Phoenicia on the one hand and Judah on the other, which had been the bases of prosperity, collapsed at once. How could they help doing so? After all Jezebel was of the ruling house of Tyre, and her daughter, Athaliah—whose son, Ahaziah, had also been swept away in the blood bath—was queen mother in Jerusalem. Political alliances do not survive such doings.
In any case the Arameans once again seized the opportunity to humble Israel to the dust. During Jehu’s reign (842-815) Hazael, the new king of Damascus, stripped Israel of all her holdings east of the Jordan (II Kings 10:32-33) and even stormed down the coastal plain as far south as the Philistine cities (II Kings 12:17). In the next generation conditions became worse. The Arameans had Jehu’s son, Jehoahaz (815-801), so at their mercy that they permitted him only a police-force army (II Kings 13:7) of fifty horsemen, ten chariots, and ten thousand infantry (Ahab had fielded two thousand chariots against the Assyrian in 853).
What was worse, the purge did not really purge. True, Israel had been saved from overt conversion to Baal, and that was no trivial thing. But it is clear that Jehu was an opportunist who had no real zeal for a purified Israel. The Asherah, symbol of the high goddess of the Baal cult, remained in Samaria (II Kings 13:6). A foreign paganism had been drowned in blood that the native variety might flourish unhindered.20 That it is possible to crush an overt paganism physically only to surrender to a subtler form of it in the spirit is tragically true. This Israel did. The feeling that the state had cleansed itself led many prophets who had not previously done so to make peace with it. Their patriotic fervor was placed at the service of the state, for the state was now God’s state.
III
The latter half of the ninth century B.C. brought dark days to Israel. The Aramean state of Damascus was at the height of its power, and Israel could not cope with it. But the eighth century produced a great shift of fortune. A providential combination of circumstances gave Israel another chance.
1. A new and terrible world power had stepped upon the scene: Assyria. Assyria was an ancient nation. A state of importance as far back as the time of Abraham and before, she had held the balance of power in western Asia approximately as the Israelites were entering Palestine. But for centuries, beset by Aramean pressure from the desert and by internal weakness, she had been of no great importance. Now, however, she had once more begun to entertain ambitions of empire. As early as 870 B.C. Asshur-naṣir-pal II had overrun all upper Mesopotamia and burst across the Euphrates with insensate cruelty. His successor, Shalmaneser III (858-824), followed in his footsteps. In the year 853 the latter was met at Qarqar on the Orontes by a coalition of Syrian and Palestinian kings, including Ben-hadad of Damascus and Ahab of Israel, who had for the moment laid aside their quarrel in the face of danger.21 The Assyrian boasted of a great victory, as was his wont, but it is plain that he was thoroughly checkmated. Whereupon Aram and Israel took up their senseless little war again, and three years later (850) Ahab met his death (I Kings 22).
The next fifty years brought triumph to Aram, humiliation to Israel. The energetic Hazael, who had usurped the throne in Damascus (II Kings 8:7-15), had to endure at least two further invasions of Shalmaneser, but he never capitulated. The last of these came in 837, after which Assyria was for a generation plagued with internal disorders and did not march west of the Euphrates. This gave Hazael the respite he needed, and he used it, as we have seen, to humble Israel abjectly. But the shadow of Assyria still lay over the west. By 805 she was back, this time under Adad-nirari III, and in a few years Aram was broken and under heavy tribute to the conqueror.
Israel, on the other hand, escaped the blow. True, Jehu had once paid tribute to the Assyrian,22 but it was nominal and did not represent permanent subjugation. Nor did Adad-nirari’s armies, which subsequently ravaged Damascus, invade Israel. What is more, the successes of Adadnirari were not followed up. After his campaigns, and for a full fifty years thereafter, Assyria entered a further period of weakness during which she was scarcely able to maintain a foothold west of the Euphrates. It must have seemed to many an Israelite that Providence had intervened: that Assyria could only be God’s tool used to save Israel and punish her foes, for Israel was God’s “kingdom.”
2. In any case this was the signal for the resurgence of Israel. Jehoash (801-786) began it. He leaped upon faltering Aram and in three victories recovered all the land his father, Jehoahaz, had lost (II Kings 13:25). At the same time when Amaziah—king of Judah (800-783)—showed a disposition to renew the chronic quarrel between the two states, he first tried to dissuade him and then, when Amaziah would not listen, thoroughly trounced him (II Kings 14:8-14). But it was Jeroboam II whose long reign (786-746) brought Israel to the height of her glory. By aggressive action he extended Israel’s frontiers farther to the north than they had been since Solomon sat on the throne (II Kings 14:25). Meanwhile the equally long-lived and able Uzziah of Judah (783-742), who had succeeded to the throne in Jerusalem upon the assassination of his father, Amaziah (II Kings 14:19), was won as a full partner in this aggressive program. Uzziah’s conquests matched those of Jeroboam in the north and extended from the Philistine plain in the west to Ammon and the northern Hedjaz in the south and east (II Chr. 26:6-8). Except that it was a double state, it was very nearly the size of Solomon’s.
And prosperity unmatched since Solomon ensued. The trade routes which Solomon had controlled were again in Israelite hands. The Red Sea port of Elath (Ezion-geber?) was restored (II Kings 14:22), and presumably the overseas trade to the south again flourished. This probably means that the Phoenicians, still at the height of their prosperity, were again brought into the program. The economic resources of the country were developed (II Chr. 26:10).23 Israel could remember few periods to compare with the mid–eighth century B.C. The fact that it was the glory of the nation’s sunset did not diminish its splendor. The fine ivories and great palaces which archaeologists have found in Samaria are proof that Amos did not exaggerate the wealth which the land enjoyed.
3. But, again as in Solomon’s day, society is sick. Only now the sickness is unto death. The reader of Amos sees the schism of society on every line. There is wealth unheard of, which knows every luxury that money can buy, and there is bitter and hopeless poverty. There are greed and venality which have no conscience, but place property above men and above God. And religion is equally sick. The shrines are busy and rich and thronged with worshipers (Amos 4:4-5; 5:21-23). But religion is a mechanical quid pro quo, a nauseous attempt to purchase material favors of God with material gifts. It tolerates the grossest immorality (Amos 2:6-8; Hos. 4:4-14); it utters no rebuke—provided only that one support his church! It is totally at the service of the state, and will countenance no criticism of it (Amos 7:10-13).
This is clearly the mortal sickness of a nation. Yet in spite of it there flourished a complacent confidence in the future which is past believing. No doubt this sprang in good part from the pride of a victorious nation in its own strength (Amos 6:13)24 and from the favorable political situation beyond which shortsighted men could not see. But it must also be understood as a disease of theology. Israel’s faith had always taught her to expect great things of the future. History, it was believed, moved onward to the victory of God’s purpose, the establishment of his rule over his people in glory. There would come that eschatological day of triumph, the Day of Yahweh, when the victorious Kingdom of God would become reality. Nor did Israel doubt that she was the people of God, the kingdom chosen by him and defended by him. So she faced the future with confidence and even dared to yearn for that Day of Yahweh (Amos 5:18), for it would be the day of her triumph too.25
IV
To this prosperity and this sickness Amos spoke. The first of that succession of prophets whose utterances are preserved for us in the Bible, he is clearly something new in Israel. Yet he is equally clearly the voice of the ancient ways. Of his life we know almost nothing. A herdsman from the fringe of the Judean wilderness (1:1),26 he had occasion to travel into the northern kingdom. He did not at all like what he saw there, and at the great shrine
