By Rabbi Yitzchak Etshalom
Maggid Books
Jerusalem, 2024
464 pages
Reviewed by Sarah Rindner
One of our family’s favorite songs to play in the car here in Israel is a feel-good anthem called “Al Tira Yisrael,” (“Have No Fear, Israel”). The version we listen to, by Israeli singer Itay Levi, is meant to inspire confidence during the difficult period following October 7. Its refrain includes a quote from the Biblical Book of Amos: “Do not fear Israel, do not be afraid, / For are you not a young lion?/ And if a lion roars—who won’t be afraid?/ Who won’t be afraid?”
The sentiment of Israel roaring like a lion reached its pinnacle during the “Sha’agat HaAri” (“Lion’s Roar”) joint US–Israeli campaign against Iran, which took place between Purim and Pesach this year. This, too, draws on Amos and suggests continuity with the “Rising Lion” campaign that took place against Iran one year ago in June. Yet a closer reading of Amos reveals a more complex context for the line, “If a lion roars, who will not be afraid?” One might even ask whether its fear is meant for our enemies or for our own society.
Amos was a Judean shepherd and farmer living in the eighth century bce in a place called Tekoa, located on the edge of the desert southeast of Jerusalem. Despite living in a time of relative tranquility, he is called upon by G-d to warn the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, largely residing in Samaria, to stop their corrupt behavior or face destruction. Amos prophesies using rich and vivid literary language. The lion is one recurring motif among many that the prophet employs to stunning and devastating effect.
Rabbi Yitzchak Etshalom, a well-known Tanach teacher based in Los Angeles, authored a wonderful volume entitled Amos: The Genius of Prophetic Rhetoric published by Maggid Books, an imprint of Koren Publishers in Jerusalem. The book is part of a series of scholarly volumes that address specific Biblical books. Each book is designed to be read on its own but also serves as a learning supplement. It offers deep, line-by-line analysis of a book’s language that is sensitive to the history of traditional interpretation, as well as to its historical and archaeological context, and to a peshat-based “close reading” of the text itself. In this spirit, Rabbi Etshalom’s Amos marries rabbinic interpretation with scholarly analysis, while demonstrating an unyielding dedication to making sense of Amos’s brilliant but dense and sometimes elusive prophetic rhetoric.
One of the signature features of the Book of Amos is its opening formulation of “for three sins [of so-and-so country], for four, I will not recant.” Rabbi Etshalom paraphrases this as “I have forgiven/overlooked three sins of this nation, but the fourth one is too grievous to overlook.” This rhetorical pattern appears elsewhere in the Torah, such as in the Book of Proverbs, and Rabbi Etshalom notes that these two numbers add up to the number seven, which is an important number in Biblical poetry representing a complete cycle. Indeed, this very “three-four” pattern is employed seven times in the beginning of Amos to describe dire prophetic punishments for seven kingdoms, such as Edom, Ammon and Moab, which surround the Northern Kingdom, and includes, interestingly enough, the Kingdom of Judah as well. Rabbi Etshalom’s analysis here also incorporates a larger introduction to Biblical poetry and to the role of numerological patterns. Amos makes heavy use of the “heptad,” or groupings of seven, to relay his prophecies and even to structure individual verses and poetic sequences.
Thus begins the real heart of the Book of Amos, a vivid and painful account of the ways in which the people of the Kingdom of Israel have rejected their mission as G-d’s chosen people by exploiting the innocent.
Rabbi Etshalom’s thorough treatment of these verses helps us imagine the situation of a Samarian audience listening to Amos’s speech. They have just heard the punishments that are about to befall their enemies on all sides. The fortresses of Gaza will be devoured, the walls of Tyre will be burnt down, and Ammon will go into exile. Even the Kingdom of Judah has not fully observed the laws of the Torah, and it, too, faces conquest and destruction. It’s not too far-fetched to imagine a Samarian audience feeling somewhat reassured by these prophecies, which are directed at their adversaries or rivals. Alternatively, these prophecies might induce a sense of dread because the listeners know, on some level, that their behavior is also far from perfect, and they wonder if they are next on the list. Rabbi Etshalom explores the different ways in which Amos’s “rhetorical sleight-of-hand” may be interpreted or experienced, ultimately leading to the understanding that “the greatest punishment is waiting for none but Israel.”
Thus begins the real heart of the Book of Amos, a vivid and painful account of the ways in which the people of the Kingdom of Israel have rejected their mission as G-d’s chosen people by exploiting the innocent. “For three sins of Israel, and for four, I will not recant: For their selling a tzaddik for silver, and the needy (for a pair of) shoes” (Amos 2:6–7). While the actions of the surrounding nations are cruel and unusual—the Ammonites rip open the pregnant women of Gilead, and the king of Moab incinerates the bones of the king of Edom to lime—the sins of the Israelites are largely “white-collar” crimes of corruption and infidelity. Yet for the G-d of Israel, even these sins are worthy of catastrophic punishment: “Therefore, because you trample upon the poor, and take from him extractions of wheat; you have built houses of hewn stone, but you will not dwell in them, you have planted pleasant vineyards but you will not drink of their wine” (Amos 5:11).
Perhaps the intensity of Amos’s rebukes may be attributable to the seeming complacency of his audience. “You cows of Bashan,” he declares in one sequence directed toward women of the Northern Kingdom, “who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to their masters, ‘Bring, that we may drink!’” (Amos 4:1). Amos warns that these wealthy landowners will be cast out on “fishhooks” and will experience starvation, thirst, pestilence and slaughter. Rabbi Etshalom analyzes each punishment with an eye to its meaning and significance, drawing parallels with other Biblical books that help explain how these rebukes may have been received. G-d choosing Israel means that He expects more from them than other nations of the world: “You alone have I singled out of all the families of the earth; that is why I will call you to account for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2).
Amos is a literary prophet along the lines of Isaiah. His book almost entirely consists of poetry, with the exception of one small narrative section. There, Amos’s words are heard by Amatziah, a false priest of the Northern temple at Beit El, and delivered to King Jeroboam of Israel (to be distinguished from the original Jeroboam I, who was the first king of the breakaway Northern Kingdom). Amatziah warns Jeroboam of Amos’s prophecies: “the country cannot endure the things he is saying” (Amos 7:10). The question of what precisely this means is of interest to Rabbi Etshalom in his discussion of the verse. One potential ambiguity is whether Amos’s words are threatening to the crown because of the immense suffering they predict, or if the real threat is that Amos’s audience may actually listen to him, repent, and thus potentially avert the verdict that has been decreed.
Indeed, while Amos’s prophecies are harsh, they always carry with them a kind of escape hatch: “Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; perhaps the Lord G-d of Hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph” (Amos 5:15). The motif of the lion used throughout the book is meant to terrify the Israelite audience and capture their attention. The opening anthem of the book has the word of G-d “roaring from Zion.” The lion of the Book of Amos evokes the wrath of G-d, not His protection. Yet the lion’s roar does not emanate from vindictiveness or cruelty; it represents justice. Rabbi Etshalom notes that one of the most famous lines of Amos appears in Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail and became a staple of the American Civil Rights Movement: “Spare Me the sound of your hymns, / And let Me not hear the music of your lutes. / But let justice well up like water, / Righteousness like an unfailing stream” (Amos 5:23–24, JPS Trans.).
The image of justice “welling up like water,” comes in direct contrast to the scenes of desiccated thirst that Amos prophesies for Israel in the future—when “beautiful maidens and young men shall faint with thirst” (Amos 8:13). Righteousness, not water, is what is needed to restore life to the Northern Kingdom, which at this moment is rich in material rather than spiritual abundance: “A time is coming—declares my Lord G-d—when I will send a famine upon the land: not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11).
The Book of Amos may be filled with rebuke, but like all prophetic books, it ends on a distinctly hopeful note. The final lines of the book predict the restoration of the Davidic monarchy, which will unite both kingdoms under one sovereign, in a line that we sing on the holiday of Sukkot every year: “In that day, I will raise up the fallen booth of David [sukkat David hanofelet]. . . .” The sukkah in this verse famously suggests both the sukkot, the temporary huts of the Wilderness, as well as David’s Temple in Jerusalem. Yet Rabbi Etshalom adds another twist: The word sukkah is also sometimes used to refer to a lion’s lair, as it is in two other places in the Bible. He writes, “Amos imagines a Davidic monarchy, mighty as a lion, bringing protection for the people—yet it will ever remain a sukkah, an inherently insubstantial structure whose stability is entirely dependent on the extent of its loyalty to G-d and His Divine truths of righteous justice” (425).
Perhaps then it should not be a great surprise that Amos’s lion imagery—originally meant to frighten the Kingdom of Israel—is repurposed in modern Israeli culture as a threat against enemies and a national rallying cry. Even within the book, the significance of the lion’s roar is double-edged. When we forsake the path of righteousness and loyalty to G-d’s words, it can make us quiver in our tracks. But when our house is in order—virtuous, united and committed to the protection of the most vulnerable in our society—then the roar of the lion becomes a proud anthem rather than a harbinger of destruction.
Sarah Rindner is a writer and educator who lives in Israel.