God Speaks
5 Listen, you people of Israel! Listen to this funeral song I am singing:
2 “The virgin Israel has fallen,
never to rise again!
She lies abandoned on the ground,
with no one to help her up.”
3 The Sovereign Lord says:
“When a city sends a thousand men to battle,
only a hundred will return.
When a town sends a hundred,
only ten will come back alive.”
4 Now this is what the Lord says to the family of Israel:
“Come back to me and live!
5 Don’t worship at the pagan altars at Bethel;
don’t go to the shrines at Gilgal or Beersheba.
For the people of Gilgal will be dragged off into exile,
and the people of Bethel will be reduced to nothing.”
6 Come back to the Lord and live!
Otherwise, he will roar through Israel like a fire,
devouring you completely.
Your gods in Bethel
won’t be able to quench the flames.
7 You twist justice, making it a bitter pill for the oppressed.
You treat the righteous like dirt.
8 It is the Lord who created the stars,
the Pleiades and Orion.
He turns darkness into morning
and day into night.
He draws up water from the oceans
and pours it down as rain on the land.
The Lord is his name!
9 With blinding speed and power he destroys the strong,
crushing all their defenses.
10 How you hate honest judges!
How you despise people who tell the truth!
11 You trample the poor,
stealing their grain through taxes and unfair rent.
Therefore, though you build beautiful stone houses,
you will never live in them.
Though you plant lush vineyards,
you will never drink wine from them.
12 For I know the vast number of your sins
and the depth of your rebellions.
You oppress good people by taking bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
13 So those who are smart keep their mouths shut,
for it is an evil time.
14 Do what is good and run from evil
so that you may live!
Then the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies will be your helper,
just as you have claimed.
15 Hate evil and love what is good;
turn your courts into true halls of justice.
Perhaps even yet the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies
will have mercy on the remnant of his people.
16 Therefore, this is what the Lord, the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies, says:
“There will be crying in all the public squares
and mourning in every street.
Call for the farmers to weep with you,
and summon professional mourners to wail.
17 There will be wailing in every vineyard,
for I will destroy them all,”
says the Lord.
18 What sorrow awaits you who say,
“If only the day of the Lord were here!”
You have no idea what you are wishing for.
That day will bring darkness, not light.
19 In that day you will be like a man who runs from a lion—
only to meet a bear.
Escaping from the bear, he leans his hand against a wall in his house—
and he’s bitten by a snake.
20 Yes, the day of the Lord will be dark and hopeless,
without a ray of joy or hope.
21 “I hate all your show and pretense—
the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.
22 I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings.
I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings.
23 Away with your noisy hymns of praise!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice,
an endless river of righteous living.
25 “Was it to me you were bringing sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, Israel? 26 No, you served your pagan gods—Sakkuth your king god and Kaiwan your star god—the images you made for yourselves. 27 So I will send you into exile, to a land east of Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is the God of Heaven’s Armies.
6 What sorrow awaits you who lounge in luxury in Jerusalem,
and you who feel secure in Samaria!
You are famous and popular in Israel,
and people go to you for help.
2 But go over to Calneh
and see what happened there.
Then go to the great city of Hamath
and down to the Philistine city of Gath.
You are no better than they were,
and look at how they were destroyed.
3 You push away every thought of coming disaster,
but your actions only bring the day of judgment closer.
4 How terrible for you who sprawl on ivory beds
and lounge on your couches,
eating the meat of tender lambs from the flock
and of choice calves fattened in the stall.
5 You sing trivial songs to the sound of the harp
and fancy yourselves to be great musicians like David.
6 You drink wine by the bowlful
and perfume yourselves with fragrant lotions.
You care nothing about the ruin of your nation.
7 Therefore, you will be the first to be led away as captives.
Suddenly, all your parties will end.
8 The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his own name, and this is what he, the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies, says:
“I despise the arrogance of Israel,
and I hate their fortresses.
I will give this city
and everything in it to their enemies.”
9 (If there are ten men left in one house, they will all die. 10 And when a relative who is responsible to dispose of the dead goes into the house to carry out the bodies, he will ask the last survivor, “Is anyone else with you?” When the person begins to swear, “No, by . . . ,” he will interrupt and say, “Stop! Don’t even mention the name of the Lord.”)
11 When the Lord gives the command,
homes both great and small will be smashed to pieces.
12 Can horses gallop over boulders?
Can oxen be used to plow them?
But that’s how foolish you are when you turn justice into poison
and the sweet fruit of righteousness into bitterness.
13 And you brag about your conquest of Lo-debar.
You boast, “Didn’t we take Karnaim by our own strength?”
14 “O people of Israel, I am about to bring an enemy nation against you,”
says the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies.
“They will oppress you throughout your land—
from Lebo-hamath in the north
to the Arabah Valley in the south.”
Source: New Living Translation: BibleGateway.com
We Respond
Reflection: Amos 5 is a funeral dirge expressing grief and lament over Israel. First, there are great losses in battle. Only 10% of the troops survive. Even then the LORD God says, “Come back to Me and live!” Their return must involve forsaking their false gods and fake worship. “Come back to the LORD and live,” or suffer fire that nothing can extinguish, especially not those false gods. God’s chosen people have withheld justice from the poor and dishonored those living righteously. The LORD who created the constellations and controls the skies and the climate will crush all their defenses. These people hate [harass] honest judges and despise [cancel] those who seek to uncover and disseminate the truth. They rob the poor by stealing their food, raising their taxes, and charging exorbitant rent. These extortioners spend this stolen money on their own elaborate houses and massive estates with lush vineyards. [Martha’s Vineyard?] But God says that they will not get to enjoy them. God knows and will deal with their sins. They oppress good people by taking bribes to testify against them and by depriving the poor of justice and their day in court. In this time of evil those who are wise consider the cost of keeping their mouths shut. Instead, these good people run from evil and depend on the LORD for mercy and the ability to turn their courts into true halls of justice. God calls His people to come together and cry out to Him for mercy in the midst of all that has been destroyed. There must be no pretense or hypocrisy, no mere ritual, meaningless music [or mere virtue-signaling]; instead, the LORD God wants to see “a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living.” For all their misbehavior (unless they truly repented of their wicked ways), God was about to send His wayward children into a “time out,” exile to a land in the east.
In Amos 6 God addresses the rich, powerful, famous, and influential people of Jerusalem and Samaria. He tells them that they are no better than the city-states and nations that He had destroyed in the past. Their lives of luxurious lounging, extravagant feasting, meaningless music, expensive self-pampering, and lavish parties will qualify them to be the first to go into exile. In spite of their arrogance and boasting of previous victories over no-account places, the LORD was prepared to send an enemy army to oppress the whole nation. Survivors would not be allowed (or would be too afraid) to mention the name of the LORD.
Prayer: LORD God, I call on Your name. I am coming back to You in humble repentance so that I (and my contemporaries) might live in Your presence now and forever. I lament over what I and others of Your people have actually done, or allowed without penalty, in the last few years or decades. We have neglected serving the poor directly; we let the government do it. We neglected the moral and spiritual education of our children; we left it up to religious organizations. We neglected spending time interacting with and influencing our children; we left them to absorb the values presented on television or by other forms of entertainment and social media while we worked to purchase fancier houses, lavish food, and toys for them or ourselves. Now we are seeing how we and they are following after false gods or ideologies. Only You, who created the heavens and the earth and everything in them, can turn this situation around (put out the fire). Only as we turn back to You will we regain respect for justice and honest judges, acknowledge the truth and seek to live by it, quit oppressing the poor and seek instead to give them the tools to escape poverty, and provide the victims of crime with true justice and safety. Please embolden Your people to bring about a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living. Help us to wake up and return to You and Your ways so that You do not have to allow us to be conquered by a nation to the east. LORD, please turn the hearts of influencers back to You. Silence their arrogance and boasting, except as they boast in You. Once they have repented, use them to draw the next generations to cause a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living. Then we will bring glory to Your name, O God Most High. AMEN
Action: (Ask God, the Holy Spirit, if He wants you to work on one of the suggestions below or something else more personal that He points out.)
- I will ask God the Holy Spirit to show me which of my thoughts, words, or actions parallel the ones condemned in these chapters and to enable me to change course.
- I will do as the LORD directs to help parents teach their children to live out biblical values.
- I will support (in every way I can) candidates for political office who seek to live out biblical values.
- I will support (in every way I can) cultural influencers (ex. people in media, in education, in religious organizations, in business, and in sports, entertainment and the arts) who seek to live out biblical values.
Share: I plan to share what I’ve learned with __________.