Amos 8:4-14

1. EARTHQUAKE, ECLIPSE, AND FAMINE

Amos 8:4

"Hear this, ye who trample the needy, and would put an end to 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, 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 Nazarites 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. So here Amos emphasizes 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 Savior'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 file Nile in mass, and heave and sink like the Nile of Egypt."

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. 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-and say, As liveth thy God, O Dan! and, As liveth the way to Beersheba! and they shall fall and not rise anymore." I have omitted Amos 8:13: "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 Amos 8:11 speak of a spiritual drought, the drought of Amos 8:13 is physical. And Amos 8:14 follows Amos 8:12 better than it follows Amos 8:13. 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. One of the oaths, "As liveth the way to Beersheba," 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. Today Arabs "swear wa hyat, ‘ by the life of,' even of things inanimate; ‘By the life of this fire, or of this coffee."' 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.