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‘Who Makes the Morning Darkness’: God and Creation in the Book of Amos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Susan Gillingham
Susan Gillingham
Affiliation:
Worcester College, Oxford OX1 2HG
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Extract

This paper has been the result of teaching and comparing two very different Old Testament texts, both of which are concerned with the relationship between God and the created order. One is Genesis 1, with its priestly concerns for harmony within the created order; the other is the book of Amos, where one encounters a profoundly pessimistic view of the coming disorder throughout the natural world. In making associations between these two texts, one cannot help but ask why the earlier reflections in Amos offer such aradical and developed understandingof God's relationship with creation — quite distinct from the view of God evidenced in the first chapter of Genesis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , May 1992 , pp. 165 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1992

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References

page 166 note 1 See the collection of essays in Schmid's, H. H.Altorientalische Welt in der alttestamentlichen Theologie (Zurich, 1974)Google Scholar; also Zimmerli, W., Grundriss der alttestamentlichen Theologie (Stuttgart, 1972, 1982 3)Google Scholar, ET Old Testament Theology in Outline (Edinburgh, 1978); Anderson, B. W., Creation in the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1977)Google Scholar; Westermann, C., Theologie des Alten Testaments in Grundzügen (Göttingen, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ET Elements of Old Testament Theology (Atlanta, 1982).

page 167 note 2 An account of Amos' defence of Yahweh's control over nature is found in Barstad, H. M., The Religious Polemics of Amos SVT XXXIV (Leiden, 1984), pp. 49ff., 67ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. For example (p. 69): ‘Amos is trying to convince his fellow countrymen that it is Yahwism that is the fertility cult.’ Whether or not this is the case with Amos, passages such as Hos. 2:2–13, 14–15 and 21–23 illustrate the conflict with fertility practices during this period in northern Israel.

page 168 note 3 See Wolff, H. W., ‘Das Zitat im Prophetenspruch’, Ev Th Beih 4 (1937), pp. 3–112Google Scholar, also in Gesammelte Studien, Munich, 1964, pp. 36–129; Weiser, A., Das Buch derzwolf Kleinen Propheten I, ATD (Gottingen, 1949)Google Scholar; Mays, J. L., Amos, OTL, (London, 1969), pp. 8ff.Google Scholar; Soggin, J. A., Ilprofeta Amos (Bescia, 1982)Google Scholar, ET The Prophet Amos, OTL, (London, 1987), pp. 20ff.; also Crenshaw, J. L., Hymnic Affirmation of Divine Justice: The Doxologies of Amos and the Related Texts in the Old Testament SBLDS 24 (Montana, 1975), pp. 38ffGoogle Scholar.

page 168 note 4 Reading in Dt. 28: 22: Compare Am. 4:9:

page 168 note 5 Normally the people would have understood destruction as punishment from their God in military terms (for example, the cycles of defeat and victory in the traditions of the judges) rather than through his reversing the natural order against them. An exception is the drought/famine cycle found in the traditions of Elijah in 1 Kgs. 17 and 18 — but there the story ends with the victory through fire on Carmel, and the giving of the rains (cf. 1 Kgs. 18:36–39 and 41–45.)

page 169 note 6 The depiction of the deity as both Creator and Destroyer is found outside the biblical accounts, some of which almost certainly antedate Amos. Cf. Tablet IV, 18–26 of the Enūma elis, (of Marduk): Lord, truly thy decree is first among gods. Say but to wreck or create; it shall be. Also Tablet VI, 124–133 (again, of Marduk): … Creation, destruction, deliverance, grace — Shall be by his command. (ANET 3(1969) pp. 66, 69) This again confirms the fact that a radical relief in the creative activity of the gods (to preserve and to destroy) was prevalent at the time of Amos, at least outside Israel. Amos is the first prophet to develop this belief within Israel, and to apply it to Israel's one Cod who now works against his own people.

page 170 note 7 This association is made clear in the later references to the Day of the Lord in Zech. 14:5.

page 170 note 8 The book of Job, which has several stylistic affinities with Amos, has a similar but more developed understanding of God as Creator: ‘shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ (2:10). On Job and Amos, cf. Crenshaw, op. cit., pp. 155ff., and on this theme in Job alone, comparing Job 3 and 38–9, cf. Alter, R., ‘The Voice from the Whirlwind’, Commentary 77 (1984), pp. 33–41Google Scholar.

page 171 note 9 The psalms proliferate with acknowlegements of the ‘name’ of God: the psalmists bless(), call upon (), glorify (), fear (), love (), sing praise to (), declare (), remember (), and give thanks for () the ‘name’ (usually ) of God. That this was an early idea is evident in its use in early cultic poetry such as Ex. 15:3 () and Ps. 68:4 [Heb. 5] (). It may well be associated with the sanctuary at Shiloh and the ‘ark of the Lord of Hosts’. See Crenshaw, op. cit., pp. 15ff., discussing the views of Wambacq, Maag, Eichrodt and Eissfeldt; also Ch. III, discussing the fourteen other uses of this refrain.

page 171 note 10 Cf. Crenshaw, op. cit., Chapter I, assessing the doxologies in their context and their supposed elevated theology and their late language. Although Crenshaw assigns them to the exilic period, he nevertheless concludes (p. 122): ‘… there is nothing within the doxology that Amos could not have taught.’

page 171 note 11 See Horst, F., ‘Die Doxologien im Amosbuch,’ ZAW 47 (1929), pp. 45–54Google Scholar; Frost, S. B., ‘Asseveration of Thanksgiving’, VT VII (1958), pp. 380–390Google Scholar; also Wolff, H. W., Dodekapropheton. Amos BKAT (Neukirchen, 1967)Google Scholar, ET Amos the Prophet (Philadelphia, 1973). Soggin, op. cit., pp. 78–80, 93, 123–4 is strangely ambivalent.

page 171 note 12 Cf. Maag, V., Text, Wortschatz und Begriffswelt des Buches Amos (Leiden, 1951), pp. 57ffGoogle Scholar.;also A. Weister, op.cit., p. 194; Watts, J. D. W., Vision and Prophecy in Amos (Grand Rapids, 1958), pp. 51–67Google Scholar; also J. L. Mays, op. cit., pp. 83–4, 95–6, 155–6; Hayes, J. H., Amos the Eight-Century Prophet, Nashville, 1988, pp. 149–150, 160–1, 217–8Google Scholar.

page 172 note 13 This technique used with other cultic material is also found in the lament in 5:2; in the phrases ‘I will never again pass by them’ in 7:8 and 8:2 and ‘I will set my eyes upon them for evil’ in 9:4, 8; and in the theophanic language throughout the book, where God comes not as Deliverer but as Judge. See Kapelrud, A. S., ‘God as Destroyer in the Preaching of Amos and in the Ancient Near East’ JBL 71 (1952), pp. 33–38Google Scholar.

page 174 note 14 For example, Crenshaw, op. cit., pp. 93ff., refers to other scholars who posit that the belief in God as Creator dates from pre-exilic times; he cites von Rad, Eichrodt, Hyatt, Vriezen, Cross and Freedman, concluding ‘… there can be no question about the fact that belief in creation played a more formative role in early Israelite thought than is generally recognised’ (p. 97).

page 174 note 15 See Barton, J., ‘Natural Law and Poetic Justice in the Old Testament’, JTS 30 (1979), pp. 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Amos's Oracles against the Nations: A Study of Amos 1:3–2:5, SOTSMS 6 (Cambridge, 1980).

page 176 note 16 Cf. Atkinson, D., The Messages of Genesis 1–11 (Leicester, 1990), pp. 95–97Google Scholar.

page 176 note 17 See for example Phillips, A., ‘Prophecy and Law’ in Israel's Prophetic Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter Ackroyd (eds. Coggins, R., Phillips, A. and Knibb, M.), Cambridge, 1982, pp. 220ffGoogle Scholar.

page 180 note 18 Cf. Crenshaw, op. cit., pp. 38–46, 120–3, noting how the doxologies are close to the prophetic ‘lawsuit’ form (the Rûb); also Crusemann, F., Studien zur Formgeschichte von Hymnus und Danklied in Israel, WMANT (Neukirchen, 1969)Google Scholar who notes the international hymnic form of participial praise in these doxologies affirms Yahweh, not other Canaanite deities, as creator of the wind, stars, storm, rain, earthquake. Rudolph, W.Joel-Amos-Obadja-Jona KAT (Gütersloh, 1971) pp. 180ffGoogle Scholar. also understands the contradictions in the doxologies to be polemic against foreign cultic practices. See also Jeremias, J., Theophanie. Die Geschichte einer alttestamentlichen Gattung WMANT (Neukirchen, 1965)Google Scholar and von Rad, , ‘Gerichtsdoxologie’, Schalom (A. Jepsen zum 70. Geburststag), ed. Bernhardt, K. H. (Stuttgart, 1971), pp. 28–37Google Scholar.

page 180 note 19 The idea of God summoning water from the earth's streams, by which the land is watered (also in Am. 5:8), has interesting correspondences with the earlier J/E account of creation (cf. Gen. 2:6, where the mist ("IX flood) goes up from the ground), rather than the later P account where the water appears to pour in from the heavenly ocean over the earth, through special windows (cf. Gen. 7:11, 8:2).

page 182 note 20 Cf. Westermann, C., Das Buch Jesaia AID 19 (Göttingen, 1966)Google Scholar, ET Isaiah 40–66 OTL (London, 1969), pp. 21–22 and 240–43; also Anderson, B. W., Exodus Typology in Second Isaiah', Isarel's Prophetic Heritage, eds. Anderson, B. W. and Harrelson, W., (New York, 1962), pp. 178–195Google Scholar.

page 183 note 21 Cf. Collected Poems 1909–1962 by Eliot, T. S. (London, 1963), pp. 199–200.Google Scholar