Week 5: God is One Angry Momma Bear

In this fifth week of my OOTLE16 course, I'm reading about the early pre exilic prophets from the Hebrew tradition. Hosea and Amos are two of those prophets whose prophetic ministries took them to the Northern Kingdom of Israel (remember, by the time of the 8th century, Israel proper had been split in two kingdoms, the north with a capital in Samaria and the south, Judah, with a capital in Jerusalem). While both prophets are deeply concerned with the deteriorating relationship between the kingdom (along with its people) and God, they express these concerns differently. For Hosea, according to Christopher Stanley, the "people of Israel have provoked Yahweh to anger by engaging in improper forms of worship" (Stanley, p.431).

In chapter 4 of the Book of Hosea (which is the longest of the twelve so-named prophetic books of the Hebrew scriptures), the prophet gives voice to Yahweh's concern, reading out a litany of (mis)deeds that have damned the people's relationship with their God: the people have no faithfulness, no loyalty, no knowledge of God in the land; they are a swearing, lying, murder, stealing and adulterous bunch, who will surely be destroyed because they don't know God and have forgotten God's law (Hos 4:1-6).

As if that weren't enough, though, there is a structural failure here, specifically by the religious authorities and namely the temple priests. The Theologian Marvin Sweeney writes that the "Israelite priesthood is the party responsible for Israel's failure to abide by its covenant (New Interpreter's Study Bible, p.1258). There are real accusations that God makes against God's people through Hosea regarding idol worship in chapters 10 and 13. In 10:4, God refers to the people as liars, saying "with empty oaths they make covenants." In 10:5, God predicts that their worship of a calf idol placed in the Samarian temple portends the doom of both the people and temple, predicting it will be carried away when Assyria sacks the whole city.

God continues through Hosea in 13:2, claiming the people "keep on sinning, and make a cast image for themselves... people are kissing calves." This is the same God who, in 13:4-8, describes saving them, delivering them from Egypt, and being their only saving God. God is incredulous at this people who, in 13:6, have forgotten God entirely: "While I fed them, they were satisfied, and their heart was proud; therefore they forgot me." God's wrath awaits them in 13:8, like a momma bear robbed of her cubs.

These are the ultimate costs of the people's actions, who have forgotten their saving God and have turned instead to adopt the cultic religious practices of their neighbors and fearful (and eventual) conquerers to the north, the Assyrians. In turning away, Hosea makes clear in chapter 8 that Israel has violated its covenant by seeking out these kings and sanctuaries which God had never authorized and not intended as part of God's perfect plan for God's people: "They made kings, but not through me; they set up princes, but without my knowledge" (Hos 8:4). Like a wild donkey (8:9), lusting after a mate, the Israelites have pursued an alliance with Assyria, perverting their own religious customs along the way, and losing their identity in God as a result. This is the heart of Hosea's prophetic complaint against Israel.

Amos' prophetic complaint cites much different examples of Israel's failure to correctly live out its relationship with Yahweh, but his overall concern, demonstrated with the use of a plumb line, is the same as Hosea's: "Israel is radically off course, despite the prosperity that has seduced many into thinking that Yahweh is pleased with them" (Stanley, p.432). Amos focuses on the prosperity of the Northern Kingdom and how, despite this wealth, "the rich are living lives of luxury and ease while ignoring the poor and needy" (Stanley, p.429). What? A widening wealth gap between the haves and have nots? This sounds desperately familiar to today! While the crooked business practices and bribing of judges (sidebar: If you haven't before, go check out Jon Foreman's Instead of a Show. Wonderful song that perfectly captures Amos' complaint!) are bad enough, they are symptomatic of a deeper spiritual sickness, as Stanley calls it, within the people.

Jon Foreman, a singer-songwriter, gives voice to God and puts it this way:

Your eyes are closed when you're praying
You sing right along with the band
You shine up your shoes for services
But there's blood on your hands

You've turned your back on the homeless
And the ones who don't fit in your plan
Quit playing religion games
There's blood on your hands

For Amos, the people's faithfulness at worshiping is completely empty action because it is devoid of any true meaning. Amos surely saw the same failure in religious leadership that Hosea decried, but he pays attention to the social expression that it produces, which is inequality (2:6), abuse of the poor (5:11), bribes (5:12), and inequitable structures designed to entrench wealth and poverty for the lucky and not-so-lucky, respectively (8:4-6). The lesson is as relevant for Israel then as it is for us today, living as we do in a political system that has co-opted free market economics to keep wealth in the hands of the already wealthy and to prevent equity and equality from being recognized among God's people. Jon Foreman's lyrics are a direct challenge to theologies of wealth and prosperity and religious expression that ignore the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized in society. For Amos and Hosea then, and for us today, there has been a great propensity to forget one's relationship with God when one is comfortable - whether that comfort comes from wealth, or from a wrong-headed view of religious expression. Whether or not an expression of God's favor, comfortability must not desensitize God's people to the hurts and needs of a broken world, who can be made even a little bit more whole through our acts of justice and mercy. And, of course, as Micah would say, (Micah 6:8) this is all, in the final analysis, that God requires.