Amos Of Tekoa

by L.B. Horne | Category: The Minor Prophets | May 1969

Amos is an outstanding example of the ordinary men, mentioned in the introduction to this series, who performed extraordinary tasks. He came from Tekoa, a village about twelve miles south of Jerusalem, where he had a sheep herd that grazed in the scant pasture. He was also involved in the business of growing Sycamore fruit. It has been suggested that the journeys into the Northern Kingdom may have begun with selling wool. The things which is clear is that he came from no school of prophets and had no prophetic vocation until God called him to deliver a series of messages in Bethel, the centre of Israelite worship. His preaching seems to have been compressed into a short space of time and to have brought him into frontal conflict with the religious authorities. We can speculate about what happened to him after he defied a deportation order, but there is no evidence. We have only a few short prophecies after the clash and then silence.

Amos prophesied in the middle of the eight century B.C. Jeroboam II came to the throne of Israel about 782. There was great prosperity and political success. In the phase between the decline of Syria and the rise of Assyria, the kingdom of Israel was restored to many of the ancient boundaries that had not been possessed since the days of David and Solomon (2 Kings 14.25). It was an era of expanding trade. Rich men had large estates, often obtained at the expense of the dispossessed poor, who were sold into slavery. Men lived in luxury on great fortunes and moved from winter to summer palaces, taking their ease and enjoying economic security. In 745, Tiglath Pileser came to the throne of Assyria and the days of Israel were numbered. God had numbered them long before. The people had chosen to follow local cults or had modified the worship of Jehovah to their own whims to free themselves for personal lust or social piracy.

Amos prophesied before the earthquake and he told them that it was coming. We know little more of this event than he tells us, except that there is one further reference to it in Zechariah 14:5, but it was obviously a terrible and long-remembered catastrophe. It is striking that Amos described his message as "the words ...which he saw". The revelation of God was an experience that was imprinted upon the visual memory.

The message begins "the LORD shall roar from Zion". The initial statement denied the place of Bethel in God's plan and made clear that there was one place where God made His will known. The point to remember is that these words were spoken at the heart of a religious system that was in rivalry with Jerusalem, to a people who resented the position of Judah, by a man from the south. We can imagine Amos delivering the prophecy of the early chapters to the crowds who gathered around him in the city. After the initial statement, they would find reason to applaud. He preached doom on Damascus, on Gaza, and Tyre, on Edom, the Ammonites and Moab. Except for the lucrative trading relationships, there was little love for these nations in Israel. Then Amos turned to Judah, and again the attack would be popular with his audience, but he did not stop there. He turned on them,

"For three transgressions of Israel, yea, for four,

I will not turn away the punishment thereof" (2.6).

We can listen happily to denunciation of other people, we can enjoy taking our friends and enemies to pieces, but as soon as the spotlight turns upon ourselves and the voice begins to speak about our own desperate faults, we cry out in anger and all our defence systems begin to operate. Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, heard Amos out over the nations, heard the denunciation of social evil, heard the warnings of national disaster, but the day that the prophet said that "the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste" (7.9) was the day that Amaziah decided that he had heard enough.

It is not possible to break through the moral laws of God without suffering the consequences. Israel was involved with a false religion, which had appearance but not reality. They had adapted God's plan to their convenience and the exigencies of the time. They were committed to the preservation of an ever higher standard of living that made their own needs a priority and placed others beyond their caring. The women, described by Amos in that unflattering term "cows of Bashan" drove their menfolk on in the search for material prosperity at all costs. The result was disaster. If there is a message in Amos for a man of the western world in the twentieth century, it must be this above anything, "woe to them that are at ease in Zion" (6.1).

God sent them warnings. Once again it is made clear that calamities and hardships in life are often the hand of God to mould and shape our way of living. There was earthquake, locusts and drought in their experience and the result was that they ran further away from God in a desperate search for other solutions. The people were told that they must seek God and live. They must not seek Him in the false places, in the religious institutions that men had created. The altars of Bethel did not hold any hope for the searchers. God had given His way to men and there was only one way. Efforts to reach security outside of that may seem successful, but the foundation is always suspect and will collapse.

It would have been much more comfortable for Amos to remain silent. It is easier to disregard moral evil than to withstand it. "He that is prudent shall keep silence in such a time" (5.13). But God does not keep silence and His prophet is bound to speak out at the cost of personal popularity and safety. He attacked their cherished beliefs. They believed that, one day, God would intervene. It was a great day ahead, but the prophet warned them that it would be an unpleasant surprise. They believed that they had a special position in God's favour, but Amos mocked their complacency. "Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto Me, O children of Israel? ...Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?" (9.7).

It was a strange position for a prophet from Judea. God chooses men by standards that are His own, and does not use human measurement. No guidance counsellor would have picked Amos for this assignment. There is still a power of guidance and divine selection at work in the world, but we can be alarmingly deaf to His voice. We can be very logical. It is impossible that a sheepherder from Judah would be asked to prophesy about the fate of Bethel. Our reasoning sounds much safer than God's because there is often too much adventure, too much faith needed for the staid, stuffy disciples to risk God's way. In any case, Amos was expended. If we are primarily interested in conserving the things that belong to us, we cannot dare to answer God's call. In God's way, a servant is expendable, as His own Son was expendable in the battle for the world that He loves.

Amaziah the priest ordered Amos to leave Israel and to confine his activities to Judah. There were many questions that Amos could not answer but on one point he was absolutely clear, that his experience of God was reality and that his reality was more important than all the arguments and threats of the men who were defending their institutions. "Thus saith the LORD", was a message that could not be silenced.

If only they had heard. If only they had shared the impracticable unreasonableness of Amos, and the reality of God's voice, there would have been a different story to tell. The little man with the lonely voice disappeared from the streets of Bethel, the memory faded in the temples and palaces, and the famine came, "not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD".

Amos was not wasted. God did not, even in all that, leave a desolation. His great love could not be denied and Amos closed with a promise. "I will not utterly destroy ... saith the LORD ... I will bring again the captivity of My people Israel" (9.8,14).

We are watching it with our own eyes. The message that fell upon deaf ears is now part of the history of our world and a fact in our newspapers. The word of God is the force that drives through centuries and kingdoms into our own experience so that we may deny the cold, hard voice of earthly wisdom and live in the truth of His purposes.

L.B. Horne | May 1969
The Minor Prophets