Tucked away among over 8,000 posts
currently available on the website is a series of
articles in a category called “The Prophets Speak
Again”. This
category contains commentaries on the so-called minor
prophets.
(The major prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and
Daniel. The minor prophets are Hosea, Joel, Amos,
Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah,
Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. They're not called minor
because they're less important, but because their books
are shorter.)
I've tried to relate the writings
of these prophets to our times and that's why the
category is called “The Prophets Speak Again”.
So far I've posted commentaries on
Joel, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Habakkuk.
You can access these commentaries by selecting
“Articles” on the menu bar at the top of the home page,
and then scrolling down the Browse by Category list on
the left until you reach “The Prophets Speak Again”.
It's the second from the bottom.
Click on it to access a directory of all the
commentaries in the category.
Select the one you want and start reading.
I say all this to announce the
beginning of a series on the book of Amos, which will
become part of this category.
Let's begin with a little background.
Introducing Amos
Although Amos lived in a small town
just south of Bethlehem and about eleven miles from
Jerusalem, the Lord called him to be a prophet to the
Northern Kingdom. His term of office, so to speak,
lasted from 760 to 750 BC.
This made him a contemporary of Isaiah, Hosea,
Micah, and probably Jonah.
The division of Israel into two
kingdoms had taken place nearly two hundred years
earlier, but both the north and south were enjoying
great prosperity.
In the Northern Kingdom, it was a time of
idolatry,
luxurious living, personal extravagance, and immorality.
The justice system had become corrupt and the
poor were being oppressed.
Having abandoned their commitment to God's law,
the people no longer had any basis for standards of
conduct.
As their prosperity increased, the
ruling class had become politically secure and
spiritually smug, thinking it was a sign of God's favor.
They had ignored His warnings and His patience was at an
end. He was
sending Amos to announce that the coming judgment
wouldn't just be another warning.
This time it would bring the end of the kingdom.
This similarity with our times is
why I believe the message Amos brought to the Northern
Kingdom will have relevance to America, and indeed the
whole world, today. Let's begin.
Amos 1
The words of Amos, one of the
shepherds of Tekoa—what he saw concerning Israel two
years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of
Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.
He said:
“The
Lord roars
from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem; the pastures of
the shepherds dry up,
and the top of Carmel withers.”
(Amos 1:1-2)
Amos worked as a shepherd in his
home town of Tekoa and saw a vision of the coming
judgment.
From the driest part of the land to the greenest, the
Lord's judgment would be as severe as if a drought had
afflicted them.
Judgment on Israel’s Neighbors
This is what the Lord says:
“For three sins of Damascus,
even for four, I will not turn back my wrath.
Because she threshed Gilead with sledges having
iron teeth, I will send fire upon the house of Hazael
that will consume the fortresses of Ben-Hadad.
I will break down the gate of Damascus; I will
destroy the king who is in the Valley of Aven and the
one who holds the scepter in Beth Eden. The people of
Aram will go into exile to Kir,” says the Lord.
(Amos
1:3-5)
The Lord had Amos begin with a
series of pronouncements upon Israel's traditional
enemies that will take us through chapter 1 and into
chapter 2, when He will inform Israel that they will not
escape His anger.
Damascus was the capital of
Aram. The Arameans had brutally mistreated the people of
Gilead, Israel's territory east of the Sea of Galilee. A
number of years earlier the Lord had sent Elijah to
anoint Hazael king over Aram (1 Kings 19:15).
Ben-Hadad was his son and successor.
Aven can mean wickedness or emptiness and Eden
means pleasure or delight.
These are most likely references to Damascus.
The Lord is promising to destroy the king who
rules from there and send the people into exile. This
prophecy was fulfilled in 732 BC by the Assyrians.
(Note: Damascus was not destroyed at the time so
this cannot be seen as a fulfillment of Isaiah 17:1.)
This is what the
Lord says:
“For three sins of Gaza, even
for four, I will not turn back my wrath. Because she
took captive whole communities and sold them to Edom, I
will send fire upon the walls of Gaza that will consume
her fortresses. I will destroy the king of Ashdod and
the one who holds the scepter in Ashkelon.
I will turn my hand against Ekron, till the last
of the Philistines is dead,” says the Sovereign Lord.
(Amos 1:6-9)
Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and
Ekron were four of the five major cities of the
Philistines.
The fifth one was Gath, where Goliath had lived, and had
already been conquered.
The Land of Edom is in southern Jordan today. The
Philistines had apparently overrun entire villages on
the trade route between Gaza and Edom and sold the
inhabitants to the Edomites as if they were livestock.
The Philistines were finally wiped out to the last
person by the Babylonians in 604 BC.
This is what the Lord says:
“For three sins of Tyre, even
for four, I will not turn back my wrath. Because she
sold whole communities of captives to Edom, disregarding
a treaty of brotherhood, I will send fire upon the walls
of Tyre that will consume her fortresses” (Amos
1:7-10)
Tyre, a Phoenician city that still
exists in modern Lebanon, was also engaged in the
wholesale trade of Jewish captives. Tyre had enjoyed
friendly relations with Israel since the days of David,
and when Solomon began construction on the Temple
he made a treaty with Hiram, the King of Tyre, to
provide
wheat and olive oil in exchange for the famous cedars of
Lebanon. This friendship ended when Hiram's grandson
became king and began his slave trading enterprise.
Tyre was a city built partly on the
mainland and partly on an island off shore. In
Ezekiel 26:3 the Lord promised to bring many nations
against Tyre, like the sea casting its waves.
Assyria had been the first, but it was
Nebuchadnezzar who demolished the mainland portion of
Tyre during a 15 year seige (586-571 BC).
Alexander the Great completed the conquest of
Tyre by using the ruins of the mainland portion to build
a causeway to the remaining island fortress and
destroying it in 332 BC.
Much of modern Lebanon was
originally part of the Promised Land.
In the Millennium it will once again belong to
Israel.
This is what the Lord says:
“For three sins of Edom, even
for four, I will not turn back my wrath.
Because he pursued his brother with a sword,
stifling all compassion, because his anger raged
continually and his fury flamed unchecked,
I will send fire upon Teman that will consume the
fortresses of Bozrah” (Amos 1:11-12).
Edom was another name for Esau, the
brother of Jacob.
The strife created by Jacob's trickery in
stealing Esau's birthright festered through the
generations.
Finally King David subdued the Edomites and after that
Edom was under Israel's control, although not happily.
When the Edomites heard of
Nebuchednezzar's intention to conquer Judah, they
colluded with the Babylonians to help make Judah's
defeat certain and made plans to steal their land. God
was not pleased by this and promised to make Edom a
desolate waste (Ezekiel 35:1-15).
After defeating Judah the Babylonians turned on
the Edomites and slaughtered them.
Teman and Bosrah were major cities of Edom, near
Petra in today's southern Jordan.
In Jeremiah 49:18 God swore that Edom
would be overthrown like Sodom and Gomorrah were
overthrown and no one will live there.
This is what the Lord says:
“For three sins of Ammon, even
for four, I will not turn back my wrath.
Because he ripped open the pregnant women of
Gilead in order to extend his borders,
I will set fire to the walls of Rabbah that will consume
her fortresses amid war cries on the day of battle, amid
violent winds on a stormy day.
Her king will go into exile, he and his officials
together,” says the Lord (Amos 1:13-15).
Ammon's greed for land led to a
program of genocide against the Gideonites.
Rabbah was the name for the city now known as
Ahman, the capital of Jordan.
This prophecy was fulfilled by the Assyrians, but
did not result in the disappearance of the Ammonites.
Later, like their cousins the Moabites, the
Ammonites assisted in Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of
Judah, for which the Lord promised to exterminate them (Ezekiel
25:7).
But in Jeremiah 49:6 He said the Ammonites will
be restored in the latter days.
Amos 2
This is what the Lord says:
“For three sins of Moab, even
for four, I will not turn back my wrath. Because he
burned, as if to lime,
the bones of Edom’s king, I
will send fire upon Moab that will consume the
fortresses of Kerioth. Moab will go down in great tumult
amid war cries and the blast of the trumpet. I will
destroy her ruler and kill all her officials with him,”
says the Lord.(Amos 2:1-3)
There are two possibilities here.
This passage apparently refers to the only time when
Edom and Moab were not on the same side against Israel.
2 Kings 3:9 says the kings of Judah,
Israel, and Edom were united against the king of Moab
who had refused to pay the tribute he owed to the King
of Israel.
When it became obvious that he was losing the ensuing
battle, the King of Moab became so enraged that he took
700 swordsmen and went after the King of Edom.
Failing to capture him, the King of Moab either
captured the King of Edom's son and heir to the throne
and offered him as a burnt offering to his god, or else
he dug up the remains of a past king of Edom and burned
them instead.
Either way it was a great offense against the
Lord and the Moabites were utterly defeated.
Later they were taken captive by the Babylonians
and soon disappeared from the world scene.
But Jeremiah 48:47 tells us the fortunes
of Moab will also be restored in the latter days.
Along with Edom and Ammon, Moab has
reappeared as the kingdom of Jordan, the only nation in
the Middle East that will escape the clutches of the
anti-Christ in the end times (Daniel 11:41).
A Reasonable Faith
It was learning about the unfailing
fulfillment of prophecies like these that brought me to
the foot of the cross.
I reasoned that a God who could predict and then
perform like this has to be who He claims to be and it
was safe to put my trust in Him.
In Isaiah 46:9-10 He said,
“Remember the
former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is
no other; I am God, and there is none like me.
I make known the end from the beginning, from
ancient times, what is still to come.”
And from Isaiah 48:3,6,
“I foretold the former things long ago,my mouth
announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I
acted, and they came to pass.
You have heard these things; look at them all. Will
you not admit them?
Later I would learn that no other
so-called holy book offers this kind of proof. And if so
many prophecies He foretold about our past have come to
pass, doesn't it make sense that those He foretold
about our future will come to pass as well? Think
about it.
From our study of Psalm 83
you can recognize several familiar names. But remember,
the prophecies of Amos 1 were fulfilled at
various times over a period of 400 years, not in a
single battle.
Therefore we can't see them as a fulfillment of
Psalm 83.
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel also prophesied the
conquest of these next door enemies of Israel, but none
of their prophecies match with Psalm 83 either.
Damascus was not destroyed as Isaiah 17 requires,
and both Jeremiah and Daniel speak of the re-emergence
of Edom, Moab and Ammon in the last days.
Clearly the Battle of Psalm 83 is yet to
come.
Next
time we'll begin looking at what the Lord had Amos say
to Israel, and it won't be pretty.
See you then.
02-16-13
