How Long, O Lord? by D. A. Carson

Author:D. A. Carson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL067000, REL006080
ISBN: 9781441200785
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

Amos 4

This is surely one of the most frightening passages in the Old Testament.

Here God addresses the women of Israel, but they are women who represent the sin of the entire nation. They are derisively described as “cows of Bashan,” that is, cows from the best pastureland. We might today say, “you fat, grain-fed cows.” They oppress the poor and crush the needy. Greedy to the core and abusive of their power, they order their husbands around like servants: “Bring us some drinks!” (v. 1). Even the plural “us” is a nice touch: they are talking as if they were royalty. But the Sovereign Lord swears by his holiness that they will be dragged away like squirming fish on a hook (v. 2). Their public piety will not save them then: “Go to Bethel and sin” (v. 4) is like saying, “Go to church and sin.” Then, in bristling irony, the Sovereign Lord declares, “Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three years. Burn leavened bread as a thank offering and brag about your freewill offerings—boast about them, you Israelites, for this is what you love to do” (vv. 4–5). They are infinitely more interested in a reputation for godliness than in godliness itself.

And then God details the various judgments he has sent to the nation over the previous decades, all without significant result. “I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town, yet you have not returned to me,” he declares (v. 6). So God tries another tactic: “I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away. I sent rain on one town, but withheld it from another. One field had rain; another had none and dried up. People staggered from town to town for water but did not get enough to drink, yet you have not returned to me” (vv. 7–8). God goes on to list other judgments he has sent—plague, sword, locusts, mildew, decay—“yet you have not returned to me,” declares the Lord.

Only the shattering climax is left: “‘Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel, and because I will do this to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God.’ He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind, and who reveals his thoughts to mortals, who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the LORD God Almighty is his name” (vv. 12–13, emphasis added). There follows the judgment itself: the prospect of massive deportation, the destruction of the nation, exile (5:1ff.). And all of this is cast as meeting God!

The truth of the matter is that meeting God is either transcendentally wonderful, or utterly horrific. If God meets sinners—sinners like you and me—in mere justice, in raw justice, the ultimate result is cataclysmic judgment; if God meets sinners in mercy and transforming power, the ultimate result is ecstasy.

That is why the final disclosure of God at the end of history is the ultimate watershed. That is a large part of what makes the book of Revelation so searching.

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