The Visions and the Rejected Worship

God shows Amos, in five visions, the approach of the judgment. In the midst of these visions a narrative is set, the clash of the prophet with the priest of Bethel. And throughout the book a single demand returns: God refuses the sacrifices of a people that despises justice.

The five visions

Five times, God shows Amos an image of the coming judgment. First a plague of locusts ready to devour the harvest, then a fire that consumes everything: before these two threats, the prophet intercedes, begging God to spare so weak a people, and twice God relents. The third vision marks a turning point. God stands by a wall, a mason’s trowel in his hand, the tool used to spread the mortar that binds a wall together. He sets it down and will mend his people no longer: “Behold, I will lay down the trowel in the midst of my people Israel. I will plaster them over no more.” Amos 7:8. This time Amos does not intercede, and God does not relent: the judgment will fall. The fourth vision confirms it: a hook for drawing down the ripe fruit, the last gathered at summer’s end. As the year ends with its final harvest, Israel’s time is complete: “The end is come upon my people Israel: I will not again pass by them any more.” Amos 8:2. The last vision shows God standing by the altar, commanding that the sanctuary be struck to its foundations: none will escape the judgment.

Amos driven from Bethel

Between the third and the fourth vision, the book reports a clash. Amasias, the priest of Bethel, denounces Amos to king Jeroboam and orders him to leave the country: “Thou seer, go, flee away into the land of Juda: and eat bread there, and prophesy there. But prophesy not again any more in Bethel: because it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is the house of the kingdom.” Amos 7:12-13. Bethel was the kingdom’s official sanctuary, tied to the throne; the word of Amos disturbed the powerful there. Amos answered that he spoke by God’s command, and he announced the fall of Amasias and the exile of Israel from its land.

Worship rejected

Israel did not lack religion. Sacrifices were many, the feasts solemn, songs and music filled the sanctuaries. Yet God rejects this worship: “I hate, and have rejected your festivities: and I will not receive the odour of your assemblies.” Amos 5:21. He refuses the holocausts, turns his eyes from the offerings, asks that the noise of the songs be taken from him. These rites have become unbearable to him because the people who celebrate them oppress the poor. Worship rises to God only when carried by justice.

Let right flow like water

In place of these empty rites, God asks one thing: justice. It is the summit of the book: “But judgment shall be revealed as water, and justice as a mighty torrent.” Amos 5:24. The Hebrew word rendered as “judgment,” mishpat (מִשְׁפָּט), means right, the cause of the weak defended with equity. God wants a right that flows unceasingly, abundant and free like a torrent that never runs dry. True worship begins there, in a life that gives each one his due.