For additional notes and resources check out Douglas’ website.
This lesson explores Amos 4:1-13.
- By this point in the book of Amos all the major themes of the book have been introduced.
- From here to chapter 7 the material in Amos is more personal: directed against unfaithful Israel in more personal terms, and opening a window into Amos' personal life.
- The boom will fall (by the 720s, Assyria will have taken northern Israel into exile)! First to be challenged are the aristocratic women of Samaria.
The fat cows of Bashan (4:1-3)
- Bashan was a fertile region of Gilead along the Yarmuk river in Transjordan, and its cows were a special breed.
- These women will be prodded like the corpulent cattle they are!
- Amos recognizes the important and responsible place of women in society. (He was thus hardly misogynist or chauvinistic.)
- “One does not have to dirty one’s hands in the actual business of exploitation; someone else can do it, someone else can engage in the dirty work. It is possible to delegate dirty deeds, but it is not possible to avoid their guilt.” “Those whose lives of luxury had been lived at the expense of the poor would be dragged off into judgment.” – Craigie 152…
- Note the parallels between chapter 4 and chapter 6.
The pilgrim festivals at Gilgal and Bethel (4:4-5)
- Gilgal and Bethel (along with Dan and Samaria) served as religious centers for the corrupt northern kingdom.
- After a parody of invitation to worship come five oracles of judgment. ("O come, all ye faithless..")
Though disciplined, they have not responded (4:6-11)!
- There's a similarity to the wicked refusing to repent in Revelation, or Pharaoh failing to respond to the evidence and message from Moses.
- Various disciplines/punishments
- cleanness of teeth = famine
- lack of rainfall (Jeremiah 5:24)
- thirst
- blight
- agricultural woes
- plague
- war
- city after city overthrown (Samaria not until 732, all Israel not until 722)
- All these threats were uttered in the Law of Moses (Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28).
Prepare to meet your God (4:12-13)!
- Irony: unlike the shallow and hypocritical preparations the Israelites went through before visiting their idolatrous shrines, Amos is talking about really meeting God (for real).
- The true meaning of the Day of the Lord will be expounded in the next chapter.
Lessons for us:
- Examine our lifestyle. Are we guilty of conspicuous consumption?
- Ask whether we're living lives of self-indulgence (1 Timothy 5:6).
- Discover whether we might be oppressing the poor even indirectly.
- Listening to repeated warnings, rebukes, input… Are there common themes when I receive input from other disciples? From my spouse? Even from my own conscience?
- Recognize that the Lord expects a response. Constant hardening will lead us to a very dark and perilous place.
- We mustn't intellectualize judgment day.
Further:
- Gilgal and Bethel (4:4) were on the prophet Samuel's regular circuit (1 Samuel 7:16).
- Among the various literary devices used by the prophet, Amos makes effective use of summary quotations:
- 4:1 – callous demands of idle rich women: “Bring us some drinks.”
- 6:13 – people exulting in military prowess: “Have we not by our own strength captured Karnaim for ourselves?”
- 8:5 – greedy merchants: “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the chaff of the wheat?
- 9:10 – complacent populace: “Disaster shall not overtake us.”