S6E5: Making sense of the book of Amos

As we return to our series on ‘How do we read the Prophets?’, Francie Cornes asks Tony Watkins and Peter Williams about the book of Amos. Tony and Peter share insights into the historical context and structure of the book, as well as talking about what it meant for its original hearers and for us reading it today.

Find out more about the host and guests here: 
Tony Watkins: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/tony-watkins/

Peter Williams: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/peter-j-williams/

Francie Cornes: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/francie-cornes/

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Tyndale House podcast.

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We're continuing our series, looking at the prophets

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and thinking through how we can read them and make sense of them.

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In our last two episodes, we talked about the book of Micah.

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And we approached that by looking at three things.

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We talked about the background of Micah.

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We then talked about the text and what it actually says.

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And then we talked about, applying the text.

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So for the initial hearers and then also applying for us today.

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So I'm joined again by Tony Watkins, who is the Fellow for Public Engagement

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here at Tyndale House, and Peter Williams who is the Principal at Tyndale House.

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And we're going to do similar to what we did with Micah,

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but we're going to look at the book of Amos today.

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So let's dig in to the background of Amos.

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So what do we need to know about the background of Amos?

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Who is he? Who prompted these messages?

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Well, when you

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start Amos, you think he's not giving us a great deal of background.

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‘The words of Amos,

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who was among the shepherds of Tekoa’, that's in the southern kingdom

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of Judah.

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The kingdom had divided into north

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and south about a couple of hundred years before Amos’s time,

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‘—which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah,

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and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Jehoash, king of Israel,

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two years before the earthquake.’

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So he does give us a historical context.

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But he is a southerner from Tekoa.

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But it's things he saw concerning Israel, which is the northern Kingdom.

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So actually he's crossed the border. So it doesn't look like it gives us

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a lot of information.

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But actually then when you get further into Amos,

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then there's a little encounter between, Amos and the priest of

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Bethel called Amaziah, and we discover a little bit more information about, about

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Amos then.

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but Uzziah became sole king

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767 [BC]?

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give or take a year

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in Judah.

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Jeroboam the second died in 753 [BC] so,

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so that gives us a very clear window for when Amos was around.

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I mean, there is a,

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Uzziah has this hugely long reign, which you could start off

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in the 790s, but I mean, let's say yes, this is all happening before 750.

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if we talk in in broad terms, we don't need to be too precise

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about eight century BC.

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And then, of course, this, earthquake is a fantastically big event.

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It leaves archaeological remains

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that are sort of widely agreed.

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We're not seismologists, but, you know, people talk about that in the city

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of David and elsewhere and of course, it gets picked up in, in the book of,

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Zechariah, where Zechariah 14 verse 5 talks about

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people fleeing, as they did in the earthquake in the days

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of Uzziah, literally remembering something from over 200 years ago

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before so that that that that's around 520 [BC],

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remembering this, this event

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and then he seems to have a couple of jobs

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as well as being prophet because it's herdsman in chapter one.

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But in chapter seven, he talks  of himself as someone who, who tends

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the sycamore

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figs, which seems to be

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well it’s widely thought this is a,

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there's a way of ripening them by piercing them, and so on.

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Obviously that's not, not something you do all year round.

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But a dresser of sycamore  figs there in chapter 7, verse

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14 and he's been taken by God, to,

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this role of prophecy and then,

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of course, we're not given his father's name.

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Which is, sometimes you are, sometimes you're not but

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it it's not necessary for us to get the message.

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Yeah.

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And who's who's he speaking to?

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What's the what's the situation he's trying to address?

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Yeah. So in the northern Kingdom, in

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around this time, was a time of,

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significant prosperity for both Israel and Judah.

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So Shalmaneser, in Assyria, Shalmaneser

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the the third I always get the Shalmanesers mixed up.

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Shalmaneser the third had had died.

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It was a time of weakness for Assyria, so they weren't able to flex their muscles

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in the Levant, the eastern end of the Mediterranean, as they had been doing.

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And so Israel, Judah, Syria just to the north, and and

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other neighbours, they were able to to relax a little bit and,

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and feel that that life was doing pretty well.

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So it was a prosperous time,

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but it was a prosperous time for the wealthy and for the elite.

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Clearly, when you read through Amos and his contemporaries, Micah,

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Isaiah, Hosea, you see that actually there's also a lot of injustice.

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So it wasn't a good time for the poor people necessarily,

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but there would, one imagines there were building projects and things.

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Amos talks about people

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having summer houses and winter houses and houses dressed of,

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made of fine dressed stone and and inlaid with ivory and these kinds of things.

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So clearly some people are doing very, very well.

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But the he's warning that trouble is to come.

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So there there is this kind of looming threat of Assyria becoming strong again,

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as it does with, the rise of Tiglath-Pileser III in,

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just a little after the, the middle of the eighth century.

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So that that's kind of a looming threat in the background.

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But at the moment it feels stable.

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It feels it feels calm, but it is a context of significant injustice.

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And also, clearly, when you read Amos, it's a situation

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where there is very little in terms of covenant faithfulness.

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The people are not following the instruction that Moses has given them,

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except in,

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maybe at a ritual level, but there's there's no heart meaning

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Okay.

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there so, so he's addressing those, those kinds of things primarily.

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And it’d be fair to say that justice is an emphasis in this book

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more than any other, even more than Micah would, would you?

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P: Or...? T: Yeah.... P: They’re big in both

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Yeah, yeah.

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P: but but really T: There probably is a bit more. Yes.

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It’s certainly what, what comes out to me is as extremely prominent

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justice and injustice language.

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And that's, that's his concern.

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And he has such evocative phrases like selling the righteous for silver

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and the needy for a pair of sandals in 2:6.

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I mean, these kinds of phrases are so powerful.

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So it's a huge concern of of Amos.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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Okay.

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Well, let's actually dig into the text itself then.

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So what's what's kind of the structure the text?

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when you read through Amos, there's

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some very obvious structure to start with.

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So after that initial verse of introduction,

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Amos 1:1 that I read just now,

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we go into to verse two, typically

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two coming after one.

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‘He said: “The Lord roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem.

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The pastors of the shepherds mourn, and the top of Carmel withers.”

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Thus says the Lord.’

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And then you see that phrase,

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‘Thus says the Lord’ coming up a few times in the next couple of chapters.

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But it's not just thus says the Lord to Israel

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or to Judah, as, as you would normally expect in the prophets. Here

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this is what the Lord says concerning transgressions of neighbouring

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city states or nations, for three

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transgressions of Damascus and for four I will not revoke the punishment,

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because they have in this case threshed Gilead with threshing sledges of iron.

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Then look at verse six.

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Thus says the Lord, for three transgressions of Gaza,

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and for four I will not revoke the punishment,

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because in this case they carried into exile a whole people.

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And so you see that phrase,

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‘Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of [wherever] and for four

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I will not revoke the punishment.’

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And that comes up,

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well, seven

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times talking about neighbouring places.

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T: So he’s F: and he's just in terms of what

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those things, what the they've been doing is that against Israel specifically?

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Is Gilead Israel or is that just these are just things they've been doing

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F: against people near them? T:  Well it's a bit of both, actually.

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So so Gilead is the is Transjordan area.

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So, possibly the

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that was under Israelite ownership and then wasn't

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and then it was and then it wasn't.

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Whether it is at the particular time that he has in mind,

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probably, but but but who knows.

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But then when you look at, verse

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six, the, the people from Gaza, the Philistines

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carried into exile a whole people to deliver them up to Edom.

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Who is that people?

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We we don't know.

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F: Okay T: but he's dotting around, so he goes south to Damascus,

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which is in the north east, and then he goes to Gaza,

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which is in the west, and then to Tyre, which is north west, right up the coast,

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and then Edom down in the south, and then the Ammonites and Moab on the east.

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Yes, on the east.

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And so, so seven neighbouring nations and or rather six neighbouring nations.

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T: And then Judah. F: Right. Okay.

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Those terrible people down in the south, we don't want anything to do with.

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And you can imagine all of the people in Israel

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that are listening to, to Amos thinking, oh, yes, he's

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got to seven, seven, seven is the number where we finish these things.

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And he's finishing with a nasty message against Judah.

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That's great. And then he adds in number eight.

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Thus says the Lord, the three transgressions of Israel.

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And for four I will not revoke the punishment.

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So you've got these two chapters of firstly oracles, as they’re called

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against other nations, and then focusing on the Lord's people at the end.

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T: And then you've— P: And that’s quite climactic as well,

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because Israel then gets the longest blast

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T: Yes, P: by some way.

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P: So it really it's delayed. T: Yeah

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And it isn't just these other nations have been doing things against Israel.

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I mean, chapter two, verse one is very clear.

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Moab burned to lime

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the bones of the king of Edom.

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That's one of their crimes. So it's,

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just, yeah, crimes generally, but yeah,

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a wonderful climax.

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P: And I was, interrupted you in your flow, Tony. T: That's fine.

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those, I guess in modern terms,

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we would say those first six are guilty of human rights violations.

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But then when it focuses on Judah and Israel,

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they are infringements of the covenant. They’re, they’re

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So all of the the nations are being called to account at some level.

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But God's covenant people are being held to a higher standard

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because they have the covenant.

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Yeah.

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Which I, just to, for anyone listening who doesn't have the passage

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in front of them, chapter two, verse four says,

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‘three transgressions of Judah.

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And for four I will not revoke the punishment

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because they have rejected

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the law of the Lord, and have not kept his statutes.’

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P: Yeah, just as an example T: Yeah. Thank you. F: of that.

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Then we have three sections starting in 3:1

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that begin with ‘Hear this word that the Lord has spoken...’

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So 3:1; 4:1 – ‘Hear, this word, you cows of Bashan.

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And then 5:1 – ‘Hear, this word that I take up over you

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T: in lamentation.’ P:  And that said said, it's worth just commenting it there.

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The chapter divisions are in exactly the right place.

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T: It is P: You know, it's some people like to criticize chapters.

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Sometimes they are open to quibbling, but sometimes they can get it right.

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These are good ones. Yeah.

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yeah, I might have put chapter two in a slightly different place

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if I was doing it, but, I'm happy with where it is.

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And then so after

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chapter 5:17, then we get

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very classic prophetic

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word ‘woe,’ ‘Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord.’

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And we have two of those.

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We have one in chapter 5:18 and one in chapter 6 verse 1

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‘Woe to those who are at ease in Zion.’

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So two, what are called woe oracles because of that first word.

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Then we we change gear a little bit in chapter seven,

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because then we have a series of visions that Amos recounts.

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‘This is what the Lord showed me’ in 7:1.

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And so you see that in 7:1. In 7:4 he has a second vision.

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‘This is what the Lord God showed me.’

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Verse 7 ‘this is what he showed me:

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Behold, the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line.’

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Very famous image from Amos.

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Then we have a little bit of narrative from 7:10

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to the end of that chapter, where Amos encounters Amaziah, the priest of Bethel,

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who is not happy about Amos,

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speaking up in that northern kingdom.

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I think this probably implies that Amos has been speaking

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in Bethel itself, which was, a place of idolatry.

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So there were two calf idols set up in the northern Kingdom, one at Dan

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and one at Bethel.

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And so this Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, is

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probably a priest in the worship of this calf idol.

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And Amos almost certainly is going there to

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to attack, to condemn the

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the idolatry of this northern kingdom.

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And that's where he runs into the priest.

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So, yeah, probably at least some of these messages are delivered there.

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Then we have another vision in chapter 8 with that phrase

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again, ‘this is what the Lord God showed me: 

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a basket of summer fruit.’

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And then

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where do we pick up the next,

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oh the next change is in ‘8:4’ we get another ‘hear’

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It's not ‘hear this word’ this time.

00:13:31:21 - 00:13:33:06
But just, ‘Hear this,

00:13:33:06 - 00:13:35:15
you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end’

00:13:35:15 - 00:13:37:12
That's 8:4.

00:13:37:12 - 00:13:41:02
And then we have a final vision in in chapter 9, verse 1,

00:13:41:02 - 00:13:44:02
‘I saw the Lord.’

00:13:44:02 - 00:13:47:02
And that that final vision takes us through to the end.

00:13:47:17 - 00:13:50:17
Though it's worth saying that there's a

00:13:51:07 - 00:13:54:14
a division within chapter 9, because when you get to verse 11,

00:13:54:22 - 00:13:59:15
we get the first beginnings of something positive in the whole of the book of Amos.

00:13:59:22 - 00:14:03:07
Just the last five verses from 9:11 to 9:15 are

00:14:03:21 - 00:14:05:06
the only positive verses.

00:14:05:06 - 00:14:06:13
And that's a regular pattern.

00:14:06:13 - 00:14:08:05
I mean, we get it in Obadiah.

00:14:08:05 - 00:14:10:17
We get this in in Micah.

00:14:10:17 - 00:14:13:12
I mean, do you want to talk about this sort of trend?

00:14:13:12 - 00:14:14:04
I'm trying to think,

00:14:15:12 - 00:14:18:04
you know, how many how many of the prophets have it?

00:14:18:04 - 00:14:21:10
P: It's, something that T: judgment and then hope?

00:14:21:13 - 00:14:23:15
Yeah. And the judgment is the longer thing.

00:14:23:15 - 00:14:27:02
But then there is this restoration for God's people

00:14:27:02 - 00:14:30:10
that's envisaged towards the end of each

00:14:31:05 - 00:14:32:05
T: Yeah, that’s right P: of these books

00:14:32:05 - 00:14:35:05
So in one of our Micah episodes, we, we talked about how they

00:14:35:20 - 00:14:38:19
there are three main sections and they all begin with judgment

00:14:38:19 - 00:14:41:19
and then pivot to hope.

00:14:42:16 - 00:14:45:08
One of them has got another little pivot

00:14:45:08 - 00:14:47:02
in the middle, but they all begin with judgment.

00:14:47:02 - 00:14:49:15
They all end with hope so yeah P: I mean Zephaniah’s another one as well.

00:14:49:15 - 00:14:49:24
Yeah.

00:14:49:24 - 00:14:52:24
T: Absolutely P: again, it's got the same sort of pattern.

00:14:52:24 - 00:14:54:10
The vast majority

00:14:54:10 - 00:14:55:14
T: Yeah P: is judgment.

00:14:55:14 - 00:14:58:12
P: But then this . . . T: Yeah.

00:14:58:12 - 00:15:00:08
P: . . . promise at the end T: That's right.

00:15:00:08 - 00:15:03:13
But it's a starker difference in Amos than in any of the others,

00:15:03:13 - 00:15:07:12
because it is such a tiny little bit at the end, to the extent that a famous

00:15:07:12 - 00:15:08:14
German commentator,

00:15:10:24 - 00:15:13:24
Westermann [Correction: Wellhausen].

00:15:13:24 - 00:15:14:17
Westermann [Correction: Wellhausen]. Yeah.

00:15:14:17 - 00:15:17:02
Yeah, he said that this is,

00:15:17:02 - 00:15:21:04
lavender and roses after blood and iron, and therefore it couldn't be genuine

00:15:21:04 - 00:15:22:20
Amos.

00:15:22:20 - 00:15:23:21
Well it's a change of gear

00:15:23:21 - 00:15:26:20
but that does mean it's not genuine Amos.

00:15:27:11 - 00:15:28:24
It. Yeah. Lavender and roses.

00:15:28:24 - 00:15:31:12
But that's God's grace. P: Yeah, sure

00:15:31:12 - 00:15:34:12
T: He is giving us lavender and roses after judgment and blood and iron

00:15:36:01 - 00:15:36:19
Yeah.

00:15:36:19 - 00:15:39:19
So we we're going to focus in on just one, one section,

00:15:40:11 - 00:15:42:23
which was chapter 5.

00:15:42:23 - 00:15:43:19
Yeah.

00:15:43:19 - 00:15:46:19
Verse 1-17.

00:15:47:15 - 00:15:48:11
Should I read that?

00:15:48:11 - 00:15:50:02
I think that's a very good idea.

00:15:50:02 - 00:15:53:02
Apologies in advance for mispronouncing things.

00:15:54:10 - 00:15:58:13
So chapter 5, verse 1 ‘Hear this word that I take up over you in lamentation.

00:15:58:13 - 00:16:01:06
Oh, House of Israel, fallen no more to rise

00:16:01:06 - 00:16:03:16
Is the virgin Israel forsaken on her land.

00:16:03:16 - 00:16:05:08
With none to raise her up.

00:16:05:08 - 00:16:08:21
For thus says the Lord God, the city that went out a thousand

00:16:09:00 - 00:16:10:11
shall have a hundred left,

00:16:10:11 - 00:16:14:05
and that which went out a hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.

00:16:14:19 - 00:16:18:11
For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel, seek me and live

00:16:18:17 - 00:16:23:13
but do not seek Bethel, and do not enter into Gilgal or cross over to Beersheba.

00:16:23:20 - 00:16:27:14
For Gilgal shall surely go into exile, and Bethel shall come to nothing.

00:16:28:06 - 00:16:31:15
Seek the Lord and live, lest he break out like fire

00:16:31:15 - 00:16:34:24
in the house of Joseph, and it devour with none to quench it

00:16:34:24 - 00:16:36:08
for Bethel.

00:16:36:08 - 00:16:40:06
Oh, you who turn justice to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth.

00:16:41:01 - 00:16:43:07
He who made the Pleiades and Orion,

00:16:44:06 - 00:16:47:11
and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day

00:16:47:11 - 00:16:50:08
into night who calls for the waters of the sea.

00:16:50:08 - 00:16:52:19
And pours them out on the surface of the earth,

00:16:52:19 - 00:16:53:24
The Lord is his name.

00:16:53:24 - 00:16:56:22
Who makes destruction flash forth against the strong.

00:16:56:22 - 00:16:59:22
So that destruction comes upon the fortress.

00:16:59:22 - 00:17:03:24
They hate him who approves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks the truth.

00:17:04:12 - 00:17:08:23
Therefore, because you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him,

00:17:09:07 - 00:17:12:19
you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them.

00:17:13:04 - 00:17:16:04
You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.

00:17:16:16 - 00:17:20:05
For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins.

00:17:20:15 - 00:17:24:03
You who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe and turn aside

00:17:24:03 - 00:17:25:13
the needy in the gate.

00:17:25:13 - 00:17:28:21
Therefore he who is prudent will keep silent in such a time,

00:17:29:05 - 00:17:31:05
for it is an evil time.

00:17:31:05 - 00:17:34:05
Seek good and not evil, that you may live.

00:17:34:07 - 00:17:37:00
And so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you,

00:17:37:00 - 00:17:42:03
as you have said, hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate.

00:17:42:13 - 00:17:44:00
It may be that the Lord,

00:17:44:00 - 00:17:47:02
the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

00:17:47:21 - 00:17:51:10
Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord.

00:17:52:05 - 00:17:55:18
In all the squares there shall be wailing, and in all the streets they shall say,

00:17:55:18 - 00:17:59:11
alas, alas, they shall call the farmers to mourning and to wailing

00:17:59:11 - 00:18:03:18
those who are skilled in lamentation, and in all vineyards there shall be wailing.

00:18:03:18 - 00:18:05:20
For I will pass through your midst, says the Lord.’

00:18:06:22 - 00:18:09:22
So what's what's this section about?

00:18:10:03 - 00:18:12:17
Well, I think you could make a good case

00:18:12:17 - 00:18:15:21
for saying that this is the the centre of Amos.

00:18:17:09 - 00:18:22:12
And it is a lament, a lamentation ‘Hear this word that I take up over you

00:18:22:12 - 00:18:26:21
in lamentation, O House of Israel,’ and at least at the beginning

00:18:26:21 - 00:18:32:05
it follows, seems to follow a kind of a rhythm or a pattern.

00:18:32:05 - 00:18:35:05
that’s sometimes called a ‘qinah’ or a,

00:18:36:04 - 00:18:39:24
a dirge rhythm, sometimes called a limping rhythm.

00:18:39:24 - 00:18:43:04
It's got a, a long bit and then a short bit.

00:18:43:13 - 00:18:46:10
So it seems to have that kind of pattern at the beginning.

00:18:46:10 - 00:18:49:15
There's a, structurally, it echoes other laments,

00:18:49:24 - 00:18:52:24
such as when,

00:18:53:08 - 00:18:56:08
Samuel, is is

00:18:58:00 - 00:18:59:13
P: David lamenting Jonathan?

00:18:59:13 - 00:19:00:15
T: David, yeah.

00:19:00:15 - 00:19:02:05
P: And Saul’s death, yeah. T: Yeah, yeah.

00:19:02:05 - 00:19:03:21
in 2 Samuel 1 Yeah.

00:19:05:11 - 00:19:05:20
Thank you.

00:19:05:20 - 00:19:09:04
T: as I started . . . P: and the same rhythm you sometimes get in the book

00:19:09:04 - 00:19:13:06
of Lamentations, it's this idea that it's a little bit offset,

00:19:13:10 - 00:19:16:15
rather than just, pairs equal,

00:19:17:13 - 00:19:19:17
pairs that you often have.

00:19:19:17 - 00:19:22:06
But it's interesting when he says at the beginning, ‘Hear this word that

00:19:22:06 - 00:19:25:12
I take up over you’ that that sounds quite, quite quiet.

00:19:25:24 - 00:19:30:10
or moderate in English, but actually, it's it's

00:19:30:10 - 00:19:33:10
‘Hear this word that I, that I cry,

00:19:34:09 - 00:19:35:16
in, in lamentation.’

00:19:35:16 - 00:19:40:03
So I, I, I rather suspect that Amos is performing this,

00:19:40:18 - 00:19:44:17
so he is I suspect that he's out in the square

00:19:44:17 - 00:19:49:21
in Bethel or wherever it is, and and weeping and mourning

00:19:49:21 - 00:19:54:13
over the state of the House of Israel, because he's saying it's fallen.

00:19:54:18 - 00:19:57:21
And at the same time, there is this invitation with this in verse

00:19:58:03 - 00:20:01:12
4 or verse 6, seek, seek me,

00:20:01:12 - 00:20:04:12
or, and live or seek the Lord and live.

00:20:04:15 - 00:20:07:24
So it is saying, it's the end.

00:20:07:24 - 00:20:13:06
But sometimes we would read that as saying, therefore there is no coming back.

00:20:13:06 - 00:20:14:02
You missed a train.

00:20:14:02 - 00:20:20:14
And and yet there is this sense that God's mercies never come to an end.

00:20:20:14 - 00:20:22:24
And and here he still is.

00:20:22:24 - 00:20:27:05
And there is always life in seek seeking him and not seeking,

00:20:28:01 - 00:20:32:10
these bad things that they been seeking in a whole list of places in, in, in

00:20:33:10 - 00:20:36:03
verse 5 with a bit of wordplay

00:20:36:03 - 00:20:40:05
in the original there, where all, but these places that have sort

00:20:40:05 - 00:20:43:05
of typified their idolatry.

00:20:44:10 - 00:20:47:19
And yet have been associated with such amazing things in, in history,

00:20:47:19 - 00:20:51:12
as you read through the prose books, the historical books of the Bible,

00:20:51:12 - 00:20:54:20
and you can see, you know, Gilgal's the place where the reproach was

00:20:54:20 - 00:20:57:22
rolled away; Beersheba, a place associated with,

00:20:58:24 - 00:21:01:12
the covenant and Abraham and so on.

00:21:01:12 - 00:21:03:21
Bethel, where God appeared to Jacob.

00:21:03:21 - 00:21:07:14
And yet these places all become corrupted.

00:21:07:21 - 00:21:11:17
And, you know, don't seek those; seek God himself.

00:21:11:17 - 00:21:15:19
P: So . . . T: yeah P:  . . . very powerful way of speaking when, when you

00:21:16:02 - 00:21:18:08
when particularly when you've been reading

00:21:18:08 - 00:21:21:17
the story of the rest of the Bible, I think it it becomes very powerful.

00:21:21:17 - 00:21:22:18
Yeah.

00:21:22:18 - 00:21:24:20
There's a there's a general thing for the prophets there

00:21:24:20 - 00:21:26:18
that sometimes their words can look,

00:21:28:02 - 00:21:28:12
on the

00:21:28:12 - 00:21:33:10
surface, so uncompromising and, well, they are uncompromising, but so final.

00:21:33:21 - 00:21:37:05
And yet the there is that possibility open.

00:21:37:05 - 00:21:40:05
So when Jonah goes to Nineveh, he says 40 more days

00:21:40:05 - 00:21:41:17
and this city will be overthrown.

00:21:41:17 - 00:21:44:24
He doesn't say unless you repent, but they do repent.

00:21:44:24 - 00:21:49:18
And the Lord, the Lord relents from from his bringing judgment on them.

00:21:50:09 - 00:21:53:09
But actually, this invitation here is the only

00:21:53:17 - 00:21:55:23
And it well,  it comes twice.

00:21:55:23 - 00:21:58:23
So it's a, verses 4 to 6.

00:21:59:11 - 00:22:02:15
And then again in, in verse 14, these are the only invitations

00:22:02:15 - 00:22:05:15
to repent in the book of Amos.

00:22:06:16 - 00:22:08:10
But but yes,

00:22:08:10 - 00:22:11:10
the city—, Israel appears to be finished,

00:22:11:24 - 00:22:14:24
but there is the possibility still of life.

00:22:16:12 - 00:22:18:23
You and you mentioned,

00:22:18:23 - 00:22:22:00
before we started recording that there's a chiastic structure.

00:22:22:21 - 00:22:24:18
What is a chiastic structure?

00:22:24:18 - 00:22:27:08
And, and how is it working in this passage?

00:22:27:08 - 00:22:30:22
Yeah so a chiasm is, is a mirror image.

00:22:30:22 - 00:22:33:05
Mirror image is a much easier term to use.

00:22:34:22 - 00:22:37:22
But we like talking about chiasms sometimes.

00:22:38:18 - 00:22:42:12
And they can be a bit controversial, because sometimes people see chiasms

00:22:42:12 - 00:22:46:20
where there feels like a bit of a stretch, and sometimes they feel very obvious.

00:22:47:00 - 00:22:49:13
I think this this one has a very obvious one.

00:22:49:13 - 00:22:52:07
So we start with lamentation

00:22:52:07 - 00:22:55:07
in in verses 1 to 3,

00:22:55:15 - 00:22:59:08
say. We finish with lamentation because we've got verses

00:22:59:08 - 00:23:03:17
16 and 17, we've got wailing and people saying, alas and mourning and,

00:23:05:03 - 00:23:07:09
and and explicitly lamentation.

00:23:07:09 - 00:23:10:09
So we begin and end with lamentation.

00:23:10:13 - 00:23:12:23
We've, we've got,

00:23:12:23 - 00:23:16:13
as we were just saying, we've got this invitation to, to seek the Lord and live.

00:23:16:13 - 00:23:17:10
Seek me and live.

00:23:17:10 - 00:23:20:02
Verse 4, but don't seek Bethel.

00:23:20:02 - 00:23:21:01
And these other places.

00:23:21:01 - 00:23:24:08
Seek the Lord and live repetition there in verse 6.

00:23:24:22 - 00:23:30:08
And that that seeking one thing and not another thing comes up in verse 14. Here

00:23:30:08 - 00:23:34:08
it's not ‘seek the Lord’, but it’s ‘seek good and not evil’.

00:23:34:08 - 00:23:36:07
But it's a very clear parallel.

00:23:36:07 - 00:23:38:18
Hate evil, love good. Flipping it round.

00:23:38:18 - 00:23:41:13
So you've got those, those two invitations,

00:23:41:13 - 00:23:44:13
just slightly in from the edges, as it were.

00:23:44:24 - 00:23:47:11
Verse 7 is about the injustice

00:23:47:11 - 00:23:50:11
‘you who turn justice to wormwood and cast righteousness to the ground.’

00:23:50:11 - 00:23:51:14
Just a single phrase

00:23:51:14 - 00:23:53:18
there, but that's unpacked a little bit

00:23:53:18 - 00:23:58:22
Then in verses 10 to 13. There we see how they are unjust.

00:23:58:22 - 00:24:00:21
They hate him who reproves in the gate.

00:24:00:21 - 00:24:02:21
They abhor him who speaks the truth.

00:24:02:21 - 00:24:05:08
You trample on the poor, and so on.

00:24:05:08 - 00:24:08:16
And then at the very centre we've got these two fabulous verses,

00:24:08:16 - 00:24:11:05
which feels like a gear change when you first read through.

00:24:11:05 - 00:24:14:04
When you go from 7 to 8, it feels

00:24:15:19 - 00:24:17:20
a bit of a clunky gear change, almost.

00:24:17:20 - 00:24:18:08
You've got

00:24:18:08 - 00:24:21:16
you who turned justice to wormwood and cast down righteousness to the earth.

00:24:22:06 - 00:24:24:17
He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep

00:24:24:17 - 00:24:27:17
darkness into morning and darkens the day into night.

00:24:28:18 - 00:24:30:00
But it's the Lord is his name.

00:24:30:00 - 00:24:33:02
So we've got these two verses about the very character,

00:24:33:03 - 00:24:36:07
nature and power of of Yahweh,

00:24:36:16 - 00:24:41:12
who is who is sovereign over all of this, despite the people's waywardness.

00:24:41:18 - 00:24:44:05
And that's the very centre of this mirror image.

00:24:44:05 - 00:24:49:03
That's the focus, and everything else revolves around that.

00:24:49:09 - 00:24:54:08
This is the God, says Amos, that you are offending

00:24:54:16 - 00:24:57:16
and letting down and,

00:24:58:10 - 00:25:01:04
turning your back on, and you want to mess with him,

00:25:01:04 - 00:25:03:04
really?

00:25:03:04 - 00:25:04:21
You might want to think again about that.

00:25:05:23 - 00:25:09:08
So that's an A, B, C, D in the centre

00:25:09:08 - 00:25:10:12
Yeah.

00:25:10:12 - 00:25:13:06
CBA structure. I'd love to ask a little bit

00:25:13:06 - 00:25:16:06
about city imagery and geography.

00:25:16:06 - 00:25:19:12
So what we've got in verse 10 is they hate him

00:25:19:12 - 00:25:22:12
who reproves in the gate, they abhor him who speaks the truth.

00:25:23:05 - 00:25:26:17
In verse 12, turn aside the needy in the gate.

00:25:26:23 - 00:25:27:04
Yeah.

00:25:27:04 - 00:25:33:07
And then we've got, in, verse 16, in all the squares there shall be wailing,

00:25:33:07 - 00:25:36:22
and all the streets, they shall say, alas and we got,

00:25:37:22 - 00:25:40:22
you know, farmers wailing and so on.

00:25:41:05 - 00:25:45:10
Just talk us through, I mean, how their cities differ from our cities

00:25:45:10 - 00:25:49:01
and what what happens in gates, what happens in squares?

00:25:49:15 - 00:25:53:14
And, maybe a bit about farmers mourning

00:25:53:14 - 00:25:56:20
Well cities are not quite like our cities,

00:25:56:20 - 00:25:59:09
are they? They’re rather smaller but the there is,

00:26:00:14 - 00:26:01:06
I mean, we

00:26:01:06 - 00:26:05:00
we’re used to cities where the the centre of the city is,

00:26:05:02 - 00:26:09:07
is where most of the life happens and where the, the court is

00:26:09:07 - 00:26:10:22
and the government buildings and so on.

00:26:10:22 - 00:26:14:20
But it's, it's actually the, the gateway of the city

00:26:14:20 - 00:26:18:21
T: that was the, the centre of life P: And cities usually only have one gate.

00:26:18:21 - 00:26:20:12
So that's everyone has to go in and out there.

00:26:20:12 - 00:26:22:12
Yep.

00:26:22:12 - 00:26:24:24
And often

00:26:24:24 - 00:26:28:03
it seems covered but but not always perhaps

00:26:28:06 - 00:26:31:09
but certainly some of them were covered and, and it seems that the elders

00:26:31:18 - 00:26:35:16
of this of the town or the city would, would sit in the gate.

00:26:35:16 - 00:26:38:05
People would come to do their business there.

00:26:38:05 - 00:26:41:05
But the elders would sit there in order to,

00:26:42:22 - 00:26:47:19
to judge, effectively. I mean there was not necessarily

00:26:49:20 - 00:26:52:20
a formal legal system, but there would be

00:26:52:21 - 00:26:55:24
the senior people within the town who would be

00:26:57:10 - 00:27:01:05
expected to arbitrate between people who have a dispute.

00:27:01:05 - 00:27:02:22
So so you could come to the gates.

00:27:02:22 - 00:27:06:08
You could you could meet with the, with the,

00:27:06:08 - 00:27:10:12
the senior people in the city and say, my neighbour is

00:27:10:15 - 00:27:13:21
has moved my boundary post, my neighbour is, is doing this.

00:27:14:20 - 00:27:17:01
And and actually

00:27:17:01 - 00:27:20:14
what they're finding here is that if you're,

00:27:20:15 - 00:27:23:20
if you're rich and powerful, you, you can get what you want in the gate.

00:27:23:20 - 00:27:26:22
But if you're if you're poor and needy, you're going to be turned aside

00:27:27:00 - 00:27:29:22
because you can't you can't bribe.

00:27:29:22 - 00:27:33:22
So the righteous and the needy are being equated with each other

00:27:33:22 - 00:27:35:20
in verse 12, you who afflict the righteous,

00:27:35:20 - 00:27:38:05
who take a bribe and turn aside the needy in the gate.

00:27:38:05 - 00:27:40:22
It's not that the needy are in principle righteous,

00:27:40:22 - 00:27:44:11
it's just that very often it's the people at the bottom of society.

00:27:44:11 - 00:27:47:11
They have nobody they can trust because they're being exploited

00:27:47:11 - 00:27:49:03
apart from the Lord.

00:27:49:03 - 00:27:50:13
And so it drives them

00:27:50:13 - 00:27:54:16
towards a faithfulness that you don't see among the more powerful people.

00:27:54:21 - 00:27:57:05
So the powerful, the rich can bribe.

00:27:57:05 - 00:27:58:12
They get their way.

00:27:58:12 - 00:28:01:18
The needy who are the righteous they are

00:28:01:19 - 00:28:05:20
they're just given a hard time. The people that try to speak the truth

00:28:05:20 - 00:28:06:10
are hated,

00:28:07:18 - 00:28:10:18
the poor are trampled on,

00:28:11:01 - 00:28:12:15
yeah. It's miserable.

00:28:12:15 - 00:28:14:24
And then squares and and streets, you were asking about?

00:28:14:24 - 00:28:18:20
So I guess the thing is usually the main square

00:28:18:20 - 00:28:21:24
might be as you just come in from the gates.

00:28:21:24 - 00:28:24:22
Yeah. That's where people can gather.

00:28:24:22 - 00:28:27:18
And I guess if people are oppressing people in the gate

00:28:27:18 - 00:28:31:07
and that's going under the eyes of the elders of the city,

00:28:31:07 - 00:28:35:01
therefore everyone's complicit in some sense of that.

00:28:35:01 - 00:28:38:05
I mean, you do see legal stuff going on in the gate, whether it's,

00:28:39:04 - 00:28:41:23
Ruth chapter 4 with Boaz doing a transaction there.

00:28:41:23 - 00:28:45:01
I love the bit at the end of Psalm 127

00:28:45:01 - 00:28:48:05
about, you know, behold, children, a heritage from the Lord.

00:28:48:05 - 00:28:51:17
And there's, talks about them like, arrows in the hand of a warrior are

00:28:52:03 - 00:28:55:03
children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who has his quiver full of them.

00:28:55:03 - 00:28:59:04
He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gates.

00:28:59:08 - 00:29:02:09
And its this sort of sense of, you know, he's got all these strapping lads

00:29:02:09 - 00:29:06:16
or whatever, coming along and yes, he's he's going to be just fine.

00:29:07:09 - 00:29:10:19
But but, the, the

00:29:10:19 - 00:29:14:14
yes, that that sense of the gate and I guess with the farmers,

00:29:15:16 - 00:29:18:16
I mean, there's so much capital at stake,

00:29:19:03 - 00:29:21:19
when you have a bad harvest, that you know

00:29:21:19 - 00:29:25:09
the whole mood, you have, about this.

00:29:25:09 - 00:29:28:05
And so if the vineyards are wrecked

00:29:28:05 - 00:29:29:07
they are,

00:29:29:07 - 00:29:33:01
they're mourning, they're wailing, and that's all part of the imagery.

00:29:33:01 - 00:29:35:11
And it's not difficult imagery.

00:29:35:11 - 00:29:39:05
It just there's a slightly sort of training as you read the Bible

00:29:39:07 - 00:29:45:01
to start thinking about the geography, the layout of their cities

00:29:45:01 - 00:29:48:06
and what that means, because I think it's easy for your eyes

00:29:48:06 - 00:29:51:09
just to glaze over these particular details.

00:29:51:09 - 00:29:54:13
Streets, gates, who cares you know, it's just a bit of poetry.

00:29:54:13 - 00:29:58:06
No, it's actually, there's actually a social reality behind that.

00:29:58:06 - 00:30:01:02
You need to, to think about that.

00:30:01:02 - 00:30:03:23
And there's a there's a connection within the passage as well.

00:30:03:23 - 00:30:09:13
So, the vineyards are a scene of wailing in verse 17.

00:30:09:13 - 00:30:10:15
But vineyards have been mentioned

00:30:10:15 - 00:30:13:10
back in verse 11, in the middle of this section of injustice

00:30:13:10 - 00:30:14:10
that we were just looking at,

00:30:15:13 - 00:30:16:04
the people who are

00:30:16:04 - 00:30:19:06
trampling on the poor and exacting grain taxes from them.

00:30:20:10 - 00:30:21:03
Where are you living?

00:30:21:03 - 00:30:25:08
Your, you've built houses of hewn stone, but you will not dwell in them.

00:30:25:08 - 00:30:29:01
These are the houses in the streets and around the squares.

00:30:29:22 - 00:30:32:22
You've planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.

00:30:33:01 - 00:30:35:18
T: And it's in the vineyards where there's going to be wailing and so on P: and again,

00:30:35:18 - 00:30:38:18
there's just a little cultural thing to think about there that,

00:30:39:04 - 00:30:41:19
you could make a house literally of putting whatever

00:30:41:19 - 00:30:44:19
stones you happen to find together and there might be some gaps between them.

00:30:44:24 - 00:30:47:24
Or you can have that really expensive sort where,

00:30:48:14 - 00:30:51:08
someone has somehow managed to cut off the edges

00:30:51:08 - 00:30:52:14
and make everything fit together.

00:30:52:14 - 00:30:54:16
And that's really, very fine.

00:30:54:16 - 00:30:55:18
And for us,

00:30:55:18 - 00:30:56:18
you know,

00:30:56:18 - 00:30:58:00
look at houses all the time and the bricks

00:30:58:00 - 00:30:59:20
basically fit and they’re joined with cement.

00:30:59:20 - 00:31:01:15
But this this is a key thing.

00:31:01:15 - 00:31:05:10
So it's, part of it is having the habit of thinking yourself

00:31:05:10 - 00:31:10:21
into the cultural realities there that houses of hewn stone are

00:31:11:20 - 00:31:12:23
definitely at

00:31:12:23 - 00:31:15:23
the upper end of, of affordability.

00:31:16:00 - 00:31:19:00
And so, and these people are oppressing,

00:31:20:02 - 00:31:22:24
others who might well just have,

00:31:22:24 - 00:31:25:06
rough stone houses or,

00:31:25:06 - 00:31:28:15
I mean, and they it does seem generally that houses have this lower,

00:31:28:15 - 00:31:32:10
at least in cities have this lower basis of stone, whatever they put above it,

00:31:33:04 - 00:31:34:21
P: perishable material. T: Yeah.

00:31:34:21 - 00:31:37:11
But that, that, that's

00:31:37:11 - 00:31:40:09
P: that's common T: There's other references to luxurious houses

00:31:40:09 - 00:31:41:11
at the end of chapter three,

00:31:41:11 - 00:31:44:00
I will strike the winter house along with the summer house,

00:31:44:00 - 00:31:46:08
which kind of, you know, these people have got somewhere

00:31:46:08 - 00:31:48:04
to live in the winter and somewhere to live

00:31:48:04 - 00:31:49:04
when it's a bit warmer.

00:31:49:04 - 00:31:51:09
That's, that's that's pretty cushy.

00:31:51:09 - 00:31:53:22
And the houses of ivory and great houses.

00:31:53:22 - 00:31:54:12
T: So, yeah. P: Yeah.

00:31:54:12 - 00:31:58:06
And the house of ivory, again, it's not that the whole thing is made of ivory, it's

00:31:58:06 - 00:31:59:17
that they've got ivory inlays.

00:31:59:17 - 00:32:02:14
This is a big thing. Samaria,

00:32:02:14 - 00:32:06:19
lots of ivory is found there, quite a number of Phoenician sort of things.

00:32:06:19 - 00:32:07:24
Even in our local

00:32:09:10 - 00:32:12:09
Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge,

00:32:12:09 - 00:32:17:12
you can see some of these sort of, eighth century pieces of ivory.

00:32:17:12 - 00:32:20:12
But just to again, think about,

00:32:20:17 - 00:32:24:04
the sort of realities of, of their world, what they were

00:32:24:04 - 00:32:27:19
physically that can really help you just appreciating,

00:32:29:06 - 00:32:31:20
the, the prophets and understand what's going on.

00:32:31:20 - 00:32:32:21
Yeah. Okay.

00:32:32:21 - 00:32:37:12
So if we then just move on to the, the last thing which is hearing the text.

00:32:37:13 - 00:32:41:20
So there's the audience that Amos is speaking to, there’s us today,

00:32:42:04 - 00:32:45:04
there's also people in between.

00:32:45:07 - 00:32:45:17
Yeah.

00:32:45:17 - 00:32:48:15
What, how were the people

00:32:48:15 - 00:32:52:10
first hearing it supposed to respond and kind of,

00:32:53:02 - 00:32:54:13
F: yeah, hear it, I guess. T: Yeah

00:32:54:13 - 00:32:58:11
So Amos is is delivering this verbally in the northern kingdom.

00:32:59:10 - 00:33:01:15
And we know from history

00:33:01:15 - 00:33:05:19
that the Assyrians came in 722 [BC] and destroyed the northern kingdom.

00:33:05:19 - 00:33:08:16
We talk about the lost tribes of, of Israel because

00:33:09:20 - 00:33:12:10
it was that was the end of it as as a kingdom.

00:33:12:10 - 00:33:15:11
Those, many of those people were taken into, into exile.

00:33:15:11 - 00:33:16:17
And, and,

00:33:16:17 - 00:33:20:11
other the people were settled in that northern kingdom; their intermarried descendants

00:33:20:11 - 00:33:25:08
became the Samaritans who were so hated by the, in the time of Jesus and and so on.

00:33:25:08 - 00:33:27:12
So that was the end of the northern kingdom.

00:33:27:12 - 00:33:31:18
So you could say, and there's a very famous article,

00:33:32:02 - 00:33:35:15
about the prophets being failures because they,

00:33:36:23 - 00:33:39:23
Amos speaks and nothing happens.

00:33:39:23 - 00:33:43:02
I just don't think that's that's fair at all,

00:33:43:03 - 00:33:46:23
because, yes, destruction did come at one level.

00:33:47:10 - 00:33:49:03
He is absolutely right.

00:33:49:03 - 00:33:50:12
Fallen no more to rise.

00:33:50:12 - 00:33:53:12
Is the virgin Israel forsaken on her own land with none to raise her up.

00:33:53:17 - 00:33:56:04
Yep, in just a couple of decades,

00:33:56:04 - 00:33:59:20
three decades, say, after Amos's time, that becomes a reality.

00:34:00:18 - 00:34:05:11
But that doesn't mean Amos is a failure, because he's not just

00:34:05:11 - 00:34:08:20
speaking to a, a monolithic nation.

00:34:08:20 - 00:34:10:17
He's speaking to individuals, too.

00:34:10:17 - 00:34:17:10
And and clearly, some people respond to Amos’s words in repentance of faith.

00:34:17:10 - 00:34:21:15
They take his injunction to ‘seek me and live’, and they take that seriously.

00:34:22:03 - 00:34:25:15
And so when when the Assyrian threat comes

00:34:25:19 - 00:34:31:09
or when destruction happens, they have by that point,

00:34:32:12 - 00:34:35:11
whether whether Amos himself has been involved in this or not,

00:34:35:11 - 00:34:35:24
we don't know.

00:34:35:24 - 00:34:40:12
But those people take Amos’s words, they flee over the border

00:34:40:12 - 00:34:43:03
to their southern neighbour, and they take refuge.

00:34:43:03 - 00:34:47:02
They become refugees in the southern kingdom, and they they settle there.

00:34:47:12 - 00:34:51:10
And so then these words, these written words, now, as a as a whole book,

00:34:51:16 - 00:34:54:16
have a have a second lease of life, addressing,

00:34:54:22 - 00:34:57:14
not the unfaithful people of the northern Kingdom of Israel,

00:34:57:14 - 00:35:00:24
but now addressing the unfaithful people of the southern kingdom of Judah,

00:35:00:24 - 00:35:03:24
because Amos becomes part of The Book of the Twelve.

00:35:04:13 - 00:35:08:03
So we have these, these 12 prophets in one scroll,

00:35:08:08 - 00:35:13:03
and they, they continue to challenge God's covenant people in, in Judah.

00:35:13:15 - 00:35:16:05
Oh, and we know the descendants of the northern Kingdom

00:35:16:05 - 00:35:19:17
were still around in Jesus’s time because he's welcomed at the temple

00:35:19:17 - 00:35:22:17
by Simeon, which sounds a very southern name to me, and Anna,

00:35:22:19 - 00:35:25:09
the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.

00:35:25:09 - 00:35:28:23
So there she is, hundreds of years later, still knowing her ancestry.

00:35:29:05 - 00:35:32:05
So. And then, of course, because of their efforts

00:35:32:05 - 00:35:35:05
in, in in preserving these words for Judah,

00:35:35:17 - 00:35:38:23
we still have them now 2700 years

00:35:38:23 - 00:35:42:24
later on, because the Lord is at work in this, er,I think that’s remarkable.

00:35:43:07 - 00:35:44:19
So would you say, so

00:35:44:19 - 00:35:47:19
the preservation of the book

00:35:48:00 - 00:35:51:12
is your kind of evidence for there were people who responded to these words.

00:35:52:05 - 00:35:53:12
Well, it's one piece of evidence.

00:35:53:12 - 00:35:55:06
It's a very significant piece of evidence.

00:35:56:15 - 00:35:59:15
But yeah, we can we can read in the,

00:35:59:15 - 00:36:02:15
in Kings that there were, there were some people,

00:36:02:19 - 00:36:04:23
some of the Levites went down

00:36:04:23 - 00:36:07:15
before this time because,

00:36:07:15 - 00:36:10:24
when, when Jeroboam set up the calf idol worship

00:36:10:24 - 00:36:14:08
in the northern Kingdom, he set up his own priesthood.

00:36:14:08 - 00:36:18:05
So, so some of the, the Levitical people certainly had already gone.

00:36:18:13 - 00:36:20:08
Yeah.

00:36:20:08 - 00:36:23:14
I also like the fact that in Acts chapter 15, when the

00:36:23:21 - 00:36:28:22
the early church is debating what to do with Gentiles and, you know,

00:36:28:23 - 00:36:32:23
and so on, which is really something that affects an awful lot of us,

00:36:34:07 - 00:36:36:13
that this is, you know,

00:36:36:13 - 00:36:40:09
James, quotes from Amos

00:36:40:18 - 00:36:44:23
and says specifically from chapter 9, after this, return, I'll rebuild

00:36:44:23 - 00:36:48:16
the tent of David that’s fallen and I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore

00:36:48:16 - 00:36:50:06
And the remnant of mankind may,

00:36:50:06 - 00:36:52:03
that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord.

00:36:52:03 - 00:36:54:02
And all the Gentiles who are called by my name,

00:36:54:02 - 00:36:57:02
says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.

00:36:57:06 - 00:36:58:12
And there's some wonderful,

00:36:59:14 - 00:37:01:03
subtle differences

00:37:01:03 - 00:37:05:14
between that and Amos, that we can maybe explore another time.

00:37:05:23 - 00:37:08:08
But the fact is this

00:37:08:08 - 00:37:10:09
vision of what God's doing

00:37:10:09 - 00:37:13:09
internationally absolutely picked up,

00:37:13:23 - 00:37:16:07
in the New Testament and pivotal,

00:37:16:07 - 00:37:20:24
and the church goes, goes forward, including, Gentiles,

00:37:20:24 - 00:37:23:24
which is, again, very good news for a lot of people.

00:37:25:16 - 00:37:28:16
So just final question, really, how

00:37:28:18 - 00:37:32:06
how should we read the passage, a passage like this in today's world?

00:37:33:12 - 00:37:36:01
You know, as you said, there's a lot of judgment in it.

00:37:36:01 - 00:37:38:23
There is there is some hope at the end.

00:37:38:23 - 00:37:39:16
Yeah.

00:37:39:16 - 00:37:42:10
How should we respond to it?

00:37:42:10 - 00:37:44:17
I think the power of lament is,

00:37:44:17 - 00:37:47:17
is something that we need to reflect on.

00:37:48:20 - 00:37:52:06
I know for myself, I've been knocking around churches my whole life.

00:37:52:06 - 00:37:54:10
You know, I was brought up in a in a Christian family,

00:37:55:12 - 00:37:58:12
I've been a Christian since my childhood.

00:38:00:02 - 00:38:02:02
And the the the

00:38:02:02 - 00:38:05:23
the challenge of of God's disapproval of sin

00:38:05:23 - 00:38:09:18
is something that I can become

00:38:10:12 - 00:38:14:12
indifferent to over time, because I've heard it so many times.

00:38:14:12 - 00:38:16:00
And yes, I,

00:38:16:00 - 00:38:18:11
you know, we we make some kind of accommodation

00:38:18:11 - 00:38:21:24
with, with our failures to, to live as God's people don’t we

00:38:22:06 - 00:38:26:03
you know, that's it's this is just the weakness that I have and or whatever.

00:38:26:13 - 00:38:30:14
And we find excuses and then we get such powerful words

00:38:30:14 - 00:38:33:20
that Amos is expressing this utter

00:38:33:20 - 00:38:36:20
grief because he's expressing God's grief.

00:38:36:22 - 00:38:39:08
And this this heartfelt invitation from the Lord.

00:38:39:08 - 00:38:41:04
Seek me and live.

00:38:41:04 - 00:38:42:15
Seek the Lord and live.

00:38:42:15 - 00:38:45:15
Seek good and not evil, that you may live,

00:38:46:00 - 00:38:50:15
and the power of those words, framed in the context of a lament,

00:38:52:18 - 00:38:53:14
it just

00:38:53:14 - 00:38:57:13
it begins to open up God's heart about sin it’s not just

00:38:57:13 - 00:39:00:24
I'm not, I'm not ticking the boxes, but I am

00:39:01:24 - 00:39:04:24
I am letting down,

00:39:05:05 - 00:39:08:08
the God who made me and, my father,

00:39:09:18 - 00:39:13:01
and my my covenant Lord and my my redeemer.

00:39:13:01 - 00:39:16:01
It's it's so it becomes a relational thing, not simply a

00:39:16:09 - 00:39:17:15
a tick box thing.

00:39:17:15 - 00:39:21:08
And so we need to we need to feel this more.

00:39:21:08 - 00:39:23:20
And I think that's one of the things that the prophets do so well.

00:39:23:20 - 00:39:26:20
They at least for me, they make they make me feel it.

00:39:27:14 - 00:39:28:05
Great.

00:39:28:05 - 00:39:31:05
Well we'll leave it there then with Amos,

00:39:31:18 - 00:39:35:14
in our next episode we'll be looking at Jonah, and doing a similar thing,

00:39:35:14 - 00:39:38:18
working through the background, the text and then the audience.

00:39:39:05 - 00:39:40:17
So thanks very much for listening.

00:39:40:17 - 00:39:42:07
Thank you both for joining me.

00:39:42:07 - 00:39:46:03
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00:39:46:23 - 00:39:49:10
And please do check out our website, tyndalehouse.com.

00:39:49:10 - 00:39:52:10
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00:39:53:01 - 00:39:56:08
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