NOTES for Amo 5:1-20
1 Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel. |
2 The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up. |
3 For thus saith the Lord GOD; The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel. |
4 For thus saith the LORD unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live: |
5 But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beer-sheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought. |
6 Seek the LORD, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel. |
7 Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth, |
8 Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name: |
9 That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress. |
10 They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly. |
11 Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. |
12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. |
13 Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time. |
14 Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the LORD, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. |
15 Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph. |
16 Therefore the LORD, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing. |
17 And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, saith the LORD. |
18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light. |
19 As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. |
20 Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it? |
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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.
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Readings for 7 June 2025
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