Amos 7:7-17 - The Unpopular Will of God

Amos 7:7-17

When you talk about the prophets of the Bible, Amos was the very first of the prophets which come later in the history of God’s people. First there is Moses and then you had the judges and Samuel but then you have the latter prophets. The book of Amos may not be the first one when you are reading straight through the Bible, but Amos is the first of these latter prophets if you are looking at the prophets chronologically. This does not mean there were no prophets who came before Amos, but this means there are no prophets whose teachings were important enough to be considered as part of the Holy Scriptures. The fact that Amos is the first prophet of his ilk is important, because although Amos says a lot of things with which those of us who are familiar with the Bible and its general content might be familiar, this was new stuff to his audience. The way Amos spoke and the things Amos had to say had never really been said before. In many ways Amos was a prophet like none who had gone before him.
He spoke at a time of great prosperity in Israel. The country was at peace. Life was good. There was plenty of food, the land was plentiful, and the temple was running smoothly, the monarchy was running smoothly. Young women could spend there time mooning over young men. Young couples were working together, to build homes and houses and eek out happy lives together. Babies were being cuddled in the arms of indulgent grandmothers and grandfathers sat on porches late into the evening telling engrossed audiences of young children about how the sun was hotter, the snow was colder and how they walked everywhere up hill with no shoes.
One would think that this would mean that it was a high point in Israelite history, but it is not. It was a time of great prosperity but it was also a time of great corruption. Many were well off and life was good, but for many others, times were hard, life was not fair and no matter how hard they worked and no matter how many long hours they labored they just could not get ahead. Life was hard, and the future was bleak.
This was a time when the rich were getting richer at the expense of the poor. They were taking advantage of the poor to get richer. Those who were well off were well off because they were cheating others in the market place and not paying people what they deserved to be paid. They would make a “small bushel” and use hollow weights to work things in their favor so when they did dealings with those who had labored hard they were cheating people out of a fair wage. And this displeased the Lord greatly. God asked for two things, God asked for the people to love God and for them to love their neighbor and, the last time I checked, cheating people out of hard earned money was a very poor way to show someone love. And God thought this was down right despicable.
Because Amos is the first of the Biblical prophets of his era, although his teachings are filled with themes with which we may be familiar, when Amos came to the people of Israel this was the first time Israel was hearing any of this. One of these themes is the idea of Israel being taken into exile as a result of their sins against each other and against God.
Although the idea of foreign kings taking a conquered people into exile is a concept those of us, who are familiar with Biblical or ancient history, find commonplace, this was not true of the people to whom Amos was speaking. At this point in history the concept of exile was absolutely unheard of. Amos proclaims the exile before it was common practice for enemies to take their defeated foes into exile. This is not only the first time in the Israelite history the people are told they will go into exile, but it is the first time anyone, anywhere had heard of doing this. No conquering king at this point in history had ever taken a nation into exile. Exile, being the practice of taking the best, the brightest and the strongest people in a conquered nation and carting them off to live in another part of your kingdom as a way of weakening the conquered nation, and dispersing the section of people who could potentially be the biggest threat, so they can not bond together and become a threat. It was also a way to get the cream of the crop of a conquered people to work for you. The first king to ever take another nation into exile occurred for the first time about 8 years after Amos dies, when King Tiglathpileser of Kir, took the Ara-ME-ans into exile.
So you put yourselves into the position of the people to whom God was sending Amos to give this message. What Amos was saying did not make sense. This threat of exile was a crazy threat. “What do you mean God is going to send us into exile? What does that even mean? Why would a conquering nation do such a thing? Amos your crazy! No country is going to just cart the majority of a population of their conquered foes off to another land. That is absolutely ridiculous. You’re a not a prophet, you can’t even prophesy right. Go home where you belong!” Not to mention that Amos does not hold back any punches. He does not sugar coat this message on single bit. He describes the bleakest, scariest and darkest parts of what it means to be a conquered nation, just to make sure the people truly understand how bad this is going to be. He lays it out there like it is and takes some pretty good flak for it.
The particular part of the book of Amos which we are looking at this morning is the third vision in a group of five visions which God gives to Amos speaking about the judgment God is bringing down upon the people of Israel for the kind of lives they have been living. The first vision is about Israel being destroyed by an army of locusts. The second is a vision about Israel being destroyed by fire. This vision is the vision about the “plumb line,” which is followed by a brief dialogue between Amos and the King. The fourth vision is a vision of a basket of ripe fruit and the last vision is about an earthquake which brings destruction to Israel. So the vision we have before us this morning is just one gloom and doom vision in the midst of quite a collection of visions of gloom and doom.
So as we begin to look at the vision in the passage we have before us this morning, I don’t know about you but as I look at this text a huge question comes to my mind, “What is going on with this plumb line stuff?” It almost does not seem to make much sense. When something in the Bible does not make sense to me in English, I go and look it up in the Hebrew. And guess what this does not make much sense in the Hebrew either. In fact going to the Hebrew does not help me understand what is going on in this passage; all it does for me is tell me that this is so hard to understand in English because it is nearly impossible to understand in Hebrew. The word here which is translated “plumb line” does not literally mean “plumb line.” The Hebrew word is “anak.” And quite frankly we don’t know what it means. There is a special word scholars use to be all scholarly about not knowing what something means and that is “hopoxlagomena.” So when we run across a word like this one we say to each other, “‘anak’ is a “hopoxlagomena.” And every one goes, ahhh, hmmmm, I see. So now you can be all scholarly too. I can say, “’anak’ is a hopoxlagomena and you all can say, “. . . So anyway hopoxlagomena is really just a fancy way of saying this is the only time this word is used in the entire Bible. Not only is it the only time it is used in the Bible but this particular word is not found in any other sources, which means that there no way of coming to an understanding what this word means. The word here is one of which nobody really knows the definition.
The root of the “anak” word is “tin or tempered metal.” Some people have translated it “lead” which led early scholars to believe that this is talking about a lead plummet on a plumb line. Thus the reason why so many English translations say, this is a wall which is built with a plumb line. But the words “built with” are not even in the Hebrew so it could be that a “plumb line” is being held up to see if the wall is standing up straight. Now I am no metal worker or (alchemist) but I am pretty sure there is a big difference between lead and tin and others agree with men and thus conclude “plumb line” is not what Amos meant when we spoke these words.
Other scholars see that tin is an alloy of bronze which is the metal of which weapons of the day would have been made. The verse would then be talking about a wall made out of tin or weapons, a threat to the people saying that this is a metaphorical “wall of weapons.” This would have God standing beside a wall of destruction. This could be a metaphor saying that an army was going to come and destroy the people and this would be the judging force of God coming down upon them for their disobedience and failure to live the way God called for them to live.
Then there are still other scholars that see this word as a word play on a similar Hebrew word, “anacha,” which means to sigh, moan, or groan. God is standing in front of a wall of moaning and groaning. God is going to wipe away the arrogance and self indulgence of the people and set them to moaning, because God will destroy them.
So, who would have thought that going and checking on one little Hebrew word would dredge up so much scholarly thoughts. Wading through all the different ideas as to what this word means and therefore what is being set among the people is a long and a rather difficult endeavor, but no matter how you understand this one word, it is not looking good for the people of Israel. God is telling them that something bad is about to happen and it is because of the way the people have been behaving.
So Amos makes this ominous proclamation about the people of Israel being out of plumb and they will be destroyed or God is going to send a wall of destruction and they will be destroyed, or God is sending a wall of moaning and groaning because they are going to be destroyed. The fact of the matter is no matter which way you understand this oracle which God gives to Amos to give to the people, they are going to be destroyed.
And what happens next? The priest Amaziah goes running off to the king, like my 5 year tattling on her sister, telling the King what Amos said. Now as I am working through this passage I want to note a couple of things. First of all Amaziah the priest of Bethel, which means “House of God, leaves Bethel, the House of God, where Amos is preaching and goes to the palace, the house of the King and tells him that Amos is in the center of the House of Israel, conspiring against the King, which last I checked not exactly any where near to what Amos was saying or doing. The King then had Amaziah leave the house of the King and go back to Bethel, the house God and tell him that he should leave Bethel, the house of God, and go back to Judah to his home town, Bethlehem, the house of bread, and go earn his bread there, because the King will not have Amos preaching in the King’s sanctuary and or in the temple of the kingdom. Go home preach your message somewhere else, we don’t like it. We don’t need you prophesying round here.
And Amos’s response is pretty straight forward, “Hey, I wouldn’t do this if God didn’t tell me to, go talk to him.” He was not a prophet by trade, he was a herdsman and a dresser of trees, he was a keeper of livestock and a gardener, this was not what he wanted to be, this was not what he trained to be but this was what God called him to be.
It might be helpful to know that during that time there were schools for people who wanted to be prophets and people who were trained as prophets went there to learn how to be prophets and tended to then settle down near those schools. Also, just like with any other trade, often times if your father was a prophet you would follow in his footsteps and be a prophet as well. Amos did not go to school to be a prophet, nor was he a prophet because his father was one. He was trained as a shepherd and as a dresser of trees. You know what the nice thing about sheep and trees is; they don’t yell at you or go running off and tattle to the King about you, when you are “just doing your job.” People are definitely a lot harder to work with then sheep and trees.
Amos had not planned on being a prophet. Being a prophet was not his chosen career path. He was a prophet because God called him to be a prophet. He would gladly go back to the sheep if God would let him. So Amos responds to Amaziah’s belittling comment about going back to Judah (and the house of bread) to earn his bread, by basically saying that he did not chose to be a prophet but God chose him. What else could he do, but obey?
God said, “Go prophesy to the people. “ And that is exactly what Amos did. And as this little conversation between Amos and the King with the priest Amaziah as a go between goes on God gives Amos a little addendum to the prophesy he has already given and Amos begins now to paint a vivid picture of a land that has been ravaged by war. Well not exactly war, but the destruction that often follows a war. Amos paints the picture the desolation which a defeated nation finds themselves in when they have been completely and utterly demolished by their enemies. The men are all dead and the wives have no way to make a living, so they are forced to be prostitutes, selling their very bodies, their very beings to those who have defeated them, their sons and daughters have been killed as part of the destruction of war, there is nothing left to speak of and their lives are in shambles, and the people are lead out of the city in lines, that is as slaves. Amos describes to them what it looks like for a nation to be taken into exile. Nothing good, nothing beautiful, nothing worth having is left. And if any thing which is note worthy or good is left it is taken away. If anyone with any skills is left they are taken away. Amos described to them what it means to say that they are being sent into exile. And they will be lead off and they will be taken to live in a far off land, where they will die, never to be return to the land of their birth, never to return to the land which God had given to them. God sending them into exile meant that God was taking away the land which God had given to them.
Usually when you read a passage such as this there is a “but,” there is this will happen “unless” there is an “if,” somewhere and we get to see what will happen if the people repent, what will happen should they choose to go down a different path, if they choose to turn from the way they are living now and return to living the way God called for them to live. But there is no, “but” in this passage, there is no “if” and there is no “this will happen unless.” God just ends it there. I have been patient and my patience is wearing thin. This is the way you are acting and these are the consequences for those actions.
Now as I said before this is just one vision which predicts the destruction of Israel among four others which do exactly the same thing? Following the final destruction, there is an oracle of restoration. In the final chapter of the book God says, “The time is surely coming, says the Lord, when . . .I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel.” When the time of judgment is over God will restore them in the hope that having dealt with the consequences of their unfaithfulness to their God and to each other, they will mend their ways and live according to the ways God has called for them to live. But first the consequences and the consequences are great.
In the midst of all the doom and gloom in the midst of all the judgment and destruction stands a man, a man who is doing nothing but simply, plainly, and perseveringly doing the will of God. Amos is quite an amazing figure. He stands up in the house of God, before the priests of God and the people of God and tells them the word of God, which God has given to him to give to them.
Amos is a man, a humble man, with a humble hard working job and God comes to him and tells him that he needs to do something. He needs to go and speak this message, this hard message to a people who don’t want to hear it, to a priesthood which are little better than schoolyard tattle tales and to a King who wants to claim the people, the kingdom and the temple and the Lord God as his own. This is not the easiest thing to do. This is not the easiest message to give, but this is what God asks Amos the tree trimmer and sheep herder to do. God asks him to go. God asks him to speak the truth and God asks him to do it even when it is hard.
And he goes and does it. He goes and does it even though the people are against him. He goes and does it even though the king is against him. He continues to do the will of God even when all the religious leaders are against him.
What God calls us to do is not always easy. What God calls us to do is not always popular. What God calls us to do does not always win us the esteem of our peers, or the authorities but all that does not matter, because what matters is that we do what God calls us to do.
Amos went to the temple and he spoke the words of God to a people who would not listen. Amos stood in temple and spoke the words of God to religious people who went and spread vicious rumors about what he was all about. Amos spoke the words of God to the king, even when the king told him to go home and keep quiet. Doing what God wanted him to do was not easy, it was not popular but it was the right thing to do. And so he did it.
God does not ask us if what God asks us to do is easy. I hate to tell you, rarely is it easy. God does not ask us if it is popular, and I can tell you most of the time it is not. God just tells us to speak truth, to live the truth and to be the truth in a land and culture which does not believe they want to hear, see or know the truth.