Amos 2
The oracle sequence reaches Israel last, with an indictment twice as long as any other: they sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes.
Summary
Chapter 2 opens with two more oracles in the nations sequence before the trap closes. Moab is indicted for burning the bones of the king of Edom to lime — a desecration of the dead that crosses a line the ancient Near East recognised even across hostile borders. Judah is indicted not for a specific war crime but for rejecting the law of the LORD and not keeping his statutes, and being led astray by the lies that their fathers followed. This oracle stands out as slightly different in character from the others — more theological, less concrete — and some readers have taken it as a later insertion. Whether or not that is the case, it functions in the sequence as the penultimate step before Israel.
The Israel oracle lands with the full weight of the delayed conclusion. The crimes are not foreign war crimes but domestic economic crimes: the righteous sold for silver, the needy sold for a pair of shoes, the head of the poor trampled into the dust of the earth and the way of the afflicted turned aside. A man and his father go in to the same girl. Garments taken in pledge are laid beside every altar. The wine of those who have been fined is drunk in the house of their God. The LORD then rehearses the history of what he has done for Israel — destroyed the Amorites, brought them out of Egypt, led them through the wilderness, raised up prophets and Nazirites — and announces that all of it will now be pressed down. I will press you down in your place, as a cart full of sheaves presses down. The fast will not save the mighty, the mighty will not save himself, and the one who is stouthearted among the mighty will flee naked in that day.
- Amos 1The chapter opens with the superscription placing Amos in the reign of Jeroboam II, two years before the earthquake, then immediately with the roar: the LORD roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem.
- Amos 2The chapter opens with the sixth and seventh oracles — Moab, for burning the bones of the king of Edom to lime, and Judah, for rejecting the law of the LORD — and then, having walked the full circle of nations, lands on Israel.
- Amos 3The chapter opens with the address Hear this word, the first of three such addresses that structure chapters 3 through 5.
- Amos 4The chapter opens with the cows of Bashan address — the wealthy women of the capital whose only recorded speech is telling their husbands to bring more wine — and announces that hooks and fishhooks will take them out through breaches in the wall.
- Amos 5The chapter opens with a lament — a dirge for Israel in the present tense, as if the fall has already happened: Fallen, no more to rise, is the virgin Israel; forsaken on her land, with none to raise her up.
- Amos 6Chapter 6 opens with a double woe — against those at ease in Zion and those who feel secure in Samaria — and then invites the audience to look around the region: are these nations better than Israel, are their territories larger? Then it describes, with a precision that reads like a reporter's note, the world of the upper class: they lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches; they eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall; they sing idle songs to the sound of the harp; they drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but they are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.
- Amos 7The chapter opens with the first two visions.
- Amos 8The fourth vision opens with the LORD showing Amos a basket of summer fruit.
- Amos 9The fifth and final vision gives no object and no question.