The current media topic in which direct quotations of the Bible are arguably most present is marriage equality. While public policy debates over health care or unemployment are not likely to feature quotes from Hebrew Scripture or the Pauline letters writ bold, lately it seems like every time I click the Comments section of a blog entry about marriage equality, I can’t go far before stumbling over a quote from Leviticus or Romans.
The strategy that proponents of equality adopt is to pull out biblical passages that the US government would never hold up as normative. A recent example would be a video released in the wake of Prop 8, in which a bearded Jack Black plays Jesus in a musical theater production. Informed that the “Bible says” that homosexuals are an abomination, Black remarks that it says the same about shrimp cocktail. When Gavin Newsome, the Catholic mayor of San Francisco and a frontrunner in the campaign for governor of California, spoke to a Times reporter recently about Leviticus signs at protests, he described reading Leviticus to see what was there: “‘It says that I may possess many slaves, male and female, as long as they are purchased from nearby nations,’ Newsom said with a laugh”. (1)
A result of this trend is that when self-identifying progressives speak about the Bible in public, the verses most quickly reached for are those that in today’s cultural setting are the most offensive, ridiculous, or blatantly immoral.
If progressives aim to pass public policy with the support of conservatives—especially in light of the massive dislocation among society’s most vulnerable as the economic crisis drags on—then in order to locate common ground, the “Religious Left” might also call attention in public discourse to Bible verses with a strong message of social justice. The book of Amos, one of the Hebrew Scripture options for this week’s lectionary, contains passage that directly address issues of economic justice that are relevant today.
The Amos passage that is arguably the most well known in America is part of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech:
We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Readers interested in either seeing the entire video of the speech or reading the text can find them here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
The line “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream” comes from Amos 5:24. The passage that it comes from is written in the voice of Yahweh (translated as the LORD):
“I hate, I despise your festivals,
And I take no delight in your sacred assemblies.
22 Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings,
I will not accept them,
Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings.
23 Take away from Me the noise of your songs,
For I will not hear the melody of your harps.
24 But let justice run down like water,
And righteousness like a mighty stream.
Amos preached during the 8th century, BCE, during the reign of Jeraboam II. The New Oxford Annotated Bible’s introduction describes how Amos’ task was preaching repentance during a time that was prosperous for the upper class. Through the exploitation of landowners, a small debt could result in a farmer losing his family’s lands and being enslaved.
“In this period, Israel attained a height of territorial expansion and national prosperity never again reached. At the same time, this prosperity led to gross inequities between urban elites and the poor. Through manipulation of debit and credit, wealthy landowners amassed capital and estates at the expense of small farmers” (NOAB 1302).
In The Prophets, the Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel brings together passages in the book of Amos that describe economic inequity:
“The rich had their summer and winter palaces adorned with costly ivory (3:15), gorgeous couches with damask pillows (3:12), on which they reclined at their sumptuous feasts. . . At the same time there was no justice in the land (3:10), the poor were afflicted, exploited, even sold into slavery (2:6-8; 5:11), and the judges were corrupt (5:12)” (Heschel, 33).
In A History of Prophecy in Israel, Joseph Blenkinsopp provides specific historical detail about what a shift from an agrarian, relatively egalitarian, way of life to a more rigid hierarchy looked like in the 8th century BCE. Landowners employed slaves and exacted heavy taxes (“exactions of wheat,” Amos 5:11). Insolvent laborers could be forced into slavery or military service, losing their land. While trade with Phoenician cities brought about economic expansion, the resulting prosperity did not equally benefit all social class. Much like religious institutions have a non-profit tax status in America today, the personnel who organized the animal sacrifice systems were tax-exempt. The hardship of sacrificing livestock in times of poverty could have contributed to resentment Amos voices in the passage Martin Luther King cites (Blenkinsopp, 81).
Blenkinsopp interprets the passage King uses as a radical critique of symbols ingrained in communal life of the state: “One of the more remarkable aspects of the book is the presentation of worship as the expression of a radically sinful way of life. The entire apparatus of festivals, sacrifice, religious music, and tithing is rejected as hateful to Yahweh” (Blenkinsopp, 40). Blenkinsopp stresses than in eighth century BCE Israel, it would be unrealistic to replace worship with a religion boiled down exclusively to ethics. He interprets Amos as critiquing the way settled religious practice can lend legitimacy to an unjust state:
“Rather, the point seems to be that worship was (as it is still) a very powerful way of legitimating the current political and social status quo. Quite simply, Amos was not taken in by the religiosity of his contemporaries” (Blenkinsopp, 81).
The passage from this week’s lectionary, 7:7-15, begins with Amos describing a vision of the destruction of Israel. Although King Jeroboam was not killed in the way Amos describes, Israel would later be taken over by succeeding armies of Assyrians and Babylonians, culminating the in destruction of the Temple and exile in 586 BCE. The “plumb line” in this passage, according to NOAB, was also mentioned in 2 Kings 21:13-15. It was “a device for determining the true vertical line of a structure,” implying that “Israel’s religious and political institutions do not measure up . . .” (NOAB, 1313).
7 This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand. 8 And the LORD asked me, "What do you see, Amos?"
"A plumb line," I replied.
Then the Lord said, "Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.
9 "The high places of Isaac will be destroyed
and the sanctuaries of Israel will be ruined;
with my sword I will rise against the house of Jeroboam."
Amos then describes his face-off against the official royal priest, Amaziah. As the insider religious spokesman, Amaziah accuses Amos of treason and commands him to leave. If can be inferred that after his banishment, Amos or his followers wrote the text that became the book of Amos:
10 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent a message to Jeroboam king of Israel: "Amos is raising a conspiracy against you in the very heart of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words. 11 For this is what Amos is saying:
" 'Jeroboam will die by the sword,
and Israel will surely go into exile,
away from their native land.' "
12 Then Amaziah said to Amos, "Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. 13 Don't prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king's sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom."
14 Amos answered Amaziah, "I was neither a prophet nor a prophet's son, but I was a shepherd, and a dresser of sycamore trees. 15 But the LORD took me from tending the flock and said to me, 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel.'
During this time, the figs produced by sycamore trees would have been slit with knives to speed the ripening process. Amos’s response means that he is not a member of a prophetic guild, and did not receive formal training as a prophet. At this time period, the profession of “prophet” was one that could be pursued through officially sanctioned channels (1 Samuel 9:6-10, Micah 3:5-8, 11). However, Amos claims to have receiving his calling directly from the Lord, in the tradition of “outsider” leaders such as Gideon who the Lord raises up to accomplish a task.
A line in the book of Amos which arguably sums up the prophet’s message is the command, in Yahweh’s voice, “For thus says the LORD to the house of Israel: Seek me, and live” (Amos 5:4). In closing, a last important aspect of the book of Amos which Heschel emphasizes is the message that peoples outside the Israelites are explicitly valued by the Lord:
Are you not like the Ethiopians to Me,
O People of Israel? Says the Lord.
Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt,
and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir? (Amos 9:7).
Heschel writes, “The God of Israel is the God of all nations, and all men’s history is His concern” (Heschel, 40).
(1) Source of the article on Gavin Newsome is
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/magazine/05California-t.html?ref=magazine
Other sources:
Blenkinsopp. Joseph. A History of Prophecy in Israel. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1983.
Coogan, Michael, Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (3rd ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Heschel, Abraham. The Prophets. New York: HarperCollins, 1962.
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