Today's reading is devoted to the central theme of Amos's preaching: the theme of the day of Yahweh, in the Synodal Translation, "the day of the Lord"...
Today's reading is devoted to the central theme of Amos's preaching: the theme of the day of Yahweh, in the Synodal Translation, "the day of the Lord" (vv. 18-20). It appears to have been a special festival that existed in the pre-exilic period, celebrated in the fall, probably around the time when Yom Kippur is celebrated. Traditionally it was the day of Yahweh's triumph as the God of Israel and the day of judgment over all the enemies of the people of God. It is no wonder that the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom, like all Jews, awaited it as the day of the triumph of their God, and therefore of their own triumph as well.
Meanwhile, Amos sees the day of Yahweh quite differently. For him it too is a day of Judgment, but not over the enemies of the people of God; it is over Israel itself. He understands that Judgment, in Paul's words, "begins with the house of God." For Amos's contemporaries, this understanding was new and unexpected. They were certain that no Judgment threatened them in any case, because in the confrontation between God and His enemies they had ended up on the right side. No one seems to have considered that there was no merit of their own in the fact that they were born Jews.
But Amos's preaching about Judgment was new in another respect as well. The traditional idea of Judgment was connected with a kind of ritual that included evaluating a person according to certain criteria. Properly speaking, Judgment was a kind of test of whether a person met these criteria. For Amos, Judgment is plainly not like that. It is no accident that he warns that the day of Judgment can easily become for many not a day of light, but a day of darkness (vv. 18, 20).
Theophanies in the time of Amos were associated by believing Yahwists precisely with light, with the radiance by which God marked the place of His presence. How then could the day of Yahweh's triumph turn into a day of darkness? Such a thing would clearly be possible only if those who wanted to see this radiant presence, coming to the Temple, saw nothing. When before a person's eyes there is something he cannot see, hear, or perceive in any other way, this imperceptible thing becomes impenetrable darkness for him. Then it becomes clear that for Amos, Judgment is not a test of conformity to any criteria, even the strictest. For him, Judgment is the moment when a person meets God face to face. And then only the spiritual condition of the one coming to Judgment determines whether the day of Judgment will become for him a day of light or a day of darkness. It is not God who condemns a person at Judgment, but his own sins. And they are precisely what turn the light of God into impenetrable darkness.
