Abstract
Amos is notable for its critique of human claims to power within Israel as well as without. Intriguingly, Amos locates the resolution of such abuses in Yahweh's exercise of power as a cosmic king who eliminates some groups from among the nations and from within Israel while creating a new relationship between Yahweh and the remnants of both groups. Using an approach that gives priority to the semantic coherence of the text over its lesser diachronic features, this article explores these dynamics with attention to the criteria according to which Yahweh delivers one group and punishes another. It closes by pondering how the book of Amos itself should be subjected to ideological critique.
1. Introduction
The variety of perspectives that the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament offers on the question of human and divine power, and the postcolonial critique of the relationship between the biblical materials and contemporary exercises of power, continue to raise questions and promote creative thinking on the part of biblical scholars. 1 While nearly every part of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament bears a relation to questions of this nature, the book of Amos is particularly interesting to read from this perspective because of its ability to critique human claims to power within Israel as well as without. To this it adds a portrayal of Israel's deity as the cosmic king whose reign will eliminate some groups from among the nations (1.3–2.3) and from within Israel (9.1–4) while also establishing a new type of relationship between Yahweh and the remnants of both Israel and the nations (9.12).
This article focuses on the criteria according to which the book allocates divine deliverance and judgment, a paradigm in which divine power and human identity come into the closest possible relation. The discussion will be anchored by the oracles against the nations (1.3–2.3) and Judah/Israel on the one hand, and the very different relation between post-judgment Israel and the nations in 9.11–12 on the other. It focuses primarily on this prophetic book in its ancient context, but also pays attention to its significance for the present, especially the possibility that the book of Amos itself should be subjected to ideological critique.
2. Method
The following discussion proceeds through the book of Amos in literary order because the continuity and development of the theme of power confirm the value of doing so. While one cannot glibly infer the coherence of the book from the coherence of a single theme, the basis for this approach is not simply pragmatic. By reading the book, and in particular one theme, as a coherent and essentially unified discourse, this article recognizes the varying surface-level terminology under which issues of power are presented, but does not automatically let surface-level factors (grammar, terminology, etc.) take primacy over the text's aggregate semantic content. 2 This distinction between surface cohesion and semantic coherence is inherent in the commonly accepted understanding of a literary theme, which is ‘more closely related to the purpose of the work than any other’. 3 Consequently, a text's conceptual coherence ‘overrides compositional unity because the latter owes its existence to the former’. 4 While this might seem to dispense too quickly with compositional elements that have been the focus of much historical criticism, it is simply the expression in methodological terms of the axiom that meaning arises from combinations of words, and the primary semantic unit is the sentence rather than the word (the latter often having been employed for arguments in favor of incoherence). 5 We therefore have ample reason to attempt to understand the text as a whole before concluding that its aggregate content cannot be unified and must therefore be broken into disparate parts, each of which is (individually) internally coherent. 6
3. Players, Roles, and Plot
a. Yahweh
It is not insignificant that Amos begins with Yahweh's roar from his chosen city. The description of Yahweh as a lion and the effects of his roar create the expectation of danger and destruction, to say the least (cf. 3.8). Not only is Yahweh introduced as a mortally dangerous wild beast whose anger threatens the very lives of the audience, but the leonine image is charged with destructive power more than anything else. 7 Indeed, there is no hint (initially) that Yahweh's appearance will bring anything other than destruction, at least to every region other than Jerusalem. In other words, Yahweh exercises unlimited power against a wide variety of behaviors deemed offensive, inside as well as outside Israel. These abuses are especially evident in the conduct of non-Israelite nations toward one another, and in the behavior of some in Israel toward their kin and fellow citizens. We will consider the nations briefly, glance in some detail at the first oracle against Aram, and then turn to Israel/Judah.
b. Non-Israelite Nations
The book of Amos teems with non-Israelite nations, city-states, and ethnic groups, although Assyria is conspicuously absent (at least lexically; it is probably in view in 5.27; 6.14; 7.9, as Gottwald suggests). 8 While not an exhaustive list, the six non-Israelite entities listed roughly surround Israel/Judah, and their number allows Judah to occupy the climactic seventh position.
While John Barton is surely correct that in the case of the non-Israelite nations the offenses identified in the various oracles are ‘atrocities committed during military campaigns’, 9 Doug Stuart's suggestion that at the heart of Edom's (and others’) actions lay the ‘misuse and abuse of helpless people for the profit of the mighty’ 10 will prove more illuminating here.
c. Yahweh against Rebellious Aram
The Arameans were not a single ethnicity, but rather a culturally and geographically compatible collection of pastoral nomads. 11 Aram's offense is simply identified as its ‘threshing Gilead with iron threshing sledges’, which emphasizes the brutality and destructiveness of the actions referenced (cf. the threshing ‘to powder’ in Isa. 41.15). In response to this brutality, the ‘fire’ of Yahweh's judgment (1.4) is focused on both the ruler (‘dynasty of Hazael’) and the architectural symbols of his power (‘palaces of Ben-Hadad’).
In 1.5 Yahweh's punishment moves from the ruler and his palaces to the principal city (‘the gate/bar of Damascus’) before returning to the ruler as the one ‘seated’ and the ‘one holding the scepter’ from the valley of Aven and the house of Eden. The final element of v. 5 mentions the forced migration of Aram's populace in the direction of Kir. The merisms in the text (dynasty and palace, ruler and populace) emphasize that Yahweh's judgment will be definitive.
Despite what might appear to be a very hostile posture toward non-Israelite nations, it is important to note that Amos condemns Aram for specific offenses, with a clear (if not absolute) focus on their leaders’ misuse of military power. The survival of some of the nations in the eschatological future that Amos foresees will confirm that a simple Israel–non-Israel dichotomy cannot adequately explain Amos’ critique of abused power. In the middle section of the book, moreover, the nations have other roles than culpable-abuser-of-power, including being witnesses or instruments of Israel's judgment (3.9; 6.14) and objects of comparison (6.2; especially 9.7). It is also intriguing that as the book progresses, the nations come into a progressively closer relationship to Israel: while a number of the oracles against the nations condemn the nations for mistreatment of Israel/Judah, the nations are ultimately not independent of Judah/Israel, and their final, positive fate is tied directly to the eschatological renewal of Israel (ch. 9).
d. Yahweh against Rebellious Judah
Even though Yahweh's roar originates from Jerusalem, Judah is not immune from his judgment, so that God is not on the side of his ‘nation’ (that term will become increasingly inappropriate as the book progresses). The oracle in 2.4–5 must therefore have been shocking to the Judahites who heard it. It is also extremely brief, and so does not give any hint as to what sins might be in view. Interestingly, just as the divine response to non-Israelite (city-)states’ abuses of power was concentrated especially on their citadels and the closely related kings and dynasties, here too Judah's military and political power structures are singled out as the target of divine wrath. 12
e. Yahweh against Rebellious Israel
As was the case with the nations and Judah, Yahweh's judgment on Israel comes as retribution for the misuse of power (2.13–16; 3.10–11; 4.1; 6.8; etc.). Although Amos denies the legitimacy of the Northern Kingdom insofar as it rejects Yahweh's sovereignty (ch. 7), its judgment will be carefully focused on those in Israel who continue to resist Yahweh (e.g. Amaziah in ch. 7). This is clearest in the opening vision report of ch. 9 and the subsequent prophecy of disaster against ‘the sinful kingdom’, which will be ‘destroyed from the face of the ground’ (9.8).
In 9.7, Yahweh's comparison of his involvement in Israel's formation with his orchestration of the genesis of other nations is a strong argument against Israel's absolute uniqueness on ethnic and historical grounds, two prominent pillars of identity. 13 In a thought that could have its roots in the confrontation between Jeroboam's priest and Amos in 7.10–17, Israel's status as a nation is forfeited by its sin (implied by the reference to exile in 7.17), and for the most part it has become the ‘sinful kingdom’ (האטחההכלממ) that will be destroyed (9.8).
The explicit ground for Israel's coming judgment appears in the covenantal-moral terminology (האטח) that describes the northern kingdom in 9.8a. The role of this identifier is crucial to the passage's developing focus on sinners within Israel in 9.10 (ימעיאטחלכ). Because the identifier ‘sinners’ is specific within the larger, general categories used in this context (e.g. house of Jacob), 14 Yahweh does not hesitate to punish that group (i.e. sinners): precise (and definitive) identity entails the assigning of a definitive fate when articulated in an eschatological context. 15
This final and ultimate inner-Israelite distinction is developed in 9.8b by means of the contrasting affirmation (which shares the root דמש) that Yahweh will not completely destroy the ‘house of Jacob’. 16 In context, this ‘house of Jacob’ must be partially or entirely distinct from the ‘sinful kingdom’ (unless a redactor of v. 8b failed to see contradiction between v. 8a and v. 8b, and understood the ‘sinful kingdom’ as identical to the ‘house of Jacob’). 17 In light of the sifting imagery in the following verse, it is most probable that the house of Jacob overlaps partially with the sinful kingdom. This would also corroborate the likelihood that דימשא דימשה אל means ‘not completely destroy’, a qualification that would be meaningless if the two entities were entirely distinct and untenable if they were completely identical.
In 9.9 the image of literal destruction gives way to the metaphor of sifting, which also involves a binary distinction. The ‘house of Israel’ (which is probably identical to the ‘house of Jacob’ in 9.8, since no clear change in its circumstances or characteristics requires a change in referent) will be ‘shaken out among the nations’ at Yahweh's command (9.9a). The sifting will not confuse the metaphorical grain and chaff, denoting non-sinners and sinners in Israel, respectively. 18
A third and final description of this purifying process appears in 9.10, and Yahweh is again the one who enacts it on the basis of divinely assigned identity. This verse returns to the sinner/non-sinner contrast already used in 9.8, and the comprehensive nature of the judgment is clear from the assertion that ‘all the sinners of my people will die’. Amos 9.7–10 thus begins with a historical argument for the relative nature of Israel's election before developing in several steps a covenantal-moral description of definitive judgment against ‘sinners’ within Israel/Jacob. 19 The result is a clear distinction between religious and national identity.
4. The Denouement
a. God for the Remnant of Israel
In the final chapter of Amos, little is said that would qualify Israel/Judah for deliverance, or that would make that deliverance impossible for others. The relativization of Israelite identity in 9.9–10 is thus especially striking in that context's discussion of comprehensive and absolute destruction or deliverance. It is also significant that the relegation of ethnic-national identity to secondary status opens the way for the subsequent integration of non-Israelites in a renewed Davidic kingdom.
The prophecy of restoration that concludes the book begins with purified Israel (those remaining after the events of 9.1–10) and immediately brings that group under the control of the divinely chosen Davidide. While some have suggested that דיודחכס indicates the Jerusalem temple, the logic of the movement from the restoration of this entity in 9.11 to the subjugation of (some of) the remaining Gentiles in 9.12 must be respected (especially the ןעמל that begins 9.12). 20 The stereotypical order of events in the Hebrew Bible and elsewhere in the ancient Near East points in the same direction, typically presenting victory followed by temple building. 21 Furthermore, in the only other biblical use of the phrase in Isa 16.5, it seems fairly clear that Davidic rule is in view, even if the image of the tent by itself is cultic. 22 It is also noteworthy that the classic description of the covenant with David in 2 Sam. 7.12 uses the hiphil of םוק with Yahweh as the subject and David's descendant(s) as the object, as is the case here.
These considerations argue for seeing the Davidic line as the referent of דיודחכס. Especially if this verse refers to the exilic period (cf. 2 Kgs 25.27–30), the imagery of the ‘booth’ is intelligible as a diminutive of a dynastic ‘house’, with a booth typically denoting a temporary and insecure dwelling. The sense of the image would thus be that the weakened, and perhaps interrupted, Davidic line would once again be brought to a position of power comparable to its earliest form (םלעימיכ). 23
b. God for the Remnant of the Nations
Amos announces that the Davidic line will be reestablished in order to ‘possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations over whom my name is called’. The primary difficulty in understanding this verse is the tension between the adversarial Israel–nations relationship suggested by שרי and the very different image of unilateral divine adoption of the nations in the phrase םהילעימשארקנ. The final hegemony of the restored Davidic line, and the related promise in 9.15 that Israel will never again be uprooted from its land, imply a new, permanent relation between Israel and the nations which can be explained several ways: (1) Israel is stronger than the nations, who would continue their aggression but without success—this is somewhat unlikely given the strong emphasis on the blessings of the Sinai covenant in 9.13–14, which go hand-in-hand with international peace (cf. Lev. 26.5, 42; Deut. 30.3–5, 9); (2) the nations no longer exercise aggression against Israel, whose relative strength would in this case be unimportant—this would imply some sort of reconciliation between them, or at least submission to Israel: (3) if the terms in 9.12 refer to territory and not to people, the question would not need to be raised, but the text excludes this possibility. Although שרי can take peoples or their territory as its object, in Amos םיוגה־לכ never refers to territory. It is also unlikely that the use of חיראש with a proper noun would refer to territory; the construction is characteristically used to refer to people groups, 24 or perhaps to nation-states inclusive of their populations. 25
In context, the ‘remnant of Edom’ would most naturally be those who survived Yahweh's judgment against them in 1.11–12. It is true that the syntax of 9.12, which uses only one definite direct object marker for what are apparently two verbal objects, is ‘lopsided and awkward’. 26 This is hardly a unique problem, however, as the omission of the object marker on the second of two related verbal objects is attested with some frequency in Biblical Hebrew. 27 Whether Edom and ‘all the nations …’ should be read together as a composite absolute element with which חיראש is in construct is more difficult to settle. The punishment of many nations as announced in 1.3–2.3 makes it more likely that a remnant of the nations, rather than the nations untouched by divine retribution, would eventually come into a renewed relationship with restored Israel. 28
These clarifications allow us to return to the question of the meaning of שרי in Amos 9.12. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible the land of Canaan is the most frequent object of the verb. 29 When the nations are in view (e.g. Exod. 34.24), the syntax is sometimes different (hiphil שרי with ינפמ), but the hiphil form can appear by itself, with the nations as its object (Num. 21.32). 30 There is also no consistent difference in meaning between the qal and hiphil forms of the verb. 31
The uses of שרי in the adjoining books of the Twelve also inform the determination of its meaning here. While the only occurrence prior to Amos is not relevant (Hos. 9.6), in Obadiah the announcement of the Day of Yahweh is described as retribution (Obad. 15b, 16a) for violence (סמח) ‘against your brother Jacob’ (10) that will lead to the destruction of ‘all the nations’ (16b). In this process those who return from exile will possess their possessions (שרי), specified in the following verses (with frequent repetition of שרי) as the house of Esau, the lowlands of the Philistines, the territories of Ephraim, Samaria, and Gilead (19), and the Negeb (20). In contrast to this destruction there is deliverance and dominance of ‘Mount Zion’, ‘the house of Jacob’, and ‘the house of Joseph’.
Thus far the evidence for understanding שרי as ‘possess territory or dispossess a people group through some use of force’ is clear in many contexts. Such a sense jars, however, with the following phrase that qualifies םיוגה־לכ in Amos 9.12. In Biblical Hebrew, to ‘call one's name over’ as the collocation of לעםשארק never appears with reference to a people group in the context of a military conquest. 32 Most frequently, the collocation has as its object either Jerusalem 33 /the temple 34 (around ten times) or Israel 35 (around five times). When used of a people group with God as the verbal subject, the phrase consistently denotes Yahweh's ownership of his covenant people. 36 This relationship was not established through military conflict but through a unilateral offer (met with Israel's acceptance) of a covenant relationship.
This leaves us in a quandary: by what means does purified Israel under the leadership of the restored Davidic line come to exercise hegemony over nations that already belong to Yahweh, or nations which he might make his own through other means? Two factors suggest that a nonmilitary sense for שרי is appropriate here. 37 First, G. Braulik has argued in some detail that Deuteronomy's description of Israel's return from exile in Deut. 30.4–5 has omitted the military content of Deut. 7.1, although both texts make ץרא the object of שרי. 38 To this we can add the reasoning that because Yahweh has called his name over these nations just as he called it over Israel, they become his people in essentially the same way—destruction would leave no people for Yahweh to possess! 39 Rather than Yahweh making these nations his own through conquest, the analogy with Israel's creation through liberation requires us to see the Davidic ‘possession’ of the remnant of Edom and all the nations over whom Yahweh's name is called as the non-violent establishment of a relationship dependent upon divine initiative (‘Yahweh who does this’). 40
5. Conclusion
Amos describes and condemns multiform abuses of human power, not only because such behavior is inherently wrong but especially because it constitutes ‘rebellion’ against Yahweh. Accordingly, both the punishment of the offenders and the deliverance of those not so described is ultimately attributed to Yahweh, who exercises unlimited power as creator, judge and deliverer. This raises a pressing question: Does the book's message that a deity will punish the misuse of power through the unilateral exercise of destruction and delivering power deconstruct it?
Amos, I think, would say no, but arguably not because he is blind to his ideology. Rather, the thematic development of the book shows at least the Israelite oppressors to be unwilling to change their behavior, so that the book announces a decisive break between Yahweh and such Israelites only as a last resort. In other words, the immense significance of human behavior, including the ability to respond to the prophet's message and amend one's ways, means that Yahweh's destruction of the ‘wicked’ comes about only after extensive efforts to produce modifications in behavior. 41
The reader, of course, may reject Yahweh's right to intervene as an unchallenged deity, especially if all violence (human and otherwise) is to be avoided at all costs. Such a position means that the book is indeed self-deconstructing, and solutions to human corruption must be sought elsewhere. Whatever its ground, however, it seems self-evident that any solution must transcend the problem, and here Amos’ utopian vision merits continued attention as an argument for hope. 42 The hope Amos inculcates not only looks for the realization of a better world, but very importantly removes from human beings the responsibility to counter such violence directly. Pacifism and the utopian world that Amos foresees coexist on the basis of faith in the prophetic word as well as in the realization that humanity has (at least to date) been unable to extricate itself from its troubles.
b. The Primacy of the Human–Divine Relationship in Amos’ Eschatology
Amos’ opening sequence of oracles (1.3–2.16) gives clear evidence that both Israel and the nations have sinned, and are therefore to come under divine judgment. In other words, they are in the same intrinsic or vertical category although their national identities (horizontal or extrinsic) remain intact and distinct. 43 Similar overlap, albeit with the opposite significance, appears at the close of the book, where a remnant of Edom and the nations over whom Yahweh has called his name survives the judgment, as have those in Israel who were not sinners. In Amos 9 national categories are again preserved, but cannot by themselves explain why two distinct people groups would survive a common judgment. 44 It is thus reasonable to assume that these two groups have survived for the same intrinsic/vertical reason.
In linguistic terms, ownership by Yahweh is a criterion of identity common to purified Israel and the remnant of the nations. 45 Because the status of belonging to Yahweh is more important than the political relationship between the two groups considered separately, it relativizes all other (horizontal) distinctions between the two groups. Amos thus presents ‘a God whose justice does not observe national and ethnic boundaries any more than do rain-filled clouds or marauding beasts’. 46
c. ‘Metacommenting Amos’
I have borrowed the above phrase from D.J.A. Clines, who, with his usual verve, calls interpreters to ‘step outside the ideology of the text and notice how severely traditional commentary has been constrained by the outlook of the text’. 47 Although the range of meanings for ideology is extremely wide, 48 Clines seems to mean the book's unwillingness or inability to reveal or evaluate the presuppositions 49 behind its portrayal and evaluation of reality. 50 In this final section I will consider a few ways in which Amos’ ideology, as evident in its critique and resolution of human abuses of power, might itself be critiqued.
First, it might be urged that Amos simply ends violence with more violence, most pointedly in the revivification of the Davidic empire in 9.12. I have suggested, however, that the process whereby Edom and the remnant of the other nations come under Davidic sway is not identical to the historical paradigm presented by the Deuteronomic History.
Second, it might be urged that Yahweh practices the same type of violence as do the nations he condemns (and punishes!). 51 This would make Yahweh at least inconsistent, and at worst self-deconstructing. Most of us would agree that Amos takes for granted that Yahweh as deity has a unique prerogative to judge, though some of us may quibble with the objective justice of such actions. This, however, raises a critical tension.
All interpreters are responsible for evaluating the texts with which they work, particularly those which carry special authority with certain groups of readers. But how can we evaluate the priority of one criticism over another? Clines elsewhere refers to the ‘practical’ reality that we adopt ‘the standards to which we ourselves are committed’. 52 As Dyck and others note, this is clearly subjective. 53 Clines is not content with mere subjectivism either, and assumes absolute human autonomy, particularly the scholarly ability to ascertain ‘knowledge’ in contrast to blind religious belief, in order to found his judgments epistemically. 54 This means that on the question of justice, particularly the propriety of a deity punishing human rebellion, Clines rejects Amos’ ‘moral defeatism’ and would ‘pronounce a moral judgment upon the prophecy’. 55 Clines recognizes the ‘awful’ conditions for the oppressed in Samaria, but urges that ‘it is even more awful to ascribe the destruction of a state and the forcible deportation of its citizens to an avenging God … To affirm [this] casually, to pretend that it is unproblematic—that is not scholarly, it is not even human.’
On Clines's view, then, the theodicy of Amos’ author and/or redactors is ‘not even human’. This line of argumentation is troubling, since it unilaterally removes from this ancient Israelite voice all claims to legitimacy. Indeed, Clines would silence the very voice of the text by sundering its sentiments from basic human values and identity, apparently because he rejects its acceptance of corporate guilt and responsibility. All the same, the problem of understanding divine (in)justice in Amos remains: does not punishing those not responsible for social injustice along with their oppressors make Yahweh unjust? Several responses can be made to this complex question.
First, while the oppressive rich are frequently condemned in Amos, this should not be taken as an affirmation of the sinlessness of those whom they oppress. Indeed, a number of condemnations are not limited to those with socio-economic power (sexual sins, 2.7; the general punishment and failure to respond in 4.6–13, addressed to ‘Israel’).
Second, while theories of corporate responsibility with respect to punishment may be objectionable to current thought, they are ineluctably present in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, as Kaminsky has shown. 56 The ‘qualification’ of corporate responsibility by individual responsibility that Kaminsky sees in the Deuteronomic literature is also present in Amos, the last vision of which allocates total destruction to individuals on the basis of their ‘sin’ (9.8–10). Moreover, protest as we might against the negative consequences of corporate responsibility in the twenty-first century, I would aver that such consequences are in fact unavoidable for any human being living in community: taxes are used to pay for prisons filled with criminals for whose acts we are not responsible; profits from our purchases are used to further rapacious business practices and exorbitant compensation, and so on. Much as we live with these consequences without accepting the guilt linked to the actions that elicit them, so too those Israelites whose lives were not characterized by the sins noted by Amos may well have simply accepted their exile as the consequence of their fellow citizens’ malfeasance without interpreting it as a punishment of their own sin.
Third and finally, death in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament is quite consistently a punishment that trumps all others, so that deportation is at worst penultimate. The historical experience of deportation by Assyria sometimes allowed individuals to continue living and contributing to their (new) society, free of interference in their religious practice. 57 K.L. Younger Jr has shown that, at least in the case of the Israelites deported under Tiglath-pileser III (744–727), Shalmaneser V (726–722), and Sargon II (721–705), ‘military personnel, administrators, priests, some skilled laborers, and some merchants’ received ‘preferred or at least reasonable treatment’. 58 This attenuation of the penultimate judgment of exile is complemented by the fact, already noted, that the oppressed who are faithful to Yahweh will surely survive the ultimate judgment that promises the destruction of all sinners (and only sinners; 9.1–4). 59
Were the author(s) of Amos alive today, one wonders how Clines would ‘manage his personal conflict’ with them while debating such issues, but his initial foray seems strikingly reminiscent of imperial tactics. Is there an alternative to Clines's muting of dissonant voices? 60 Can we use ideological criticism as ‘a way into the discussion about ethics and meaning in biblical studies?’ 61 If, as Dyck suggests, ‘a thoroughly self-conscious ideological criticism would admit that we are all subject to distortion’ as readers, how can we self-correct? 62
While recognizing that tensions remain in the presentation of the Hebrew Bible's prophetic books with respect to justice, Mark Brett nonetheless suggests that the fusion of our self-conscious ideology with that of the text is called for: ‘authentic judgments of value allow the possibility that in actually engaging with the other our original standards may be transformed’. 63 Patient engagement with Amos’ approach to crime and punishment is thus a desideratum, even if it offends our modern sensibilities. Such engagement is also promising, as shown by the text's striking departure from an ethnicity- or nation-centered paradigm to one in which Israel's God relates to individual Israelites and non-Israelites alike on the basis of their moral and spiritual condition. 64
Footnotes
1.
For approaches to the question of power, see J.G. McConville, God and Earthly Power: An Old Testament Political Theology: Genesis–Kings (LHBOTS, 454; London: T&T Clark, 2006); C. Smith, ‘Biblical Perspectives on Power’, JSOT 93 (2001), pp. 93110. For helpful overviews of biblical studies from the vantage point of postcolonial studies, see B. Crowell, ‘Postcolonial Studies and the Hebrew Bible’, CBR 7 (2009), pp. 217–44, and A. Runesson, Exegesis in the Making: Postcolonialism and New Testament Studies (BIS, 103; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2010).
2.
Meaning has both textual and extratextual elements; cf. H. Bussmann (ed.), Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 299.
3.
M. Jacobs, The Conceptual Coherence of the Book of Micah (JSOTSup, 322; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), p. 47, citing Cuffey, ‘The Coherence of Micah: A Review of the Proposals and a New Interpretation’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Drew University, 1987), p. 130. W. Brueggemann similarly argues that a focus on ‘individual paragraphs or episodes’ leads the reader to ignore the whole text's ‘larger intentionality’; ‘Narrative Coherence and Theological Intentionality in 1 Samuel 18’, CBQ 55 (1993), pp. 225–43 (225). Such an approach to the Twelve is elaborated and implemented by J.T. LeCureux, The Thematic Unity of the Book of the Twelve (HBM, 41; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012).
4.
W. Lee, Punishment and Forgiveness in Israel's Migratory Campaign (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 59. See the similar reasoning and conclusions of H.C.P. Kim, ‘Form Criticism in Dialogue with Other Criticisms’, in M. A. Sweeney and E. Ben Zvi (eds.), The Changing Face of Form Criticism for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 85–104 (100–102).
5.
‘The linguistic bearer of the theological statement is usually the sentence and the still larger literary complex and not the word or the morphological and syntactical mechanisms’. J. Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 269. The same identification of the sentence (rather than the word) as the prime semantic unit occurs in more traditional linguistic thought as well; note M. Dummett, ‘What Is a Theory of Meaning (II)?’, in G. Evans and J. McDowell (eds.), Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 67137 (79): ‘The difference between a molecular and a holistic view of language is not that, on a molecular view each sentence could, in principle, be understood in isolation, but that, on a holistic view, it is impossible fully to understand any sentence without knowing the entire language, whereas, on a molecular view there is, for each sentence, a determinate fragment of the language a knowledge of which will suffice for a complete understanding of that sentence’.
6.
A.J.O. van der Wal recognizes that this is a presupposition (‘Toward a Synchronic Analysis of the Masoretic Text of the Book of Jeremiah’, in M. Kessler [ed.], Reading the Book of Jeremiah: A Search for Coherence [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004], pp. 13–24 [13]), yet it is difficult to imagine how a reader might proceed otherwise. Of course, literary and conceptual coherence may well be at odds, but B. Becking concludes regarding Jer. 30.12–17 that ‘the parts of a text may, in spite of their differences in form or literary genre and despite some inconsistency on the level of a first reading, be interpreted as a coherent whole, expressing a single idea or a coherent set of ideas’; Becking, ‘Divine Reliability and the Conceptual Coherence of the Book of Consolation (Jeremiah 30–31)’, in Kessler (ed.), Reading the Book of Jeremiah, pp. 163–80 (168–69).
7.
A. Nahkola, ‘Amos Animalizing: Lion, Bear and Snake in Amos 5.19’, in A.C. Hagedorn and A. Mein (eds.), Aspects of Amos: Exegesis and Interpretation (LHBOTS, 536; London: T&T Clark International, 2011), pp. 83–104 (97, 99). B. Strawn concludes that it ‘is a trope of threat and power’; What Is Stronger than a Lion? Leonine Imagery and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (OBO, 212; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), p. 65.
8.
N.K. Gottwald, All the Kingdoms of the Earth: Israelite Prophecy and International Relations in the Ancient Near East (New York: Harper, 1964), p. 97.
9.
J. Barton, Understanding Old Testament Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), p. 79.
10.
D. Stuart, Hosea–Jonah (WBC, 31; Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987), p. 312.
11.
W.M. Schniedewind, ‘The Rise of the Aramean States’, in M. Chavalas and K.L. Younger, Jr (eds.), Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Explorations (JSOTSup, 341; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), pp. 276–87 (279).
12.
The fact that Yahweh interests himself in the behavior of the nations suggests that Barton's dismissal of ‘the universal rule of God’ as the basis for the moral judgment exercised here and his decision in favor of ‘international customary law’ is unwarranted (Old Testament Ethics, pp. 80–81, 109, 112–14). Note also that the term עשפ (‘rebellion’) carries, due to its context, the sense ‘to revolt, rebel, cast off allegiance to authority’ (S. Paul, Amos: A Commentary on the Book of Amos [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1991], p. 45); Andersen and Freedman thus conclude that ‘Yahweh claims jurisdiction over all the region’ (Amos, p. 232).
13.
M. Sternberg, Hebrew Between Cultures: Group Portraits and National Literature (Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 186–205.
14.
So also P.R. Noble, ‘Amos’ Absolute “No”’, VT 41 (1997), pp. 329–40 (334–35).
15.
While ‘destroy from the ground’ (דמש rather than החמ as in Gen. 7.4, 23) does not echo the flood, it is surely complete and definitive, and has Deuteronomic overtones (cf. Deut. 6.15; 28.51; Josh. 23.15; 1 Kgs 13.34). K. Koenen, Heil den Gerechten—Unheil den Sündern! Ein Beitrag zur Theologie der Prophetenbücher (BZAW, 229; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1994), pp. 18–67, explores similar purifications of ‘Israel’ in Isa. 29.17–21; Zeph. 2; 3.11–13; Ezek. 20.32–38; Mal. 3.13–21.
16.
When the infinitive absolute is followed by the cognate finite verb, some sort of emphasis is present. C.H.J. van der Merwe, J.A. Naudé, and J.H. Kroeze, A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar (Biblical Languages, 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), among others, are unwilling to correlate a specific emphasis with a specific word order (pp. 158–59). The closest analogue to this passage is Gen. 3.4, which shares the syntax negative + infinitive absolute + finite verb; cf. the same sense for a similar syntactic construction in Judg. 1.28.
17.
As suggested by Koenen, Heil den Gerechten, pp. 14–15. It is at least equally plausible that the ‘sinful kingdom’ be distinct from the ‘house of Jacob’ in light of the emphasis throughout the Hebrew Bible on the continuity of the divine promises to him and his descendants, something Koenen recognizes but does not see as undermining his assertion that both 9.8a and 9.8b refer to ‘Israel’ (p. 16 n. 19). J. Jeremias, The Book of Amos (OTL; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998), p. 128, suggests that ‘For Amos and his followers in the book of Amos (cf. esp. 9.8b), “Jacob” never refers to the state, but rather always to that entity which is totally focused and dependent upon God’.
18.
Koenen, Heil den Gerechten, p. 18. It might be suggested that the remnant is not in view in 9.10 because the construct relationship cannot mean ‘the sinners of my people’, but this is nearly nonsense in view of 9.8–9. In a similar vein, the claim that the construct relationship cannot express a partitive sense is not conclusive; see especially the corporate (e.g. lips of the king), ‘part-divided whole’ (e.g. sons of the prophets), and ‘characteristic’ relationships noted by van der Merwe, Naudé, and Kroeze, Reference Grammar, pp. 198–200.
19.
J. Kaminsky's stimulating study of election in the biblical tradition pays surprisingly little attention to the remnant concept; Yet I Loved Jacob: Reclaiming the Biblical Concept of Election (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2007), esp. pp. 147–58.
20.
J. Radine suggests on the basis of Lam. 2.6 and the Lament over Ur that דיודחכס refers to the temple, not to the Davidic monarchy; see his The Book of Amos in Emergent Judah (FAT, 2/45; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 199–205. Schart, ‘Fifth Vision’, pp. 58–59, sees ‘an allusion to the temple in Amos 9.1, and thinks some more general entity is perhaps in view in light of the context's focus on Israel and its sinful and remnant parts, but also finds reasonable ‘a small version of the Davidic dynasty’ that would entail ‘a modest version of political independence’.
21.
Cf. Enuma Elish, tablet VI; V.A. Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings (JSOTSup, 115; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992).
22.
See H. Wildberger, Isaiah 13–27 (CC; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), pp. 143–44.
23.
This is suggested by Jeremias, Amos, p. 167.
24.
H. Wildberger, ‘ראש’, in TLOT, p. 1286; this coincides with the use of the remnant-concept in cognate literatures per G.F. Hasel, The Remnant: The History and Theology of the Remnant Idea from Genesis to Isaiah (Andrews University Monographs, 5; Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1972), p. 100.
25.
E.g. J. Wöhrle, Die frühen Sammlungen des Zwölfprophetenbuches: Entstehung und Komposition (BZAW, 360; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2006), p. 120.
26.
Anderson and Freedman, Amos, p. 890.
27.
See van der Merwe, Naudé, and Kroeze, Reference Grammar, pp. 246–47, and cf. Judg. 1.4; 1 Sam. 8.14.
28.
For the opposing view, see Paul, Amos, p. 291.
29.
Gen. 15.7; 28.4; cf. also Amos 9.15.
30.
While the land of Canaan is the most common object of the verb, peoples rather than territory can also serve as the verb's object. H. H. Schmid, ‘שרי’, in TLOT, II, p. 579; cf. Deut. 2.12, 21, 22; 9.1, 5; 12.29; 18.14; 19.1; Judg. 11.23.
31.
HALOT, p. 441; Schmid, ‘שרי’; N. Lohfink, ‘שרי’, in TDOT, VI, pp. 368–96 (393–94).
32.
2 Sam. 12.28 refers to a city; 2 Sam. 18.18 is similar but not the exact idiom; Ps 49.11 uses the phrase of land-property; Isa. 4.1 uses it to describe a marriage relationship that entails obligations between husband and wife.
33.
On Jerusalem, see Jer. 25.29; Dan. 9.18, 19.
34.
On the temple, see 1 Kgs 8.43 // 2 Chron. 6.33; Jer. 7.10, 11, 14, 30; 32.34; 34.15.
35.
Of Israel, the description is voiced by Moses, Deut. 28.9–10; by God, 2 Chron. 7.14; by Daniel, Dan. 9.19; Isa. 63.19 uses it to say that because of her judgment Israel has become like ‘those over whom you never ruled, over whom your name was never called’; Israel uses it of herself in Jer. 14.9. Exceptionally, Jeremiah uses it of himself in Jer. 15.16.
36.
A.S. van der Woude, ‘םש’, in TLOT, p. 1363; C.J. Labuschagne, ‘אדק’, in TLOT, p. 1162; S. Richter, The Deuteronomic History and Name Theology: lešakkēn šemō šām in the Bible and the Ancient Near East (BZAW, 318; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 84–85.
37.
Lohfink, ‘שרי’, suggests, on the contrary, that Amos 9.12 is a ‘post-Deuteronomistic’ use that still includes the idea of dispossessing by force (pp. 371, 393).
38.
G. Braulik, ‘Die Völkervernichtung und die Rückkehr Israels ins Verheissungsland: Hermeneutische Bemerkungen zum Buch Deuteronomium’, in M. Vervenne and J. Lust (eds.), Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature (BETL, 133; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997), pp. 3–38 (33–37).
39.
Kaminsky reaches nearly the same conclusion in his discussion of Isa. 19.18–25, arguing that such texts speak of ‘Gentile inclusion … not by eliminating or downplaying the idea of Israel's election, but by continuing to affirm it’ (Yet Jacob I Loved, p. 152).
40.
While in Deut 30.4–5 the land is the object of the verb, Amos probably makes various nations its object in order to permit the Davidide's rule to extend beyond the boundaries of the land.
41.
Cf. K. Möller, A Prophet in Debate: The Rhetoric of Persuasion in the Book of Amos (JSOTSup, 372; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003).
42.
S. B. Thistlethwaite, ‘Utopia Viewed from the Underside: A Response to Jean Bethke Elshtain’, ThTo 58 (2001), pp. 14–19, also stresses (with reference to G. Gutiérrez) that sin and its resolution in the perfected Kingdom of God properly constitute the horizon of utopian thought.
43.
‘Yahweh is the indiscriminate judge of the earth. He who does not hesitate to judge Moab for its wrongs against Edom will surely not hesitate to judge Israel for her wrongs’. Gottwald, All the Kingdoms, p. 110.
44.
Thus, pace Gottwald, it cannot be said that ‘the prophet's interest in these peoples was an exclusively national one, for the writer expects a revived Davidic dynasty … “to possess …” the former conquests of David in the name of Yahweh’ (All the Kingdoms, p. 95).
45.
See A. Gibson, Biblical Semantic Logic: A Preliminary Analysis (The Biblical Seminar, 75; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2nd edn, 2001), pp. 140–50, for a helpful theoretical explanation of this concept.
46.
Gottwald, All the Kingdoms, p. 119.
47.
D.J.A. Clines, Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup, 205; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), p. 76.
48.
See J.E. Dyck, ‘A Map of Ideology for Biblical Critics’, in M. Daniel Carroll R. (ed.), Rethinking Contexts, Rereading Texts: Contributions from the Social Sciences to Biblical Interpretation (JSOTSup, 299; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 108–28.
49.
Clines, Interested Parties, pp. 76–93.
50.
T. Pippin, ‘Ideology, Ideological Criticism, and the Bible’, CR:BS 4 (1996), pp. 51–78 (52). Cf. M. Barrett's definition. ‘Ideology is a generic term for the processes by which meaning is produced, challenged, reproduced, transformed’ (The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991], p. 97).
51.
This point is made by C. Crouch in War and Ethics in the Ancient Near East: Military Violence in Light of Cosmology and History (BZAW, 407; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2009), p. 103.
52.
Clines, Interested Parties, pp. 19–20, cited in Dyck, ‘A Map of Ideology for Biblical Critics’, p. 127.
53.
Dyck, ‘A Map of Ideology for Biblical Critics’, p. 127; N.K. Gottwald, ‘Ideology and Ideologies in Israelite Prophecy’, in S.B. Reid (ed.), Prophets and Paradigms: Essays in Honor of Gene M. Tucker (JSOTSup, 229; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1996), pp. 136–49 (148).
54.
E.g. Clines, ‘Metacommentating Amos’, pp. 13–14.
55.
Clines, ‘Metacommentating Amos’, p. 18.
56.
J.S. Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup, 196; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).
57.
F.M. Fales, Guerre et paix en Assyrie: religion et impérialisme (Les Conférences de l’École pratique des hautes études; Paris: Cerf, 2010), p. 19.
58.
K.L. Younger Jr, ‘Recent Study on Sargon II, King of Assyria: Implications for Biblical Studies’, in Chavalas and Younger (eds.), Mesopotamia and the Bible, pp. 288–29 (296). Other, less fortunate deportees, including agricultural workers, forced laborers, and military or other conscripts, were subject to heavy workloads, sometimes received insufficient alimentation, and (in the case of those in liminal territories) were exposed to additional hardships.
59.
This thought parallels Carroll R.'s suggestion that the text deconstructs itself in favor of an ultimate resolution effected directly by Yahweh rather than indirectly and imperfectly by the penultimate exile of Israel; see his ‘Reflecting on War and Utopia in the Book of Amos: The Relevance of a Literary Reading of the Prophetic Text for Central America’, in M. Daniel Carroll R., D.J.A. Clines, and P.R. Davies (eds.), The Bible in Human Society: Essays in Honour of John Rogerson (JSOTSup, 200; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), pp. 105–21 (118–20).
60.
R. Sugirtharajah, Exploring Postcolonial Biblical Criticism (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), p. 176: ‘What fundamentalists of all shades want is to simplify narratives and discard any awkward and dissenting voices. This they do by … winnowing out uncomfortable texts.’
61.
Pippin, ‘Ideology’, p. 69.
62.
Dyck, ‘A Map of Ideology for Biblical Critics’, p. 128.
63.
M. Brett, Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire (The Bible in the Modern World, 16; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009), p. 194 (see his elaboration of tensions in the prophets on 94–111).
64.
This disproves Sugirtharajah's claim that the biblical prophets had little interest in ethnic diversity (Exploring Postcolonial Biblical Criticism, p. 45).