Thus Amos returns to the chief target of his shafts--the senseless, corrupt worship of the national sanctuaries. And this time--perhaps in remembrance of how they had silenced the word of God when he brought it home to them at Bethel--he tells Israel that, with all their running to and fro across the land, to shrine after shrine in search of the word, they shall suffer from a famine and drouth of it. Perhaps this is the most effective contrast in which Amos has yet placed the stupid ritualism of his people. With so many things to swear by; with so many holy places that once were the homes of Vision, Abraham's Beersheba, Jacob's Bethel, Joshua's Gilgal--nay, a whole land over which God's voice had broken in past ages, lavish as the rain; with, too, all their assiduity of sacrifice and prayer, they should nevertheless starve and pant for that living word of the Lord, which they had silenced in His prophet.
Thus, men may be devoted to religion, may be loyal to their sacred traditions and institutions, may haunt the holy associations of the past and be very assiduous with their ritual--and yet, because of their worldliness, pride and disobedience, never feel that moral inspiration, that clear call to duty, that comfort in pain, that hope in adversity, that good conscience at all times, which spring up in the heart like living water. Where these be not experienced, orthodoxy, zeal, lavish ritual, are all in vain.
AMOS ix. 1-6.
There follows a Vision in Bethel, the opening of which, _I saw the Lord_, immediately recalls the great inauguration of Isaiah. He also _saw the Lord_; but how different the Attitude, how other the Word! To the statesman-prophet the Lord is _enthroned_, surrounded by the court of heaven; and though the temple rocks to the intolerable thunder of their praise, they bring to the contrite man beneath the consciousness of a life-long mission. But to Amos the Lord is _standing_ and alone--to this lonely prophet God is always alone--and His message may be summed up in its initial word, _Smite_. There--Government: hierarchies of service, embassies, clemencies, healings, and though at first devastation, thereafter the indestructible hope of a future. Here--Judgment: that Figure of Fate which terror's fascinated eye ever sees alone; one final blow and irreparable ruin. And so, as with Isaiah we saw how constructive prophecy may be, with Amos we behold only the preparatory havoc, the levelling and clearing of the ground of the future.
_I have seen the Lord standing over the Altar, and He said, Smite the capital_--of the pillar--_that the very thresholds_[354] _quake, and break them on the head of all of them!_ It is a shock that makes the temple reel from roof-tree to basement. The vision seems subsequent to the prophet's visit to Bethel; and it gathers his whole attack on the national worship into one decisive and irreparable blow. _The last of them will I slay with the sword: there shall not flee away of them one fugitive: there shall not escape of them a_ single _survivor!_ Neither hell nor heaven, mountain-top nor sea-bottom, shall harbour one of them. _If they break through to Sheol, thence shall My hand take them; and if they climb to heaven, thence shall I bring them down. If they hide in Carmel's top, thence will I find them out and fetch them; and if they conceal themselves from before Mine eyes in the bottom of the sea, thence shall I charge the Serpent and he shall bite them; and if they go into captivity before their foes_--to Israel as terrible a distance from God's face as Sheol itself!--_thence will I charge the sword and it shall slay them; and I will set Mine eye upon them for evil and not for good_.
It is a ruder draft of the Hundred and Thirty-Ninth Psalm; but the Divine Pursuer is Nemesis, and not Conscience.