Chapter 44
Good Monday Morning to this week 44 of 2021
Do you remember the proverb from Amos 5. 19?
A man was attacked by a lion. By sheer accident, he was able to save himself, but then a bear ran at him. Again he escaped. With the last of his strength, he made it to his house and just barely slammed the heavy door in the bear’s face. Gasping for breath, he leaned his hands against the wall—and a snake bit him. The bite was fatal.
What could this be about? Is the meaning really obvious? Our worst enemies are not outside, they are in our own house? Or is it about our shadows? Or is it temptation that keeps returning? Or is the day of the Lord at hand, as many say?
Wow, this little passage ist is extreme!
Gerhard Lohfink … first gives the parable to many of his students – then makes an attempt to put it into context …
It has to do something about the “Day of the LORD,” the crucial phrase that frames and dominates the parable. Amos is using the parable to explain to his hearers in the Northern Kingdom of Israel what the “Day of the LORD ” means for them. Before war and deportation overtook them the people of the Northern Kingdom lived in fragile security. Their economic situation was good. The rich were getting richer all the time and exploiting the poor. Pompous worship services were celebrated, along with lavish feasts. The political situation was heating up. The people expected God to defeat their enemies, as on the “day of Midian”. For them, that was a day on which God had intervened, a day when God had rescued Israel from its foes. Now they were longing for such another “Day of the LORD .” But the prophet levels that expectation to the ground. The “Day of the LORD ” the people are wishing for will look completely different. Embedded in the prophecy of woe stands the parable of the futile flight. There is no salvation any longer for the people of the Northern Kingdom!
The discussion group then debated for a long time about how open to a variety of interpretations an isolated parable text standing by itself can be. Only the literary context or oral commentary or the actual situation in which a parable is spoken can establish its meaning without a doubt. For that very reason, Amos gave his parable a frame—the “Day of the LORD .”
After this figurative indication of the sufferings and calamities which the day of the Lord will bring, Amos once more repeats in v. 20, in a still more emphatic manner, that it will be no day of salvation, to those who seek evil and not good and trample justice and righteousness.
What is your interpretation?
So many people are talking about this day, calamity coming as the day of the Lord. What if the warning is not about the day of the Lord as a day of losing salvation or redemption, but the day of the Lord is when it’s about those not about seeking justice, but instead about trampling on the less privileged and causing injustice? For many, the bite of injustice is indeed fateful.
The encouragement today is as we had it the other day out of Micah:
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God!
Wishing you a good start to this week.
Philemon