JUDGMENT OF THE NEIGHBORING GENTILE NATIONS In preparation for talking about the judgment on Israel, God proclaimed the judgment of the neighboring Gentile nations; to confirm the extent of His detest for evil, and His non-partiality to one nation at the expense of another; or to a person at the expense of another. 1- Introduction 1 – 2 2- Judgment on Damascus 3 – 5 3- Judgment on Gaza 6 – 8 4- Judgment on Tyre 9 – 10 5- Judgment on Edom 11 – 12 6- Judgment on the Ammonites 13 – 15 1- INTRODUCTION: “The words of Amos, who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake”(Amos 1: 1) The prophet Amos did not feel ashamed of proclaiming his profession as a herdsman in Tekoa, and a tender of sycamore fruit; which is only done by the lowly and the needy. Not mentioning his father’s name is because he belonged to a poor unknown family. By saying: “The words of Amos …. which he saw”, and not which he heard or said; He confirms that the words he is proclaiming, are not his own, but are the fruit of divine visions and proclamations through the Holy Spirit. He told about the location of his hometown, and the date of his prophetic work; which we mentioned in the introduction. “And he said: ‘The Lord roars from Zion, and utters His voice from Jerusalem; The pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the top of the Carmel withers’” (Amos 1: 2) That is how he began his prophecy; Dwelling in Tekoa, on the rim of the wilderness, has probably provided him with an experience of the roar of the lion that brings terror to the hearts of the herdsmen, and of the farmers. Amos likened the wrath of God over sin to a roaring lion, saying: “A lion has roared! Who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3: 8). And said that the lion’s roar does not come from void, or emerge without cause: “Will a lion roar in the forest, when he has no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he has caught nothing?” (Amos 3: 4) The prophets Hosea and Joel spoke of God – blessed is His name – as a Lion that the earth and heavens will shake when He roars; and everyone will realize that He is the shelter and the stronghold of His people; That He dwells among them in the mountain of His sanctuary in Jerusalem, that no alien would ever pass through it again (Joel 3: 16, 17); … And that when He roars, He shall gather His people from Egypt and Assyria, and let them dwell in their own houses (Hosea 11: 11, 12). Here, however, the prophet Amos sees the Holy God as Lion, lying in Zion, roaring with His voice, because of the sins of Israel, Judah, and all the neighboring Gentile nations; and because He does not endure seeing the sin coming close to His 4 sanctuary and surrounding it. When He roars, the foundations of sin will shake, and the works of the old man will be destroyed; Fire will come out of His mouth, to burn up all its palaces, and to scatter its being. When the Lion roars, the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the top of the Carmel, the most fertile land, withers; And all will realize that the voice of the Lord will dry up everything set upon evil, and will destroy all the fruits of corruption. The word of God is not set upon complimenting, flattering, or faltering between the good and the evil; But is set upon the destruction of evil to set the good in its place; Or is set upon the crucifixion of the old man, to proclaim the resurrection of the New Man. The Lion, coming out from the tribe of Judah has proclaimed this, by saying: “No one puts a piece of un-shrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved” (Matthew 9: 16, 17). And according to St. Ambrose: [The Lord commands us not to mingle the new with the old; And the apostle instructs us not to put on a new garment over an old one; but to take off the old garment and put on the new one, that “ we shall not be found naked” (2 Corinthians 5: 2-4) 1]. Jacob was aware of that when he blessed his son Judah, from whose seed the Lion who will roar against the sin, and who will terrify death, is to come; saying: “You are a lion’s cub, O Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness – which dares rouse him up?” (Genesis 49: 9). He saw him, crouching like a lion on the cross, roaring on the sin that corrupted the human life, killing His prey – the devil and his works – and granting sanctification to humanity, turning it into the holy Zion and Jerusalem. Actually, Amos’ prophecy, as a whole, is a roar of the Lion from Zion; It starts by terrifying chastisements: fire burning up palaces, destroying strongholds, and scattering the inhabitants, whether of the Jews or of the Gentiles; … Yet, not to remain ruins with no dwellers, but to open wide the doors of hope, by the end of the prophecy. In place of the palaces, “On that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David which has fallen down, and repair its damages; I will raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of olds”; He will dwell in its midst, and “All the Gentiles are called by His name” (Amos 9: 11, 12). He breaks down and builds up; He uproots and plants; He destroys the old man, to set the new man in us instead! That is the roar of the Lion from Zion, His voice from the holy Jerusalem! 2- JUDGMENT ON DAMASCUS: In the judgment on the Gentiles and on Judah, Amos followed the same pattern to proclaim that the Author of the judgment is “God Himself”; Their three and four transgressions; Not turning away the punishment; And on sending a burning fire; … Yet each nation, had her one or more specific transgression. At the beginning of every judgment he says: “Thus says the Lord …“ (Amos 1: 3, 6, 9, 11, 13; 2: 1, 4, 6). Even if not all nations worship Him, Yet He is God of the whole earth, Judges all, condemns all, and also cares for all! 1 القدیس أمبروسیوس: تفسیر لو 27 :5 الخ (ترجمة مدام عایدة حنا بسطا). 5 As to His talk about their three and four transgressions; These two figures refer here to several concepts; of which are the following: (1) The figure 3 refers to the human soul, being created according to the image and likeness of the Trinity; Whereas the figure 4 refers to the body, being taken from the earth with its four directions (east, west, north, and south). It is as though God judges us on our mental sins (like pride and hate); and on our physical sins (like the love of luxury, gluttony, and carnal lusts). And according to St. Augustine: [Because sins could be committed by the mind or will alone, or together with the works of the body, to be seen … Namely, three as the nature of the soul; and four because of the body; Man being formed of both1]. (2) According to St. Jerome, the three and four transgressions, mean the sin, having evolved into its third and fourth generation; turning from being merely a thought in the mind, to be proclaimed through the speech, then translated into action, and finally turns into a habit. God, as it is written: “is longsuffering, and abundant in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but He by no means clears the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children in the third and fourth generation” (Numbers 14: 18). This means that God does not punish us on our thoughts on the spot, but on the evil works, and the sinful habits coming from them; according to the words that came on the mouth of Amos: “For the three transgression and the four of so and so city…” (Amos 1: 3) 2. Commenting again on those three and four transgressions, St. Jerome says they are: a- Thinking of evil (the first transgression) b- Doing the evil (the second transgression). c- Not repenting; namely, continuing to do it (the third transgression) d- Preaching it (the fourth transgression) He says: [It is as though the Lord says: You accepted evil, and I forgave you; You did it, and I forgave you; You did not repent it, and I still forgave you; …. Are you going to preach it as well?! That is what the book means concerning the three and four transgressions3]. These are the tree and the four transgressions, that He will not turn away its punishment; but will send a fire of His wrath to devour the palaces of their evil. Although He does not endure sin, Yet He loves the sinners! This fire is probably the natural fruit of the sin, the consuming fire; God will let man harvest the fruit of his work; embrace the fire of his sin; to consume his palaces of vanity, that bear shining, yet temporary glitter. That is concerning the Gentile nations as a whole; Now let us talk about each of them: Damascus, the capital of Syria (Aram). From which Israel lived about a whole century in a state of terror; And some of the contemporaries of Amos lived through the wars brought up against Israel by Hazael king of Aram and his son Ben-Hadad (2 Kings 8: 7-15. 28-29; 10: 32-33; 13: 3-7, 22-25); Gilead, east of the Jordan, and north of Syria, has been the stage of those wars. The prophet Elisha, seeing, by the eye of prophecy, how bitter and fierce they will be, he wept ; And when Hazael -- before he took over the 1 Ser. On N.T. Lessons. Ser. 1: 34. 2 Ep. 130: 8. 3 On Ps. Ho 1; Comm. On Amos 1: 5. 6 kingdom – asked him why he weeps, he answered: “Because I see the evil that you will do to the children of Israel: Their strongholds you will set on fire, their young men you will kill with the sword, and you will dash their children, and rip open their women with child” (2 kings 8: 12). As to the fruits of this ferocity: (1) God sent a fire into the house of Hazael, that devoured the palaces of Ben- Hadad (4). If that king and his son thought that they could destroy and take over the kingdom of God; God with the fire of His justice returned the fire of their evil over their palaces, the center of their authority, the location of their plots, and the place of their security. In bitterness I say that our inner Hazael is nothing but our human ‘ego’, which occupies the heart as her palace; And, together with the evil it produces (Ben-Hadad), it makes war against our energies, talents, and potentials, to the account of evil; instead of letting God reign over the heart, and of working as a tool of righteousness by God. … While assuming that it is able to reign, to have authority, and to dwell securely in its inner palace, the ‘ego’ actually bring upon itself a fire that would consume its potentials, and make it lose all its authority. Let is then deliver our inner palace to our Lord Jesus, instead of delivering it to Hazael and to Ben-Hadad, to make it their dwelling place, and the center of their kingdom. Let the Lord proclaim in it His Kingdom, so strongly, that no fire of evil, especially that of the ‘ego’, would be able to approach; being flared by the heavenly fire of the Holy Spirit Himself, Who conforms it day to day, so that it may eventually reach the full measure of the stature of Christ; And who sets forth with it from glory to glory, to bring it forth in Jesus Christ, into the bosom of the Father, where it will forever settle. Let us deliver our palace to the heavenly King with His fiery Spirit, to keep Hazael and his son Ben-Hadad from dwelling in it. (2) God broke down the strongholds surrounding Damascus; … Not that man would live with no strongholds; But, instead of the strongholds made of stone, he would find in the Lord Himself, his stronghold and the refuge of his life. … When there are those human arms of stone, man would lean on them; That is why the Lord destroys them, to grant us instead the eternal arms, and we would say: “I will love You, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold” (Psalm 18: 1, 2). Let the mortal stony walls of Damascus be destroyed; that the Lord would provide us with Himself, the Rock of Ages, a Stony Wall to which the serpent could never approach, to deceive us while we are inside it. We would enter into it and find comfort; A fiery divine wall would surround us, and flare our depths, to become like the heavenly creatures, like “His ministers, the flames of fire” (Psalm 104: 4). (3) The valley of Aven – also called the valley of vanity, or the valley of idols – turned into a ruin with no inhabitants. With evil working in man, he assumes that he has acquired the human wisdom, that makes him rich at the expense of others; to find out that he has acquired in his heart a valley of vanity, or a center of idol worship. By evil, he actually purchases a void; and by malice, he acquires a deprivation! That is the portion of the wicked about whom the Psalmist said: “They shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb” (Psalm 37: 2). 7 (4) Every great (who holds the scepter) from ‘Beth Eden’ (the house of gladness and rejoice) will die. Man, through his preoccupation with temporal pleasures, will lose everything great and strong in him. (5) The people of Syria (the Aramites) shall go captive to Kir in the kingdom of Mady. This was historically realized as it came in (2 Kings 16:9; Isaiah 22: 5, 6). Who are those Aramites, inhabitants of Jerusalem, on whom Haziel and his son Ben-Hadad reign, but the energies of man, his potentials, and his mental (mind) and physical talents?! When Haziel ; namely, the ‘ego’ reigns on them, they would turn into servitude, and would work to the account of the kingdom of Mady…. Man would lose his energies, not to live without any, but to live with energies dedicated to evil, and deviated from their exalted mission… Man, with all his potentials, would work to the account, and at the service of the devil; Instead of having them exalted by the Holy Spirit, to work to the account of the Kingdom of God. In short, the fruit of what Haziel and his son Ben-Hadad have done; namely, of pride, and self-esteem, is that man’s inner palace; and his stronghold in which he found refuge, would be destroyed; Would lose every greatness and strength, as in Beth Aven; Would acquire deprivation in Beth Eden, or house of gladness and rejoice; And all his energies would be captivated to the account of the devil! In other words, he would lose his authority (his palace), his peace (his strongholds), and his gladness (in Beth Eden). That is what God meant by the judgment of Damascus So that when man realizes the extent of complete deprivation and utter devastation, he has reached; he would take refuge in God alone, which would restore to him, double as what he lost, on an exalted heavenly level. 3- JUDGMENT OF GAZA: Gaza was the capital of the Philistines in those days, whose transgression was their abuse of the children of Judah who resorted to their land from the face of Sennechrib the king of Assyria. They took them captives and sold them as slaves to the Edomites, the worst of their enemies; with the intention to wipe away the name of Israel, according to the words of the Psalmist: “Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more” (Psalm 83: 4). That is why the fire returned over them to devour the palaces of their main cities: Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Ekron. St. Augustine believes that the word Philistines means (those fallen through drinking wine)1; and refers to the souls drunkards by the love of the world and its pleasures. While St. Jerome interprets this name as (death by an intoxicating drink); believing that it refers to those who drink the cup of seduction of the devil, as a poison for the fast perdition and fall of the soul2. 4- JUDGMENT OF TYRE: Phoenicia and its capital Tyre, used to boast a mighty fleet and a huge trade, on an international level. Disregarding the covenant of brotherhood between their king Hiram and king Solomon (1 Kings 5: 1-12; 9: 10-14), and delivering up the whole Israeli captivity, who resorted to their land, to their enemy Edom; God allowed for their palaces 1 On Ps. 83: 5. .175 ، 2 حزقیال، 1981 ، ص 174 8 to be devoured by fire, which was literally realized when Nebuchadnezzar put it under siege, and took it over in the sixth century B.C. Both St. Augustine1 and St. Jerome2, believe that the word ‘Tyre’ means affliction or tribulation; That is why what came concerning Tyre in the book of Ezekiel (Chapter 28), refers to the devil who bring men forth into tribulations and Satanic temptations. 5- JUDGMENT OF EDOM: Edom was Esau the brother of Jacob. The Edomites took an adversary position against the children of Israel (Jacob) as they were crossing the wilderness, denying them the right of passage through their territory (Numbers 20: 14-21). They often gloated on Israel’s misfortunes; And sometimes attacked them3. The word ‘Edom’ is derived from ‘Adam’, meaning (a bloody man) or (an earthly man)4; and refers to love of bloodshed for the sake of earthly benefits. For being flared with the fire of evil and that of the love of bloodshed; God returned the fire over Edom to burn down the palaces of his main province ‘Teman’ (Teman was a tribe named after the firstborn of Eliphaz the son of Esau, and the land where he dwelt) (Genesis 26: 11, 15, 42). It is located north of Edom (Ezekiel 25: 13); its inhabitants were known for their wisdom (Jeremiah 49: 7, 13) 5. ‘Bozrah’, whose palaces were also burned, was also a city in the land of Edom (Isaiah 34: 6; 63: 1). The word ‘Bozrah’ in Hebrew means a fortress or a sheep-hold. It was utterly devastated as prophesied by the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 49: 13)… If ‘Bozrah’ represents the fortress of Teman in Edom; Evil would burn up its goods, destroy its possibilities, and turn it into ruins. 6- JUDGMENT ON THE AMMONITES: In our study of the book of Ezekiel we saw that the Ammonites were the descendants of ‘Ben Ammi’ the son of ‘Lot’ (Genesis 19: 38); a hard-hearted race, who used to offer their own children as sacrifices to the god Milcom (1 Kings 11: 5-33); and were continuously at war against the children of Israel6. The Ammonites, representing ferocity based on greed; “ripped open the women with a child in Gilead, that they might enlarge their territory” (Amos 1: 13). A horrible portrait of how greed corrupts the heart of man and his natural compassion for the sake of earthly profit; and transforms him into a wild animal with no compassion on weak women and helpless fetuses. Their natural fruit would be that the walls of their capital ‘Rabbah’ would be be kindled by fire, its palaces would be devoured; would turn into a field of battle and tempest; and their king and princes will be captivated. And if the word ‘Rabbah’ means (great), he who treat others with cruelty and destroy them for the sake of his earthly personal profit, and to become the greatest and richest of all, will soon have his walls destroyed, his palaces burnt down, his inner life turn into a bitter battle field; will lose his 1 Pl 25: 240. 2 On Ps. 83: 5. .174 – 3 حزقیال ص 173 4 On Ps. 83: 5. 5 New Westminister DICT., of Bible, p. 929. .171 – 6 حزقیال ص 169 9 true peace, and his thought, heart, and all his energies will be captivated by his enemy. When he assumes that he has got everything through his might, he will find himself in an utter void, and a complete loss, even of his life, peace, and potentials.
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