Amos

Six nations are judged first, each for what it did to another people: Damascus “threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron” (1:3), and Edom “did pursue his brother with the sword” (1:11). They had not received the law, and none is charged under it (Romans 2:12). Judah is judged by it, “because they have despised the law of the LORD” (2:4), and Israel most of all: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (3:2). To be known by the LORD, brought out of Egypt and given prophets, was not a shelter from judgment but its measure. The exodus gave no immunity: the LORD who “brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt” brought “the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir” as well (9:7).

The gate was the town’s court. It was the old custom that the elders should sit at the gate to make out by judicial trial the quarrels of persons at strife, as Gregory the Great explained. In Israel’s gates “they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right” (5:12), and have “turned judgment into gall” (6:12). The market is no better, “making the ephah small, and the shekel great” to “buy the poor for silver” (8:5–6). The law said a poor man’s pledge must go back to him by sundown (Deuteronomy 24:12–13); Israel lay on such clothes beside its altars (2:8). Hence the command: “establish judgment in the gate” (5:15), and “let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream” (5:24).

The verb for seek, dârash, also means to frequent a place, and to worship there. Israel frequented Bethel and Gilgal, with sacrifices every morning, tithes and free offerings (4:4–5), and swore, “Thy god, O Dan, liveth” (8:14): Bethel and Dan held the golden calves of Jeroboam the son of Nebat (1 Kings 12:28–29). The LORD sets himself against the shrines: “Seek ye me, and ye shall live: But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal” (5:4–5). He is the Maker, “him that maketh the seven stars and Orion” (5:8), and to seek him is to “Seek good, and not evil” (5:14). He refuses worship kept beside the bribe and the false balance: “I hate, I despise your feast days” (5:21).

The book ends on a booth. “In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen” (9:11): the word means a booth, and David’s royal house has fallen to that. The LORD rebuilds it himself, that it may possess “the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name” (9:12). Christians have read the fulfilment two ways. James cited the passage at Jerusalem for Gentiles turned to God (Acts 15:14–19), and Cyril of Alexandria saw it done when Christ rose: the Father raised the tent of David, and rebuilt its ruins. Others take James’s “After this I will return” (Acts 15:16) to set the Gentiles’ calling first, and look also for Israel planted in its land, where “they shall no more be pulled up” (9:15), when “all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:26).