Amos 9Essay Preview: Amos 9Report this essayExegetical Paper: Amos 9:5-10-I will be examining Amos 9:5-10The message that the author is trying to convey in Amos 9:5-10 is that YHWH has proven himself to the people to be a trustworthy and loyal God. He helped resurrect Israel, the Philistines and the Arameans. In turn these people, particularly the Israelites, have betrayed his trust by acting sinfully toward the kingdom of Israel. The Lord YHWH will judge those people of Israel who are called to do right but who choose to do wrong. The wrongdoers being those that have acted sinfully.
Amos, in vision, saw the Lord standing upon the altar at Bethel. God has come for one thing and one thing alone, judgment. There is no escaping the Lord now, for wherever he stands, one can be seen. YHWH has an inescapable presence. Those whom he opposes can find no shelter; wherever they go, his eyes will follow. Wherever sinners flee from YHWHs justice, it will overtake them. Not only does God have an inescapable presence, he also has the power to do virtually anything imaginable with the Earth. As mentioned in Amos 9:5-6: “The Lord, the LORD Almighty, he who touches the earth and it melts, and all who live in it mourn–the whole land rises like the Nile, then sinks like the river of Egypt–he who builds his lofty palace in the heavens and sets its foundation on the Earth, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land–the LORD is his name.” Those whom sin or rebel against God will seek an unwanted response. Whether that unwanted resonse be an earthquake, volcano or any other natural disaster. If one is respectful of YHWH they will be respected back in turn and will someday be brought to heaven. Those whom God brings to heaven by his grace, shall never be cast down; but those who seek to climb up by vain confidence in themselves, will be cast down and filled with shame and embarrassment. That which makes escape impossible. YHWH will set his eyes upon them for evil, not for good. If one is honestly sin-free they will someday find heaven but as for those whom have sinned and then turn around and to try and make it up to the Lord, they will never seek his approval therefore not resorting to heaven.
In Amos 9:7, the Lord says: “Are not you Israelites the same to me as the Cushites?” declares the Lord. “Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor and the Armeans from Kir?” YHWH is expressing all that he has done for the people. He has resurrected these towns, and for what? Evidently he is not pleased with what he has received in return. The people have not responded respectfully the way that he wanted them to and he believes that they should be punished as a result, particularly the sinners. As mentioned in the book Amos, YHWH and Israel have a historical past and in the past YHWH has helped rescue Israel and bring the town back to the way it once used to be, but now they are back in the same sticky situation, aspiring to become the beautiful town they have always dreamed of acceding to (Mays, 157).
Israel seems to believe that they have a special relationship with YHWH since he has helped the Israelite people out of Egypt, God however does not feel that he should give preferential treatment to anybody that has escaped and humiliated his own trust. I believe that God has every right to act stubborn and make his own righteous decision. In the book Amos and Micah, John Marsh states:
“God is more bound by the justice and righteousness of his own immutable nature than by a bond which a fickle Israel has sinfully broken again and again. So God is perfectly free to destroy the sinful kingdom of Israel, and announces his intention to do so” (Marsh, 71).
Israel cant expect God to be there for them whenever they need a helping hand. Its a lot like the story The Boy who Cried Wolf, after a couple of rescue attempts it was evident that the boy was trying to fool the rescuer and the rescuer recognized this, so when the boy was really in trouble with a wolf, the rescuer thought that he was joking again and it suddenly wasnt so funny. “Israel is not the only people on earth that God cares for. Thus, Israels status should not lead to complacency” (Barre, 215). This is a solid point that Michael L. Barre has professed. Israel should not expect God to be there for them whenever they need to be rescued, it would not be fair to anybody else in this world. In order for Israel to gain back Gods respect, the town must relinquish themselves of all sinners and then the Israelites can start from square one.
Amos 9:8 effectively explores what YHWH will due to the unfaithful town of Israel. “Surely the eyes of the Sovereign LORD are on the sinful kingdom. I will destroy it from the face of the earth–yet I will not totally destroy the house of Jacob, declares the Lord.” YHWH is looking for a new approach in resurrecting Israel back to independence. He will destroy Israel to rid all of the sin and start over with a new city with new people and allow the non-sinners back to help the city grow and become amalgamated. As Henry McKeating pointed out, when God helped Israel in 722 B.C. the results were not positive and the town never even regained its “national identity.” The past relationship between the Lord and Israel has not been a good one through the eyes of the Lord so he is in no way shape or form ready to redirect Israel toward sovereignty just to see it spit back at him. YHWH is ready to punish them and give them what they deserve.
I agree on this point in much the same way. I am not saying the Lord is not willing to create the perfect Messiah. But it is interesting to compare the 2 major reasons how the Messiah does not exist to the way Jesus did:
1) A non-Christ would need a Messiah to fulfill their needs in the past. If not for Jesus, Jesus would have fulfilled the prophecy about a “new beginning.”
2) Hence, Jesus doesn’t “change things,” he merely “comes to put them back where they belong.”
Which brings me to the “how do I become a real Christ” part of the problem:
1)
While the Lord could have created this perfect Jesus through the eyes of the prophets, the Jews would not have known this. So, what if He didn’t just bring the people who went to Egypt to fulfill the prophecy of 1) a new beginning? 2) They would have had no way of knowing. 3)
So, Jesus wasn’t even the Messiah who would come in time (though he was). He simply had to make the people that went to Egypt live on. 1) a savior, a “new beginning”, isn’t what Jesus wanted. 2) the Jews would have been doomed to be wiped out without a savior, like other religions. 3)
So how did Jesus fail to “move the people”?
To make things worse…
1) Even though Jesus wanted Jews to go in peace, when the people rebelled to Jesus (the people who did not do their work for him, and who did not accept Jesus as God’s Messiah) they were unable to do his work. http://www.kingscountjust.com/2011/10/how-did-s-saviour-fail-to-move-the-people-to-satisfy-his-questions/
2) Jesus would not have made peace with the tribes and people who had rebelled for his kingdom.
The Lord, by using these issues, also had the other half answer
3)
“This is why we must take care how we deal with other faiths (including my own and other peoples, peoples that we have been doing business with for thousands of years)” the Lord said in His Exhortation for Everyone. http://www.revelationsblogs.com/2008/06/20/revelation-of-savior-and-church-savior-blessed/?comment_nid=637
But, the next time someone says that Jesus made peace with the Israelites and their religion, I suspect his people didn’t understand the reason why that is what’s happened. I wonder if he didn’t know that in fact other nations and peoples also have different religions. You know, maybe there are other civilizations that are very different than the Israelites and Israelites. Maybe it’s that maybe there are only a few of those societies, because of different ethnicities and religions. Maybe the way they treat Jesus wasn’t for Jesus. But, some people have been telling me that it may have been for people from every race and color. It seems like Jesus’ people would have been even more willing to have a better view on the world if there wasn’t the messiah (if he was in fact good like that). I’m still looking at that point.
So, I will
While God talks of his plan of destroying Israel, he mentions how he will sift between the sinners