Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Fredrik Lindström on Amos 3:6b

  

Interpretation of V 6b – Those scholars who regard this half verse to be the highpoint of v 3-6 generally also hold that the expression “evil in the city” refers to the impending national catastrophe. The expression is understood as a rebuttal of the popular view which is also voiced in Amos 9, 10:

 

“All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say, ‘Evil shall not overtake or meet us’” (RSV; cf. 5,18; 6,1.3). Words of this sort express the cocksure belief that there was no reason to believe that YHWH would condemn the people to national calamity as the prophet predicted. This popular belief will probably have been founded on the idea of election, a vulgar conception of which will have been taken to guarantee positive action by the deity. Also, the economic flowering of the Northern Kingdom in the first half of the eighth century BC was probably understood as a sign of YHWH’s approbation.

 

Now, it is doubtful that the notion underlying Amos 9,10 was that YHWH was unable to carry out the threat voiced by his prophet, that is, the attitude comparable to the words in Zephaniah, “YHWH will not go good, nor will he do ill!” (Zeph 1,12). At least, this can not be shown with certainty. However, it is in any cast intelligible that Amos was compelled to “prove” that the imminent national catastrophe predicted by him indeed originated with YHWH. . . .

 

I personally regard it as unlikely that the prophet is here employing the expression “evil in a city” in reference to the impending destruction of the Northern Kingdom. Amos seems to have been aware of this understanding of the approaching judgment; thus in 3,11 he was able ot say explicitly that “An adversary shall surround the land”. Accordingly, the usage of 3,6b is more probably to be taken to mean that the prophet is referring to one or more lesser disasters in the present or rennet past. Nor is it possible to dismiss this argument by saying that Amos had no need to argue so forcefully for his conviction that YHWH was behind such disasters. The reaction of Amos’ contemporaries to this sort of calamity is expressed with all desirable clarity in Amos 4,6-11:

 

‘I gave you
. . . lack of bread in all your places,
yet you did not return to me,’ says the Lord.
‘And I also withheld the rain from you . . .
yet you did not return to me,’ says the Lord.
‘I smote you with blight and mildew;
I laid waste your gardens and your vineyards;
your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured;
yet you did not return to me,’ says the Lord.
‘I sent among you a pestilence . . .
I slew your young men with the sword . . .
yet you did not return to me,’ says the Lord.
‘I overthrew some of you . . .
yet you did not return to me,’ says the Lord. (RSV)

 

This “parody of the saving history” (von Rad) confronts the audience with a dimension in YHWH’s dealings with his people which they have not observed, namely the divine pedagogy of history. Israel’s disasters have been sent as a warning to the people to return to their God; the fact that the expected result does not take place does not suggest a conception of the pancausality of YHWH, but rather that the people failed to see the hand of YHWH behind their misfortunes. The emphatic use of the personal pronoun in the section shows that the burden of the message is equally distributed between YHWH’s authorship and the people’s unwillingness to repent. The People of God have not drawn the correct conclusions from their experiences; indeed, they have been unable to recognize the connexion between these disasters and YHWH’s activity. They have failed to see the twin aspects of these events.

 

It seems likely that Amos is referring to such admonitory disasters in 3,6b; this supposition explains why v 3-6 are located after the word of judgment in v 1-2. The judgment will no doubt have provoked objections along the lines of “does not the well-being of the country testify to the fact that YHWH is content with us?” However, this sort of objection is only possible at the cost of ignoring what has indeed really transpired, since YHWH has by no means failed to serve notice that he is dissatisfied with the state of affairs. The audience simply must be prepared to concede this point. Moreover, the expansion in v 7 to the effect that the prophets are notified in advance of what YHWH has planned is intelligible as the work of a redactor who understood v 6b to refer to admonitory disaster. The redactor will have reasoned that just as YHWH had sent misfortune to warn his people of coming events, the prophets are likewise informed as to the deliberations of the Divine Council in advance.

 

If this interpretation (i.e., admonitory disaster) is correct, then Amos 3,6b can in no way serve as a witness to the notion of the pancausaity of YHWH in the middle of the eighty century BC, whether it be supposed that this idea was formulated by the prophet himself or only held that he merely promulgated it. To the contrary, it appears on the basis of Amos 3,6b improbable that a living “dogma” existed in the Northern Kingdom which stated that HWH was responsible for all misfortunes affecting the nation. Furthermore, the conclusion that we do not have to do with a dogma of this sort accords well with the conclusions which other sources allow us to draw.  (Fredrik Lindström, God and the Origin of Evil: A Contextual Analysis of Alleged Monistic Evidence in the Old Testament [Coniectanea Biblica Old Testament Series 21; Lund, Sweden: CWK Gleerup, 1983], 205-8)