Selling the Poor for a Pair of Shoes

Ranchers take a pretty good read of the land – and when grazing lands grow dry they think hard about the implications. Amos was a rancher who thought hard and prayed hard. In his day, 200 years after King David, Israel was a fractured nation, split into north and south. Both were prosperous and religious, and they credited God with their prosperity.

But Amos recognized that their religion had very little effect on their ethics. While the wealthy were making money hand over fist, it was largely at the expense of the poor. They would “sell the needy for a pair of sandals” Amos 2:6.

Eugene Peterson says, "exploitation justified in the name of religion is the most dangerous energy known to humankind." Because the wealthy withheld justice, Yahweh withheld the rain.

I sent rain on one town, but withheld it from another.
One field had rain; another had none and dried up. Amos 4:7


Amos believed there was a connection between social ethics and climate change, between injustice and environmental disaster. Moses and Solomon had taught the same thing in earlier generations, and in our own century Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel, and Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress, illustrate how the well-being of human societies depends on restraint and respect. Unbridled greed, religious presumption and moral complacency inevitably lead to cultural and environmental disaster.

God wasn’t about to let Israel self-destruct without warning. So Amos roared to the people of both north and south to repent of their callous indifference to the plight of their poor neighbors, to recognize that their religion was hypocrisy and a smear on the good name of God. He urged them to recognize the signs of their times, to see God’s hand in the difficulties of their lives.

"I gave you empty stomachs in every city
and lack of bread in every town.
"I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away....

People staggered from town to town for water
but did not get enough to drink,
Yet you have not returned to me," declares the LORD.

Amos warned of worse judgments that would befall the land. He predicted earthquake and darkness – and, indeed, in June 763, an eclipse of the sun coincided with an earthquake, but even that brought no serious change of heart. Amos warned that the northern nation of Israel would fall to enemies and be sent into exile. But Israel’s spiritual elite rejected Amos’s warnings.

Then Amos predicted a disaster of even more debilitating proportions – a famine, not of failed crops, but a spiritual famine. We'll look at that on Friday.

Photo Sources:
Ranching - Jack Dykinga - USDA ARS
Shoes: - Tom's *
Solar Eclipse - linuxhub
* Click here for more about Tom's, a One-for-One company that gives a pair of new shoes to a needy person for every pair the company sells.