A Marzea and a Mizraq: A Prophet's Mêlée with Religious Diversity in Amos 6.4-7

This article supports the hypothesis that the feast described in Amos 6.4-7 was a religious event, even a marzea banquet. The loungers' practice of drinking from mizraq vessels is singled out as a definitively syncretistic practice adopted from the nations around them. Epigraphic and iconographic evidence is used to illustrate the prevalence of drinking from ritual vessels at cultic banquets in the ancient Near East, thus explaining the ready incorporation of such a custom by the Samarian elite and bringing greater clarity to Amos's denouncement.