The "wrath filled" part of this section is, I find, one of the easier to deal with. God is pronouncing judgement on the nations for their routine, and systematic violence. Whether this be the violent kidnapping of slave-trade, or the violence of sacking the cities of your neighbors, or the violence of how they brutally descrated the bodies of their enemies, the violence of humanity is the consistent sin throughout these judgments.
"Those who live by the sword, die by the sword," so they say. The warnings of wrath can be seen as God's warning to humanity of the propensity and evil of violence used to dominate others for our own gain.
But this, in the end, misses some of the best that Amos 1-2 has to say.
The first six judgments of Amos are to the traditional enemies of the Hebrews. With long histories of war and resentment, you can clearly see how the Hebrews would hear these judgments and think to themselves, "Preach it Brother! These evil people deserve God's wrath." The more and more Amos pronounces the destruction of the traditional enemies of God's people the more they will celebrate.
The repetition of this section becomes important too. You can almost hear the people listening to this begin to chant along with certain lines Amos repeats, like a good crowd at a protest rally. The people start to chant along with Amos as he declares "for three sins even foor four." Ramping up their expectation as Amos continues to declare the evil and wickedness of their traditional enemies.
Then comes to big one. Amos comes from the southern Hebrew state, called Judah. Amos is preaching, however, in the northern Hebrew state of Israel. So when Amos declares the judgment on his own province of Judah, you can imagine the ecstasy of the northern Israelites, who are in many ways seen as the religious enemies of Judah. When they hear of their own God's judgment on Judah they must feel vindication, justification, and superiority over their neighbors.
And it is only now, when the crowds are in full agreement with Amos, when they are bursting with the womderful greatness of God's wrath against all these nations that Amos pronounces his judgment on Judah itself. The people must be stricken.
There should be an immediate, viceral feeling here when we thing about this. When we ourselves look around the world, or at our own neighbors and see the evil in their lives. It is easy to imagine, and even appreciate God's wrath when it is directed at others whose evil we understand and can see. But to ourselves?
Humanity has an incredible blindspot to our own evils. We have in incredible ability to justify within ourselves what we would never accept in another person. This capacity exists on a societal level as well.
The people os Israel in this time were in a time of relative pease and prosperity, at least for the minority. The prosperity of some in Israel was on the backs of the poor, gained from the violence of their military might. It is easy, afterall, to see yourself as blessed by God when everything is going well in your life, even if we are blind to the fact that this prosperity is based on injustice and violence.
Amos may be one of the most applicable books today. A socity that sees everything it does as justified; but stands on the backs of the poor, has extreme wealth disparity, looks with judgment on other societies even though it's guilty of the same things here. Below are some questions for when we get together that will hopefully help spark discussion for the meaning, and application of this passage.
Discussion Questions:
- Amos preached judgement on his own people. What would you preach to this society as its greatest evil?
- What are the blindspots of evil in our society? What do we judge others for which we fail to do ourselves?
- How does the wrathful language in this passage make you feel? How does this affect your feelings and ideas about God?
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