It cannot be the Kingdom of God, because it has flouted the laws of God and violated the covenant brotherhood. The Kingdom of Israel is under the judgment of God—and the judgment is history!
4. Let us not suppose that the words of Amos are ancient words. They are very modern. They are spoken to us and clamor for our attention. We dare not refuse to listen, for it is very late. We are, to be sure, in all externals as little like ancient Israel as possible. Yet in us there is written her hope, and also her delusion and her failure.
We, too, have longed and do long for the Kingdom of God, and dark days heighten the longing. Of course, tongue-tied as we are in the language of faith, we would never put it that way. We would speak of an end to war and fear, a community of nations, the triumph of justice and brotherhood, a moral world order. But there is small difference, in the stuff of it, between what we long for and the hope of ancient Israel that God’s people would one day be established under his rule to live out its days in peace and plenty. We earnestly desire the Kingdom of God, although we do not know by what name to call it. With but a recollection of a parent’s recollection of a grandparent’s faith in that Kingdom, we desire it because we cannot help doing so.
But we might ask to what extent Amos’ indictment of society is applicable to us today. In one sense the answer is obvious: it is fully applicable. It takes no skill, nor even a very sharp conscience, to point out that our society, like that of ancient Israel, is shot through with the crimes which Amos denounced: injustice and greed, immorality, pleasure-loving ease, and venality. Nor does one have to be a Cassandra to understand that these things are society’s sickness, for which a doctor’s bill will surely have to be paid. The indictment of Amos is an indictment of all societies, including our own.
But are we then to apply directly to our society the thundering negation which Amos gave to the hope of the Israelite kingdom? Have we nothing to look forward to but an impending and well-deserved doom? There is a sense in which to say so would not seem fair. To admit that we are guilty before the indictment of Amos is to say but half the truth. For, if compared with other societies that have existed and do exist, ours is not a bad society at all but a very good one. We are a nation founded on Christian principles; our political institutions and our national dogma of the rights and the dignity of man have grown out of these principles. We have so many churches, and these have so many active members, that we can claim to be a Christian nation. What is more, the shadow of the Church and her teachings falls across the nation and the national character more powerfully than most of us realize. The indictment of Amos, and of the other prophets and of Christ, has been, in a measure, taken seriously: stupendous efforts have been made to better the lot of mankind; injustices have been corrected and will continue to be corrected. Ours is a society as good to live in as any that has ever been. We ought to give thanks for it. For all its obvious faults it is worth defending; if we do not defend it, we are forty times purblind. Surely we may pray for God’s guidance as we do so!
But will we then commit the fatal error? Will we, like Israel, imagine that our destiny under God and God’s purposes in history are to be realized in terms of the society we have built? The temptation to do so is subtle. After all, we may claim a Christian heritage from which human liberties have flowed; we have churches and support them lavishly; but Communism, for example, is totally godless and so destructive of all that is noble in man that scarcely one redeeming thing can be said of it. Between the two there is simply no comparison. Surely God, if he be just, will further our efforts and will defend us from his foe and ours—for we are his good Christian people! As for ourselves, we will labor and pray for the winning of the world to Christ and the victory of his Kingdom—for it is either that sort of world or a chaos in which nothing which we value would be safe. And if the victory of Christ—which we tend to equate with our own best interests—seems remote, we will turn to yet busier activity, for that is all we know how to do. Surely if we thus energetically serve him, God will protect us and give us the victory!
To this hope Amos speaks a resounding No! Let us understand his words clearly: God does not in that sense have favored people. No earthly state is established of God, guaranteed of God, and identified with his purposes. Nor has any earthly order, however good, the means of setting up God’s order in terms of its own ends. On the contrary, all societies are under the judgment of God’s order, and those that have been favored with the light doubly so! Indeed, before we can have any hope of a righteous order established by God, we must, like Israel, learn that our order is not God’s but must conform to it or perish. Wherever, says Amos, the schism of society is set forward, there is society perishing. Wherever men who have known of righteousness can speak only of their right to crowd for what they can get; wherever men who have known of Christian brotherhood behave as if they believed in favored races; wherever men who have heard a higher calling grow soft in the enjoyment of the ease that money can buy—there is society under judgment. And the judgment is history. Nor will it greatly matter to those who have to face it whether the barbaric tool of that judgment is Assyria or Russia.
Does Amos then leave society no hope? For sinful society, as sinful society, none! Man’s disorder cannot inherit the Kingdom of God but must, on the contrary, live ever in history’s judgment. The very hope of peace must remain for it a Utopian dream, which it pursues as a will-o’-the-wisp. Nor are there any external means by which an unrighteous society may avert the judgment that awaits it. Certainly the busy activity of its religion, and the formal correctness of its worship, is of no avail. It is true—although Amos does not mention it—that a nation may, by wise statecraft and sufficient strength, manage to postpone the judgment and survive through centuries of time. Because this is so, it is not irrelevant what policies a nation pursues; and we ought to pray that our nation may choose its course wisely. Amos, however, is not concerned with political realities, but with moral ones. And his verdict stands: a society which flouts the righteous laws of God is none of his and cannot forever endure. No comfort there, to be sure, but the alternative mankind must face. And if that alternative seems to brush aside the political realities which conditioned Israel’s survival, and which govern ours, it may nonetheless be accorded a deeper relevance. For the choice before man remains this: to enter anew into covenant with God to live as his people under his rule—or the judgment of history without end.
So Israel yearned for the Day of Yahweh, the day of the victory of God’s Kingdom. And week by week our prayer goes up: “Thy kingdom come.” It is well that we so pray; it is our proper prayer. But how is it that we dare to pray it except as his obedient children? If we are to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” we must also learn to pray, and to mean it quite seriously, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
1 This can be suspected rather than proved. A court and harem such as Solomon had inevitably breeds favoritism. Certainly Solomon did not stint his household any luxury. Favored wives, such as pharaoh’s daughter, naturally received preferred treatment (I Kings 7:8-12). While we know nothing of the merits of the two sons-in-law who were made district governors (I Kings 4:11, 15), their presence certainly indicates a desire to consolidate power in the family.
2 David had also subjected conquered peoples to forced labor (II Sam. 12:31).
3 I Kings 5:13 speaks of a levy of thirty thousand Israelites. It has been estimated that this would be comparable to five million Americans today. Cf. W. F. Albright, “The Biblical Period,” The Jews: Their History, Culture and Religion, L. Finkelstein, ed. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1949), p. 28. This article, incidentally, is highly recommended as an accurate thumbnail sketch of Israel’s history.
4 The background of the transaction is not clear. A casual reading would leave the impression that the cities were ceded to Hiram in payment for materials received (vs. 11), but vs. 14 (Hiram pays Solomon!) shows that the real purpose was to raise cash. Cf. most recently J. A. Montgomery, The Books of Kings (International Critical Commentary [New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons, 1951]), p. 204; he believes that the towns were pawned against a cash loan.
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