Amos: Seek The Lord and LiveНамуна

When you read all of chapter five, it’s quite hard to make sense of it. It’s almost as if someone has chopped up three different speeches and then jumbled them together. There is the certainty of unavoidable judgment, followed by an appeal for repentance. I take it that the writer wants to unsettle us and make us feel like we’re on the deck of a ship swaying violently in a storm. 

I think that the structure works like this: 

Lament (vv. 1–3) 

    Offer of mercy (vv. 4–6) 

       Accusation of injustice (v. 7) 

          Hymn of God’s power (vv. 8–9) 

       Accusation of injustice (vv. 10–13) 

    Offer of mercy (vv. 14–15) 

Lament (vv. 16–17) 

How can God declare that judgment is certain in 5:1–3, but then immediately call Israel to repent and seek Him in 5:4–6? It’s a tension that grows throughout the book, becoming clearest in 9:8. The answer is that although the majority of Israel would be destroyed, there would be a remnant who were truly believers and so did indeed seek Him in repentance. As 5:15 states, ‘Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant’. 

This concept of the remnant became clearer in the later prophets, especially Isaiah and Jeremiah (see Is. 10). Paul picks up on this in Romans 11:5: ‘So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.’ God never abandoned His promise to Israel, but only a remnant has trusted Him. 

So, overall the book of Amos is the record of God pronouncing judgment with the aim that a remnant would repent and truly trust in the Lord. They would truly seek Him rather than engage in superficial religious activity such as a pilgrimage to Bethel, Gilgal or Beersheba (5:5). True preaching always has that divisive impact.

Reflection

What do you think it means to truly seek the Lord as opposed to being engaged in religious activity? How do the parallel verses of 5:14–15 help explain what it means to seek the Lord?