Chapter 4
2022 - He is talking to "wives", because "they say to their husbands"...
Cows of Bashan? MSB says this is a reference to the women of Samaria, who were living in luxury. The whole verse is thus:
1 "Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, 'Bring, that we may drink!' [Amo 4:1 ESV]
Seems there's some role reversal going on here also. We saw this earlier in Isaiah 3, where the women were doing things, in charge of things, running things, and their downfall is prophesied. Here is an example of what Isaiah says but the chapter has much more:
16 The LORD said: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet, 17 therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will lay bare their secret parts. [Isa 3:16-17 ESV]
In Isaiah the once haughty women will beg to be wife #7. Women in leadership are exceptions, and there are examples down to the present time of women who were exceptional leaders. There is no biblical prohibition of women in leadership roles - except in the church itself. But when it gets to the point where "most" of our leaders are women, God is not happy. He is not happy because it means men have forsaken their role, and the curse of Genesis 3 is in full swing with women dominating men.
2023 - So I am not a misogynist, I am a student of history!
2023 - In vs 3, they go out "through the breaches". Samaria, the city, will fall to a siege after the walls are breached. They will be marched out through the breaches, rather than the gates, to remind them that they are defeated. War was truly hell in those days.
Vss 4, 5 are an indictment of insincere worship, of sacrifices for show and not for worship. Of offering unacceptable sacrifices through ignorance or apathy or disregard. God holds Israel accountable for this playing at worship as much as for their disregard of human life.
Here is something for FB:
Verses 6 through 13, the end of the chapter, list seven "chastenings", or attention getters, that God sent to let Israel know he was unhappy with them and required that they return to Him. We should pay close attention to this list, as it is highly likely that it is God's general method for dealing with nations in revolt against Him. Here is the list:
1, cleanness of teeth, lack of bread. Food shortages. Serious food shortages. It says this happened in ALL Israel's cities. Clean teeth because no food to get them dirty. Seems to mean famine at least, but could also mean a breakdown of the food distribution infrastructure? We saw a hint of that when covid started. It could get a lot worse.
2, the rain was withheld. Weather related crop failure. Think drought in the San Fernando Valley, currently. If drought also hits the corn belt, then what? 2023 - Note that the drought was not nationwide. It went city by city, field by field. Like our rotating droughts - the Colorado river going dry this year.
3, 4 scorching wind, blight and mildew, locusts. That is, the crops that did grow were damaged and unusable, or eaten by pests. Monocultural crops, genetically identical crops, both far more susceptible to pests and diseases than the "old way" of the truck farms. Two things in this section.
5, 6 pestilence, as there was in Egypt. and young men killed by the sword. This one is pretty easy to see in today's newspaper. Covid and the murders in places like Chicago.
7, Some places overthrown absolutely as were Sodom and Gomorrah. I think it means some places were razed to the ground as examples of what might happen, and yet these object lessons were ignored. Maybe the beginnings of things like this could be seen in Portland and other places.
Famine, pestilence, sword...but not wild best in this scenario...Is there some key in the wild beasts not being mentioned? Surely when people are being killed for food by animals it is because the whole area has been reduced to a survival situation. No one is safe - no homes, not walls, no armies, no public defense. The animals are after - they are a consequence of the wrath poured out and not a punishment in themselves.
Israel ignored all these warnings. Because they will not repent given the lesser, though deadly serious and recognizable chastenings above. So this is what God decrees:
12 "Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!" [Amo 4:12 ESV]
2023 - Note in vs 9 that it talks about the locusts devouring vines and fig trees. Joel starts with the plague of locusts. Were Joel and Amos contemporary? Looked at MSB intro to Joel. There is little certainty about Joel's time, but comparisons with this book - with Amos - indicate that Joel was also during this time.
Whether the current events in this country constitute the same kind of Biblical warning that the seven items above were for Israel, I surely cannot say. But I think we have far more in common with the Israel of that time than should be comfortable!
2026 - In light of vvs 7-8 in the bigger passage above we can see an aspect of the Biblical principle of chastening:
7 "I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither; 8 so two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water, and would not be satisfied; yet you did not return to me," declares the LORD. [Amo 4:7-8 ESV]
God sends rain in some places but not others. That is, some cities do fine and have their harvest but other cities in the same nation go thirsty, their crops fail, they have to search out other places to obtain the most basic commodity of all. The lesson here is not that God punishes the worst offenders and lets the lesser offenders off scott free - because there are no lesser offenders in his eyes. The lesson is that we ought to take lessons taught elsewhere to heart and change our own ways lest the chastening intensify and affect us all...as happens just a few verses later:
12 "Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!" [Amo 4:12 ESV]
2024 - This seems to show that Amos had read Jeremiah...or knew him:
13 For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth-- the LORD, the God of hosts, is his name! [Amo 4:13 ESV]
2 "Thus says the LORD who made the earth, the LORD who formed it to establish it--the LORD is his name: 3 Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known. [Jer 33:2-3 ESV]