Along The Way (January 5th-11th, 2024)
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Amos 6 & 7
Complacent Self-Indulgence Will Be Punished
Woe to those who are at ease in Zion
and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria,
the notables of the first of the nations,
to whom the house of Israel resorts!
Cross over to Calneh and see;
from there go to Hamath the great;
then go down to Gath of the Philistines.
Are you better than these kingdoms?
Or is your territory greater than their territory,
you who put far away the evil day
and bring near a reign of violence?
Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory
and lounge on their couches
and eat lambs from the flock
and calves from the stall,
who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp
and like David improvise on instruments of music,
who drink wine from bowls
and anoint themselves with the finest oils
but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile,
and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.
The Lord God has sworn by himself
(says the Lord, the God of hosts):
I abhor the pride of Jacob
and hate his strongholds,
and I will deliver up the city and all that is in it.
If ten people remain in one house, they shall die. And if a relative, one who burns it, takes up the body to bring it out of the house and says to someone in the innermost parts of the house, “Is anyone else with you?” the answer will come, “No.” Then the relative shall say, “Hush! We must not mention the name of the Lord.”
For the Lord commands,
and he will shatter the great house to bits
and the little house to pieces.
Do horses run on rocky crags?
Does one plow the sea with oxen?
But you have turned justice into poison
and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood,
you who rejoice in Lo-debar,
who say, “Have we not by our own strength
taken Karnaim for ourselves?”
Indeed, I am raising up against you a nation,
O house of Israel, says the Lord, the God of hosts,
and they shall oppress you from Lebo-hamath
to the Wadi Arabah.
Locusts, Fire, and a Plumb Line
This is what the Lord God showed me: he was forming locusts at the time the latter growth began to sprout (it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings). When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,
“O Lord God, forgive, I beg you!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!”
The Lord relented concerning this;
“It shall not be,” said the Lord.
This is what the Lord God showed me: the Lord God was calling for judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said,
“O Lord God, cease, I beg you!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!”
The Lord relented concerning this;
“This also shall not be,” said the Lord God.
This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said,
“See, I am setting a plumb line
in the midst of my people Israel;
I will spare them no longer;
the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”
Amaziah Complains to the King
Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said,
‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword,
and Israel must go into exile
away from his land.’ ”
And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there, but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”
Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I am no prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I am a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’
“Now therefore hear the word of the Lord.
You say, ‘Do not prophesy against Israel,
and do not preach against the house of Isaac.’
Therefore thus says the Lord:
Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city,
and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,
and your land shall be parceled out by line;
you yourself shall die in an unclean land,
and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.”
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Amos 8 & 9
The Basket of Fruit
This is what the Lord God showed me: a basket of summer fruit. He said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me,
“The end has come upon my people Israel;
I will spare them no longer.
The songs of the temple shall become wailings on that day,”
says the Lord God;
“the dead bodies shall be many,
cast out in every place. Be silent!”
Hear this, you who trample on the needy,
and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
saying, “When will the new moon be over
so that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath,
so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier
and practice deceit with false balances,
buying the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals
and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”
The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
Shall not the land tremble on this account,
and everyone mourn who lives in it,
and all of it rise like the Nile,
and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?
On that day, says the Lord God,
I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
I will turn your feasts into mourning
and all your songs into lamentation;
I will bring sackcloth on all loins
and baldness on every head;
I will make it like the mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.
The time is surely coming, says the Lord God,
when I will send a famine on the land,
not a famine of bread or a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
They shall wander from sea to sea
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.
On that day the beautiful young women and the young men
shall faint for thirst.
Those who swear by Ashimah of Samaria
and say, “As your god lives, O Dan,”
and, “As the way of Beer-sheba lives” —
they shall fall and never rise again.
The Destruction of Israel
I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said:
Strike the capitals until the thresholds shake
and shatter them on the heads of all the people,
and those who are left I will kill with the sword;
not one of them shall flee away,
not one of them shall escape.
Though they dig into Sheol,
from there shall my hand take them;
though they climb up to heaven,
from there I will bring them down.
Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel,
from there I will search out and take them;
and though they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea,
there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them.
And though they go into captivity in front of their enemies,
there I will command the sword, and it shall kill them;
and I will fix my eyes on them
for harm and not for good.
The Lord, God of hosts,
he who touches the earth and it melts,
and all who live in it mourn,
and all of it rises like the Nile
and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt,
who builds his upper chambers in the heavens
and founds his vault upon the earth,
who calls for the waters of the sea
and pours them out upon the surface of the earth —
the Lord is his name.
Are you not like the Cushites to me,
O people of Israel? says the Lord.
Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt
and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?
The eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom,
and I will destroy it from the face of the earth
— except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,
says the Lord.
For I will command
and shake the house of Israel among all the nations,
as one shakes with a sieve
but no pebble shall fall to the ground.
All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword,
who say, “Evil shall not overtake or meet us.”
The Restoration of David’s Kingdom
On that day I will raise up
the booth of David that is fallen
and repair its breaches
and raise up its ruins
and rebuild it as in the days of old,
in order that they may possess the remnant of Edom
and all the nations who are called by my name,
says the Lord who does this.
The time is surely coming, says the Lord,
when the one who plows shall catch up with the one who reaps
and the treader of grapes with the one who sows the seed;
the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
and all the hills shall flow with it.
I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,
and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.
I will plant them upon their land,
and they shall never again be plucked up
out of the land that I have given them,
says the Lord your God.
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Obadiah 1
Proud Edom Will Be Brought Low
The vision of Obadiah.
Thus says the Lord God concerning Edom:
We have heard a report from the Lord,
and a messenger has been sent among the nations:
“Rise up! Let us rise against it for battle!”
I will surely make you least among the nations;
you shall be utterly despised.
Your proud heart has deceived you,
you who live in the clefts of the rock,
whose dwelling is in the heights.
You say in your heart,
“Who will bring me down to the ground?”
Though you soar aloft like the eagle,
though your nest is set among the stars,
from there I will bring you down,
says the Lord.
Pillage and Slaughter Will Repay Edom’s Cruelty
If thieves came to you,
if plunderers by night
— how you have been destroyed! —
would they not steal only what they wanted?
If grape gatherers came to you,
would they not leave gleanings?
How Esau has been pillaged,
his treasures searched out!
All your allies have deceived you;
they have driven you to the border;
your confederates have prevailed against you;
those who ate your food have set a trap for you —
there is no understanding.
On that day, says the Lord,
I will destroy the wise out of Edom
and understanding out of Mount Esau.
Your warriors shall be shattered, O Teman,
so that everyone from Mount Esau will be cut off.
Edom Mistreated His Brother
For the slaughter and violence done to your brother Jacob,
shame shall cover you,
and you shall be cut off forever.
On the day that you stood aside,
on the day that strangers carried off his wealth
and foreigners entered his gates
and cast lots for Jerusalem,
you, too, were one of them.
But you should not have gloated over your brother
on the day of his misfortune;
you should not have rejoiced over the people of Judah
on the day of their ruin;
you should not have boasted
on the day of distress.
You should not have entered the gate of my people
on the day of their calamity;
you should not have joined in the gloating over Judah’s disaster
on the day of his calamity;
you should not have stolen his goods
on the day of his calamity.
You should not have stood at the crossings
to cut off his fugitives;
you should not have handed over his survivors
on the day of distress.
For the day of the Lord is near against all the nations.
As you have done, it shall be done to you;
your deeds shall return on your own head.
For as you have drunk on my holy mountain,
all the nations shall drink continually;
they shall drink and gulp down
and shall be as though they had never been.
Israel’s Final Triumph
But on Mount Zion there shall be those who escape,
and it shall be holy,
and the house of Jacob shall take possession of those who dispossessed them.
The house of Jacob shall be a fire,
the house of Joseph a flame,
and the house of Esau stubble;
they shall burn them and consume them,
and there shall be no survivor of the house of Esau,
for the Lord has spoken.
Those of the Negeb shall possess Mount Esau,
and those of the Shephelah the land of the Philistines;
they shall possess the land of Ephraim and the land of Samaria,
and Benjamin shall possess Gilead.
The exiles of the Israelites who are in Halah
shall possess Phoenicia as far as Zarephath,
and the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad
shall possess the towns of the Negeb.
Those who have been saved shall go up to Mount Zion
to rule Mount Esau,
and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.
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Jonah 1 & 2
Jonah Tries to Run Away from God
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.
But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. Then the sailors were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up; call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.”
The sailors said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, “Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” “I am a Hebrew,” he replied. “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” Then the men were even more afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.
Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.” Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
A Psalm of Thanksgiving
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying,
“I called to the Lord out of my distress,
and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you heard my voice.
You cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
passed over me.
Then I said, ‘I am driven away
from your sight;
how shall I look again
upon your holy temple?’
The waters closed in over me;
the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped around my head
at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the Pit,
O Lord my God.
As my life was ebbing away,
I remembered the Lord,
and my prayer came to you,
into your holy temple.
Those who worship vain idols
forsake their true loyalty.
But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”
Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out onto the dry land.
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Jonah 3 & 4
Conversion of Nineveh
The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Humans and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.
Jonah’s Anger
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
The Lord God appointed a bush and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort, so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
Jonah Is Reproved
But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?”
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Micah 1 & 2
The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
Judgment Pronounced against Samaria
Hear, you peoples, all of you;
listen, O earth, and all that is in it,
and let the Lord God be a witness against you,
the Lord from his holy temple.
For the Lord is coming out of his place
and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.
Then the mountains will melt under him,
and the valleys will burst open
like wax near the fire,
like waters poured down a slope.
All this is for the transgression of Jacob
and for the sins of the house of Israel.
What is the transgression of Jacob?
Is it not Samaria?
And what is the high place of Judah?
Is it not Jerusalem?
Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country,
a place for planting vineyards.
I will pour down her stones into the valley
and uncover her foundations.
All her images shall be beaten to pieces,
all her wages shall be burned with fire,
and all her idols I will lay waste;
for as the wages of a prostitute she gathered them,
and as the wages of a prostitute they shall again be used.
The Doom of the Cities of Judah
For this I will lament and wail;
I will go barefoot and naked;
I will make lamentation like the jackals
and mourning like the ostriches.
For her wound is incurable.
It has come to Judah;
it has reached to the gate of my people,
to Jerusalem.
Tell it not in Gath;
weep not at all;
in Beth-leaphrah
roll yourselves in the dust.
Pass on your way,
inhabitants of Shaphir,
in nakedness and shame;
the inhabitants of Zaanan
do not come forth;
Beth-ezel is wailing
and shall remove its support from you.
For the inhabitants of Maroth
wait anxiously for good,
yet disaster has come down from the Lord
to the gate of Jerusalem.
Harness the steeds to the chariots,
inhabitants of Lachish;
it was the beginning of sin
to daughter Zion,
for in you were found
the transgressions of Israel.
Therefore you shall give parting gifts
to Moresheth-gath;
the houses of Achzib shall be a deception
to the kings of Israel.
I will again bring a conqueror upon you,
inhabitants of Mareshah;
the glory of Israel
shall come to Adullam.
Make yourselves bald and cut off your hair
for your pampered children;
make yourselves as bald as the eagle,
for they have gone from you into exile.
Social Evils Denounced
Woe to those who devise wickedness
and evil deeds on their beds!
When the morning dawns, they perform it,
because it is in their power.
They covet fields and seize them,
houses and take them away;
they oppress householder and house,
people and their inheritance.
Therefore thus says the Lord:
Now, I am devising against this family an evil
from which you cannot remove your necks,
and you shall not walk arrogantly,
for it will be an evil time.
On that day they shall take up a taunt song against you
and wail with bitter lamentation
and say, “We are utterly ruined;
the Lord alters the inheritance of my people;
how he removes it from me!
Among our captors he parcels out our fields.”
Therefore you will have no one in the Lord’s assembly
to allot you a piece of land.
“Do not preach” — thus they preach —
“one should not preach of such things;
disgrace will not overtake us.”
Should this be said, O house of Jacob?
Is the Lord’s patience exhausted?
Are these his doings?
Do not my words do good
to one who walks uprightly?
But you rise up against my people as an enemy;
you strip the robe from the peaceful,
from those who pass by trustingly
with no thought of war.
The women of my people you drive out
from their pleasant houses;
from their young children you take away
my glory forever.
Arise and go,
for this is no place to rest,
because of uncleanness that destroys
with a violent destruction.
If someone were to go about uttering empty falsehoods,
saying, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,”
such a one would be the preacher for this people!
A Promise for the Remnant of Israel
I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob;
I will gather the survivors of Israel;
I will set them together
like sheep in a fold,
like a flock in its pasture;
it will resound with people.
The one who breaks out will go up before them;
they will break through and pass the gate,
going out by it.
Their king will pass on before them,
the Lord at their head.
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Micah 3 & 4
Wicked Rulers and Prophets
And I said:
Listen, you heads of Jacob
and rulers of the house of Israel!
Should you not know justice? —
you who hate the good and love the evil,
who tear the skin off my people
and the flesh off their bones,
who eat the flesh of my people,
flay their skin off them,
break their bones in pieces,
and chop them up like meat in a kettle,
like flesh in a caldron.
Then they will cry to the Lord,
but he will not answer them;
he will hide his face from them at that time
because they have acted wickedly.
Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets
who lead my people astray,
who cry “Peace”
when they have something to eat
but declare war against those
who put nothing into their mouths.
Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision,
and darkness to you, without revelation.
The sun shall go down upon the prophets,
and the day shall be black over them;
the seers shall be disgraced
and the diviners put to shame;
they shall all cover their lips,
for there is no answer from God.
But as for me, I am filled with power,
with the spirit of the Lord,
and with justice and might,
to declare to Jacob his transgression
and to Israel his sin.
Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob
and chiefs of the house of Israel,
who abhor justice
and pervert all equity,
who build Zion with blood
and Jerusalem with wrong!
Its rulers give judgment for a bribe;
its priests teach for a price;
its prophets give oracles for money;
yet they lean upon the Lord and say,
“Surely the Lord is with us!
No harm shall come upon us.”
Therefore because of you
Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
and the mountain of the temple a wooded height.
Peace and Security through Obedience
In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s temple
shall be established as the highest of the mountains
and shall be raised up above the hills.
Peoples shall stream to it,
and many nations shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between many peoples
and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation;
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid,
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
For all the peoples walk,
each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God
forever and ever.
Restoration Promised after Exile
On that day, says the Lord,
I will assemble the lame
and gather those who have been driven away
and those whom I have afflicted.
The lame I will make the remnant,
and those who were cast off, a strong nation,
and the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion
now and forevermore.
And you, O tower of the flock,
hill of daughter Zion,
to you it shall come,
the former dominion shall come,
the sovereignty of daughter Jerusalem.
Now why do you cry aloud?
Is there no king in you?
Has your counselor perished,
that pangs have seized you like a woman in labor?
Writhe and groan, O daughter Zion,
like a woman in labor,
for now you shall go forth from the city
and camp in the open country;
you shall go to Babylon.
There you shall be rescued;
there the Lord will redeem you
from the hands of your enemies.
Now many nations
are assembled against you,
saying, “Let her be profaned,
and let our eyes gaze upon Zion.”
But they do not know
the thoughts of the Lord;
they do not understand his plan,
that he has gathered them as sheaves to the threshing floor.
Arise and thresh,
O daughter Zion,
for I will make your horn iron
and your hoofs bronze;
you shall beat in pieces many peoples
and shall devote their gain to the Lord,
their wealth to the Lord of the whole earth.