Chapter 16

judgment--a section more akin to iii.-vi. than to vii.-ix. The book concludes with an outlook on the redemption and prosperity which will follow in the Messianic age, ix. 8-15. It is hardly possible that this outlook can be Amos's own. In one whose interest in morality was so overwhelming, it would be strange, though perhaps not impossible, that the golden age should be described in terms so exclusively material; but the historical implications of the passage are not those of Amos's time. It is further an express contradiction of the immediately preceding words, ix. 2-5, in which, with dreadful earnestness, the prophet has expressed the thought of an inexorable and inevitable judgment from which there is no escape. Besides, while Amos addresses Israel, this passage deals with Judah, presupposes the fall[1] of the dynasty (cf. _v_. 11) and the advent of the exile (ix. 14, 15).[2] [Footnote 1: Even if only the decay were pre-supposed, the words would be quite inapplicable to the long and prosperous reign of Uzziah, i. 1.] [Footnote: The authenticity of a few other passages, cf. viii. 11, 12, has been doubted for reasons that are not always convincing. Most doubt attaches to the great doxologies, iv. 13, v. 8, 9, ix. 5, 6. The utmost that can be said with safety is that these passages are in no case necessary to the context, while v. 8, 9 is a distinct interruption, but that the conception of God suggested by them, as omnipotent and omnipresent, is not at all beyond the theological reach of Amos.]

Amos must have had predecessors, ii. 11; but even so the range and boldness of his thought are astonishing. History, reflection and revelation have convinced him that Israel has had unique religious privileges, iii. 2; nevertheless she stands under the moral laws by which all the world is bound, and which even the heathen acknowledge, iii. 9--Amos has nothing to say of any written law specially given to Israel--and by these laws she will be condemned to destruction, if she is unfaithful, just as surely as the Philistines and Phoenicians (i.). Indeed, so sternly impartial is Amos that he at times even seems to challenge the prerogative of Israel. The Philistines and Arameans had their God-guided exodus no less than Israel, and she is no more to Jehovah than the swarthy peoples of Africa, ix. 7. The universal and inexorable claims of the moral law have never had a more relentless exponent than Amos; and, though there is in him a soul of pity, vii. 2, 5, it was his peculiar task, not to proclaim the divine love, but to plead for social justice. God is just and man must be so too. Perhaps Amos's message is all the more daring and refreshing that he was not a professional prophet, vii. 14. His culture, though not formal, is of the profoundest. He is familiar with distant peoples, ix. 7, he has thought long and deeply about the past, he knows the influences that are moulding the present. The religion for which he pleaded was not a thing of rites and ceremonies, but an ideal of social justice--a justice which would not be checked at every step by avarice and cruelty, but would flow on and on like the waves of the sea, v. 24.

OBADIAH

The book of Obadiah--shortest of all the prophetic books--is occupied, in the main, as the superscription suggests, with the fate of Edom. Her people have been humbled, the high and rocky fastnesses in which they trusted have not been able to save them. Neighbouring Arab tribes have successfully attacked them and driven them from their home (_vv_, 1-7).[1] This is the divine penalty for their cruel and unbrotherly treatment of the Jews after the siege of Jerusalem, _vv_. 10-14, 15_b_. Nay, a day of divine vengeance is coming upon all the heathen, when Judah will utterly destroy Edom, and once again possess all the land, north, south, east and west, that was formerly theirs, and the kingdom shall be Jehovah's, _vv_. 15_a_, 16-21. [Footnote 1: Verses 8, 9, which imply that the catastrophe is yet to come, and speak of Edom in the third person, appear to be later than the context. For "thy mighty men, O Teman," in _v_. 9_a_, probably we should read, "the mighty men of Teman."]

The date of the prophecy seems to be fixed by the unmistakable allusion in _vv_. 11-14 to the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar in 586 B.C.--an occasion on which the Edomites abetted the Babylonians (Ezek. xxxv.; Lam. iv. 21 ff.; Ps. cxxxvii. 7). But the case is gravely complicated by the similarity, which is much too close to be accidental, between Obadiah 1-9 and the oracle against Edom in Jeremiah, xlix. 7-22 (especially _vv_. 14-16, 9, 10, 7, 22); and, though in one or two places the text of Obadiah is superior (cf. Ob. 2, 3; Jer. xlix. 15, 16), the resemblance is such that the passage in Jeremiah must be dependent on Obadiah. Now the date assigned to Jeremiah's oracle is 605 B.C. (xlvi. 2); but obviously Jeremiah could not adopt in 605 a prophecy which was not written till 586. A way out of this difficulty has usually been sought in the assumption that both prophets have made use, in different ways, of an older oracle against Edom, _vv_. 1-9 or 10. But there is no adequate reason for separating _vv_. 11-14, which must refer to the capture of Jerusalem in 586, from _vv_. 1-7. The assumption just mentioned becomes quite unnecessary when we remember that Jeremiah xlix. 7-22, as we have already seen, is probably, at least in its present form, from a period very much later than Jeremiah. The priority therefore rests with Obadiah, whose prophecy has been utilized in Jeremiah xlix.

In _vv_. 1-7 the catastrophe is not predicted for Edom, it has already fallen: it was probably an earlier stage of the Bedawin assaults, whose desolating effect upon Edom is described in Malachi