Let Justice Roll Down

In the dry hills south of Bethlehem there is a village called Tekoa: stony sheep country. A man there kept sheep and goats there and looked after some sycamore figs. Looking after sycamore figs meant going along the branches with a little knife, nicking each green fig so it would ripen. Slow work, badly paid. His name was Amos. He was not a prophet, and said so himself, later, to a man’s face. It was the days of Uzziah king of Judah and Jeroboam king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. God took Amos from the sheep and sent him north, into another king’s country, where he knew nobody. He began like this: “The Lord has spoken from Zion and raised his voice from Jerusalem. The shepherds’ pastures are in mourning, and the top of Carmel has dried up.”

Then he went round the map, starting a long way off. Every country got the same opening words. “For three wrongs done by Damascus, and for four, I am not turning back — because of what they did to the people of Gilead with iron saws. I will send fire on the house of Hazael, and it will eat the foundations under it.” “For three wrongs done by Gaza, and for four — because they carried a whole people off and sold them into Edom. For three by Tyre — because they shut those same people up there and forgot the treaty between brothers. For three by Edom — because he went after his own brother with a sword and would not let his anger go.”

Another prophet, Obadiah, saw nothing else at all: his whole message was Edom, and one day in particular. Edom was family. Edom’s people came from Esau, Jacob’s brother — the two boys born on the same morning. Their children grew into two countries with a desert between. Edom’s country was rock: red cliffs, houses cut back into the stone, roads so narrow two men could hold them. “Your proud heart has lifted you up. You live in holes in the rock and say to yourself: who is going to bring me down? Even if you go up like an eagle, even if you put your nest among the stars, I will bring you down.” And then the day. When the armies came into Jerusalem and broke the gates and threw dice for the city, Edom came out and stood on the hill and watched. They did nothing. That was the trouble. They stood along the ridge and watched their brother’s city come apart; and afterward some went down for what was lying about, and some waited where the roads fork, to catch the ones getting away. “You should not have looked at your brother on his day, or been glad about Judah on the day they were destroyed. You should not have come in at their gates, or stood at the fork in the road to catch the ones who got away. As you have done, so it will be done to you.” Obadiah put one light at the end: on Mount Zion there would be a way out, and the kingdom would belong to the Lord. But God counted the men who only watched as though they had broken the gate themselves.

Amos went on round the map. “For three wrongs done by Ammon, and for four — because they killed the mothers of Gilead and the children not yet born, to make their borders bigger. For three by Moab — because they burned the bones of the king of Edom to ashes. For three by Judah — because they threw the law of the Lord away and went after the empty things their fathers followed.” That last one was Amos’s own country. The crowd in the north had heard seven countries named, every one somebody else. Then he said Israel, and did not stop. “For three wrongs done by Israel, and for four, I am not turning back — because they sold a good man for silver, and a poor man for a pair of sandals. They knock the poor down with their fists and push the humble off the road. They take a man’s coat for what he owes and lie on it beside the altar, and drink wine squeezed out of other people in the house of their own God.” “I brought you out of Egypt and led you round the wilderness forty years to give you this land. I made some of your sons prophets — and you gave the prophets an order: do not prophesy.”

And then why he was saying any of it, put as questions. “Does a lion roar in the bushes when it has caught nothing? The Lord God does nothing without telling his servants the prophets. The lion has roared — who is not afraid? The Lord God has spoken — who can help saying it?” That is why a man who scored figs was standing in Bethel.

He had a hard word for the rich ladies on the hill of Samaria. Cows of Bashan, he called them, who squeeze the poor and say to their husbands: bring us another drink. And he had a list, with the same line after every item. “I gave you empty teeth in all your towns and no bread in any of your places — and you did not come back to me. I rained on one town and not on the next — and you did not come back to me. The caterpillar ate your vineyards and fig trees — and even then you did not come back to me.”

Then Amos sang them a funeral song, and it was for them. “The girl Israel has fallen and will not get up again. She is lying on her own ground, and there is nobody to lift her.” And in the middle of it he put the way out. “Seek me and you will live. Do not go looking at Bethel. Do not go into Gilgal. Do not cross to the Well of the Oath. Seek the Lord and live.” There is one word Amos keeps coming back to: the gate. Just inside it was an open place with stone benches where the elders heard cases — the one place in the country where a poor man was supposed to be equal to a rich one. “They hate the man who puts them right at the gate. Because you punched the poor and took the best of what they had, you have built fine stone houses and will not live in them, and planted good vineyards and will not drink the wine. You trample good people, you take bribes, you turn the poor aside at the gate. Look for good and not evil, and live. Put fair judging back in the gate.”

And then God said what he thought of their religion, which was going beautifully all this while. “I hate your feasts and will not take them. Bring me your burnt offerings and I will not have them. Take the noise of your songs away. I am not going to listen to your harps.” And then God said this. “Let judging roll down like water, and doing right like a river nobody can wade across.” They looked forward to the day of the Lord in those years, and talked about it like a festival. “What good is the day of the Lord to you? It is darkness, not light. It is like a man running from a lion and meeting a bear, then getting into his house and putting his hand on the wall — and a snake bites him.” He said it to people lying on ivory beds, eating lambs out of the flock, drinking wine out of bowls, and never once feeling sick about the ruin of Joseph.

God showed Amos four things. First, young locusts coming up in the early morning, eating the grass down to the dirt. “Lord God, be merciful! Who is going to raise Jacob up? He is so small. Change your mind about this.” “It will not happen.” Then fire, called out to do the judging, eating up the great deep and starting on the fields. “Lord God, please stop! Who is going to raise Jacob up? He is so small.” “This will not happen either.” Twice a goatherd argued with God about a country not even his, and twice God changed his mind. Then a man standing on a wall of the hardest stone there is, with a piece of it in his hand. “What do you see, Amos?” “The hard stone.” “Look. I am setting hard stone in the middle of my people Israel. I will not pass them by any more.” Amos did not argue that time.

There was a priest at Bethel called Amaziah, and Bethel was the king’s own holy place. Amaziah sent word to King Jeroboam. “Amos is plotting against you in the house of Israel. The land cannot hold his words. He says Jeroboam will die by the sword and Israel be carried off.” Then he found Amos and told him to go. “Seer — go. Go to Judah and eat your bread there and prophesy there. Do not prophesy at Bethel any more. This is the king’s holy place and the king’s house.” And Amos gave him this answer. “I was not a prophet, and I was not a prophet’s son. I looked after goats and scored sycamore figs. And the Lord took me from behind the sheep and said to me: go and prophesy to my people Israel.” Then he told Amaziah what was coming to his own house: his sons and daughters would fall by the sword, his land would be measured out for other people, and he would die in a foreign country.

The fourth thing was a basket, the kind a man carries to catch birds. “What do you see, Amos?” “A basket.” “The end has come on my people Israel. I am not going to pass them by any more.” And then a picture of them behind a market stall. “You grind the poor down in the morning and drive the needy off the earth. You say: when is this month over, so we can sell? When are the rest days finished, so we can open the storehouses? We will make the measure small and the weight heavy and put a lie in the scales, and buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.” “I will turn your feasts into mourning and your songs into funeral songs. And days are coming when I will send hunger on this land — not hunger for bread, not thirst for water, but hunger to hear a word from the Lord. People will stumble from north to east looking for it, and not find it.”

Then Amos saw the Lord standing over the altar, and heard that nobody was slipping out the side. “Even if they dig down into Hades, my hand will bring them up. Even if they climb into heaven, I will bring them down. If they hide on the top of Carmel, I will find them.” And then it turns. “But I am not going to wipe the house of Jacob out. I will shake Israel among the nations the way grain is shaken in a sieve — and not one grain will fall to the ground.” “On that day I will raise up David’s fallen tent and build it as it was in the old days, so that all the nations called by my name may come looking for me. Days are coming when the threshing will catch up with the grape harvest. They will build the ruined towns and live in them, plant vineyards and drink the wine, make gardens and eat the fruit. And I will plant them on their own ground, and they will never be pulled up again.”

Two years after he said all this, the earthquake came. Amos looked after goats and nicked figs with a knife. He said it in a country that was not his, in the king’s own holy place, with the king’s priest telling him to go home. “Let judging roll down like water, and doing right like a river nobody can wade across.”