Amos 9
The fifth vision: the Lord himself stands beside the altar and calls for the temple to come down. The book's only restoration oracle closes with the fallen booth of David raised and the mountains dripping sweet wine.
Summary
The fifth vision opens without the question-and-answer structure of the previous two. The Lord is standing beside the altar — not worshipped at it but standing as its judge — and commands Amos to strike the capitals until the thresholds shake and shatter them on the heads of all the people. The pursuit that follows is the most absolute in the prophetic literature. If they dig into Sheol, the hand of the LORD will take them; if they climb to heaven, the LORD will bring them down; if they hide on the top of Carmel, he will search them out and take them; if they hide from his sight on the bottom of the sea, he will command the sea serpent to bite them; if they go into captivity before their enemies, he will command the sword to kill them. The eye of the LORD watches for evil, not good. The cosmic LORD who touches the land and makes it melt, who builds his upper chambers in the heavens and founds his vault upon the earth, is the same God who brought Israel out of Egypt — and, the text adds in a statement that has struck readers across all centuries, who also brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir. The LORD's governance is not limited to Israel's story.
The last eight verses of the book — verses 11 through 15 — are formally and tonally discontinuous with everything that precedes them. In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old. The mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. The people will rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them on their land, and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that I have given them. The word Amos has refused to speak for eight and a half chapters — the word of restoration — appears here, in the closing verses, as a coda that the rest of the book has not prepared for. Most historical-critical scholars understand these verses as a later editorial addition, attached to Amos's oracles during or after the exile to bring the collection into conformity with the prophetic pattern of judgment followed by restoration. Whether or not that is the case, the reader who has been with Amos through the oracles against the nations, the cows of Bashan, the day of the LORD, the plumb line, and the famine of the word arrives at these verses after a book that has refused, until this moment, to console.
- 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.