Introduction to post: If New Testament, CJB online, emphasis in bold or Old Testament from chabad.org, text I emphasize in green; NKJV in magenta; OT in olive. footnotes to CJB in superscript sky blue using Hebrew Bible; Nomads* discussion in yellow; and my comments in gray. Colored text indicates a repeated phrase, catalogue, or theme. I may use endnotes to cite outside literature or extensive comment.
*Participative
Sunday-school-class at UBC led by Kenny Tipton. In my view, Kenny appreciates
and owns opinion in a continuous search to discover the ineluctable truth.
My
evolving statement about Genesis 1:26-28,31 and Psalm 82, now from the Hebrew
Bible at chabad.org, is at the end of this post: because I accept Genesis 1’s
directive to constrain chaos in my way of living, I may personally attempt to
develop a god facing death or angelic person (John 10:36 with reference to
Psalm 82:6-7).
Understanding
this series: Kenny is leading a series of 8 lessons on the book of the
12; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Minor_Prophets.
Key
points in Amos 7 & 8:
7:2 Amos
begs forgiveness to Israel (Jacob); 7:2,5 “with Jacob”.
7:3,
6, 8:12, Shall not: respectively, come about, come to pass, find it. In the
third instance, Israel shall not find the word of the Lord.
7:9 through
8:12 Amos’s vision for Israel’s future is sprinkled with dark words: desolate,
ruined, die, exiled, harlot, fall, divided, wailings, corpses, quake, destroyed,
mourning, lamentation, baldness, bitter, famine, thirst, and wander, in order.
8:14
The how: Israel erred by following gods.
8:4,6
The what: Israel abused the poor and the needy.
The text:
|
Amos 7 https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16179/jewish/Chapter-7.htm 1Thus
the Lord God showed me, and behold He was forming locusts
at the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth, and behold the
latter growth after the king's mowings. |
|
2And
it came to pass, when it finished eating the grass of the earth, that I said,
"O Lord God! Forgive
now! Who shall arise
[with] Jacob, for he is small?" |
|
3The Lord relented concerning
this. It shall not come
about, said the Lord. |
|
4Thus
the Lord God showed me, and behold the Lord God calls to contend by fire,
and it consumed the great deep and consumed the field. |
|
5And
I said, "O Lord God! Desist now! Who shall arise [with] Jacob, for he is small?" |
|
6The Lord relented concerning
this; this too shall
not come to pass, said the Lord God. |
|
7Thus
He showed me, and behold the Lord was standing on a wall made
by a plumbline, with a plumbline in His hand. |
|
8And
the Lord said to me; What do you see, Amos? And I said, "A
plumbline." And the Lord said: Behold I place a plumbline in the midst
of My people Israel; I will no longer pardon them. |
|
9And
the high places of Isaac shall become desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be ruined,
and I will rise upon the house of Jeroboam with the sword. |
|
10And
Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying,
"Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The
land will be unable to endure all his words. |
|
11For
so said Amos; Jeroboam shall die
by the sword, and Israel shall be exiled
off its land." |
|
12And
Amaziah said to Amos, "Seer, go, run away to the land of Judah and eat
bread there; and prophesy there. |
|
13But
do not continue to prophesy in Bethel for it is the sanctuary of a king and
the capital of the kingdom. |
|
14And
Amos replied and said to Amaziah, "I am neither a prophet nor the son of
a prophet, but I am a cattle herder and an inspector of sycamores. |
|
15And
the Lord took me from following the flock, and He said to me; Go, prophesy to
My people Israel. |
|
16And
now, hearken to the word of the Lord. You say, "Do not prophesy
concerning Israel and do not prophesy concerning the house of Isaac." |
|
17Therefore,
so said the Lord: Your wife shall play the harlot
in the city, and your sons and daughters shall fall
by the sword, and your land shall be divided
by lot, and you shall die
on unclean soil, and Israel shall be exiled
from its land. Amos 8 |
|
1Thus the Lord God showed me, and behold a
basket of late figs. |
|
2And He said: What do you see, Amos? And I
said, "A basket of late figs." And the Lord said to me: The end has
come to My people Israel. I
will no longer pardon them. |
|
3And the songs of the temple shall be wailings in that day, says the Lord God: corpses shall increase; everywhere "Cast away, remove!" |
|
4Hearken to this, you who swallow up the needy, and to cut off the
poor of the land. |
|
5Saying, "When will the month be delayed,
so that we will sell grain, and the Sabbatical Year, so that we will open
[our stores of] grain, to make the ephah smaller and to make the shekel
larger, and to pervert deceitful scales. |
|
6To purchase the poor with money, and the needy in order to inherit them,
and the refuse of the grain we will sell." |
|
7The Lord
swore by the pride of
Jacob: I will never forget any of their deeds. |
|
8Shall the land not quake for this, and shall all its inhabitants [not] be destroyed? Yea, it shall rise up wholly like the rain cloud, and it shall
cast up and sink like the river of Egypt. |
|
9And it shall come to pass on that day, says
the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to set at midday, and I will darken
the land on a sunny day. |
|
10And I will turn your festivals into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation, and I bring up sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head, and I will make it like the mourning for an only
son, and its end is like a bitter day. |
|
11Behold, days are coming, says the Lord God,
and I will send famine into the land, not a famine for bread nor a thirst for water, but to hear the word of the Lord. |
|
12And they shall wander from sea to sea and from the north to the east; they shall run
to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall
not find it. |
|
13On that day, the beautiful virgins and the
young men shall faint of thirst. |
|
14Those who swear by the sin of Samaria, and say,
"As your god
lives, O Dan," and "As the road to Beersheba exists," shall fall and no longer rise. |
[Genesis 1:26-28, 31, chabad.org:
I
read to consider and apply perhaps 5500 year old Sumerian political philosophy,
religiously referenced by Semite (pre-Israel) scribes of 3900 years ago, in
Genesis 1:26-28, in my paraphrase and extension to civic integrity:
Female-and-male-human-being may and can
choose to practice the power, the authority, and the responsibility
to pursue goodness and constrain wickedness on earth. Civic citizens
may and can develop statutory justice.
Political
and religious philosopher Yeshua affirmed Genesis 1:26-28, contributing ideas
in each Matthew 18:18 (no peace-power above humankind), Matthew 19:3-8 (mutual
spousal-loyalty), Matthew 5:48 (in good behavior, pursue personal perfection,
which also affirms Deuteronomy 18:13), Matthew 19:4-6 (don’t divide/lessen
goodness), John 10:34 (humans who resist and avoid wickedness are gods facing
death, as in Psalm 82:1-7), and in other direct dialogue, such as “go and sin
no more”. Psalm 82 says nothing about resurrection, which could be church
doctrine only.
Discussion
I think Genesis 1:26-28 informs humankind to flourish in
goodness rather than accommodate badness and allow evil.
Quoting chabad.org below,
And God said, "Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of
the sea and over the fowl of the heaven and over the animals and over all the
earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth."
And God created man in His
image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be
fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish
of the sea and over the fowl of the sky and all the living creatures that crawl
on the earth."
Accepting
the power, the authority, and the responsibility to have dominion over life on
earth is human being (verb). Reliable human-beings discover
and choose goodness to actual reality.
Sumer-mythology holds that 3
goddesses and 3 gods -- Namma, An, Ki, Enki, Ninhursag, and Gestu – both created
and activated existence. A list of major Sumerian gods and relation to
primitive opinion about the beginning follows:
|
Name |
Gender |
Earth/Psychology Feature |
Power |
Offspring |
|
|
1 |
Nammu |
goddess* |
primeval waters |
creation |
An and Ki |
|
2 |
An |
god* |
sky |
universal authority, kings |
gods &godesses |
|
3 |
Ki |
goddess* |
earth |
gods &godesses |
|
|
4 |
Enlil |
god |
wind, air, storms |
creator,father,caring judge |
Nanna & Utu |
|
5 |
Nanna |
god |
moon |
light,divine justice |
plants |
|
6 |
Utu |
god |
sun,justice,truth,morality |
light,divine justice |
plants |
|
7 |
Inanna |
goddess |
love,beauty,eros,justice,war |
escaped the underworld |
|
|
8 |
Ereshkigal |
goddess |
death,doom |
Underworld |
|
|
9 |
Enki |
god* |
water,male fertility,wisdom |
Prophesied Great Flood |
civilization.art |
|
10 |
Gula |
goddess |
healing |
Doctors |
surgery |
|
11 |
Ninhursag |
goddess* |
mountains,rocky
ground |
royal guardian |
wildlife |
|
12 |
Gestu |
god* |
blood of
humankind |
intelligence |
^ Sumer mythology suggests that 6 gods and goddesses created &
activated existence
The pronoun and plurality change
in Genesis 1:26-28 may be an artifact of the ancient scribe’s confusion if not
weakness in transitioning primitive thought to the monotheistic version. Genesis 1 marks discovery
by polytheistic Sumer civilization and transitions to a Semitic-speaking
faction’s pursuit of monotheism, which leads to Israel’s Hashem then on to
Christianity’s blood sacifice.
Note: unlike chabad.org,
quoted above, OJB uses “Elohim” in Genesis 1 and 2, excepting “G-d” in
1:24-31. V 27 seems to equate the two entities. Septuagint uses
“ὁ θεὸς”, or God throughout Genesis 1. I use “The phrase, the god or
whatever constrains human choice”, hoping to express religious humility to
whatever the god is.
Again,
since theism is a human construct, I use the phrase, “the god, whatever it may
be”, to express objection to any doctrinal God yet reserve humility to
ineluctable evidence and remaining unknowns about that which constrains the
consequences of human choices. Make no mistake, I write opinion, because I do
not know the ineluctable truth.]
New practice, recording the cover message:
Hello, Nomads,
We indulged the delight of togetherness, which neglected key points in
the text.
It seems Amos 7-8 warns that neglecting the poor and needy promises
ruin. My study is attached and posted on my blog
understandtheknowledge.blogspot.com.
I think responsibility to the needy and poor was first introduce in
the first Sumer-king law codes, 5500 years ago: “The
orphan was not delivered up to the rich man; the widow was not delivered up to
the mighty man; the man of one shekel was not delivered up to the man of one
mina”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu.
Sumerian law codes legislated harshness, famously “eye for eye”.
Judeo-Christianity,
I think erroneously, proposes to ameliorate life that perpetuates the poor and
needy by giving to church-doctrine. Kenny asks, in essence, “Do we perceive we
have not improved in 2000 years and therefore should take action?” I think
Kenny is onto something, and it’s not firing the LSU football coach.
Globally, I think capitalism is the only economic system that can benefit Homo
sapiens. However, the give and take of the entrepreneur-consumer-relationship
is so massive and slow that government nudge is necessary to goodness and
justice. The cost to the entrepreneur is high and risky, so rewards need to be
adequate. However, they need not crush the consumer unto poverty. The civic
faction need not accommodate a ballroom that dwarfs the White House. The
working class need not pay taxes to subsidize the poor and thereby excessively
reward the entrepreneurs. A civic people has the responsibility to manage the
United States republic.
What can be done? My first thought is to limit rewards. For example, limit
major CEO salaries to a multiple of the median income; which now approaches
$50,000/year. If a civic people limited the top CEO’s to only $5,000,000/yr,
scaling down to minor CEO’s the United States republic could motivate the needy
and the poor. Another glaring injustice is the extreme rewards to the
rent-seekers of the entertainment industries. My first thought is to limit
ticket prices to $100 for concerts and $50 for sports events. A civic people
can require top economists to remedy entertainment excesses.
Judeo-Christianity entices us to assign responsibility for civic justice to
“God”. Some Christians displace “God” with Jesus Christ. Neglect of authority,
power, and responsibility that the laws of physics assign to the civic faction
of humankind marches on. Nomads and UBC need not continue the neglect unto the
next generation. Is that the challenge Kenny expressed on Sunday?
I need to revise my post for Amos 5 to include Amos 6.
I hope to see you next Sunday,
Phil