcely once alluded to as a scene of the calf-worship.
Others, then, might be deceived by the surface-glitter of extended
empire in the days of Jeroboam II. Not so the true prophets. It has
often happened--as to Persia, when, in B.C. 388, she dictated the
Peace of Antalcidas, and to Papal Rome in the days of the Jubilee of
1300, and to Philip II. of Spain in the year of the Armada, and to
Louis XIV. in 1667--that a nation has seemed to be at its zenith of
pomp and power on the very eve of some tremendous catastrophe. Amos
and Hosea saw that such a catastrophe was at hand for Israel, because
they knew that Divine punishment inevitably dogs the heels of
insolence and crime. The loftiness of Israel's privilege involved the
utterness of her ruin. "You only have I known of all the families of
the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities."[327]
Such prophecies, so eloquent, so uncompromising, so varied, and so
constantly disseminated among the people, first by public harangues,
then in writing, could no longer be neglected. Amos, with his natural
culture, his rhythmic utterances, and his inextinguishable fire, was far
different from the wild fanatics, with their hairy garments, and sudden
movements, and long locks, and cries, and self-inflicted wounds, with
whom Israel had been familiar since the days of Elijah whom they all
imitated. So long as this inspired peasant confined himself to moral
denunciations the aristocracy and priesthood of Samaria could afford
comfortably to despise him. What were moral denunciations to them? What
harm was there in ivory palaces and refined feasts? This man was a mere
red socialist who tried to undermine the customs of society. The hold of
the upper classes on the people, whom their exactions had burdened with
hopeless debt, and whom they could with impunity crush into slavery, was
too strong to be shaken by the "hysteric gush" of a philanthropic
faddist and temperance fanatic like this. But when he had the enormous
presumption to mention publicly the name of their victorious king, and
to say that Jehovah would rise against him with the sword, it was time
for the clergy to interfere, and to send the intruder back to his native
obscurity.
So Amaziah, the priest of Bethel,[328] invoked the king's authority.
"Amos," he said to the king, "hath conspired against thee in the midst
of the house of Israel." The charge was grossly false, but it did well
enough to serve the priest's purpose. "The land is not able to bear
all his words."
That was true; for when nations have chosen to abide by their own
vicious courses, and refuse to listen to the voice of warning, they
are impatient of rebuke. They refuse to hear when God calls to them.
"For when we in our viciousness grow hard,
Oh misery on it! the wise gods seal our eyes;
In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us
Adore our errors; laugh at us while we strut
To our confusion."
The priest tried further to inflame the king's anger by telling him
two more of Amos's supposed predictions. He had prophesied (which was
a false inference) that Israel should be led away captive out of their
own land,[329] and had also prophesied (which was a perversion of the
fact) "that Jeroboam _should die_ by the sword."
At the first prophecy Jeroboam probably smiled. It might indeed come
true in the long-run. If he was a man of prescience as well as of
prowess, he probably foresaw that the elements of ruin lurked in his
transient success, and that though, for the present, Assyria was
occupied in other directions, it was unlikely that the weaker Israel
would escape the fate of the far more powerful Syria. As for the
personal prophecy, he was strong, and was honoured, and had his army
and his guards. He would take his chance. Nor does it seem to have
troubled any one that Amos looked for the ultimate union of Israel
with Judah. Since the time of Joash the inheritance of David had been
but as "a ruined booth" (ix. 11); but Amos prophesied its restoration.
This touch may have been added later, when he wrote and published his
"burdens"; but he did not hesitate to speak as if the two kingdoms
were really and properly one.[330]
We are not told that Jeroboam II. interfered with the prophet in any
way.[331] Had he done so, he would have been rebuked and denounced for
it. He probably went no further than to allow the priest and the
prophet to settle the matter between themselves. Perhaps he gave a
contemptuous permission that, if Amaziah thought it worth while to
send the prophet back into Judah, he might do so.
Armed with this nonchalant mandate, Amaziah, with more mildness and
good-humour than might have been expected from one of his class, said
to Amos, "O Seer,[332] go home, and eat thy bread, and prophesy to thy
heart's content at home; but do not prophesy any more at Bethel, for
it is the king's sanctuary and the king's court."
Amos obeyed perforce, but stopped to say that he had not prophesied
out of his own mouth, but by Jehovah's bidding. He then hurled at the
priest a message of doom as frightful as that which Jeremiah
pronounced upon Pashur, when that priest smote him on the face. His
wife should be a harlot in the city; his sons and daughters should be
slain; his inheritance should be divided; he should die in a polluted
land; and Israel should go into captivity. And as for his mission, he
justified it by the fact that he was not one of an hereditary or a
professional community; he was no prophet or prophet's son. Such men
might--like Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, and his four hundred
abettors--be led into mere function and professionalism, into
manufactured enthusiasm and simulated inspiration. From such
communities freshness, unconventionality, courage, were hardly to be
expected. They would philippise at times; they would get to love their
order and their privileges better than their message, and themselves
best of all. It is the tendency of organised bodies to be tempted into
conventionality, and to sink into banded unions chiefly concerned in
the protection of their own prestige. Not such was Amos. He was a
peasant herdsman in whose heart had burned the inspiration of Jehovah
and the wrath against moral misdoing till they had burst into flame.
It was indignation against iniquity which had called Amos from the
flocks and the sycomores to launch against an apostatising people the
menace of doom. In that grief and indignation he heard the voice and
received the mandate of the Lord of hosts. He heads the long line of
literary prophets whose priceless utterances are preserved in the Old
Testament. The inestimable value of their teaching lies most of all in
the fact that they were--like Moses--preachers of the moral law; and
that, like the Book of the Covenant, which is the most ancient and the
most valuable part of the Laws of the Pentateuch, they count external
service as no better than the small dust of the balance in comparison
with righteousness and true holiness.
The rest of the predictions of Amos were added at a later date. They
dwelt on the certainty and the awful details of the coming overthrow;
the doom of the idolaters of Gilgal and Beersheba; the inevitable
swiftness of the catastrophe in which Samaria should be sifted like
corn in a sieve in spite of her incorrigible security.[333] Yet the
ruin should not be absolute. "Thus saith Jehovah: As the shepherd
teareth out of the mouth of the lion two legs and the piece of an ear,
so shall the children of Israel be rescued, that sit in Samaria on the
corner of a couch, and on the damask of a bed."
The Hebrew Prophets almost invariably weave together the triple strands
of warning, exhortation, and hope. Hitherto Amos has not had a word of
hope to utter. At last, however, he lets a glimpse of the rainbow
irradiate the gloom. The overthrow of Israel should be accompanied by
the restoration of the fallen booth of David, and, under the rule of a
scion of that house, Israel should return from captivity to enjoy days
of peaceful happiness, and to be rooted up no more.[334]
* * * * *
Hosea, the son of Beeri, was of a somewhat later date than Amos. He,
too, "became electric," to flash into meaner and corrupted minds the
conviction that formalism is nothing, and that moral sincerity is all
in all. That which God requires is not ritual service, but truth in
the inward parts. He is one of the saddest of the prophets; but
though he mingles prophecies of mercy with his menaces of wrath, the
general tenor of his oracles is the same. He pictures the crimes of
Ephraim by the image of domestic unfaithfulness, and bids Judah to
take warning from the curse involved in her apostasy.[335] Many of his
allusions touch upon the days of that deluge of anarchy which followed
the death of Jeroboam II. (iv.-vi. 3). That he was a Northerner
appears from the fact that he speaks of the King of Israel as "our
king" (vii. 5). Yet he seems to blame the revolt of Jeroboam I. (i.
11, viii. 4), although a prophet had originated it, and he openly
aspires after the reunion of the Twelve Tribes under a king of the
House of David (iii. 5). He points more distinctly to Assyria, which
he frequently names as the scourge of the Divine vengeance, and
indicates how vain is the hope of the party which relied on the
alliance of Egypt.[336] He speaks with far more distinct contempt of
the cherub at Bethel and the shrine at Gilgal, and says scornfully,
"Thy calf, O Samaria, has cast thee off."[337] Shalmaneser had taken
Beth-Arbel, and dashed to pieces mother and children. Such would be
the fate of the cities of Israel.[338] Yet Hosea, like Amos, cannot
conclude with words of wrath and woe, and he ends with a lovely song
of the days when Ephraim should be restored, after her true
repentance, by the loving tenderness of God.
Jeroboam II. must have been aware of some at least of these prophecies.
Those of Hosea must have impressed him all the more because Hosea was a
prophet of his own kingdom, and all of his allusions were to such
ancient and famous shrines of Ephraim as Mizpeh, Tabor, Bethel, Gilgal,
Shechem,[339] Jezreel, and Lebanon. He was the Jeremiah of the North,
and a passionate patriotism breathes through his melancholy strains. Yet
in the powerful rule of Jeroboam II. he can only see a godless
militarism founded upon massacre (i. 4), and he felt himself to be the
prophet of decadence. Page after page rings with wailing, and with
denunciations of drunkenness, robbery, and whoredom--"swearing, lying,
killing, stealing, and adultery" (iv. 2).
If Jeroboam was as wise and great as he seemed to have been, he must
have seen with his own eyes the ominous clouds on the far horizon, and
the deep-seated corruption which was eating like a cancer into the
heart of his people. Probably, like many another great sovereign--like
Marcus Aurelius when he noted the worthlessness of his son Commodus,
like Charlemagne when he burst into tears at the sight of the ships of
the Vikings--his thoughts were like those of the ancient and modern
proverbs--"When I am dead, let earth be mixed with fire." We have no
trace that Jeroboam treated Hosea as did those guilty priests to whom
he was a rebuke, and who called him "a fool" and "mad" (ix. 7, 8, iv.
6-8, v. 2). Yet the aged king--he must have reached the unusual age
of seventy-three at least, before he ended the longest and most
successful reign in the annals of Israel--could hardly have
anticipated that within half a year of his death his secure throne
would be shaken to its foundation, his dynasty be hurled into
oblivion, and that Israel, to whom, as long as he lived, mighty
kingdoms had curtsied, should,
"Like a forlorn and desperate castaway,
Do shameful execution on herself."
Yet so it was. Jeroboam II. was succeeded by no less than six other
kings, but he was the last who died a natural death. Every one of his
successors fell a victim to the assassin or the conqueror. His son
Zachariah ("Remembered by Jehovah") succeeded him (B.C. 740), the
fourth in descent from Jehu. Considering the long reign of his father,
he must have ascended the throne at a mature age. But he was the child
of evil times. That he should not interrupt the "calf"-worship was a
matter of course; but if he be the king of whom we catch a glimpse in
Hos. vii. 2-7, we see that he partook deeply of the depravity of his
day. We are there presented with a deplorable picture. There was
thievishness at home, and bands of marauding bandits began to appear
from abroad. The king was surrounded by a desperate knot of wicked
counsellors, who fooled him to the top of his bent, and corrupted him
to the utmost of his capacity. They were all scorners and adulterers,
whose furious passions the prophet compares to the glowing heat of an
oven heated by the baker. They made the king glad with their
wickedness, and the princes with lying flatteries. On the royal
birthday, apparently at some public feast, this band of infamous
revellers, who were the boon companions of Zachariah, first made him
sick with bottles of wine, and then having set an ambush in waiting,
murdered the effeminate and self-indulgent debauchee before all the
people.[340] The scene reads like the assassination of a Commodus or
an Elagabalus. No one was likely to raise a hand in his favour. Like
our Edward II., he was a weakling who followed a great and warlike
father. It was evident that troublous times were near at hand, and
nothing but the worst disasters could ensue if there was no one better
than such a drunkard as Zachariah to stand at the helm of state.
So did the dynasty of the mighty Jehu expire like a torch blown out in
stench and smoke.
Its close is memorable most of all because it evoked the magnificent
moral and spiritual teaching of Hebrew prophecy. The ideal prophet and
the ordinary priest are as necessarily opposed to each other as the
saint and the formalist. The glory of prophecy lies in its recognition
that right is always right, and wrong always wrong, apart from all
expediency and all casuistry, apart from "all prejudices, private
interests, and partial affections." "What Jehovah demands," they
taught, "is righteousness--neither more nor less; what He hates is
injustice. Sin or offence to the Deity is a thing of purely moral
character. Morality is that for the sake of which all other things
exist; it is the most essential element of all sincere religion. It is
no postulate, no idea, but a necessity and a fact; the most intensely
living of human powers--Jehovah, the God of hosts. In wrath, in ruin,
this holy reality makes its existence known; it annihilates all that
is hollow and false."[341]
FOOTNOTES:
[313] Amos vii. 1. Famine (iv. 6); drought (iv. 7, 8); yellow blight
and locusts (iv. 9); pestilence (iv. 10); earthquake and burning (iv.
11).
[314] Amos vii. 4.
[315] Amos i. 1, iii. 14, iv. 11, viii 8; Zech. xiv. 5: "Ye shall flee
like as ye fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah." Josephus
says that in an earthquake a little before the birth of Christ ten
thousand were buried under the ruined houses (_Antt._, XV. v. 2), and
he has many Rabbinic haggadoth to tell us about the earthquake, which,
he says, happened at the moment when Uzziah burnt incense in the
Temple (_Antt._, IX. x. 4).
[316] According to Hind, they took place on June 15th, B.C. 763, and
February 9th, B.C. 784. Amos alludes to the capture of Gath by Uzziah,
of Calneh (_Ktesiphon_), and of Hamath (vi. 2; 2 Chron. xxvi. 6). Gath
henceforth disappears from the Philistian Pentapolis (Amos i. 7, 8;
Zeph. ii. 4; Zech. ix. 5).
[317] Or "dresser of sycomore-trees" (R.V.). LXX., κνίζων συκάμινα;
Vulg., _vellicans sycomoros_. The sycomore-fruit (fruit of the _Ficus
sycomorus_, or wild fig) is ripened by puncturing it (Theoph., _H.
Plant._, iv. 2; Pliny, _H. N._, xiii. 14).
[318] The well-known town of Tekoa had been Solomon's horse-fair, and
had been fortified by Rehoboam (2 Chron. xi. 6). It lay in a wild
country six miles south of Bethlehem (2 Chron. xx. 20; 1 Macc. ix. 33;
Robinson, _Bibl. Res._, i. 486). For a fuller account of these
prophets, I must refer to my book on _The Minor Prophets_ in the "Men
of the Bible" Series. It has always been assumed that Amos belonged to
the well-known Tekoa, and was therefore a subject of the Southern
Kingdom. In recent days this has become uncertain. No sycomores grow
or can grow on the bleak uplands of Tekoa (Tristram, _Nat. Hist. of
the Bible_, p. 397); so that Jerome, in his preface to Amos, thinks
that "brambles" are intended. Even Kimchi conjectured that Tekoa was
an unknown town in the tribe of Asher. Amos's allusions to scenery are
all applicable to the Northern landscape.
[319] Amos i. 1-ii. 5.
[320] Amos ii. 6-13.
[321] Amos iii. 9-15.
[322] Amos iv. 1-13.
[323] This title, "Jehovah-Tsebaoth," now begins to occur. It is not
found in the Hexateuch. It probably means "Lord of the _starry hosts_."
Contact with Assyria first made the Israelites acquainted with
star-worship. Amos alludes to the Pleiades and Orion (v. 8: comp. Job
ix. 9, xxxviii. 31). Star-worship is forbidden in Deuteronomy. In Amos
v. 26 the true meaning is that the Israelites _would take with them, on
their road to exile_, Sakkuth (Moloch?) and Kewan (the god-star Saturn).
[324] Amos vi. 1-14.
[325] Amos vii. 1-9.
[326] Strange as it may seem, the early authority for the existence of
any calf at Dan is very slight, and the extreme uncertainty of the
reading and interpretation in one main passage (1 Kings xii. 32) makes
it at least possible that there were _two calves at Bethel_, and that
at Dan there was no calf, but only the old idolatrous ephod of Micah,
still served by the servant of Moses. See additional note at the end
of the volume.
[327] Amos iii. 2.
[328] That the chief priest of Bethel bore the name "Jehovah is
strong" shows once more that "calf-worship" was in no sense a
_substitute_ for the worship of Jehovah.
[329] This was not quite accurate; he had rather prophesied the
devastation of the high places (vii. 9). In fact, his words had often
been very vague. "_Thus_ will I do unto thee" (iv. 12).
[330] Amos ix. 11-15. Comp. Hos. iii. 5.
[331] The exaggerated haggadoth of later days say that Amaziah had
Amos beaten with leaded thongs, and that he was carried home in a
dying state (Epiphan., _Opp._, ii. 145), to which there is a supposed
allusion in Heb. xi. 35: ἄλλοι δὲ ἐτυμπανίσθησαν.
[332] We cannot be sure that the term "Seer" was meant to be
contemptuous, although from 1 Sam. ix. 9 we should infer that the
title had become somewhat obsolete. Further, we must bear in mind that
it may not have been always easy for worldlings to distinguish between
true prophets and the unprincipled pretenders who, about this time,
succeeded in making the name and aspect of a prophet so complete a
disgrace that men had carefully to disclaim it (Zech. xiii. 2-6). It
is true that the heading of Amos (i. 1), which may not, however, be by
the prophet himself, tells us of "the words which he _saw_" (_i.e._,
spoke as a seer), and he also disclaims the name of prophet (vii. 14).
[333] Amos viii. 1-ix. 9, 10.
[334] Amos ix. 11-15.
[335] Hos. iv. 15-19.
[336] Hos. v. 13, vii. 11, viii. 9, ix. 3-6, xi. 5, xii. 1, xiv. 3. It
must be borne in mind that the cuneiform inscriptions prove that
Assyria had burst into sight like a lurid comet on the horizon far
earlier than we had supposed. Jehu had paid tribute to Shalmaneser as
far back as B.C. 842, more than a century before Menahem's tribute in
738. The destruction which Hosea prophesied took place within
thirty-one years of his prophecies--probably in B.C. 722, when Sargon
finished the siege of Samaria begun by Shalmaneser. The king Hoshea
was perhaps taken captive before the siege.
[337] Hos. viii. 5, ix. 15.
[338] Hos. x. 13, 14.
[339] Hos. vi. 9: for "by consent" read "towards Shechem."
[340] Hos. vii. 3-7. The allusions are vague, but we see a drunken
king among his drunken princes, surrounded by wicked plotters who have
flattered his vices. He is ignorant of his peril. The subjects aid the
rulers in these abominations. All are blazing, like an oven, with
passion and infamy, and only rest (as the baker does) to acquire new
strength for inflaming their burning desires. At the dawn their
treachery blazes into the crime of murder, and in the wine-sick
fever-heat of the banquet the king is murdered by his corrupt
intimates (see my _Minor Prophets_, p. 78).
[341] Wellhausen, _Isr. and Jud._, 85.