The Prophet: Amos (13 page)

“Barely.”

“How do you feel?”

“As though someone whipped me and threw me down some stone steps.”

“You’ve lain like death for three days.”

So long!
He remembered none of it. “May the Lord bless you for your kindness.” Had he made it outside the city, he might have been lying in a field somewhere, unconscious and prey to scavengers.

“How is your head?”

Amos felt the bandages. He had a slight headache, but the dizziness was gone. “I’ll live.” His stomach growled loudly.

“It will be morning soon.” Hosea grinned. “My mother will make bread.”

Amos smiled.

“It is good to have you as our guest, Amos.” He grimaced. “Despite the circumstances, of course.”

Amos rubbed his head. A bump still protruded, but it was not as tender as the day he had received it. He still had trouble seeing, and realized after a slight exploration that his eyelids were swollen almost shut.

“I can’t serve you bread, but there is some wine.”

“A little wine and I’d probably sleep for another two days. Water, please.” Amos found his staff beside the pallet and struggled to rise.

Hosea helped him. “Please. Don’t go. Everyone shouted so loudly in the square I could not hear what you had to say. I want to know what you prophesied about Israel.”

“It is the Lord’s Word and not mine that stands against Israel for all its many sins.”

“You said God will punish Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and Judah. And now God will bring judgment on Israel as well. The entire world is condemned. Not one nation will remain standing after God’s judgment.”

Amos sank wearily onto the bench and leaned his forearms on the table. “Judah will be the last to fall.”

“Is there hope if Judah repents?”

“There is always hope when a nation repents.” But they seldom did. It took famine, drought, or flood to bring a nation to its knees before God. It took war!

Hosea poured water and handed the cup to Amos. “But Judah will still fall in the end?”

Amos drank deeply and held out the cup for more. “Men fell long ago and still refuse the hand of God to help them rise again.” He drained the cup again.

“What then will be left, Amos?”

“God’s promise, my young friend. You reminded me that His faithful love endures forever. So it does. His mercy is poured out upon those who love Him. The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him. Destruction will come as surely as the sun rises in the morning, but a remnant will remain. Men like you who love the Lord and want to follow Him. The rest will be like chaff in the wind, here one day and gone the next.”

“I should feel more hope than I do. I feel I must do something to help you.”

“
Listen.
And encourage others to do likewise. And then do what the Lord commands.”

The sun rose and with it Beeri and Jerusha. She prepared the morning meal. They prayed and broke bread together.

“Why don’t you stay here in Bethel, Amos?” Hosea looked at his father. “Wouldn’t it be far better for him to live here with us?”

Beeri nodded.

Amos fought the temptation. “More convenient, perhaps, but dangerous for you. I have a place to live.”

“At least stay a few more days.” Jerusha offered him more bread. “Until you’ve recovered from your fall.”

Amos thanked them.

After another day, Amos longed to stay. He enjoyed the conversations with Beeri and Hosea that lasted far into the night, always centering on the Lord and His commandments.

Beeri worked as a scribe, and Hosea studied the scrolls his father kept in the cabinet. Jerusha used what little money they had wisely. Beeri read from the Scriptures locked in the cabinet each evening. Much he knew by memory, and Hosea along with him. “They were taken away once,” Beeri told him, “but I had another copy hidden.”

Beeri questioned Amos only once. “How is it a prophet of God does not know the Scriptures?”

“I’ve spent my life in the pastureland with my sheep. Other than a few years when I was a boy, I’ve had little opportunity to sit before a rabbi and learn the Law. What I know is given to me by God.”

Beeri was quick to apologize. “I did not mean to question your calling, Amos.”

“I take no offense, but I will say that had I had the opportunity, I doubt I could do as you have done. Some men have minds that can take in knowledge, like you and Hosea. What I know is the land, the night skies, my sheep.”

Beeri nodded. “That is a great deal in itself, my friend.”

“The Lord is our shepherd,” Hosea said. “Surely the Lord sent you here to show us the way home.”

“I’ve usually had to deal with a few wayward sheep.” Amos shook his head. “But never an entire flock such as Israel so determined to find trouble.”

After six days Amos knew he must leave. Here, in this quiet, devout household, he slept comfortably, ate well, and enjoyed warm fellowship. But, in this small dwelling tucked away in the labyrinth of Bethel, among these hospitable people, he could not hear the Lord’s voice as he could when he stood beneath the stars in an open field.

“I must go.”

“Back to Jerusalem?” Hosea leaned forward, eager. “Say the word and I will go with you!”

“No. I must go out into the hills and return to my place of rest.”

“But it’s only a cave.”

“I’ve slept at the entrance of many caves, Hosea. It is a sheepfold and reminds me of the simpler life I had before the Lord called me to come to Bethel.”

Jerusha looked downcast, Beeri confused. “Surely this is more comfortable than a cave.”

“Yes, it is.” But distracted by the pleasure of their company, he could not clear his mind long enough to hear the quiet Voice that directed his footsteps and his words.

Neither Hosea nor his father tried to convince him otherwise. Jerusha filled his scrip with roasted grain and raisins, almonds and barley bread.

Just before dusk, Hosea walked with him to the city gate. When he started to follow Amos outside, Amos turned.

“Go back, Hosea. Convince your father to move to Judah. Go to Tekoa and speak with my servant, Eliakim. Tell him I sent you. He will help you find a priest in Jerusalem to help you get settled. I know it will be difficult to start over there, but you have no future here.”

Hosea nodded. “I will tell my father everything you have said.”

“May the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. . . .” He could not finish.

Hosea clasped his hand. “May the Lord show you His favor and give you His peace.”

Amos walked away, shoulders bent and aching.
Spare them, Lord. Pluck them out of the destruction to come. Especially young Hosea, who has such a hunger and thirst for You
.

The first night proved the most difficult, for after days with kind friends, loneliness set in and with it a longing to go home to Tekoa and his sheep. The Lord spoke to him in his dreams. When Amos awakened with the dawn, he rose with renewed strength.

Return to Bethel and speak to My people again.

He knew what he must do. If it meant another lashing, another beating, or even death, Amos would do what the Lord called him to do.

Still bruised and sore, he limped down the hill and stood at the gates, waiting for them to open. When they did, he went forward, staff in hand.

The guard looked far from pleased. “You!”

Without a word, Amos walked past him and up the street. He stood in the temple square. “The idols you’ve made will disgrace you. They are frauds. They can do nothing for you. The Lord your God is the Creator of everything that exists, and you are His special possession. Come back to Him. Turn away from godless living and sinful pleasures. We should live in this world with self-control, right conduct, and devotion to God!”

The few who paused to listen quickly changed their minds and passed him by. Guards stood at the temple doorway, sniggering.

After a week, the temple guards locked him in stocks.

Issachar came in the night and spoke from behind a pillar. “You should say the things you first said, Amos. Then you wouldn’t be locked up in the stocks. You wouldn’t be a joke to everyone who passes by.”

Amos lifted his head. Had Issachar come only to taunt? “I speak the Word of the Lord.” Exhausted, every muscle aching, hungry, thirsty, he fought the depression filling him. “You would do well to heed it.”

After a nervous glance around, Issachar came out and stood before him. “You’ve only to look around Bethel to see how God has blessed us!” He spoke low, half pleading, half frustrated.

Amos felt Issachar’s tension. He watched him look around and edge back toward the deeper shadows. “Fear God, not men.”

Issachar leaned close, angry. “I’m here for your own good. Stop speaking against Israel. You insult us!”

“God gives you an opportunity to repent.”

“
Raca!
Fool. You’re going to get yourself killed if you keep on this way.” He disappeared into the night without offering so much as a piece of dried bread or a sip of water.

“This is your hour, Issachar. The hour of darkness.” Amos wept softly.

Though he became a joke in Bethel, he did not stop speaking the Word of the Lord after he was released from the stocks.

Every morning, he came into city. Every day, he spoke.

No one listened. No one left gifts at the entrance of his cave anymore. His only regret over that was not having anything to offer the poor he saw each time he entered the city, the men whose robes and sandals had been stripped from them as collateral for debts they would never be able to pay. Amos writhed inwardly over the mercilessness of the rich. He could only offer encouragement to the poor whose outer garments had not been returned when the night chill set in. “The Lord hears your prayers.” Even they would not listen to him.

He saw the widow in the marketplace again. She saw him as well and turned her back to him, ordering her hungry children to do the same.

No one listened to him anymore. Those who had so relished the first prophecies turned deaf ears to anything said against Israel.

Lord, when they see me on the street, they turn the other way. I am ignored as if I were dead!

For six months, he stood waiting at the gates in the morning and departed just before they were shut at night. Day after day, Amos preached the Word of the Lord and day after day, he suffered mockery and disdain. The neophyte priests gloated while Amaziah watched balefully from a high temple window.

Even as he cried out the truth, people walked up the steps and into the temple of Bethel, day by day sealing their fate with their indifference toward the Lord. Life and death were before them.

And they continued to embrace death with foolish abandon.