Amos 8:4-9:15
Dear RTB’ers,
Amos, the end. Judgment and redemption. The whole of today’s reading is judgment, until we get to the last three verses. Amos repeats one of his central themes in today’s first three verses – greed, dishonesty, and subjugation of the poor by the wealthy, followed by the horrible extent of God’s judgment. But the worst of God’s judgment is the people seeking Him and Him shutting Himself off from them: “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.” (vv. 8:11-12) Sometimes I wonder (briefly) if God hears my prayers, but I quickly catch myself and remind myself of words that I’ve often heard from my friends at Freedom Road, “God is God and you are not.” He may be silent (from my perspective), but He hears every word and acts when and where He chooses.
A quick note: “Those who … say, ‘As your god lives, O Dan,’ and, ‘As the Way of Beersheba lives,’ they shall fall, and never rise again.” (v. 8:14) Dan, the city, was in the far north of the Promised Land and Beersheba was in the far south. So when we read “from Dan to Beersheba” in the Old Testament, the writer is referring to the whole of Israel, all the people in both the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom.
Amos 9:8 provides a summary statement for the book of Amos: “Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground, except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” declares the LORD. God will judge their evil deeds and their false worship; both Israel and Judah will go into captivity, in 722 and 586 BC, respectively, but God will save a remnant of the house of Jacob. He will not “utterly destroy” them. Clearly Hitler did not understand the ways of God!
Restoration, redemption in Amos 9:11-15. Amos, the end.
Blessings!