Prophetic Critique: Idolatry, Immorality, and Injustice

Over the summer of 2020, with the issues of “social justice” roiling in our culture, I wanted to go to the Bible to get some perspective.  I remembered that the book of Amos had things to say about God’s concern for justice.   A classic passage is Amos 5.24: “But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”  Now the danger with this approach is to go searching for a few texts that speak of “justice” and denounce economic exploitation (5.10-15; 8.4-6) and then import our modern understandings of what contemporary social justice should look like.  As Pierre Berthoud aptly notes:

 

“But we have to be careful to read these comments not through twenty-first century eyes heavily influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by contemporary materialist perspectives.

 

“In order to apply properly the prophetic insights of Amos, it is essential to understand his message in light of the historical situation of Amos, of the central theological theme of the Old Testament—namely, God’s eternal covenant with man.”[1]

 

With that danger in mind I choose, rather, to read and study the whole book of Amos to understand its context and flow of argumentation.  This allowed me to see a larger prophetic critique that encompasses the concern for injustice but also a larger vision of integrated sins. 

 

Utilizing John Frame’s tri-perspectivalism I came up with the following diagram which represents an attempt to capture something of the full “prophetic critique.”

 

Idolatry

(Normative)

                                      Injustice                              Immorality

                                   (Situational)                            (Existential)

 

All three of the aspects are elements that Amos (and others) critique.  These three aspects can also be re-named as three potent areas of life: Religion, Sex, and Power.  

 

Within the prophetic critique the fundamental sin from which all others flow is that of idolatry.  Thaddeus Williams, in his book Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth, begins with this crucial point:

 

“Today almost everything is considered a matter of injustice, everything of course, except the main thing.  There is talk of economic injustice, reproductive injustice, racial injustice, and, even, according to yesterday’s headlines, facial injustice (based on a recent university policy that threatens expulsion for ‘mean’ facial expressions). What no one sems to be talking about—though it is at the bedrock of all other injustice—is worship.  Theistic justice—bowing down to something that is worth bowing down to—is not a justice issue; it the the justice issue from all other justice blooms.”[2]

 

Flowing from the primal sin of idolatry, there issues forth all sorts of others violations of God’s character.  Injustice with its attendant economic exploitation and judicial compromise as well as immoralities—usually of a sexual nature—come riding in the wake of idolatry.  The prophetic critique in Amos and elsewhere takes into account all these aspects.  

 

Prophetic Critique in Amos

Idolatry: 

 

·     1.2: “The Lord roars from Zion and from Jerusalem he utters his voice.” This is an implicit critique of the Northern kingdoms’s shrines.[3]

·     2.4: “They have rejected the law of the Lord and have not kept his statutes; their lies also have led them astray, those after which their fathers walked.”

·     2.11-12: Violation of Nazrite vows and refusal to listen to God’s prophets.

·     3.14: “I will punish the altars of Bethel; the horns of the altar will be cut off and they will fall to the ground.”[4]  

·     4.4-5: Self-made religion only brings more sin.

·     5.21-27: God rejects their religious festivals and rebukes them for carrying along with them idols.

·     7.9: Mentions the “high places of Issac.” These are places of idolarty and fornication.[5]

·     7.10-13: Attempt to stop the word of the Lord through Amos.

·     8.10-14: “Swear by the guilt of Samaria.”[6]

 

Immorality: 

 

·     2.7: “And a man and his father resort to the same girl.”[7]

 

Injustice: 

 

·     1.2-2.3: Oracles against the nations.  J. A. Moyter summarizes the transgressions of this section:

 

“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).” [8]

 

·     2.6-8: “They sell the righteous for money and the needy for a pair of sandals.”

·     3.9-15: Winter houses, summer houses, and great houses.[9]

·     5.12: Accept bribes in the court system.

·     6.4-7, 11: Great houses and excessive luxury.

·     8.4-6: “Cheat with dishonest scales, so as to buy the helpless for money and the needy for a pair of sandals.”

 

Thomas John Finley summarizes the social injustices contained in the book of Amos:

 

“The particular instances of sins against the poor that Amos describes are the selling into slavery of either an innocent victim or of a person whose indebtedness is so paltry that it should be forgiven anyway (2:6; 8:6), bribery of judges (5.12), failure to return a garment taken in pledge at the end of the day (2:8), denial of due process of law (2:7; 5.12), extortion and defrauding (4:1), exacting of heavy rent through an unfair grain tax (5:11), tampering with weights and standards (8:5), and selling a low quality of merchandise (8:6).  The pattern is clear: Rich and powerful people are becoming richer and more powerful at the expense of the poor and powerless.”[10]

 

There is further mention of the phrase “justice and righteousness” in three different Amos passages: 5.7, 24; 6.12.  These are key terms harkening back to the call of Abraham.  Abrahm who was to “command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18.19).  Robert Ellis helpfully articulates the nature of this “justice and righteousness”:

 

“Bruce Birch defines the Old Testament notion of justice as ‘the claim of all persons to full and equitable participation in the structures and dealings of the community, and especially to equity in the legal system.’  Consequently, justice often involves an effort to ‘put things right’ when something has gone wrong, either through informal personal action or formal judicial proceedings. Birch says of righteousness that it ‘is not the fulfillment of some list of rules or adherence to a set of standards.  Righteousness is a relational term.  It refers to the expectation in relationships that persons will, in their intentions and actions, seek the wholeness of the partner in that relationship.’  The economic ethic of Amos rests firmly in the expectation of righteousness: that in each relational dimension individuals and societies must do what those relationships demand in order to ensure shalom.  Similarly, Amos’ economics insist that persons are entitled to the justice of adequate and fair engagement in the resources and privileges of the community and then should that fair participation be breached, have the recourse to regain a position of shalom.”[11]

 

Amos is not only the person in Scripture to engage in this comprehensive prophetic critique. The following portraits are drawn from both the Old and New Testament (although the detail of exegesis and commentary work will not be as full as was done with Amos).

 

Prophetic Critique in Ezekiel 22.1-13

Idolatry: 

 

·     3-4: idols

·     8: “despised my holy things and profaned my sabbaths”

·     9: mountain shrines

·     12: forgotten God

 

Immorality:

 

·     7: treated father and mother lightly

·     9: slander

·     9: acts of lewdness

·     10: uncovered father’s nakedness

·     10: sex with menustruating women

·     11: adultry and incest

 

Injustice:

 

·     3-4, 6, 9, 12, 13: shedding blood

·     7: oppressed the alien

·     7: wronged the fatherless and widow

·     12: economic oppression

·     12-13: bribery; take interest and profits

 

Within this passage in Ezekiel there are not only all the various aspects but even, at times, in a single verse all the components come together.  Consider Ezekiel 22.9:

 

Slanderous men have been in you for the purpose of shedding blood (injustice), and in you they have eaten at the mountain shrines (idolatry).  In your midst they have committed acts of lewdness (immorality).

 

The New Testament also contains this prophetic critique as seen in the ministry of John the Baptist.

 

Prophetic Critique in John Baptist (Luke 3)

Idolatry: 

 

·     Luke 3.3: “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

 

Immorality: 

 

·     Luke 3.19: John reprimands Herod the tetrarch “because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the wicked things which Herod had done.”

 

Injustice: 

 

·     Luke 3.10-14: John gives specific exhortations which revolve around economic issues to those who are repentant and want to know how to live—“what shall we do?”.

 

o   Crowds: share food and clothes with those who have none.

o   Tax collectors: “Collect no more than what you have been ordered to.”

o   Soldiers: “Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages.”

 

Prophetic Critique in Romans 1.18-32

Idolatry: 

 

·     21-23: Refusal to give honor and thanks to the true and living God and, instead, creating idols.

·     25: “For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”

 

Immorality: 

 

·     24: “Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.”

·     26-27: Degarding passions and homosexuality

·     28: “God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.”

·     29-31: Litany of various sins.

 

Injustice:

 

·     32: “… and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.”

 

Although this passage does not have the same level of specifity in detailing particular forms of injustice as does Amos and others, Jeffery Ventrella brings out the implications and applications to the civil realm.

 

“This pattern culminates in the approval of unrighteousness practices.  This is why the culture’s law is implicated and must be a concern of any Bible-believing Christian.  According to Paul, paganism presses its practices seeking approval, and in doing so brings into play the cultural icons that grant approval, including the law. The question, therefore, is not whether the law will be involved; the question is whether the extant law will approve righteousness or unrighteousness.  The law and the public square are inherently a Christian concern.”[12]

 

Ventrella adds:

 

“An unredeemed judiciary will ultimately seek to approve practices contrary to the law of the Lord.  Its very nature tends toward codifying radical autonomy, that is, ‘approving’ man’s becoming ‘like God, knowing [determining autonomously] good and evil.”[13]

 

Thus, the civil realm and its judiciary will be open to implementing all sorts of injustices.

 

Conclusion and Contemporary Application

The tri-perspectival “prophetic critique” articulated above can help keep the church from a reductionistic understandings of the full complement of sin.  At times the church has failed to integrate the concern for justice into its calls for purity of worship and purity of life. A focus on the full prophetic critique will help the church avoid this reductionism.  However, today the challenge may be for the church to avoid a simplistic concern for social justice which overlooks or actively ignores the concerns of idolatry and immorality.

 

Theologian Peter Jones insightfully recognizes what is happening among some segments of the church—particularly among the younger generation.  Jones writes:

 

“Love for the poor and hurting is essential to the gospel, but shorn of biblical cosmology and wiped clean of the distinctives of biblical ethical living, this approach is false advertising, at best.  In the name of the ‘common good,’ it may suck the life-blood from the next generation of Christians, escorting them into the waiting arms of gospel-denying ‘progressive’ liberals and evangelicals.”[14]

 

Note that what Jones refers to as (1) love for the poor and hurting, (2) biblical cosmology, and (3) biblical ethical living can be correlated with injustice, idolatry, and immorality as found in the “prophetic critique” triangle. Jones goes on to note that “Perhaps the two hottest issues are Christian uniqueness and homosexuality.”[15]  “Christian uniqueness” has to do with the unique worship offered to God through Jesus Christ alone.  When Jones speaks of “homosexuality” it might be better to talk about the exclusivity of Christian sexual ethics which stands opposed to not only homosexuality but also challenges transgender ideology.  Whatever the terms used, the concepts are clear and Jones cogently argues:

 

“According to the ‘progressives,’ these two [Christian uniqueness and homosexuality] are the tiresome, secondary issues constantly raised by uptight, unloving, obnoxious, right-wing fanatics, who obstruct a kinder, more loving Christianity.

 

“These two issues are not secondary, however.  They are fundamental because each evokes a theme of profound moral and spiritual import—the nature of God and the nature of humanity—basic theology and basic anthropology.  ‘Theology,’ because interfaith allows so many different kinds of gods that the true God is eliminated; ‘anthropology,’ because when the Bible describes the image of God in human beings it includes the male/female distinction.”[16]

 

A proper focus on the balance of the prophetic critique with its alignment of proper worship, purity of life, and concern for public justice, will keep the church balanced and pursuing the full panoply of what is imporant for her mission.

---

     [1]Pierre Berthoud, “The Covenant and the Social Message of Amos” European Journal of Theology14.2 (2005), 99.

     [2]Thaddeus J. Williams, Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth: Twelve Questions Christians Should Ask About Social Justice(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Academic, 2020), 13.

     [3]“Zion and Jerusalem are mentioned as rebukes to the northern shrines whose false worship Amos so roundly denounces.” David Allan Hubbard, Joel and Amos: An Introduction and Commentary(Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1989), 126.  “The voice of God comes from the Southern Kingdom and its national sanctuary.  The roar does not originate from the North and its shrines.  In other words, from the opening line the religious world of Israel is exposed as illegitimate.” M. Daniel Carroll R. “Can the Prophets Shed Light on Our Worship Wars? How Amos Evaluates Religious Ritual” Stone-Campbell Journal8 (2005), 220.

     [4]“He turns (3:13-15) to review the religion which they so assiduously practice and finds that they have departed from divinely-given ordinances and norms into theological and religious compromise.” J. A. Moyter, The Message of Amos(Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1974), 85.

     [5]J. A. Moyter, The Message of Amos(Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1974), 165-166.

     [6]“What seems clear in all this is that Israel was playing false with Yahweh by taking oaths and making promises in the name of alien deities.”  David Allan Hubbard, Joel and Amos: An Introduction and Commentary(Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1989), 225.

     [7]“Third, fathers, taking advantage of filial obedience and the inability of young women to stand up for their rights, asserted patriarchal authority to have intercourse with their daughter-in-law, despite the laws of Israel which clearly forbade such confusion of sexual relations (cf. Lv. 18:15; 20:12; Dt. 22:28-29, 23-27).”  David Allan Hubbard, Joel and Amos: An Introduction and Commentary(Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1989), 142.

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

     [9]“The phrase frequently translated ‘great houses’ (RSV; NASB: NEB) is probably better rendered ‘many houses’, in keeping with the context that attacks the excessive luxury of owning more than one house in a society where poor people were regularly being dispossessed of their staple goods.” David Allan Hubbard, Joel and Amos: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1989), 153-154.

     [10]Thomas John Finley, “An Evangelical Response to the Preaching of Amos” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society28.4 (1985), 415-416.

     [11]Robert R. Ellis, “Amos Economics” Review and Expositor107 (2010), 466.

     [12]Jeffery J. Ventrella, “Passionately Demonstrating Truth: Triangulating Cultural Restoration” in Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frameedited by John J. Hughes (Phillipsburg, Penn.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2009), 858.

     [13]Jeffery J. Ventrella, “Passionately Demonstrating Truth: Triangulating Cultural Restoration” in Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frame edited by John J. Hughes (Phillipsburg, Penn.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2009), 861.

     [14]Peter Jones, One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference—Romans 1 for the Twenty-first Century(Escondido, Calif.: Main Entry Editions, 2010), 57.

     [15]Peter Jones, One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference—Romans 1 for the Twenty-first Century(Escondido, Calif.: Main Entry Editions, 2010), 58.

     [16]Peter Jones, One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference—Romans 1 for the Twenty-first Century(Escondido, Calif.: Main Entry Editions, 2010), 58.