6 Thus says the Lord:
“For three transgressions of Gaza,
and for four, I will not revoke the
punishment,
because they carried into exile a whole
people
to deliver them up to Edom.
7 So
I will send a fire upon the wall of Gaza,
and it shall devour her strongholds.
8 I
will cut off the inhabitants from Ashdod,
and him who holds the scepter from
Ashkelon;
I will turn my hand against
Ekron,
and the remnant of the Philistines
shall perish,”
says the
Lord God.
Amos 1:6-8
This passage is the second oracle of
judgment out of eight. The concentration
of this second oracle is on the Philistines.
If we look at all eight oracles we will find that Amos had written them
in a certain formula. In every oracle,
Amos started with the author of the oracle, God. Then he moved to proclaim that the punishment
of the respective nation will not be spared due to their multiple
transgressions. Quickly Amos gave the
main reason of God’s judgment. Then he
proceeded with the kind of judgment He was going to execute. The first two chapters of Amos clearly
confirms that the Lord God is sovereign over all.
Let us now take a look at our specific
passage. After spelling out the formula
that identified the Lord as the author of the oracle, Amos continued with the
formula that the sins of Gaza were plenty and thus the Lord would not relent
from sending His punishment. Now Gaza as
the capital city of the Philistines represented the Philistine nation as a
whole. Billy Smith and Franklin Page of
the New American Commentary pointed out of the importance of Gaza as the main
city of the Philistines:
The commercial and political importance
of Gaza may account for the prominence of that city-state in the Philistine
oracle. Gaza was a port city, located just inland from the Mediterranean coast
and on the main north-south trade route.[1]
Then
Amos quickly moved to the main reason why the Lord was going to punish Gaza,
which was “because they carried into
exile a whole people to deliver them up to Edom.” Be mindful that what Amos was speaking about
here is not something ordinary that depicts the common situation in a war in
the ancient world. But this was something
extraordinary even for the ancient time that the Lord must address this issue. Gary Smith of the Mentor Commentaries
elaborated:
The guilt of
Gaza must be related to its forcible dislocation of ‘complete masses of
captives’ for the purpose of economic gain. Their kidnapping of entire villages
was probably not the result of war. They made slave raids to satisfy their
desire for wealth. Amos attacks Gaza’s hardened cruelty in ‘taking captives’,
and then the underlying motive is condemned ‘to deliver them to Edom’. The
taking of slaves from those who are defeated in war would be understandable,
but it is immoral to treat the innocent people of another nation like cattle to
be sold to the highest bidder. The size of the operation condemns them—‘whole
masses of captives’. Removal by kidnapping for the sole purpose of resale is
contrary to even the lowest sense of morality. People are not things; rather
they are creations of God.[2]
Smith
and Page agreed as they said:
The sin of Gaza was the capture and
sale of either “whole communities” of people, including women and children, or
people at peace with Gaza. The word šĕlēmâ
may be translated either “whole” or “peaceful.” Deportation of an entire
community (or a community keeping a covenant of peace with Gaza) was only one
aspect of Gaza’s double-edged sin. Sale of captives to Edom was the other side
of it.[3]
This was a sin against humanity and
God. The Philistines had violated the
basic human right, dignity, and morality.
But not only the Philistines who violated what was basic to humanity,
all the other nations in the series of Amos’ oracles also did. James Montgomery Boice observed:
The one common denominator of the oracles against Syria,
Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab is that each involves a sin against
basic human relations. ….
These are
not violations of any specific provision of the law of God, though the Old
Testament law covers these as well as other items. They are violations of that
basic code of human behavior written in the hearts of all people and expected
of all, whether friend or foe, kinsman or stranger, neighbor or member of a
distant nation. God holds even the pagan nations responsible for merciful behavior,
but these, as others, had acted without mercy to their foes.[4]
These nations had no mercy to their
fellow humans, in particular those who were not their own. They treated humans who were created in the
image of God as if they were animals, or even lower than animals. Smith and Page reflected on this reality in
Amos and said:
The concern
of Amos seems to have been the freedom and dignity of persons regardless of
their national origin. Sale of such captives for use as slave laborers was to
treat precious humans made in the image of God (Gen 1:26–27) as mere
commodities. The driving force behind these atrocities was nothing higher than
the profit of the mighty.[5]
Clearly, such atrocity was not even
motivated by any nobler cause. What
drove Gaza to do such a horrible thing was merely money. Thus Boice spoke of the Philistines’
unnecessary cruelty:
In the case of Gaza,
the chief city of Philistia, the area of offense is commerce, but its nature is
the same: unnecessary cruelty. ….
The crime is
not that soldiers were enslaved after being taken in battle, which was the
standard practice, but that the Philistines used their temporary supremacy to
enslave whole populations—soldiers and civilians, men and women, adults and
children, young and old—for commercial profit. Gaza did not even need the
slaves. She merely sold them to Edom for more money.[6]
The God of Israel saw this cruelty and
sent His prophet Amos to proclaim His judgment.
This then shows that Yahweh is not limited to the nation Israel. But that He is the God of all the world. Smith and Page made it clear that Yahweh is
even the God of our modern world:
The God of
Amos was no national deity limited in power to particular geographical
boundaries or to a special nation. He ruled and rules over all nations
including Judah and Israel, Aram and Philistia, Tyre and Edom, Ammon and Moab,
the United States of America and the United Kingdom. The theology of Amos
allowed room “only for one God supreme over life and history.”[7]
There is only One True God in all the
universe. And He is sovereign over all
the nations in the face of the earth, from the beginning of time until the end.
Now
that we have known the main concern about these series of oracles and
particularly our passage for today, what is it to us? Before we get deeper into it, I would like to
draw our attention to Boice’s illustration that I am going to read to you.
A woman
attended an evangelistic meeting and was delighted when she learned that the
preacher would talk about sin. When he preached against strong drink, she
cried, “Preach it, brother!” When he declaimed against tobacco, she shouted,
“Amen!” The minister’s third point was a condemnation of gossip, and she leaned
over to her neighbor and said, “Now he’s not preachin’; he’s meddlin’.”[8]
What did Boice mean here? This is the meaning, that if the hard
preaching is for other people or someone else, we would not hesitate to affirm
it, but when the hard preaching offends us by uncovering our hidden sins that
we hold dear in our heart, we would oppose it and would not support it
anymore. In other words, this is what
the sinner in us says: “You ‘preacher’ may talk about other people and I will
support it wholeheartedly, but do not even think of speaking about my little
tiny transgression, for then you have meddled with my business and I don’t like
it!”
Brothers
and sisters, what I am going to preach afterwards is going to meddle with your
business, will you shout: “Preach it, brother!”? or “Amen”? or will you say:
“Now he’s not preachin; he’s meddlin”?
This
passage in Amos must not be left merely as a study of theology. It can’t also be understood merely as
something that happened a long time ago without any significance in the lives
of the people in the 21st century.
It must not be preached just to fill up our bank of knowledge. Rather, we must realize the universal meaning
of God’s judgment upon the Philistines.
We must understand the main reason God would not relent from sending His
judgment of destruction to the Philistines.
And as we have learned just now, God was angry because they had violated
the very basic sense of morality as human beings. God demanded from all humans to have mercy on
their fellow humans, be it their enemies or friends. But Gaza disregarded the voice within their
hearts that God had written since they were in the wombs of their mothers. This is the very core of Gaza’s sin.
Thus,
this Holy Scripture taken from Amos 1:6-8 is still and very relevant for us
today. Any dealings with our fellow
humans that exploit them in order for us to make more money is as guilty as the
Philistines 2500 years ago. A few years
ago there was a doctor in the Michigan USA that exploited his patients. Dr.
Farid Fata deliberately gave 533 patients false cancer diagnoses so that he
could squeeze money out of their pockets.
He treated his 533 healthy patients with chemotherapy and radiation for
the purpose of getting rich. His bank
account grew significantly as he pocketed millions of dollars in this
malpractice. Dr. Fata had no compassion
for his patients whatsoever. He saw them
as his cash cow, not more than that. So
Dr. Fata dared to gamble his patients’ life for his profit gain. Many of his patients went bankrupt in order
to fund the treatment with the hope they would get better. Dr. Fata of the 21st century is as
cruel and guilty as the Philistines 2500 years ago. The word of the Lord through the prophet Amos
is still effective in judging the unnecessary cruelty humans do even in the 21st
century. Finally he was handed a 45
years jail time for his crime. For this
I trust you will say to me: “Preach it, brother.”
God’s
word here is also relevant to those people who are in the business of selling
and enslaving people for money even today.
Human trafficking in the 21st century does not show sign of slowing
down. The data from the United Nations
show that in 2017 they had recorded more than 50,000 individual cases of human
trafficking. Many of those were women
and children. Most of them were
trafficked for sex. About 5,000 cases
are added every year according to the statistics. This is disheartening. How come in our modern age we still witness
the unnecessary cruelty exhibited by humans.
These people treat their fellow humans as commodities. They kidnap women and children and sell them
to be used as sex slaves in order to add money in their bank account. What is wrong with their conscience? They even sell their own nieces and
daughters. Boice is right to label such
thing as “unnecessary cruelty.” God’s
justice will certainly fall upon them. God
will not relent. And for this you will
shout in unison: “Amen!”
Brothers
and sisters, it is time we take a look at our own dealings with our fellow
humans. Are you cruel toward your fellow
humans? In your professionalism, are you
being unmerciful toward your employee?
Will you drive them to the ground to work so hard for you and your
company no matter how sick they are, how miserable they are, just to squeeze
for you your little profit you can get?
Will you force them to labor hard, keeping a piercing eye on their move
every second, while at the same time you do not care if their spouse is sick,
if their children need them at home, if their parents are dying? You say to them that they must work hard,
that they must have some kind of high professional ethics, that they must not
be lazy, yet you know that they are never lazy, they just need a break from the
high level stress and intense labor in your company. You scold them if they close their eyes for
five minutes just to relax their retina from looking intensely into the
computer screen. You scorn them when
they request for a salary increase because you have paid them too low, and deep
down in your hearts you know it; then you lecture them about the quality of
their works that do not meet up the standard and thus can’t be considered to be
having any merit for a salary increase.
That is your best justification so that you won’t feel so guilty. Day in and day out, you then have grown to
become a cruel person, care not for the wellbeing of others. All you care about is how to make more
profit, how to become richer, how to increase your bank account. If you do such thing, I shall call you to
repent today. For what you are doing is
exactly what the Philistines were doing 2500 of years ago. If you say honestly in your heart that you
have never done so, I applaud you for it for you then are a good master. For this, will you say: “Now he’s not
preachin; he’s meddlin?”
This
warning covers the most basic human dignity.
Humans are not commodities. In
the 21st century we have considered slavery as inhumane and thus we
abolish it. But hidden slavery is still
practiced under our very nose. Simple
people need food for their starving stomach, so they stoop so low and are
willing to do anything just to eat. 21st
century people take advantage of their need, and thus exploit them to work for
them in the inhumane level. They rob
them of their dignity and destroy their opportunity to live a better life. This is done simply by forcing them to work
hard and be loyal to them or otherwise be fired, and pay them a very low salary
so they will always depend on them. This
is modern slavery. In essence there is
no difference than what Gaza did. This
is what Boice called “unnecessary cruelty.”
For such behavior, God will destroy them just like He had destroyed the
Philistines.
Brothers
and sisters, we are not called to become like the Philistines. We are called to become like Jesus
Christ. We are dignified in Christ. And Christ is full of mercy, gentleness, and
love. The second greatest commandment
spells: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Gaza violated this commandment.
This commandment is very basic in our life. For even since within our mother’s womb we
have felt the love, gentleness, and mercy of others to us. When we are born in to this world unable to
sustain ourselves, others sustain us with great love. Each and every day, love is showered upon us
until we may sustain ourselves. It takes
a very radical destruction of one’s soul in order to wipe out all the mercy,
gentleness, and love of others that we experienced in our very life.
We
are not called to exploit others so that we may make more money. Far be it from us. But instead, we are called to sustain other
people’s life. We are called to help
others to thrive in life. We are called
to dignify others. We are called to be
merciful to others. Just like Jesus
Christ is merciful to our pity soul.
Just like Jesus Christ dignifies us.
Just like Jesus Christ makes us thrive in this life by freeing us from
the bondage of sin. Just like Jesus
Christ continually sustains us by giving us His life. When you feel your heart has become hardened
by the hard life you are experiencing, remember the love, the gentleness, and
the mercy of our Redeemer, Lord Jesus Christ.
Remember how He is to us. If it
is still too difficult to get to that level, try practice the golden ethics
Jesus said in Matthew 7:12: “So whatever you wish that others would do to
you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Amen!
[1] Billy K. Smith and Franklin S.
Page, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, vol. 19B,
The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers,
1995), 51.
[3] Billy K. Smith
and Franklin S. Page, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, vol. 19B, The
New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995),
51.
[4] James
Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002), 171.
[5] Billy K. Smith
and Franklin S. Page, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, vol. 19B,
The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers,
1995), 51.
[6] James
Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002), 172.
[7] Billy K. Smith
and Franklin S. Page, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, vol. 19B,
The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers,
1995), 52.
[8] James
Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002), 169.
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