Amos the Herdsman

2. The Six‑fold Judgment

He stood there, this young prophet from Judea, in the court of the idol sanctuary at Bethel, in the presence of king Jeroboam II of Israel and the High Priest, burning with zeal to deliver his prophecy. The ten‑tribe nation of Israel was the principal target of his denunciation although Judah also was to hear her condemnation from his lips. But first of all there were six neighbouring peoples destined to have their fates proclaimed, Syria, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab; all had offended and all must pay the penalty. It is a remarkable thing that although each of these nations had been permitted by God to oppress and harry Israel as part of Israel’s retribution for her apostasy from the Covenant, they must still pay the penalty for their unrighteous acts. "The wrath of man shall praise thee" sang the Psalmist (Psa.76:10) and although there is a little doubt as to the precise meaning of that particular text, the principle behind the expression as it stands in the AV is certainly a sound one. God uses the wrath of man to work out His purposes just as He uses the cataclysms of Nature— volcanoes, lightning, monsoon rains,—to contribute to the well‑being of the earth. But even so, the wrath of man must then bring its own retribution for "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." (Gal.6:7) So, Amos commenced the discharge of his mission by pronouncing Divine judgment upon Israel’s guilty neighbours.

Six such nations are involved; Syria (Damascus), the Philistines (Gaza), Tyrus (the Phoenicians), Edom, Ammon, and Moab, encompassing Israel on the north, west and south. Their crimes and resultant judgments are described in the beginning of the prophecy from Amos 1:3 to 2:3.

"Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron." (chap.1:3) Damascus was the capital city of Syria, and the Syrians were almost constantly at war with Israel. Gilead, one of the most fertile and prosperous areas in Israeli territory, was particularly vulnerable to their attacks, and it was because of the Syrians’ ferocity towards the peaceable Israelites of Gilead that the penalty was declared, a penalty that would not be revoked. "For crime after crime of Damascus, I will grant them no reprieve" (v.3) is how the NEB puts it and this is the meaning of the term "for three transgressions, and for four" which appears in the AV, as prelude of the judgment passed on each of these six nations. "I will send a fire into the house of Hazael" (king of Syria at the time of Amos) "which shall devour the palaces of Benhadad" (the preceding king; see 2 Kings 6:8). "I will crush the great men of Damascus and wipe out those who live in the Vale of Aven and the sceptred, ruler of Beth‑Eden; and the people of Syria shall go into captivity to Kir, saith the LORD." (ch.1:4‑5‑part NEB).

Aven was the district in the mountains well north of Damascus, and Beth‑Eden the extreme eastern part of Syria on the Euphrates. The whole of the Syrian people were to be exiled to Kir. The prediction was fulfilled not more than some fifteen years later when Tiglath‑Pileser II of Assyria subjugated Syria and took the entire population away for resettlement in the land of Kir (2 Kings 16:9) the location of which is in some doubt but in all probability in the area nowadays known as Kurdistan.

Now comes the sentence upon the Philistines. These people were settled on the seacoast of Canaan as far back as the time of Abraham. From the days of Joshua to those of David they were oppressors of Israel and although David broke their power they were still a thorn in Israel’s side until the Babylonian captivity. Gaza was one of their principal cities, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Ekron three of the others. "For crime after crime of Gaza I will grant them no reprieve, because they deported a whole band of exiles and delivered them up to Edom." (v.6 NEB) The land of Edom lay on the trade‑route which came up from southwestern Arabia (Sheba) to Tyre, from whence the merchant vessels of Tyre sailed to the countries of Europe. The Edomites therefore, had become a nation of traders. Slaves were always a profitable line of merchandise, and here it would seem that prisoners taken by the Philistines on their forays into Israel were sold to the Edomites and ended up perhaps thousands of miles from their native land. Judgment is given.

"I will send a fire"–the symbol of invasion and war–"on the wall of Gaza, which shall devour the palaces…and I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, and him that holdeth the sceptre (the prince), from Ashkelon, and I will turn mine hand against Ekron: and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish." (ch.1:7‑8) The sentence began to be executed thirty years or so after Amos when Sennacherib the Assyrian ravaged their land; successive invaders decimated the Philistines until Alexander the Great four centuries later obliterated them as a nation from the earth. "The remnant of the Philistines shall perish, saith the Lord GOD." (v.8)

Next is the turn of Tyre, the notable trading people known as the Phoenicians. From their stronghold on the seacoast north of Israel their ships went to every part of the known world and even to the American continent; this latter fact they kept a jealously guarded secret from all the other Mediterranean nations. At the first Tyre and Israel were firm friends, linked by a treaty of friendship. Hiram, king of Tyre was "ever a lover of David" (1 Kings 5:1) and much of the material for Solomon’s Temple was provided by the Tyrians. After Solomon’s death the friendship cooled and the marriage of Ahab, king of the ten‑tribes, to Jezebel, daughter of the then king of Tyre, with the gross idolatry which she introduced into Israel, only served to widen the breach. They too were guilty of selling Israelite slaves to Edom, despite the long‑standing treaty, the "brotherly covenant," of chap.1:9, and they too incurred the same sentence of war and destruction. "For crime after crime of Tyre I will grant them no reprieve, because...they delivered up the whole captivity to Edom, and remembered not the brotherly covenant. But I will send a fire on the wall of Tyre, which shall destroy the palaces." (vv.9‑10 part NEB)

The sentence was not executed at once. The Tyrians successfully withstood the Assyrians and the Babylonians for something like four hundred years but were finally conquered and the city completely destroyed by Alexander in 332 C. The one‑time greatest merchant city in the world became a mere fishing village, a "place for the spreading of nets" as Ezekiel scornfully predicted (Ezek.26:5) and never rose again.

"For crime after crime of Edom" announced the prophet "I will grant no reprieve, because, sword in hand, they hunted their kinsmen down, stifling their natural affections. Their anger raged unceasing, their fury stormed unchecked. Therefore will l send fire upon Teman, fire that shall consume the palaces of Bozrah." (chap.1:11‑12 NEB) The antagonism of Edom to Israel is evident throughout the Old Testament. Esau himself lived in peace with his brother Jacob, but after Jacob’s descendants returned from Egypt the brother‑nation was hostile. On the way to the Promised Land Israel was refused passage through Edom and had to go another way. David subdued them and added Edom to his empire but two hundred years later they revolted and remained independent until Roman times. At the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s capture of Jerusalem the Edomites actively assisted the Babylonians in the looting and depopulation of Judea but after that the fortunes of war gradually reduced their power until by the time of the First Advent what was left of them became absorbed into the Jewish nation and Edom was no more. Teman and Bozrah, cities of Edom had long since disappeared.

Another of Israel’s brother‑nations next hears the burning words of Amos. Ammon, descended from the patriarch Lot, the nephew of Abraham, possessed the rich grazing lands east of the Jordan, but not content with a peaceable pastoral life they were from earliest times continually in conflict with Israel. Their great crime was the invasion and annexing of Israel’s own rich lands east of Jordan. "For crime after crime of the Ammonites I will grant them no reprieve, because in their greed for land they invaded the ploughlands of Gilead." (This is the meaning of the metaphorical expression "ripped up the women with child" in the AV, alluding to the rounded pasture hills of Gilead) "Therefore will I set fire to the walls of Rabbah," (their capital city) "fire that shall consume its palaces amid war‑cries on the day of battle, with a whirlwind on the day of tempest; then their king shall be carried into exile, he and his officers with him." (Amos l:13‑15 NEB)

As with the Philistines and the Phoenicians, the national existence of the Ammonites was brought to an end by Alexander four centuries after Amos’ day.

The last of the six judgments is that of Moab, perhaps the bitterest enemy of them all. "For crime after crime of Moab I will grant them no reprieve, because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime. But I will send a fire upon Moab and it shall devour the palaces of Kirioth: and Moab shall die with tumult, and shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet: and I will cut off the judge...and slay all the princes." (chap.2:1‑3 NEB/ AV)

Moab, like Ammon, was descended from Lot and therefore racially akin to Israel. Nevertheless there was constant warfare between them, interspersed with occasional periods of friendship. Their influence on Israel was always bad and a source of the idolatry which constantly afflicted Israel. With all of this it is rather difficult to understand the reason given for the Divine condemnation of Moab, particularly since no other reference to such a proceeding is to be found in the Old Testament. No commentator seems to have made any valid suggestion beyond surmising that it may have something to do with the incident recorded in 2 Kings 3:21‑27. On this occasion, some eighty years before the time of Amos, Jehoram of Israel with Jehoshaphat of Judah made common cause with the king of Edom to quell the rebellion of Moab, which at that time was subject to Israel. The Moabites were defeated and retreated to their well‑nigh impregnable fortress town of Kirioth (now Kerak). Realising that total defeat awaited them, the king of Moab adopted the desperate expedient of sacrificing his eldest son, the heir to the throne, as a burnt offering to the Moabite god Chemosh, on the city wall in full sight of the besieging armies, in the hope that Chemosh would thus be placated and deliver his people. The horror aroused by this act was such that the Edomites and Israelites raised the siege and returned to their own lands.

This is not what is said in the present text of Amos; both Masoretic and Septuagint agree in the rendering as given in the AV. There is, however, one hypothesis which could make sense of the passage. It may be that half a dozen words in the relevant sentence have dropped out of the original text at a very early date, before Masoretic and Septuagint were differentiated. Such omissions do occur. If the expression originally read "because he burned the bones [of his son in the sight] of the king of Edom into lime" then Amos could very well have referred to the incident in 2 Kings 3 and this act on the part of the king of Moab be counted the greatest sin laid to the charge of that nation. Nothing of what the Moabites had been guilty in the past could have equalled this and the Lord gave this instance to Amos as the supreme evidence of the depravity of Moab. Like their neighbour nation Ammon, they too fell victims to Alexander and were no more as a distinct people.

At this point there is a natural break in the thread of Amos’ prophecy. Judgment had been pronounced on six nations and all of them were enemies of Israel; all of them had laid violent hands on the Lord’s anointed. It can hardly be doubted that the listeners received the message with considerable satisfaction. That the foes of Israel were to be well and truly punished for their misdeeds was good news indeed. There was probably a swift reversal of feeling when Amos went on to decree judgment upon Judah and Israel for their own misdeeds. But for the present the emphasis is upon the six.

In history the predictions were fulfilled at various times during the ensuing seven centuries. Syria suffered first, at the hands of the Assyrians, barely a generation after Amos. Philistia, Tyre, Ammon, Moab, all came next, in the war between Alexander of Greece and Darius of Persia which led to the universal empire of Greece in 332 BC. Finally, Edom disappeared under Rome shortly before the First Advent. By the time Jesus appeared in Judea and Galilee this part of the prophecy of Amos had been fulfilled.

There could, however, be a secondary fulfilment. Although the words of the Hebrew prophets almost always bore direct relation to the events of their own time and had to do with the failings and sins of their own people, the fact that these books have been preserved by the Holy Spirit for so many centuries for the instruction of the people of God in subsequent generations leads to the conclusion that they have a message for Christians just as vital as was the message to the Prophet’s own people. Usually the teaching is by way of analogy; there is a likeness between the position then and the words spoken then, and the position now and the fitness of the words to that position now. In this particular instance there can be traced a correspondence with the Divine judgments which at the end of this Age will surely come upon every aspect of this present world‑order which have been and still are the enemies of the Christian in his endeavour to maintain his loyalty and allegiance to Christ. Each of these six nations is characteristic of one particular aspect of "this present evil world." (Gal.1:4) Thus Syria, more than any of them, was the war‑like nation, continually sending in her troops to harass Israel, just as militarism in all modern nations, and particularly the despotic totalitarianism of some, results in the oppression of those who name the name of Christ. The Philistines were a cultured and artistic people; they came originally from Crete which up to the time of Moses possessed a unique civilisation of a high order, curiously reminiscent of our own civilisation. Philistia could well picture the attraction and allure of the cultured and pleasant things of this world to the Christian. Tyre, the nation of merchants, is fittingly representative of the commercial powers of today, a threat to every Christian who allows himself to become entangled in the web of money‑making for its own sake. Edom, the blood‑brother of Israel, well prefigures the snare of the social life, whilst Ammon, the pastoral agricultural people, the appeal of the workaday world with all its interests and preoccupations and obligations. Finally comes Moab, the most intensely religious of all the six, but a religion which was focussed upon a false god, a god who demanded human sacrifice and whose service involved debasing and degrading rituals. One of the greatest enemies of those who would know and serve Christ is presented in systems of false and debasing theology which present God in a guise far removed from His true character and inculcates standards far below those which are truly His.

So, Amos may well have a message for our own day. Every aspect of every force and power in this world which is in opposition to the orderly development of the people God is training for His future purpose is to come before the bar of His justice and be condemned by His judgment. The nineteenth chapter of Revelation depicts the forces of evil in this world, whatever they may be, gathered together to oppose the One who sallies forth from heaven with the powers of heaven behind Him, and all those forces are defeated and liquidated. The fire of Divine judgment which Amos declared should come forth to devour those nations of his own day will be revealed a second time to devour all in this present world‑age which has its prototypes in those people whom Amos denounced by name. In the days of Amos, the judgment was long in coming, but it came at last. Likewise, it may seem in these days of the ending of an Age, when the world seems ripe for judgment, that it is long in coming; come it will, and when it comes, it will be final.

AOH
(To be continued)