Chapter 26 - Amos and Hosea

I keep reading the title and wanting to say "Amos and Andy" ...oh well.

The role of prophecy - an ethical dimension - denouncing social injustices.

Religious syncretism. Religious syncretism!

God's justice demands the destruction of the people, but God's love for them invigorates a hope for their salvation.

Israel gets a major slap in the face: oppressions of the poor, violation of the family, wholesale social immorality... profanation of religious acts.

There are showy displays of religiosity for all to see... worship for the glorification of the people... scrupulously correct worship done in a spirit of blasphemy...

To seek YHWH means to seek justice and righteousness...

Some things never seem to change: let's put the word GOD on our money and in our public lives and let's put scripture here and there but justice and righteousness? Pffft.... as long as I have my health care I don't want to pay more taxes for someone else to have health care.

Prepare to meet you God! It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear!

I cannot stand your assemblies... I will not accept your offerings... I will have no regard for your offerings... I will not listen to the music of your harps...

But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Pretty harsh stuff here.

Amos doesn't hold back anything: 'Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword. Your land will be measured and divided up, and you yourself will die in a pagan country. And Israel will certainly go into exile, away from their native land.'

As I read this I was reminded of how much we like to quote scripture that proves our point and how much we tend to ignore scripture that might actually have something to tell us.

Amos slams the Capitalists: "When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?" — skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

The above makes me think of recent Wall Street activities.

So YHWH will tear it all down in order to build it all back up again.

"The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills. I will bring back my exiled [g] people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them," says the LORD your God. <- although these are not the words of Amos.

* * * Hosea * * *

Idolatry is evil not simply because it is idolatry but because of the moral BLINDNESS it produces in the people.

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
...it was I who healed them...and bent down to feed them...all my compassion is aroused...
I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim. For I am God, and not man — the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath.

God's grace.