Amos 1.3-2.3: God's Judgment on Nations

Amos 1.3-2.3: God’s Judgment on Nations

 

In Amos 1.3-2.3 there is a list of judgment oracles against six different nations: Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab.  It is instructive to examine this sequence of judgment oracles for its theology of God’s judgment.  

 

Who, What, and Why of Judgment

 

Who is this judge of the nations?  Yahweh is the sovereign Lord over all nations. He is not a tribal deity but, rather, the world’s universal Lord.  This speaks to the issue that there is one truth which contravenes the modern tendency to relativism.  Also, this great God is the supreme moral agent and authority.  He holds nations to a moral standard. We can gain insight into what concerns the Lord by seeing what these nations are judged for in this text.

 

What is the judgment?  This judgment in on all nations; even non-covenantal nations.  God deals with nation-states as corporate entities. The judgment is brought after periods of patience.  Each of the judgment oracles contains the following refrain: “For three transgressions of __________ and for for four…”

 

“What the device seems to be saying is that each neighbour has rebelled enough and more than enough to warrant the Lord’s drastic intervention in its history; therefore, he is entirely justified in bringing calamity upon them.”[1]

 

Why are the nations judged?  Here are some of the details:

 

            Damascus: “because they threshed Gilead with implements of sharp iron”

 

            Gaza: “because they deported an entire population  to deliver it up to Edom”

 

Tyre: “because they delivered up an entire population to Edom and did not remember the covenant of brotherhood”

 

Edom: “because he pursued his brother with sword, while he stifled his compassion; his anger also tore continually, and he maintained his fury forever”

 

Ammon: “because they ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead in order to enlarge

                 their borders”

 

Moab: “because he burned the bones of the king of Edom to lime”

 

M. Daniel Carroll R. summarizes the transgressions as an “irrational blood lust in war.”[2]  J. A. Moyter more fully describes the national transgressions:

 

“The spotlight falls not on what they may or may not have done or held in relation to God, but on what they have done man to man: barbarity (1:3) in the course of Hazael’s military campaigns half a century earlier; pitiless slave-trading involving total populations (verse 6b), promise breaking (verse 9), unnatural and persistent hatred (verse 11), and finally sickening atrocities against the helpless (verse 13) and the dead (2:1).” [3]

 

 

These national sins bring forth the judgment of God who rules over the nations with a sovereign moral authority.  Of particular interest is the fact that some of the nations listed here in Amos are threatened with judgment, not because of their behavior toward God’s people, but, rather, for how they treat other non-covenanted nations. Walter Brueggemann insightfully brings out this point:

 

“What astonishes us and warrants our attention is that on occasion the affront against Yahweh is not a direct mocking of Yahweh or an abuse of Israel, but abuse of a third people that has nothing to do with Israel but, as it turns out, has everything to do with Yahweh.

 

For three transgressions of the Ammonites, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they ripped open pregnant women in Gilead in order to enlarge their territory…

For three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because he burned to lime the bones of the king of Edom.  (Amos 1:13, 2:1)

 

“This rhetoric permits Israel to enunciate the claim that under the aegis of Yahweh’s sovereignty, there is a kind of international law or code of human standards that seems to anticipate the Helsinki Accords of 1975 in a rough way, a code that requires every nation to act in civility and humaneness toward others.  Any affront of this standard is taken to be an act of autonomy, arrogance, and self-sufficiency, which flies in the face of Yahweh’s governance.  Thus Yahweh is the guarantor, not only of Israel, but of the nations in their treatment of each other.”[4]

 

 

Contemporary Significance

 

The living God is still sovereign over nations.  He still renders judgments in history over peoples who transgress with impunity.  This message needs to be broadcast to the nations.  For those who continue to in their destructive forms of injustice there will be a reckoning.  

 

Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns; indeed

the world is firmly established, it will not be moved;

he will judge the peoples with equity… for he is coming,

for he is coming to judge the earth.  He will judge the world

in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.

Psalm 96.10, 13

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     [1]D. A. Hubbard, Joel and Amos (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1989), 129.

      [2]M. Daniel Carroll R. “Visions of Horror, Visions of Hope: An Orientation for Urban Ministry from the Book of Amos” Ex Auditu29 (2013), 7.

     [3]J. A. Moyter, The Message of Amos(Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity Press, 1972), 37-38.

     [4]Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy(Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1997), 503.