Scripture Daily

Context No. 1470 of 4322 · Amos

Context · Reflection

Amos 5:1-15: in context

1Listen to this word which I take up for a lamentation over you, O house of Israel: 2“The virgin of Israel has fallen; She shall rise no more. She is cast down on her land; there is no one to raise her up.” 3For the Lord GOD says: “The city that went out a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which went out one hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.” 4For the LORD says to the house of Israel: “Seek me, and you will live; 5but don’t seek Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and don’t pass to Beersheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing. 6Seek the LORD, and you will live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, and there be no one to quench it in Bethel. 7You who turn justice to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth! 8Seek him who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns the shadow of death into the morning, and makes the day dark with night; who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the LORD is his name, 9who brings sudden destruction on the strong, so that destruction comes on the fortress. 10They hate him who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks blamelessly. 11Therefore, because you trample on the poor and take taxes from him of wheat, you have built houses of cut stone, but you will not dwell in them. You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. 12For I know how many are your offenses, and how great are your sins— you who afflict the just, who take a bribe, and who turn away the needy in the courts. 13Therefore a prudent person keeps silent in such a time, for it is an evil time. 14Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the LORD, the God of Armies, will be with you, as you say. 15Hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the courts. It may be that the LORD, the God of Armies, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.”

Amos raises a lament over Israel as over one already fallen, and then calls out the way back: seek me, and you will live, says the LORD; do not seek the empty shrines of Bethel and Gilgal, which will come to nothing. He indicts the injustice of the nation: they turn justice to bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground, they trample the poor, take bribes, and turn aside the needy in the courts. And he presses the call home: seek good, and not evil, that you may live; hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the LORD will be gracious.

The repeated call of this passage is seek the LORD and live, but Amos will not let us mistake what seeking God means. The people were seeking God, in a sense; they were busy at the shrines of Bethel and Gilgal, keeping up their religious observances. But God says do not seek there; those places will come to nothing. Instead, seeking God is spelled out in the parallel call: seek good, and not evil; hate evil, love good, establish justice in the gate. To seek the LORD, Amos insists, is not primarily to visit shrines and keep up rituals; it is to love good and to do justice, especially to the poor and the needy whom the nation was trampling. The two cannot be separated. A people that turns justice to bitterness, tramples the poor, takes bribes, and turns aside the needy in the courts cannot claim to be seeking God, however diligent their worship. God is not sought in ritual while injustice is practiced; he is sought in a life that loves good and establishes justice. This is one of the clear places where scripture ties the worship of God inseparably to the doing of justice. We cannot seek God with our worship while trampling the vulnerable with our lives; the seeking he wants is to hate evil, love good, and establish justice. Seek good and live, Amos says; that is what it means to seek the LORD.

Do I imagine I am seeking God through my worship while my life practices or tolerates injustice, when Amos insists that seeking God is to hate evil, love good, and establish justice, especially for the vulnerable, and cannot be separated from it?

Sources