An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 177: Evil saxophones, a basket of fruit, and God goes on strike (Amos 6-9)

Amos 6-9
Evil saxophones, a basket of fruit, and God goes on strike.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Amos 6
“That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall”

The opprobrium of God now falls on those who have made themselves a life of luxury (somewhat at odds with the views expressed in Ecclesiastes), even inventing new musical instruments is frowned upon for some reason (bad luck Adolphe Sax). As punishment for this, God promises to “rise up” a nation against the Israelites, that will “afflict” them.

I think the intent is not so much against luxury itself, but selfishness, hinging on the verse about those that “drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments: but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph”.

Amos 7
“Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me; and, behold, he formed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings.”

Amos gets into trouble here for his prophesying against Israel. One Amaziah, priest of Bethel informs on him to King Jeroboam, and also tells Amos to take himself and his prophesying off to Judah. It’s a bit disconcerting that this kind of thinking still exists – because Amos was speaking out against the iniquities of Israel he must therefore be an enemy of the state, rather than simply a concerned citizen (or, well, in this case someone who is compelled to speak the word of God as he interprets it, but it’s still a free speech issue).

The prophecies themselves that get mentioned in this chapter are rather obscure, to do with grasshoppers devouring grass, and God “setting a plumbline” in his people; maybe as some kind of measure of moral uprightness as opposed to actual vertical alignment, I can’t say.

Amos 8
“And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.”

God shows Amos a basket of summer fruit as some kind of metaphor, but it seems to get lost somewhere. I suppose, perhaps, it’s meant to represent transience? Unlike some of the prophetic metaphors and visions, this one doesn’t get explained in explicit terms; figure it out yourselves!

More iniquities of the people are discussed by God – selling on the Sabbath, cheating weights and measures (which I still find an interesting cultural element that this should have a religious aspect to it rather than a purely secular legal aspect), selling people for money or shoes and so on.

God threatens “lamentations” and threatens a famine, not of food, but of His word. God is going to go on strike, in other words.

Amos 9
“I saw the Lord standing upon the altar: and he said, Smite the lintel of the door, that the posts may shake: and cut them in the head, all of them; and I will slay the last of them with the sword: he that fleeth of them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not be delivered.”

God threatens (promises, perhaps I should say) to overthrow the Israelites so that they die by the sword and a rea scattered, but He will not completely remove the line of Jacob and so eventually bring back the remnant and rebuild the temple of David anew. This is pretty much what I’ve come to expect from these prophecies – Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel all said the same at great length, and there’s not much in the way of novelty that I can see.

And that’s it for Amos. I suppose the unusual part was that he was a herdsman and not a scribe, but the content of the prophecies was pretty much the same as the others – I thought there might be some other snippets of Messianic prophecy that warranted its inclusion, but there didn’t seem to be. Stylewise it was okay, but I didn’t get much from it that was new.

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