(Audio version; Music: "First" and "How Can It Be" by: Lauren Daigle)
Introduction
We often forget
that justice and righteousness are intimately woven into the fabric of God’s
person. As a result, compromise, when it comes to justice and righteousness, is
not one of God’s characteristics. Just because God is slow to exact His
judgment on humanity’s injustice and unholiness, doesn’t mean He never will.
One day, God will act in response to humanity’s disobedience. “YHWH’s rule will
be made manifest, despite the cost that it carries to the people.”[1] The
prophet Amos says it’s like fleeing from a lion only to run headlong into a
bear—or reaching the safety of home only to be bitten by a snake when we
believe to be safe. There is no escaping God’s justice and righteousness. And
no amount of hiding behind ritual practices can take the place of trusting in
His goodness and grace and faithful obedience to Him. Nevertheless, we see this
dynamic at work in our churches today. Many of us drive our roomy cars to a
sprawling church complex and park in spacious, paved lots outside magnificent
church structures. Once inside, our taste senses are greeted with coffee and
pastries. We are surrounded by plasma televisions bombarding our visual senses
with church activities and coming attractions. Finally, we settle into
comfortable stadium seating and worship to music of near-professional musicians
utilizing world-class lighting and sound systems (and fog machines!). We are
taught by some of the most eloquent preachers of our time who tell us that God
loves us and that Jesus died for us. After an hour (exactly one hour in many
cases) we make our way to the car and head home thinking we’ve done our part in
a spiritual transaction of sorts. This describes the spiritual life in its
entirety of many in our churches today.
Lest
you think this attitude and practice is something new, Amos experienced
something quite similar in his day. Israel was looking forward to the Day of the LORD in the hopes that God
would step in and elevate Israel above its adversaries and enemies. However,
Israel in general, refused to acknowledge the unfaithfulness and disobedience
of their own behavior. Instead, they brazenly believed that God would overlook
Israel’s sin while punishing the sins of their enemies. But no amount of
worship, even elegant, verbose, or sincere worship, could hide their sin. Because
Israel was unwilling to deal with their own sin, The Day of the LORD would prove to be a grim event for Israel
during the time of Amos.
Subject Text
Amos 5:18-27
18Woe
to you who long for the day of the LORD! Why do you long for the day of the
LORD? That day will be darkness, not light. 19It will be as though a
man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and
rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him. 20Will
not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light—pitch-dark, without a ray of
brightness? 21“I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot
stand your assemblies. 22Even though you bring me burnt offerings
and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship
offerings, I will have no regard for them. 23Away with the noise of
your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. 24But let
justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! 25“Did
you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the desert, O house of
Israel? 26You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal
of your idols, the star of your god—which you made for yourselves. 27Therefore
I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the LORD, whose name is God
Almighty.
Context
Amos was a prophet
during the time of King Jeroboam of Israel in the north and King Uzziah of
Judah in the south during the middle of the 8th century BC. This was a period
of great prosperity for Israel and Judah. Unfortunately, the elite prospered at
the expense of others. Small farmers that once farmed primarily for their own
needs were now being forced to farm crops that brought the highest trading
prices. At the same time, prosperity and trading with neighboring nations left
Israel and Judah vulnerable to experiment and adopt the religious practices of
those neighboring nations. This meant neglecting their obedience and
faithfulness to YHWH. Also during this time Assyria was battling the forces of
Damascus in the north on its way south to pay a visit to both Israel and Judah!
Literary Context
Many
believe that our Subject Text forms
a complete literary unit. Although it is part of a larger context within the
book, it “still exists as an independent unit.”[2]
This pericope forms one theme divided into three distinct parts:
Part 1 – vv. 18-20: This section includes the
claim that the people are awaiting The Day
of the LORD. As previously stated, the people were clearly expecting that
day to be a day of blessing and triumph for Israel. They seemed oblivious to
the coming destruction. “This makes sense only if Amos is contradicting a
popular expectation of a positive, beneficial day of YHWH. In that case, then
Amos’ audience has been experiencing the beginnings of their own
destruction…Amos 5:18-20 emphasizes prophetic contradiction of the people’s
hope in the day of YHWH as a cure for their current distress.”[3]
Part 2 – vv. 21-24: This section focuses on
Israel’s worship and sacrificial practices. The clear admonition of their
worship and sacrificial practices is not intended to denounce the practice
itself but the spirit of the practice. God seeks true justice and righteousness
and that cannot be derived through worship and sacrifice alone but in complete
obedience and faithfulness to God. Part 3 will demonstrate just how far removed
Israel was in the spirit of their worship and sacrifices. Instead, they were
using these practices as some kind of quid-pro-quo system with God.
“The seeking of
divine favor through cultic excess appears so futile that God asks the people
to desist, emphasizing the utter impossibility of cultic influence upon divine
actions…God shows no interest in human activities that might render them
acceptable. To the contrary, this passage asserts the futility of human
attempts to earn God’s favor through any means, especially through acts of
worship.”[4]
Part 3 – vv. 25-27: This section naturally
progresses to the point of shining a bright light on the detestable practices
of Israel. Not only do they claim to worship God but it is revealed that they
also worship foreign gods! During their wilderness wandering, God proved
himself faithful to Israel by caring for and protecting them. During that time,
none of his care required sacrifices by the people. Now that they were finally
in the land promised to them during their wilderness wandering, they could
offer sacrifices to God to demonstrate their love and affection for him.
However, they turned the cultic system into a means to an end while simultaneously
worshipping foreign gods. Ultimately, God would not be mocked by their selfish
acts of worship and proclaimed their impending doom.
There
are a number of interesting interpretive and exegetical issues within this text
that are worth noting:
Text Analysis
18Woe
to you who long for the day of the LORD! Why do you long for the day of the
LORD? That day will be darkness, not light. 19It will be as though a
man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and
rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him. 20Will
not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light—pitch-dark, without a ray of
brightness?
In
order to properly understand our Subject
Text, we must have a proper grasp of the terminology and imagery used by
Amos in v. 18-20 that sounds foreign
to most of us.
- “Woe” –
This interjection carries with it the weight and “nature of a threat.”[5]
- “The day of the LORD” – In
scripture, this expression is used for the first time in the Book of Amos.
No doubt, the people anticipated something great and triumphant associated
with this day. However, “Amos did not share that hope. He knew that this
‘day of the Lord’ would be a day of ‘darkness, and not light’ for the
Israelites who had rejected the truth. It would not be a time of victory
for Israel over her enemies, but a time of victory for God over Israel.”[6]
- “That day
will be darkness, not light” – Amos’ use of this term is clearly
metaphorical. Instead of a day of triumph and celebration filled with
light and hope, it will be a day of judgment and sorrow filled with the
darkness and despair of being conquered and taken into captivity.
- “Bear” occurs
as a pair with “lion” in v. 19
and in places such as Proverbs 28:15, Lamentations 3:10 and 1 Samuel in
the story of David. In all but one of these cases “lion” precedes “bear.”
This is presumably intended to communicate that the latter is more fierce
than the former as Hebrew poetry usually adds strength and precision to
the second word in parallel lines.[7]
The second part of v. 19
reinforces the first part that there is no safe place; no escaping the
coming judgment. YHWH’s inescapable judgment will come with the ferocity
of a lion that chases its prey into the waiting teeth of a bear. And those
who escape the clutches of the lion and the bear will perish in the safety
of their own homes as though they were unexpectedly bitten by a poisonous
snake.
“Amos
takes this well-known concept and reverses the fate of Israel; instead of
salvation and light, there will be darkness and defeat…Destruction and death
will ultimately be caused by God passing through their midst in judgment…a
military defeat will be one of the main ways God will accomplish this…The
audience understood the traditions Amos was describing, but they expected
darkness for their enemies, not for themselves…
These folksy, proverbial sayings portray a
situation where death is everywhere and inescapable. When a person thinks he
has escaped from these fierce animals and is securely resting at home, then
death will strike in a most unexpected manner.”[8]
21“I hate, I despise
your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. 22Even though
you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. 23Away
with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. 24But
let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!
God
went to great pains to describe exactly how He wanted His people to worship
Him. God identified all the religious feasts and festivals the people were
supposed to recognize and celebrate. He described how and in what ways He
wanted sacrifices prepared and offered. God didn’t miss a detail even down to
exactly how the priests were supposed to purify themselves, how they were
supposed to dress and how they were supposed to conduct the affairs of the
temple. However, vv. 21-24 make
clear that God doesn’t care about any of that if the hearts and motives of the
people are impure. In fact, God “hates” pretentious worship and devotion. Here
in America, we see this all the time as worshippers flood churches every Sunday
praising God through song and prayer and then watch those same worshippers live
the other six days of the week as though they had never known the God they
worship on Sundays. No matter how elegant the sermon may be or how amazing the
music is or how entertaining the church production may be, if the hearts and
minds of the people are not truly committed to God and God alone, then God will
hate everything about it.
There
have been some who have used this text as evidence against certain songs and
instruments during worship. The text does not indicate anything inherently
inappropriate about the music described in this verse. It seems to be part of
the festivities described in v. 22.
Consequently, because the activities of v.
22 are rejected, the activities of v.
23 are likewise rejected.
Some have
translated “never-failing stream” as “mighty stream” in v. 24. However, “The words ‘mighty stream’ cannot be found in any
recent English translation of the Bible; all our contemporary versions recognize
the Hebrew…[as meaning] something like an ‘ever-flowing’ or ‘everlasting’
stream.”[9] The sense
is not of something that grows or gets bigger but instead of something that
always continues and advances.
“Israel’s
God requires regular, consistent keeping of the covenant. Sacrifices and other
elements of worship constituted occasional, intermittent righteousness and were
rejected because they were not complemented by proper living in general. A
society truly in harmony with Yahweh’s will must practice justice and righteousness
routinely: always and everywhere. It is in the nature of a covenant that it
cannot be kept merely now and again. For example, no one can say, ‘I keep my
marriage covenant; I commit adultery only every few days and the rest of the
time am completely faithful to my wife.’ Likewise the Israelite’s implicit
argument was ludicrous: ‘I keep Yahweh’s covenant. I misuse and abuse others
only some of the time and otherwise faithfully worship Yahweh.’
Canaanite
cultic religion allowed people to be personally immoral and unethical; they
could still be right with the gods if they merely supported the cult
enthusiastically. Yahweh’s covenant denied his people any such option. Justice
and righteousness cannot stop and start like a wilderness wadi that flows with
water only during the rainy season and otherwise is just a dry stream bed. They
must instead continue night and day, all year, like the [never-failing stream]
that never goes dry.”[10]
25“Did you bring me
sacrifices and offerings forty years in the desert, O house of Israel? 26You
have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of
your god—which you made for yourselves. 27Therefore I will send you
into exile beyond Damascus,” says the LORD, whose name is God Almighty.
The rhetorical question
in v. 25 is meant to be answered
“No!” “If the prophet’s listeners had to concede that Israel did not offer
Yahweh sacrifices in the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, which
could be regarded as a time when the people were under the full care of Yahweh,
they would be able to realize that sacrifices had no influence on Yahweh’s good
will towards the people, and therefore were not a necessary part of the
people’s worship of him.”[11]
There is some
debate about this particular position with respect to whether there was or was
not a mandate to offer sacrifices. However, some believe that this misses the
point altogether insisting that “Amos does not refer at all to the question of
whether Yahweh prescribed cultic laws to the people through Moses, but simply
fastens on the fact that the wilderness period was in fact a time of God’s
favour.”[12]
The difficulty in v. 26 lies in the translation of
“shrine” and “pedestal.” Instead of translating the words as ‘shrine’ and ‘pedestal,’
consider instead that “originally it [“shrine”] certainly read Sakkut, which is
an alternate name of the Assyrian and Babylonian god Ninib (Saturn). Similarly
[“pedestal”]…is in reality a proper name for Kaiwan or Kewan, which also
corresponds to the planet Saturn.”[13]
I believe the use of Sakkut and Kaiwan respectively in the translation of this
verse is the better translation of the Hebrew given the overall context. The
Hebrews wanted to worship the celestial bodies while at the same time
worshipping God who created the celestial bodies! It’s not difficult to see why
God would be so upset. It is as ridiculous as a man sleeping with his
neighbor’s wife and then going home and climbing into bed with his own wife and
expecting her to ignore his behavior and instead be loving and accepting.
The reference to
“beyond Damascus” in v. 27 is
assumed to imply Assyria since “This phrase in earlier days represented the
climax of judgment, as did Babylon in later days.”[14]
However, strictly speaking, “the Hebrew means ‘in a land which is farther than
the town of Damascus.’ The actual distance is not important in the meaning, and
it is not clear how far the people were to be taken beyond Damascus. Even if
this is a reference to Assyria, such information should not be stated in the
translation, since the author intends it to be vague.”[15]
Nevertheless, it is interesting to note the irony that Israel would go into
exile to become slaves to a nation whose gods they prostituted themselves to!
The
trajectory of these verses make it clear that Israel wanted God’s blessing and
protection as they looked forward to The
Day of the LORD. They worshipped and offered sacrifices to God but failed
to address their own sins. They seemed to think that as long as they
“performed” for God through their worship and sacrifices that God would somehow
be obligated to overlook their disobedience and unfaithfulness (maybe they
needed a fog machine or a better light show or maybe a more expensive sound
system!). Instead, their view of The Day
of the LORD and God’s view of The
Day of the LORD would be dramatically different in the face of the Assyrian
military onslaught and subsequent exile.
Application
I don’t want to
leave you with the impression that I’m opposed to worship—I’m not! In fact, I
love worshipping God. My concern is that some have lost sight of what worship
really means in its entirety. They think that worship is a “performance” that
only happens on Sunday mornings.
“Worship, it
seems, is one of the ways we lose focus in our service to God. Distracted by
pomp and circumstances, we fall in with false expectations of worship. We think
large congregations are more impressive than small ones. We think renowned
preachers are more important than simple ones. We plan our worship to impress
others and to impress God. Most of all, we fall into ways of manipulating God.
We judge the worth of our worship by what we ‘get from God’ rather than how we
give ourselves to God.”[16]
The giving of
ourselves in service to God and to humanity strikes at the very heart of what
it means to worship and sacrifice to God. However, we continue to pretend to be
obedient to God in our churches as we hide behind our well orchestrated worship
services. We are quick to proclaim, with raised hands and loud voices no less,
that our way of worship is the best way. However, I wonder how many of us would
just as quickly recognize the neighbor that is desperate to know someone loves
them as they sit beside the hospital bed of their cancer stricken child? How
many who enjoy the relative safety of their suburban neighborhood churches have
walked the dangerous streets of Juarez, Mexico caring for those innocently
trapped in a society controlled by corrupt politicians and murderous drug
cartels? How many who leave their happy and healthy babies in the church
nursery have held a dying AIDS baby in a remote African orphanage? How many
want God to deal with our neighbor’s sin but close His eyes to our sin? How
many sit and stare weekly at the cross and still fail to take serious the fact
that God demands justice and righteousness all
the time and no amount of church attendance and religious finery can
satisfy that demand? How many realize the enormity of the cost associated with
God’s justice and righteousness?
Amos proclaimed to
Israel that the cost of that justice and righteousness for their disobedience during
his generation was that they would be forced into exile. Centuries later, God’s
continuing demand for justice and righteousness would require the ultimate
price—a price that only He could afford to pay. The Father sent the Son to pay
the price that would fulfill God’s demand for justice and righteousness once
and for all. Nothing we do, whether they are personal sacrifices or beautifully
produced worship services, will fulfill God’s demand for justice and
righteousness. That demand has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. As a result,
those who put their trust in Christ are made just and right because of what Christ
did on the cross. Being, therefore, made just and right, we are called to do
what is just and right as well—all the
time! And that, my friends, is sacrifice and worship that is acceptable to
God as a sign of our love for and devotion to Him.
[1] Jon L.
Berquist, “Dangerous Waters of Justice and Righteousness: Amos 5:18-27,” Biblical Theological Bulletin 23, no. 2
(Summer 1993), p. 59.
[2] Jon L.
Berquist, “Dangerous Waters of Justice and Righteousness: Amos 5:18-27,” p. 58.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.,
p. 87.
[6] Bernard
Thorogood, A Guide to The Book of Amos,
(S. P. C. K. Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone, London, 1971), p. 63.
[7] Robert
Alter and Frank Kermode, eds., The
Literary Guide to the Bible, (First Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
MA, 1987), pp. 611-624.
[8] Gary V.
Smith, Amos—A Mentor Commentary,
(Geanies House, Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications,
1998), p. 248
[9] Susan
Ackerman, “Amos 5:18,” Interpretation: A
Journal of Bible and Theology 57, no. 2 (April 2003), p. 190.
[10] Douglas
Stuart, Hosea-Jonah—Word Biblical
Commentary, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1987), p. 355.
[11] Erling
Hammershaimb, The Book of Amos a
Commentary, (Schocken Books, New York, NY, 1970), p. 91.
[12] Ibid.,
p. 92.
[13] Ibid.,
p. 93.
[14] William
Rainey Harper, A Critical and Exegetical
Commentary on Amos and Hosea, (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, NY,
1905), p. 138.
[15] Jan de
Waard and William A. Smalley, A
Translator’s Handbook on The Book of Amos, (United Bible Societies, West
Germany, 1979), p. 124.
[16] Emilie
Griffin, “The Hidden Way: Elijah & Authentic Worship,” Conversations: A Forum for Authentic Transformation 7.2,
(Fall/Winter 2009), p. 70.
No comments:
Post a Comment