NOTES for Amo 5:1-20

Today's reading is devoted to the central theme of Amos's preaching: the theme of the day of Yahweh, in the Synodal Translation, "the day of the Lord" (vv. 18-20). It appears to have been a special festival that existed in the pre-exilic period, celebrated in the fall, probably around the time when Yom Kippur is celebrated. Traditionally it was the day of Yahweh's triumph as the God of Israel and the day of judgment over all the enemies of the people of God. It is no wonder that the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom, like all Jews, awaited it as the day of the triumph of their God, and therefore of their own triumph as well.

Meanwhile, Amos sees the day of Yahweh quite differently. For him it too is a day of Judgment, but not over the enemies of the people of God; it is over Israel itself. He understands that Judgment, in Paul's words, "begins with the house of God." For Amos's contemporaries, this understanding was new and unexpected. They were certain that no Judgment threatened them in any case, because in the confrontation between God and His enemies they had ended up on the right side. No one seems to have considered that there was no merit of their own in the fact that they were born Jews.

But Amos's preaching about Judgment was new in another respect as well. The traditional idea of Judgment was connected with a kind of ritual that included evaluating a person according to certain criteria. Properly speaking, Judgment was a kind of test of whether a person met these criteria. For Amos, Judgment is plainly not like that. It is no accident that he warns that the day of Judgment can easily become for many not a day of light, but a day of darkness (vv. 18, 20).

Theophanies in the time of Amos were associated by believing Yahwists precisely with light, with the radiance by which God marked the place of His presence. How then could the day of Yahweh's triumph turn into a day of darkness? Such a thing would clearly be possible only if those who wanted to see this radiant presence, coming to the Temple, saw nothing. When before a person's eyes there is something he cannot see, hear, or perceive in any other way, this imperceptible thing becomes impenetrable darkness for him. Then it becomes clear that for Amos, Judgment is not a test of conformity to any criteria, even the strictest. For him, Judgment is the moment when a person meets God face to face. And then only the spiritual condition of the one coming to Judgment determines whether the day of Judgment will become for him a day of light or a day of darkness. It is not God who condemns a person at Judgment, but his own sins. And they are precisely what turn the light of God into impenetrable darkness.

What does it mean to "seek good, and not evil"? At first it looks clear: try to do good deeds, not evil ones. But do we not act that way? Is there anything we do not do from good motives? "We," not "they" - right now we are evaluating not others, but ourselves! And yet our deeds turn out to be evil too often - perhaps because through these actions we react to the evil around us and try to punish it or uproot it.

Let us try truly to seek good and not evil. Without closing our eyes to the existence of evil in the world, in people, and in ourselves, let us still try first of all to see the good, even tiny grains of it. Then we may not want to answer evil with evil at once, but may want to try to change and improve relationships, to multiply the good - and then God, of whom it is said that He is love, will truly be with us.

The prophet Amos denounces the people of Israel for their sins, whose essence is the absence of love, and warns of the coming catastrophe. But the goal of prophecy is not to frighten people so much that their hands fall helplessly, but to move them to change their lives. Prophecies are not so much predictions as pedagogy. Therefore the main thing here is not the coming horrors, but the call to an overturning of human ideas, which is the meaning of the word "repentance" (Amos 5:18-24), and to the restoration of relationship with God (Amos 5:4; 5:14-15).

And Amos continues. Prophets are always very inconvenient: as soon as you have achieved something for yourself and relaxed, there is the prophet, and nothing is right for him. Who gave him such a right? A heart burning with love for God and suffering from our separation from Him. Therefore God calls him to bring us the words of the Lord, and in a certain sense He Himself speaks these words to us through His prophet (see, for example, v. 8 and 14).