Amos 7 and 8 abusing the poor

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