Evelyn Abbott - The History of Antiquity, Vol. 3 (of 6)

From this arose a peculiar class of ideas. Jehovah had chosen Israel for his people before other nations. He desires to protect him and grant him his favour. But how can he, the pure and holy God, grant protection and defence, if his people live an impure and unholy life? To protect sinners would be against his own nature. Jehovah was a severe and jealous God; was he not to punish the defection from his service, the faithlessness and ingratitude of the nation, with grievous punishment? Must he not visit these wrong-doers with a heavy penalty? The Assyrians were on the Euphrates. From these suppositions, and the conclusion that Jehovah, according to his pure and holy being as well as his severe nature, must punish the error of the people; that he could not allow the breach of the ancient covenant, the defection, the worship of idols, the injustice, and the luxury to remain unvisited, grew up the idea of a great sentence about to be executed on Israel and Judah. Among the prophets this became a settled conviction. But according to their conception, Jehovah is raised far above the weakness and the anger of men. If his people return to him, amend their conversation, and serve him with their lips and their heart, he will in his mercy pardon them, or the punishment which he sends upon them will be merely a purification; the stiff-necked obstinacy of the hard heart he will break; many will fall, but he will spare those who are true to him; and when he has corrected his people by a severe judgment, he will exalt them anew, and take up his abode on Zion.

Filled with these conceptions the prophets came forward soon after the beginning of the eighth century. They are no longer sooth-sayers and seers; they do not predict any more; they do not announce definite facts; they only know what will and must be the consequences of the sinful life of the people: they proclaim a great judgment; they declare what must be done in order to turn aside the wrath of Jehovah. Impelled by inward certainty to ascertain and reveal the nature and will of Jehovah, filled with religious inspiration, and in a tone of deepest earnestness, the prophets give to their utterances an expression of force and fire, which forms a proper sequel to the beautiful beginnings of lyric poetry, as we have learned to know them in the songs of victory, in the strains of thanksgiving and lamentation of the Israelites, in the psalms – a sequel which corresponds to the power and importance of the spiritual movement from which the exhortations of the prophets arise. With unwearied zeal they exhort the people to return to their ancient God and trust in him alone. Then, as Israel's power began to decline after the death of Jeroboam and Uzziah, the view and conception of the prophets becomes higher and higher; the more threatening and dangerous the position of affairs, the greater their influence; and at the time when the political existence of the Israelites was broken down, their religious life is perfected and purified, into a thorough recognition of ethical monotheism.

A man of the kingdom of Judah, Amos of Tekoa, a place not far from Jerusalem, prophesied in Israel in the first decades of the reign of Jeroboam, between 790 and 760 B.C. He calls himself "neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet;" he assures us that he was not a disciple of the prophets, and did not wear the usual garb of a prophet, i. e. a poor coarse clothing. He adds that he was a herdsman and a planter of sycamores: "Jehovah took me from following the flock, and said to me; Go and prophesy to my people in Israel." 51From these prophecies, which he afterwards wrote down, it is plain that the Holy Scriptures, in the form in which the two texts had been united and revised by the hand of a prophet, were familiar to him and present before him; that the prophecies of Joel were known to him. 52It was in Bethel, the chief place of sacrifice in Israel, that he came forward. There, at the place of the bull-image, he proclaimed the wickedness of this worship, and branded in still stronger terms the moral corruption of the land. In vain had Jehovah uttered warnings by his prophets; the law was not regarded; justice was crooked; the weak were oppressed. No doubt Amos exaggerated his reproaches, but we cannot doubt that the faults he attacked were in existence. The careless he threatened with the destruction which would soon burst upon them if they remained without repentance or improvement. Then would the high places of Isaac be laid waste, and the shrines of Israel destroyed, and Jehovah would rise up with the sword against the house of Jeroboam. The priests of Israel could not endure to hear such utterances. The high priest at Bethel, Amaziah, said to Amos: "Seer, go flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread and prophesy. Prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it is the king's chapel, and the king's court." Amos answered: "Thou sayest, Prophesy not against Israel, and drop not thy word against the house of Isaac. Therefore thus saith Jehovah: Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by a line; and thou shalt die in polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land." Then Amaziah the priest sent to king Jeroboam: "Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words; for he saith, By the sword shall Jeroboam die, and Israel shall be led captive out of his land."

The proclamations of Amos were not directed against Israel alone. He threatens the Damascenes and the Ammonites with vengeance for the devastations they had caused in Gilead (II. 258); the Philistines because they had carried away captives from Judah and sold them (II. 303); the city of Tyre because she put the captives of Judah in the hands of the Edomites; the Edomites because they pursued their brothers (the Judæans) with the sword (II. 252). Nor does he even spare the kingdom of Judah; even there the law of Jehovah is despised, and his ordinances are not kept. But the judgment of Jehovah will descend only on the guilty, and when the day of judgment is over Jehovah will again purify Israel and set up Zion.

"Did I not bring you up from Egypt?" so Amos represents Jehovah as saying; "Did I not lead you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorites? Did I not destroy the Amorites before you, who were tall as cedars, and strong as oaks? Did I not raise up prophets from your sons, and Nazarites from your young men? 53Hear this word, ye who oppress the weak and trample underfoot the poor; 54ye who stretch yourselves beside the altar on garments taken in pledge, and drink the wine of the condemned in the house of your gods; ye who overpower the just, and make the poor bow down at the gate; 55who purchase the thirsty for silver, and the helpless for a pair of shoes; 56who, father and son together, go to one mistress, and say: When is the new moon over that we may sell grain, and the day of rest that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balance for deception. Do men hunt the horse on the rocks, and plough the stone with oxen, that ye may turn justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock? 57Because ye trample down the weak, and oppress them with burdens, ye have planted pleasant vineyards, and built houses of hewn stone. 58O ye that are at ease in Zion, ye careless ones in the mount of Samaria, who imagine that the day of destruction is far off, and draw near the seat of violence; who lie on beds of ivory, and stretch yourselves on couches; who eat up the lambs of the flock and the calves of the stall; who chant to the sound of the harp, in order to invent instruments of music like David; 59who empty your wine cups, and anoint yourselves with the chief oil, and trouble not yourselves for the affliction of Joseph; ye shall not dwell in your houses, and drink the wine out of your pleasant gardens: ye shall go forth into misery, with the first that go captive. 60Go to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression. Bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes on the third day; burn thank-offerings, and publish the free will offerings. 61Seek me not at Bethel, and go not to Gilgal and Beersheba. I hate your festivals, and will not taste your offerings, or look on the thank-offering of your stalled calves. Take from me the noise of your songs, and let me not hear the sound of the harp. 62Let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: establish judgment in the gate; it may be that Jehovah will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph. Hate the evil, and love the good, so will Jehovah, the God of hosts, be with you." 63