Amos in the First and Twentieth Century
I had the privilege of preaching on Amos 5:18-27 in my church, and the time spent preparing for it was precious. One of the things that impressed me as I read what people had to say about chapter 5, and in particular 5:18-27, is the different ways that Amos can be appropriated and used in various times and cultures.
I would like to show you an example of how Amos is used in the 1st and 20th centuries. First I want to consider how Stephen quoted verses 5:26-27 in Acts 7 and then how Martin Luther King Jr. quoted verse 5:24 in his famous I Have a Dream speech.
Beyond Babylon
As Stephen talked about the idolatry of Israel in the wilderness, he makes a connection between that idolatry and later worship of false gods. He cites Amos 5:25-27 which basically follows the Septuagint (LXX) with minor variations. Although the differences between the Masoretic Text (MT) and the LXX are worth studying, I am only interested here in Stephen’s use of “Babylon” at the end of Acts 7:43. The basic context is that Israel committed idolatry and, because of that, God would send the people into exile. Here are the verses:
And I will send you into exile beyond Babylon. (Acts 7:43b)
And I will send you into exile beyond Damascus (Amos 5:27a, MT)
And I will send you into exile beyond Damascus (Amos 5:27a, LXX)
Both MT and LXX agree that the exile will be beyond Damascus whereas Stephen changes it to Babylon. On the reason why Stephen chose “beyond Babylon” instead of “beyond Damascus” (i.e., in Assyria), I. Howard Marshall says,
“Stephen, with the advantage of hindsight, took the prophecy to include the definitive captivity of Judah in Babylon and paraphrased it accordingly.” (Commentary of the NT Use of the OT [Baker Academy, 2007] p. 566).
If I understand Marshall correctly, the more significant exile of the Southern Kingdom of Judah became paradigmatic of the very idea of exile and his use of Babylon gives us a bigger picture of the extent of God’s punishment.
If this is correct, it is interesting to observe that Stephen preserves the spirit of what Amos was saying. In this sense, the other differences that we see between the MT and the LXX still keep the main point intact, that is, because of the people’s idolatry, God will send them into Exile.
Can we call this a hindsight use of Scriptures?
I Have a Dream
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech entitled “I Have a Dream” on August 28th 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C. Below follows an excerpt of his speech where he alludes to Amos 5:24:
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: “For Whites Only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
The MT of Amos 5:24 is:
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
If you were to look for King’s use of “mighty stream” in today’s modern translations, you will not find it. This happens to be a mistranslation of nahal etan (eternal wadi) found in the 1611 KJV. What is intriguing about this is that King does not follow the KJV when he uses the word “justice” (mishpat) which is translated in the KJV as “judgment.” In the context of Amos 5:24, justice is the correct translation as mishpat carries the sense of the justice people receive in court (so judgment in this sense would be correct, but most people probably think of judgment as punishment if the word is not qualified). What is interesting about this is that King knew the actual wording of the KJV, for he uses the translation “let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream” in his sermon “Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” delivered in 1956 (Susan Ackerman, “Amos 5:18-24,” Interpretation 57, no 2, [2003]: 190). So, what prompted King to keep “mighty stream” and not “judgment?” I find Susan Ackerman’s explanation to be quite helpful:
So why did King eventually settle on the “mix-and-match” translation he used during the March on Washington? We can never know for sure, but I suspect King’s choices were guided by his politics, his theology, and also his intuitive sense of oratory and thus of the mot juste for any situation. I would like to think, for example, that King’s unwavering political and theological commitment to nonviolence came to mitigate against adopting the King James’s language of “judgment”; he did not want or need to see those who oppressed or had oppressed his fellow African-Americans punished for their offenses. “Nonviolence,” he wrote, “does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent.” Instead, nonviolent protests were, for King, a means for touching hearts and changing minds. His ultimate goal was not revenge but “redemption and reconciliation … the creation of the beloved community.
…Or consider the “ever-flowing” or “everlasting” stream. This hope of a perennial water source was surely a potent and wondrous image for Amos’s ancient Israelite audience, who generally observed dry streambeds that were only occasionally filled with water when carrying the runoff from a heavy rain. However, for most of King’s followers, especially the African-Americans of his native South, the image of an “ever-flowing” stream was not Amos’s stuff of miracle; in the South, streams that are full of water year-round are commonplace. Slow-moving, even sluggish, streams are commonplace in southern heartland states such as Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana. King had no use for these languid bayous; their torpor is hardly the pace with which King hoped the transformation of America would proceed. Instead, King’s vision was, in the words of his “I Have A Dream” speech, one of “the fierce urgency of now.” (Ackerman, p. 192)
For this reason, Ackerman thinks that King’s translation is “apt.”
Although King talks about race issues, that was not Amos’ concern when he addressed the people of Israel. However, the issue of economic injustice and the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy is something that Amos often talks about in his oracles and, in that sense, King’s reworking of the translation and appropriation of Amos 5:24 highlight a principle that I believe Amos would not disagree.
Quoting Amos throughout the Ages
What I find striking about Stephen and Martin Luther King Jr.’s use of Amos is that both were using a translation and both changed their translations in order to communicate more forcibly the point they were trying to make. The LXX became Stephen’s personalized LXX and the KJV became King’s personalized KJV.
For King, Amos was not a dead prophet whose words had nothing to say to people fighting for civil rights. King’s creative use of Amos gave voice to an aspect of the prophet’s message in light of the inconsistent claim of a nation that said that “every man is created equal” and yet allowed discrimination to abound.
Stephen is able to look back at the history of Israel and see that the people’s idolatrous hearts had far-reaching ramifications that went beyond the exile of Northern Kingdom.
Both believed that their current circumstances could be properly understood by the prophet’s message. And, as Ackerman said,
“The challenge that follows for us, as readers and hearers of the text, is to consider more ways in which Amos’s imagery might be transformed for our times yet still be consistent with Amos’s original message. The waters that Amos evoked have so far proven mighty and everlasting. Our task, if we are to use Amos’s text in this new century, is to make sure they run clear to the prophet’s vision” (p. 193).
