b. Judgment of Israel and exhortations to enter into Yahweh’s presence (3:1-4:12)
The judgment of Israel, first articulated in 1:3-2:16, continues. And the interest in Israel’s relationship to other nations, begun in 1:3-2:16, is sharpened. In 3:1-2, Israel is summoned to hear why Yahweh’s judgment is especially directed at them: “You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins” (v.2). How unexpected! Would not Yahweh be expected to bless both Israel and all the families of the earth (see Ge 12:1-3)? But the text of Amos is firm and unambiguous: being Yahweh’s chosen means special accountability for sin; Israel is measured by a special standard.
Surely the prophet is wrong! Undoubtedly he is not a prophet! Surely his word does not come from God! Amos knows that his detractors say such things. So a disputation—an argument—emerges to overcome his claims (3:3-8). The argument is based on an analogy between cause and effect in ordinary daily experience and the cause of prophetic speech. A series of rhetorical questions appear: Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so? “Of course not,” the reader is supposed to answer, “does a lion roar in the thicket when he has no prey?” “Certainly not,” the text expects the reader to say. Again and again, in vv.3-6, questions are posed, and in each case the text presupposes that the answer is obvious.
Then the poet moves to resolve the matter under dispute (3:7-8). It begins with an assertion: Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets (v.7). An impressive claim about how fully aware prophets are of Yahweh’s deeds! Yet this assertion speaks only of prophets in general. Thus there is still need to show that what Amos says, especially in vv.1-2, truly comes from Yahweh. That is the reason for the questions in v.8. Indeed, their significance may be appropriately paraphrased as follows: “Just as when a lion roars anyone would be afraid, so also, when Yahweh speaks, no one could fail to prophesy.” The causal relationship that can be observed in daily life can just as readily be applied to the speeches that prophets utter, according to 3:3-8. If the reader is persuaded, then that reader might also be ready to agree that Amos’s words have come from God and can no longer be questioned.
Thus far we have examined the logic of 3:3-8. Now let us turn to its imagery and its potential impact on the total imagination. My contention is that the reader is potentially moved from emotional neutrality to intense apprehension. The first question in the disputation leads to no anxiety; the fact that walking together is the result of prior agreement to meet is an insight that poses no threat. But a question that presumes a lion’s roaring comes from having taken prey alludes to a threatening circumstance in the animal world. And so do the questions about snares and traps (v.5). Thus the imagery has moved from the innocuous to the threatening. But there is as yet no potential danger for humans. In v.6, however, danger touches humans: When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? If such an alarm is sounded, inhabitants of a city are terrified, for they know an enemy is approaching. So also if calamity (sometimes translated “evil”) befalls a city, should they not think it comes from Yahweh? The imagery has escalated to encompass threat to human life. But the emotional impact may well create a sense of dread that the hearers' own city might actually be the one in which the sound of alarm might soon be blown.
In 3:9-15 such fears are confirmed, for the total defeat of Samaria, Israel’s capital, is prophesied. Messengers are commissioned to journey to Ashdod and Egypt to summon those foreign powers to come to the mountains of Samaria to observe the city’s misdeeds (v.9). One must not overlook the irony of having gentile nations whom Yahweh has not known (cf. v.2) serving as witnesses against Yahweh’s chosen! Ashdod and Egypt will most certainly see unrest and oppression in the chosen people’s capital. Those who have been chosen by Yahweh (v.2) do not even know how to do right (v.10). Indeed, as the metaphor states it, they fill their fortresses with violence and destruction (v.10). They have hoarded those two terrible commodities as if they were afraid that there might not be enough violence and destruction to go around. All this among Yahweh’s chosen, from whom he expected justice and righteousness!
Yes, it is true that Yahweh will punish for their iniquities those whom he has chosen. As punishment for unrest and oppression, violence and destruction, an enemy will surround Samaria’s land (v.11). Their strength will be brought down and, ironically, the mighty fortresses or strongholds upon which they relied for defense will be plundered. The defeat will be so massive that virtually nothing will be left. Just as when a shepherd tries to rescue a sheep from the mouth of a lion, he saves nothing more than two legs or a piece of an ear, so shall those who dwell (or sit) in Samaria be rescued with nothing more than a fragment or edge of the furniture upon which they sit (v.12).
In 3:13-15 witnesses are once again called to testify against Israel concerning ways Yahweh plans to punish his people. The imagery of the destruction of buildings and furniture that we saw in vv.9-12, continues: the winter houses, the summer houses, the houses of ivory, indeed the great houses. Thus the defeat by an enemy destroys the fortresses, the houses of the wealthy, and leaves nothing but the smallest remnants of the furniture from those imposing structures. But there is more: on the day that Yahweh punishes Israel for their crimes, he will cut off the horns of the altar at the great sanctuary at Bethel. Such language is of great symbolic significance, for it was well known in Israel that clinging to the horns of the altar was a refuge from the manslayer (1Ki 1:50; 2:28). With the horns of the altar cut off, there would be no place of refuge. Thus Israel’s last hope of escape vanishes.
To summarize our interpretation of ch. 3: Israel, alone among all the earthly families chosen by Yahweh, cannot rest secure in that special relationship. They are instead to be held especially accountable for all their iniquities (v.2). Moreover, they cannot wriggle free from that awesome responsibility by contending that Amos’s words do not come from God. Indeed, just as ordinary events in daily life have their cause, so also does prophetic speech (vv.3-8). Therefore, the text implies, the words of Amos are valid.
The growing dread that Yahweh might blow an alarm in Israel’s cities, that his speaking (3:8) might signify an imminent catastrophe, turns out to be a reliable hunch. The summons of witnesses to testify to Samaria’s misdeeds (vv.9-10) leads to a verdict of guilt and a sentence in which the dreaded defeat occurs, complete with enemy to surround the land and destroy the fortresses (v.11) and most of the fine furnishings as well (v.12). Any last hope for refuge is dashed forthwith, for the horns of the altar of asylum will be hewn off (v.14). And Yahweh himself will bring the great houses to an end (v.15). Truly the land of Israel, whose people were chosen of Yahweh, will be completely defeated and destroyed with no hope for rescue.
4:1-12 continues the theme of punishment for oppression of the poor. A diatribe against the women of Samaria for oppressing the poor and crushing the needy leads into a prophecy of these so-called cows of Bashan being led mercilessly into exile by means of hooks and fishhooks, straight through the breaches of the city wall made by the battering assault of the enemy. Not only will the land be defeated, but its inhabitants will also be led away into captivity.
While it is true that 4:1-12 continues the theme of judgment of oppressors (ch. 3), it is also the case that a fresh pattern of imagery emerges, namely, a mosaic of metaphors of journeys undertaken. We saw above that 1:3-2:16, in introducing 1:3-4:13, employs the metaphor of the journey of God’s anger. Now we see that 1:3-4:13 comes to a close with certain journey metaphors. In 4:1-3 the metaphor of the journey into exile dominates the announcement of judgment (vv.2-3). Am 4:4-5 exhorts worshipers to make pilgrimage into Yahweh’s presence by journeying with sacrifices into his sanctuary. The metaphor of journey also characterizes 4:6-12: a series of chastisements are sent by Yahweh to provoke Israel to repent. But they did not. Each time they refused to return; they failed to make the journey back to God.
Multiple ironies are found in 4:1-12. The wealthy women, addressed metaphorically as cows, ironically lose the independence produced by wealth and are led away like animals from their dwelling place into an alien land (vv.1-3). Furthermore, the second journey—the invitation to make pilgrimage to the important shrines of Bethel and Gilgal—is also not without irony. A cultic official might ordinarily have been expected to say something like, “Come to Bethel and make sacrifice,” but only an ironic manipulation of conventional ways of speaking would have anyone say, “Go to Bethel and sin.” Indeed, a tongue-in-cheek exhortation to make a sacred journey into God’s presence in order to sin becomes still more satirical when the directives about the kind of sacrifices to bring and when to bring them ends with: “Call out your freewill offerings, make them public, for so you love to do, sons of Israel.” The summons to come to the central shrines and make sacrifice turns out ironically to be an invitation to parade their religiosity in public so that their piety may be seen by others (see Mt 6:1-6).
God is not impressed with Israel’s piety any more than he is willing to tolerate their deeds of injustice. But he had made efforts to lead them to repentance. He chastised them with famine (empty stomachs and lack of bread). But they refused to return to Yahweh (4:6). Once again he sent drought, but they would not return (vv.7-8). Again and again Yahweh chastised them, but never would they make the journey back to him. Then comes Yahweh’s response: Therefore, thus I do to you, O Israel; because this I do to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel” (v.12). What is meant here? Does v.12 signify that God, having failed to elicit Israel’s repentance, will heap on additional punishment in the future, for which reason Israel must prepare to meet God? Or does it mean that because God does this (namely, the past chastisements mentioned in vv.6-11), they must get ready to meet God? The peculiarities of Hebrew tense structure prevent us from knowing whether “Therefore” and “this” in v.12 refer to future deeds that Yahweh will do or whether they signify chastisements that Yahweh periodically does. In any event, Israel must prepare to meet God.
Israel’s refusal to make the return journey of repentance back to God is ironically the antithesis of their eagerness to journey into his presence with sacrifices so that their piety might be displayed for all to see. Moreover, the journey readily made in pious pretense (4:4-5), together with the journey of repentance, which they refused to make (vv.6-11), are related to the journey away from Samaria that Israel must make (vv.1-3). Their journey into exile is the result of not having made the appropriate kinds of journeys into Yahweh’s presence. Finally, their refusal to make the “return” journey of repentance (vv.6-11) cannot be separated from Yahweh’s decision not to cause his anger to “return” (chs. 1-2).
The exhortation “Prepare to meet your God” (4:12) is a critical turning point in Amos. It is a summons to prepare for a theophany—a summons to make ready to enter into Yahweh’s personal presence (cf. Ex 19:15, 17 to see how the words prepare and meet are associated with language about theophany). What should Israel expect after they have “prepared” and “met” God? Should they expect to experience a reaffirmation of their role as Yahweh’s chosen, despite their having been punished for their iniquities (3:2; 4:6-11)? Surely theophany was often associated with God’s presence to affirm and protect his chosen (Ex 19; Pss 18:7-19; 46:6-7; Isa 30:29-33). Or should Amos’s audience expect Yahweh’s theophany to precipitate still more frightful acts of judgment against Israel? The text does not say. Instead it leaves the reader to ponder just what might happen when Israel meets God face to face. Just what Yahweh’s presence will actually signify is indeed not disclosed until part B of the book (5:1-9:6). Thus part A (1:3-4:13) closes on a note of suspense and leads us on to read part B.