Amos 1:3-2:8 and the International

Economy of Iron Age II Israel*

Jeremy M. Hutton
University of Wisconsin—Madison

Past historical-critical research into Amos 1-2 has typically relied on one of two
strategies in relating the historical Amos’s identity as a prophet to the authority
and scriptural status of the book. In the first strategy, many interpreters have
detected in these eight stanzas allusions to and descriptions of particular political
relations, economic contexts, or military engagements, supposing that such
correlations secure the book’s roots in the eighth century b.c.e. Such chronological
benchmarks, in turn, are implicitly thought to sustain the importance of Amos’s
prophetic identity—i.e., the Amos of Tekoa named in 1:1 — in effect constituting
the text’s nature as scripture. A second, somewhat related strategy has centered
on the reconstructed “original” or “secondary” status of certain passages. In this
redaction-critical variation of the historical-critical endeavor, interpreters assume
that an understanding of the text’s chronological development can help to flesh out
the picture of Israel’s (and Judah’s) developing theology or theologies. Again, this
model tacitly accepts that prophetic identity plays an intimate and necessary role in
the text’s authenticity (and conversely, that redactional composition contributes to

All translations of biblical passages are modified from the NRSV to suit the context, except
where otherwise noted. I am grateful to Gary Rendsburg, Christopher B. Hays, Jeffrey Stackert,
Ronald Troxel, and John Whitley for their many helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper,
including many bibliographic citations on the economics of ancient Israel and stylistic comments.
I am also grateful for a brief communication with Jason Radine, wherein he allowed me access to
passages from his book (a hard-copy of which was unavailable to me at the time, but which I secured
subsequent to the initial submission of this article; unfortunately, I have been able to engage with
its theses only at a modest level). Finally, I am indebted to two anonymous reviewers from HTR
for helpful comments that served to tighten the argument. As usual, however, I take responsibility
for all opinions expressed and any mistakes made throughout the argument here.

HTR 107:1 (2014) 81-113

82 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

a passage’s supposed “inauthenticity”) and also, therefore, in its authoritativeness

within various temporally-constrained interpretive communities.1
The second position has recently (and appropriately) come under fire, however.
The argument for the underlying, valorized, and essential importance of the
prophet’s historical identity is increasingly difficult to make. That the prophet’s
ipsissima verba lies behind the book accredited to him, and, moreover, that the
book’s authority depends on the historicity of the superscription, are arguments
quickly dwindling in the more sober quarters of academic investigation. Primacy
is increasingly placed on the book itself and on what can be detected of its
editorial formation and reception in communities of interpretation.2 But despite
the diminishing importance of the “prophetic author” in current scholarship, one
need not consider the book’s value for reconstructing the economic and social
interactions of Iron Age II Israel with its contemporaries to have been entirely
negated. Even if the author or redactor is adjudged to have been working later (and
therefore “inauthentically,” in the parlance of earlier treatments), the book may still
contain authentic reminiscences of political and economic conditions—both of the
putative prophetic author ’s time as well as of the times of later tradents. Therefore,
although I continue to use the terms “authentic” and “inauthentic” here, I do so
with the recognition that they are not without problems, and with the caveat that
“inauthenticity” does not necessarily impugn historical reliability.3 Conversely,
although I am interested in probing the historical and economic conditions lying
behind the various oracles of Amos 1:3-2:8, this study offers no arguments
specifically for or against the theological authority of any single oracle.
Despite recent (and sophisticated) developments in redaction-critical study, the
text of Amos continues to invite the investigation of the historical background(s)
it presupposes precisely because of its repetitious and literarily uneven nature, but
also (and more importantly, perhaps) because of the gritty acknowledgement of
awful historical realities made in 1:3-2:8. In the span of twenty-one laconic verses,
replete with the reverberations of the opening and closing formulae of each stanza,
the text presents the reader with reports of several humanitarian (and some cultic)
offenses. The poem associates each transgression (or set of transgressions) with

1 For examples of this conviction, to greater or lesser degree, see the biographies of the prophet
in Richard S. Cripps, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book ofAmos (rev. ed.; London:
SPCK, 1969) 9-14; James Luther Mays, Amos (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969) 3-4; Wilhelm
Rudolph, Joel-Amos-Obadiah-Jonah (KAT 13/2; Gütersloh; Mohn, 1971) 96-100; Hans Walter
Wolff, Joel and Amos (trans. Waldemar Janzen, S. Dean McBride, and Charles A. Muenchow;
Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) 90-91; Max E. Polley, Amos and the Davidic Empire: A
Socio-Historical Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) 8-14; Jörg Jeremias, The Book
of Amos (OTL; trans. Douglas W. Stott; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998) 1-5.
2 For recent instances of this approach, see, e.g., Ehud Ben Zvi, Hosea (FOTL 21 A; Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006); and Ronald L. Troxel, Prophetic Literature: From Oracles to
Books (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) esp. 1-17.
3 For a brief discussion of the problems associated with the terminology of “authenticity,” see
Troxel, Prophetic Literature, 109, text-box.
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 83

one of the polities surrounding Israel (as well as Judah), culminating with the sins
of Israel itself. Altogether, these atrocities entail everything from what might be
considered near-universal commonplaces, such as the oppression of society’s most
vulnerable constituents (2:6-8), to more outright and egregious military assaults on
civilians, such as enslavement, mutilation, and murder. Historical investigation into
the described events is merited, if only to understand the socio-historical scenario(s)
presumed by the book’s oracles and the literary form of the book’s excoriation of
the surrounding nations.
Therefore, I deal first with the individual “oracles against the nations”
themselves; although the events alluded to in the first six oracles against Israel’s
neighbors (Amos 1:3-2:3) are difficult—if not impossible—to relate to specific
historical events, their common context in border disputes involving international
trade and in exploitative commoditization of human life is evident. In the following
section, I address issues of “authenticity” and secondary literary development
and what these adjudications have meant for previous scholars’ interpretations
of the so-called “oracles against the nations.” Some interpreters have suggested
that by excising certain passages from 1:3-2:8 the rhetorical thrust of Amos’s
oracles becomes more intelligible as a meaningfully structured unit. Conversely,
I will argue that, whatever the precise organizing principle governing the shape
of Amos 1:3-2:8 and no matter the degree of “authenticity” of certain oracles, the
passage as a whole in its final form—including its climax in the oracles against
Judah and Israel in 2:4-8 (9-16)—presents us with the hermeneutical key to the
resultant compilation of the book. These oracles’ position at the beginning of the
book of Amos (rather than the more conventional positioning of collections of
oracles against the nations in the middle or towards the end of a book)4 and their
sometimes perplexing internal literary arrangement can be explained through a
more economically attentive reading of 1:3-2:3. In the third section, I provide that
reading, noting first the oracles’ coincidence with the prescriptions of the Geneva
Conventions (as elaborated by Matthew R. Schlimm). I argue that the apparently
random violence wreaked upon Israel, Judah, and their neighbors is not random
at all but rather derives from the injustice inherent in the economic structures of
the international economy (“international” insofar as it connects Israel and Judah
with the world beyond their borders) in the eighth century b.c.e. (and later).5 In a
fourth section, I make explicit the web of connections tying the crimes described

4 For a summary of this problem, see A. Graeme Auld, who concludes, Amos “is remarkable for
spotlighting this concern [viz., nations external to Israel] at the very outset [of the book]” (Amos
[Old Testament Guides; Sheffield, U.K.: JSOT Press, 1986] 41).
5 It may be convenient here to use Fernand Braudel’s definition of a world economy: “a fragment
of the world, an economically autonomous section of the planet able to provide for most of its needs,
a section to which its internal links and exchanges give it a certain organic unity” {The Perspective
of the World [trans. Siân Reynolds; vol. 3 of Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Centuries;
London: Collins, 1984] 22, as cited by Robert B. Coote and Keith W. Whitelam, The Emergence of
Early Israel in Historical Perspective [2nd ed.; Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010] 63).
84 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

in the oracles against Judah and Israel (2:4-8 and, indeed, the remainder of the
book) together with the socio-economic and historical observations arrived at in
the third section. I conclude that, although the remainder of the book of Amos
sets at Israel’s feet the nation’s own culpability in the oppression and negligence
of the Iron Age II economy, Amos 1:3-2:8 has already anticipated this trajectory,
in that it serves to locate Israel inextricably at the crossroads of the international
economy as Amos—and the editors who later drew together the collection of oracles
attributed to him—knew it. This unit is, thus, not inconsistent with or ancillary to
the remainder of the book’s imprecations. Rather, regardless of any redactional
insertions that may have been added after the initial publication of the text and
regardless of any intrusions into or deliberate (re-)arrangements of the opening
oracles, Amos 1:3-2:8 comprises a cohesive, coherent opening salvo that leads
directly into the book’s castigation of Israel.6

■ Literary Structure and Political History in Amos 1:3-2:8

Anyone reading Amos 1:3-2:8 cannot help but recognize the structured repetitions
of the eight stanzas comprising these “oracles against the nations.” Each begins
with the messenger formula “Thus says the Lord” followed by the formulaic
justification of punishment: “For three transgressions of GN, and for four, I will
not turn it back” (1:3,6,9,11,13; 2:1,4,6). No matter the precise meaning of this
line,7 the fact that its recurrence serves as a central structuring device of the passage
has been so thoroughly discussed that little further consideration is required here.
Even the repeated claim that the nations have committed “transgressions” is almost
unanimously interpreted as a claim of yhwh’s universal sovereignty.8 Through this
litany of nations that have “rebelled,” Amos subjugates these nations to the mighty
God of Israel: he implicitly claims for them the status of a vassal in a relationship
they themselves would have disavowed.

6 My treatment of 2:8 as the culmination of this literary unit is admittedly somewhat arbitrary:
although the oracles against the nations (here, including Judah and Israel) end in 2:8, this passage
leads so directly into the following oracles that it is nearly impossible to tell where the unit ends
and the next unit begins (see, e.g., Barton, Amos’s Oracles, 3). Jack R. Lundbom has found reason
to extend the literary unit from 1:2 until 3:8 (“The Lion Has Roared: Rhetorical Structure in Amos
1:2-3:8,” in Milk and Honey: Essays on Ancient Israel and the Bible in Appreciation of the Judaic
Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego [ed. S. Malena and D. Miaño; Winona
Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2007] 65-75). For the sake of simplicity, I use 2:3 as the culmination of
the oracles against the nations (exclusive of Judah and Israel) and 2:8 as the end of the passage
under consideration.
7 Interpretations are varied, as evidenced in the variety of commentaries (see, e.g., Wolff,
Joel and Amos, 128; Barton, Amos’s Oracles, 17-18; Paul, Amos, 46-47). The most compelling
explanation, in my opinion (with Paul’s), is that which views it as a guarantee that the punishment
will not be revoked.
8 Rolf Knierem,“‫ פשע‬pœsa‘ Verbrechen,” THAT 2:488-95, esp. 493; Cripps, Amos, 118; Mays,
Amos,27; Horst Seebass,“‫פשע‬pœsa‘,‫ ״‬ThWAT6:793-810; Paul,Amos,45-46; although,cf.Menahem
Haran, “The Rise and Decline of the Empire of Jeroboam ben Joash,” VT17 (1967) 266-97, at 274.
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 85

Aram
Within the six stanzas comprising 1:3-2:3, foreign nation after foreign nation
comes under the judgment of yhwh, each criticized for grievances against its
contemporaries and, thus, against a deity understood as having cosmic jurisdiction.
The first to undergo this withering confrontation is the Aramean state of Damascus.
Amos cites the Arameans’ “threshing of Gilead with threshing sledges of iron”
(1:3) as the act precipitating the harsh condemnation of Damascus. The use of the
geographic name “Gilead” here is perhaps misleading; it potentially lulls the reader
into the false sense that the prophet indicates only the land itself, since the basic
term “thresh” (‫ )דוש‬is used of grains, such as wheat (e.g., 1 Chr 21:20; see also Isa
28:28).9 10
But comparison with two other biblical texts suggests that the picture is
not so innocuous. In Judg 8:7, Gideon threatens to “trample” (‫ )ודשתי‬the flesh of
the recalcitrant inhabitants of Succoth “on the thorns of the wilderness and on the
briers”—a threat which he carries through after his defeat of the Midianite kings
Zebah and Zalmunna (Judg 8:16). More closely related to the passage at hand is
the historical notice in 2 Kgs 13:7, which describes the king of Aram as having
“destroyed [the soldiers of Israel] and made them like the dust at threshing (‫כעפר‬
10”.(‫ לדש‬This datum appears in the summary of the reign of Jehoahaz, son of Jehu
(2 Kgs 10:32-33),11 occasioning Mays’s suggestion that this is the same Aramean
offensive recalled by Amos.12 However, as other scholars have pointed out, the
imagery of destruction in this metaphor can be correlated with numerous attacks
on Israel, whether during or after the reign of Jeroboam II;13 moreover, nothing
prohibits an understanding of Amos 1:3 as the reapplication of the same terminology
to an Aramean military operation occurring at a later date.14
The act of threshing (‫ )דוש‬was performed with a threshing sledge, a contraption
comprising large wooden boards with stones (or here, iron blades) embedded in
the bottom (cf. Isa 41:15). The agriculturalist would ride on the implement while
it was pulled behind a draft animal (e.g., Hos 10:11). This process served to split

9 ‫ דשה‬in Jer 50:11 may be a textual error for ‫( דשא‬cf. LXX έν βοτάνη).
10 Cripps, Amos, 119; Mays, Amos, 30; Paul, Amos, 48; Jeremias, Amos, 26; and, for Akkadian
exemplars, see Paul, Amos, 47-48.
11 See also Paul, Amos, 48.
12 Mays, Amos, 30.
13 E.g., Wolff, Joel and Amos, 89; Rudolph, Joel-Amos-Obadiah-Jona, 130-31 ; Haran, “Rise and
Decline,” 276-78; J. Alberto Soggin, “Amos VI: 13-14 und 1:3 auf dem Hintergrund der Beziehungen
zwischen Israel und Damaskus im 9. und 8. Jahrhundert,” in Near Eastern Studies in Honor of
William Foxwell Albright (ed. Hans Goedicke; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971)
433-41. John Barton cites a few Assyrian texts using identical or similar imagery (Amos’s Oracles
against the Nations: A Study of Amos 13-2.5 [SOTSMS 6; Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University
Press, 1980] 19). For a fuller discussion of the proposed chronological settings of this oracle, see
ibid., 25-31; and Jason Radine, The Book of Amos in Emergent Judah (FAT 2/45; Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2010) 172-75.
14 Equally possible is the supposition that the author of 2 Kgs 13:7 adapted Amos’s description
to the context.
86 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

the husk of the grain (i.e., the chaff; see the parallel use of ‫ מץ‬in Isa 41:15), which
was then allowed to blow off with the breeze, leaving only the kernel.15 Used
metaphorically,16 the image evoked is one of destruction in which the enemy had so
thoroughly ridden roughshod over the Israelite army that their battered and lifeless
corpses were left split and cracked, the ephemeral trappings of glory blowing
away in the wind. Regardless of whether this devastation was carried out against
the civilian inhabitants of the land of Gilead (as in Tg. Jon. and lxx17), it was so
completely applied to both the Gileadite landscape and the soldiers defending it,
claimed Amos, that the military excesses of the Aramean army would be levied
against the very city of Damascus itself.

Gaza and Tyre

The second foreign nation to come under judgment is Philistia, represented
metonymically in the stanza’s opening salvo by the city Gaza. The crime for
which the Philistines receive reproach here is “their carrying into exile entire
communities, to hand them over to Edom” (1:6).18 A nearly identical accusation
is leveled at the Phoenician city of Tyre in the following stanza (v. 9ba). The two
excoriating indictments differ from one another only in the precise description of
the offending action19 and in the addition of the clarifying remark “[they] did not
remember the covenant of kinship” in the Tyre oracle (v. 9bß). The “covenant of

15 See Gustaf Dalman, “Dreschen,” BRL 393; Helga Weippert, “Dreschen und Worfeln,” BRL2
63-64; H. Neil Richardson, “Threshing,” IDB 4:636; Philip J. King and Lawrence E. Stager, Life
in Biblical Israel (Library of Ancient Israel; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001) 89-90.
16 See, e.g., Paul, Amos, 47. One need not consider the reference to be literal description of “a
method of torturing prisoners” (Mays, Amos, 31; see previously Cripps, Amos, 119) in order for
the image to retain its potency.
17 The Targum interprets “the inhabitants of the land of Gilead” (‫)יתבי ארע גלעד‬, while lxx reads
“those pregnant in Gilead” (τας έν γαστρι έχούσας των έν Γαλααδ) in agreement with 5QAm (4)
frag. 1: [‫( הרו]ת[ הכלע]ד‬Maurice Baillet, Józef T. Milik, and Roland de Vaux, Les ‘Petites Grottes *
de Qumrân [DJD 3; Oxford: Clarendon, 1962] 173). These interpretations may, however, be attempts
to harmonize 1:3 with v. 13 (Paul, Amos, 47 n. 32).
18 Several attempts to re‫־‬identify the recipients of the “delivered” population (Menahem Haran,
“Observations on the Historical Background of Amos 1:2-2:6,” IEJ 18 [1968] 201-12; Paul
Haupt, “Scriptio plena des emphatischen la- im Hebräischen,” OLZ 10 [1907] 305-9, at 307-8)
or to equate Edom as the direct object of the atrocity (marked by ‫ ;ל‬e.g., Robert Gordis, “Edom,
Israel and Amos—An Unrecognized Source for Edomite History,” in Essays on the Occasion of
the Seventieth Anniversary of the Dropsie University (1909-1979) [ed. Abraham I. Katsh and
Leon Nemoy; Philadelphia: The Dropsie University, 1979] 109-32, at 128-30), have been largely
discredited (Paul, Amos, 57).
19 Verse 6 uses the locution ‫הגלותם גלות שלמה להסגיר לאדום‬, while v. 9 substitutes the first
word with the identical form of *‫סגר‬, omitting that root from the phrase in the latter half of the
accusation: ‫הסגירם גלות שלמה לאדום‬. Troxel suggests this variation should be read as accusing
“Tyre of handing over previously uprooted people” (Prophetic Literature, 43 [italics in original];
following Paul, Amos, no pages given, but cf. 59-61) in a “slave trafficking” endeavor, whereas v.
6 charges Gaza “with shipping prisoners of war to Edom.” The locution is so close that I do not
perceive this difference.
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 87

kinship” is traditionally taken to refer to the familial bonds established between

Tyre, Israel, and Judah by virtue of 1) the parity treaty between Ahiram’s Tyre
and the Israelite United Monarchy under the Davidic dynasty (2 Sam 5:11; 1 Kgs
5:15-26 [= Eng. vv. 1-12]; 9:10-14; 1 Chr 14:1; 2 Chr 2:2-17 [= Eng. vv. 3-18]);
2) Jezebel’s marriage into the royal Omride lineage of Israel (1 Kgs 16:31); and 3)
the subsequent marriage of Athaliah into the Davidic lineage of Judah (2 Kgs 8:26
= 2 Chr 22:2).20 Any historical referent of the accusation against the Philistines,
however, is left without explicit mention in the historiographic biblical texts. None
of these texts notes the delivery of an “entire community” over to Edom, which
is to be expected if one understands this allegation not as a reference to a major
geopolitical event but rather as a smaller-scale local event or series of events that
happened along the Philistine border with Israel and Judah.21 In either case it seems
clear enough that the crime was mass kidnapping with the intent to sell the victims
into slavery (cf. Exod 21:16).22 Some have suggested the Edomites played only
the role of brokers in the slave trade, selling the population further south, as may
be assumed in the threat in Joel 4:8 (= Eng. 3:8; cf. also vv. 6-7 and Ezek 27:13),
which names the Sabeans as the final recipients of the slave population.23 However,
Edom itself may have been a large consumer of slaves, since it would have needed
an enormous number of them to work the copper mines and the associated industrial
complexes near Feinän, located in modem Jordan.24 Moreover, it seems likely that
Gaza and Tyre were major centers of the slave trade,25 located on the Mediterranean
coast and having access to seaborne trade networks.26

20 Jeremias, Amos, 30; and Troxel, Prophetic Literature, 43^14 and 53 n.ll; see earlier John
Priest, “The Covenant of Brothers,” JBL 84 (1965) 400-6.
21 E.g., Cripps, Amos, 124; Mays, Amos, 32; Paul, Amos, 60; Jeremias, Amos, 27.
22 The use of *‫ סכר‬in the hiphil ubiquitously describes the delivery over or réintroduction of
individuals to slavery or to an enemy as captives of war (in which case, their fate was usually the
same); see, e.g., Deut 23:16 [= Eng. v. 15]; Obad 14 (Haran, “Observations,” 205-6; Barton, Amos’s
Oracles, 21; Jeremias, Amos, 27).
23 Norman K. Gottwald, All the Kingdoms of the Earth: Israelite Prophecy and International
Relations in the Ancient Near East (New York: Harper & Row, 1964) 98-99; Cripps, Amos, 124;
Mays, Amos, 32; Hans-Peter Müller, “Phönizien und Juda in exilisch-nachexilischer Zeit,” WO 6
(1970/1971) 189-204, at 194; Paul, Arnos, 57.
24 Paul, Arnos, 57; Jeremias, Arnos, 27.
25 For Tyre’s participation in the practice, see Ezek 27:13.
26 The nature of this labor exchange-and-extraction system as one with hubs on the Mediterranean
Sea connected to their markets by a network of interregional trade routes comports well with the
more general model of decentralized and noncoercive “Port Power” described by Lawrence E.
Stager, “Port Power in the Early and the Middle Bronze Age: The Organization of Maritime Trade
and Hinterland Production,” in Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and Neighboring Lands: In
Memory of Douglas L. Esse (ed. Samuel R. Wolff; SAOC 59; ASOR Books 5; Chicago: Oriental
Institute of the University of Chicago; Atlanta: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2001)
625-38. Not coincidentally, Stager mentions the long-standing copper trade originating at Feinän
(“Port Power,” 632).
88 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

In these two oracles, any chance of determining historical specificity breaks

down, forcing the reader into an investigation of social rather than historical
orientation.27 Yet even here, the social elements of the prophet’s invective are
brought to bear in the theological sphere, regardless of any precise historical
events that may be alluded to. Although most commentators have reconstructed
the described event as one or more small, local raids on the outlying villages and
towns of Israel and Judah, there is no explicit identification of the victims.28 This
anonymity suggests to Paul that “the prophet is not inveighing here against the
incursion into Judean territory per se (if at all) but is rather indicting the inhumanity
and cruelty of the forceful traffic of human beings, who are thereby abused and
debased to mere numbers and objects of merchandise.”29 As for Tyre, given the
criticism in v. 9bß referring to the treaty between the royal dynasties, it seems
rather obvious that the depredations were to some extent inflicted on Israelites;30
the parallel case of Gaza might be viewed cautiously in this context as well. But
Paul’s exegesis is correct, in that Amos’s omission of any explicit victim suggests
the prophet’s focus is on the crime itself and not on the ethnic or political identity
of the community or communities affected.

Edom
According to the nrsv translation of the fourth oracle (1:11-12), Amos reproaches
Edom,
because he pursued his brother with the sword
and cast off all pity;
he maintained his anger perpetually,
and kept his wrath forever.

Although the nrsv gives one possible construal of the Hebrew, the collocation is a
difficult one: the sequence *‫ שחת‬piel + ‫ רחמים‬is otherwise unknown in the Bible (the
two words appear together in the same verse only in Ps 103:4 but in two different
cola).31 That the phrase means “cast off (his) compassion” is highly interpretive
and seems tenuous in light of lxx, which interprets ‫ רחמיו‬more substantively as
the plural of ‫“ ו־חם‬womb,”32 rendering και έλυμήνατο μήτραν έπι γης “and he

27 For a recent survey of the various attempts to situate these oracles historically, see Radine,
Book of Amos, 175-79.
28 Paul translates ‫ הסגיךם‬as “for handing them over” (Amos, 60 n. 172 [italics in original]),
but one can also read the suffix as possessive, as in the preceding oracles, referring to the Tyrians
themselves (“their handing over”); cf. Radine, Book of Amos, 15.
29 Paul, Amos, 56-57.
30 See, e.g., Karl Budde, “Zu Text und Auslegung des Buches Amos,” JBL 43 (1924) 46-131,
at 64-65; Driver, Amos, 137; Cripps, Amos, 127-28; apud Barton, Amos’s Oracles, 20; and Paul,
Amos, 59.
31 Dieter Vetter, “‫ שחת‬sht pi ./hi. verderben,” THAT 2:891-94, esp. 892.
32 Shalom Paul, “Amos 1:3-2:3: A Concatenous Literary Pattern,” JBL 90 (1971) 397-403, at
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 89

destroyed a womb (from) upon (the) land.” Moreover, Paul points to the word ‫רחם‬
“young woman” used in Judg 5:30, as well as in Moabite (‫ ;רחמת‬KAI 181:17) and
Ugaritic (rhm\ KTU 1.6.Ü.27).33 The meaning of the term ‫“ רחמים‬compassion” does
come into play, however, in juxtaposition with the second stich of the indictment
(v. llbßy). Here, the accusation focuses on Edom’s continual or repeated anger,34
opening the possibility of reading ‫ רחמיו‬as a case of Janus-parallelism, in which
the polysemy of a word is highlighted by its position between two poetic lines
assuming different meanings of the word.35
That the unnamed, victimized population was an ethnically Israelite (or,
specifically, Judahite) one is not necessary but is nonetheless suggested by the
use of the term ‫ אחיו‬in conjunction with the many textual indications that these
two nations considered themselves to be kin (see the Jacob and Esau narratives
in Genesis, especially 25:19-26; 27:40-41; see also Num 20:14; Deut 2:4; 23:8
[= Eng. v. 7]; Obad 10,12).36 Despite this posited agnatic relationship, the storied
history of these peoples’ relationship indicates a significant amount of military
conflict between them, including Edom’s partial or total subjugation to Judah
during the late eighth and early seventh centuries (2 Kgs 14:7; 2 Chr 25:11-12).37
The extent of this subordinate position of Edom is a matter of dispute, inspired in
part by the impugned “authenticity” of this oracle: if Edom was under complete
Judahite domination during the reign of Jeroboam II, it is assumed, the oracle must
be dated to a later period.38 Conversely, partial Judahite supremacy over Edom,

402-3; idem, Amos, 64. The word has been understood by others as denoting “treaty partners”; see
Michael Fishbane, “The Treaty Background of Amos 1 11 and Related Matters,” JBL 89 (1970)
313-18; idem, “Additional Remarks on rhmyw (Amos 1:11),” JBL 91 (1972) 391-93; Michael L.
Barré, “Amos 1:11 Reconsidered,” CBQ 47 (1985) 420-27.
33 Paul, Amos, 64-65; but cf. Barton, Amos’s Oracles, 21.
34 A more accurate translation of the first half of this stich (v. 9bß) might be “his anger tore
perpetually” (cf. Paul, Amos, 66) or perhaps “repeatedly,” repointing as ‫לעד‬. For the sequence *‫טרף‬
qal + ‫אף‬, compare Job 16:9; 18:4, although the former verse is generally emended (Paul, Amos, 66)
and the latter inserts the preposition ‫ב‬. For ‫ עד‬as “repeatedly,” see BDB 729 (s.v. 2 ‫)עוד‬, although
the word is not normally used with the preposition ‫ל‬. For various emendations of ‫ טרף‬to ‫ נטר‬II “to
rage,” see, e.g., Moshe Held, “Studies in Biblical Homonyms in the Light of Akkadian,” JANES 3
(1970-1971) 46-55, at 47-51, esp. 50.
35 Paul, Amos, 65. For Amos’s propensity for paronomasia and wordplay, compare the well-
known example of ‫ קיץ‬and ‫ קץ‬in 8:2. Ron Troxel has suggested to me (personal communication)
that the value of the phrase *‫ שחת‬+ ‫ רחמים‬may reside precisely in the “abruptness of the metaphor:
[Edom] ‘demolished compassion’.”
36 Cripps, Amos, 129; Mays, Amos, 35; John R. Bartlett, “The Land of Seir and the Brotherhood
of Edom,” JTS 20 (1969) 1-20, at 12-18; Jeremias, Amos, 30; cf. Haran, “Observations,” 203.
37 For a fuller discussion, see Paul, Amos, 63; and, earlier, Haran, “Observations,” 209-12; Simon
Cohen, “The Political Background of the Words of Amos,” HUCA 36 (1965) 153-60, at 159 n. 17.
For the identity of Sela, see Yohanan Aharoni, The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography (rev.
ed.; trans. and ed. Anson F. Rainey; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979) 441.
38 Mays, Amos, 35-36; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 160; Barton, Amos ’s Oracles, 32; Jeremias, Amos,
30. A recent treatment of the problem has been given in Tchavdar S. Hadjiev, The Composition and
Redaction of the Book of Amos (BZAW 393; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009) 42-45; see also Radine,
90 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

or over only a small portion of traditionally Edomite territory, would render the
offense more probable during the reign of Jeroboam II.39 In either case, the oracle
alludes to a drawn-out animosity between the two nations, attested elsewhere, and
mirrored in the following oracle as well.40

Ammon
Amos charges the Ammonites with “having ripped open pregnant women in
Gilead in order to enlarge their territory” (1:13). The horrific graphicness of
this indictment—in juxtaposition to the somewhat ambiguous, though similar,
accusation against Edom—conveys the author’s repugnance towards the act itself.
This barbaric practice of murdering those among the most vulnerable civilians of a
city and the consequent deaths of their unborn children was known throughout the
ancient world, both in other biblical texts (see below) and in non-biblical texts.41
No specific Ammonite campaign can be posited as the exact event to which Amos
refers, but the expression *‫ בקע‬+ ‫ הרות‬points to sometime in the mid-ninth to late
eighth centuries, if the collocation’s other usages in the Hebrew Bible may serve
roughly as guides.42
The verb ‫“ בקע‬to split open,” in its many different stems,43 commonly
44 describes
the fate of pregnant women (2 ;‫הרות‬/‫ הריות‬Kgs 8:12; 15:16; and Hos 14:1 [= Eng.
I3:6]).u In 2 Kgs 2:24 and Hos 13:8 the pi* el stem of this verb is used to illustrate the
mauling of humans by bears or other wild animals.45 This beastly imagery parallels
Book of Amos, 179-80.
39 Haran, “Observations,” 209-12; but cf. Paul, Amos, 63; and John R. Bartlett, “The Brotherhood
of Edom,” JSOT 4 (1977) 2-27, at 10-16. Contrast more recent arguments for a much later date,
such as that of Troxel, who supports a date of the Edom oracle around 600 B.C.E. or later (Prophetic
Literature, 44).
40 While it is possible that the term ‫“ אח‬brother” is used here solely with the connotation of
“treaty-partner” (e.g., Fishbane, “Treaty Background,” 315), the allusions to the Jacob-Esau narratives
run too deep to be discarded so easily (see, e.g., Paul, Amos, 63-64, citing Gen 27:40; 44-45).
41 VAT 13833 rev. line 3; see Mordechai Cogan, “ ‘Ripping Open Pregnant Women’ in Light of
an Assyrian Analogue,” JAOS 103 (1983) 755-57; see also the Akkadian text quoted in Wilfred G.
Lambert, “A Neo-Babylonian Tammuz Lament,” JAOS 103 (1983) 211-15, rev. line 19; and the
Greek text cited by Barton (Amos’s Oracles, 57; II. 6.57-60).
42 Paul, Amos, 68 n. 239; Mays, Amos, 37; but cf. Jeremias, Amos, 28; and Radine, Book ofAmos,
180-82. Barton considers the oracle difficult to date, but recognizes that it “has as its background
the never-ending border disputes between Gilead and Ammon” (Amos's Oracles, 32). It is, of course,
possible that later authors used the term, but the events described in 2 Kgs 8:12; 15:16; and Hos
14:1 (= 13:6 Eng.) are all purported to have occurred during the mid-ninth to late-eighth centuries.
43 Although the pïel is used in 2 Kgs 8:12; 15:16 and the pu‘al in Hos 14:1, there is no need
to revocalize the qal form in Amos 1:13 as pVel (Paul, Amos, 68 n. 237). See also GKC §61a. For
the qal, cf. Exod 14:16; Judg 15:19; 2 Sam 23:16; Isa 34:15; 48:21; 63:12; Ezek 29:7; Ps 74:15;
78:13; 141:7; Eccl 10:9; Neh 9:11; 1 Chr 11:18; 2 Chr 21:17; 2 Chr 32:1.
44 E.g., Cripps, Amos, 133. For discussion of alternate proposals, cf. Paul, Amos, 68 n. 238.
45 Paul, Amos, 68. The latter verse sets these “beasts of the field” in juxtaposition to “the lion”
and, more importantly in this context, to “the bear robbed of her cubs.” Cf. also the Ugaritic cognate
bq‘ found in KTU 1.6.Ü.32.
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 91

the use of the verb ‫ טרף‬in the preceding oracle, which itself is used ubiquitously as
a depiction of the ways wild animals tear apart their prey (e.g., Gen 37:33; 44:28;
49:27; Exod 22:12 [= Eng. v. 13]; Deut 33:20; Jer 5:6; Ezek 19:3; etc.; see also
the related noun ‫)טרף‬. Combining the animalistic imagery of Amos 1:13 with
that of v. 11,1 would make the following observation: whereas wild animals “tear
apart” (‫ )טרף‬prey for their own survival and as life-giving sustenance for their own
whelps (e.g., Nah 2:13[= Eng. v. 12]), the Ammonites and the Edomites have done
so with no goal but national expansion.46 Often, these brutal and excessive tactics
were employed specifically “to terrorize and decimate resident populations,”47
presumably to encourage the hasty evacuation of neighboring towns, and thus
to clear the way for resettlement and repopulation by the invading ethnic group.
Instead of partaking in the familial αγάπη to be expected from these two close
kinsmen,48 the Israelites and Judahites were left agape at the atrocities perpetuated
as a matter of course in such programmatic efforts at intimidation and dislocation,
often dismissed by modem scholarly rhetoric as “mere border skirmishes.”49

Moab
The sixth oracle castigates Moab for “burning to lime the bones of the king of
Edom” (2:1). The difficulties encountered in this accusation are numerous but
seem best explained by reference to the Moabites’ desecration of a human corpse.
This desecration may have occurred after the disinterring of the king’s corpse,50
but if so, that aspect of the crime has gone unmentioned. Here, the reader finds
only reference to the actual mode and end of the Moabites’ destruction of these
bones: ‫ שרף‬+ ‫ ל‬+ ‫שיד‬, though even these terms are unclear. With many interpreters,
the nrsv translates ‫ ל‬as “to,” on the assumption, following the Vulgate’s usque ad
cinerem, that the degree of the corpse’s destruction through fire reached a stage at
which the “ashes became as fine and white as powdered chalk.”51 But a more likely
reading, which takes seriously the meaning of ‫שיד‬, would be “for lime,” that is,
for use as a component in whitewash or plaster.52 When burned, human skeletons
produce a residue that is chalky in texture and substance.53 This material would then

46 See similarly Paul, Amos, 68; earlier, Cripps, Amos, 133; Mays, Amos, 37.
47 Mays, Amos, 37.
48 For the (incestuous) familial relationship postulated for Ammon, see Gen 19:30-38.
49 For the long-standing traditions of Ammonite aggression towards the Gileadites, see Judg
10:7-9; 10:17-11:33; and 1 Sam 11:1-11.
50 Paul, Amos, 72; see also the prohibition against disinterment of the king’s remains in the
Ahirom inscription (ΚΑΙ 1; pointed to by Barton, Amos’s Oracles, 56).
51 Roland Gradwohl, Die Farben im Alten Testament: Eine terminologische Studie (BZAW 83;
Berlin: Töpelmann, 1963) 86-87, cited in Paul, Amos, 72 n. 271; see also Robert James Forbes,
“Kalk,” BHH 2:921-22.
52 Wolff, Joel and Amos, 162-63; Paul, Amos, 72.
53 Steven A. Symes et al., “Patterned Thermal Destruction of Human Remains in a Forensic
Setting,” in The Analysis of Burned Human Remains (ed. Christopher W. Schmidt and Steven A.
92 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

have been spread on stones (as in Deut 27:2,4) or on houses (as interpreted by Tg.
Jon. Amos 2: l54). Apparently, this reuse of the bones was particularly problematic;
elsewhere, the burning of bones seems to be considered unproblematic for the
morality of the agent, despite its connotations of abuse (2 Kgs 23:16).55
This oracle against Moab seems enigmatic among the six discussed here, since
it alone does not leave open the possibility that Israel and Judah were the victims of
the condemned practice. One wonders whether this impression may be inaccurate,56
but in the end, it is safer to understand this incident as an otherwise unrecorded
clash between the Moabites and Edomites—a deliberate desecration of a royal
grave and the intentionally revolting use of the excavated remains. This abuse of
human remains may have been part of an ongoing and concerted effort at frontier
intimidation practiced by the Moabites: if the ultimate use of this plaster was to
serve as a memorial in which an inscription was committed (cf. Deut 27:2,4), the
desecrated and displayed remains of a human being would have posed a stronger
threat of violence than any “no trespassing” sign could have communicated.

■ The Textual History of Amos 1:3-2:8

Over the course of the past century, scholars have frequently sought to understand
the developmental process whereby Amos 1:3-2:8 took shape. Two issues are
usually at stake in such discussions. First, interpreters commonly investigate each
oracle’s date relative to the others, with the result that the oracles against Tyre
and Edom (1:9-12), along with that against Judah (2:4-5), are usually deemed
secondary.57 Second, they investigate the literary order of the oracles, both in the
hypothetical original form of the chapters and in the final scriptural form of Amos.
Clearly, these two issues are interrelated: the addition of any secondary oracles
would naturally change the patterning of the original oracles. Since the first of these

Symes; London: Academic, 2008) 15-54, at 37.

54 “Because he burned the bones of the king of Edom and spread them (‫ )וסדינון‬on his house
like plaster (‫)כגירא‬.”
55 Cf. Jeremias, Amos, 29.
56 I leave unaddressed here the problems posed by reinterpreting ‫ מלך־אדום‬as mulk-’adam,
a form of human sacrifice (e.g., Barton, Amos's Oracles, 33-35). See the discussion, along with
citations of a significant mass of earlier research in Paul, Amos, 73.
57 E.g., Wolff, Joel and Amos, 139-41 and earlier literature cited there; Barton, Amos’s Oracles,
22-24; Robert B. Coote, Amos among the Prophets: Composition and Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1981) 68-69; cf. the balanced discussion in Auld, Amos, 42-44. John B. Geyer takes the argument
further and suggests that “the oracles in Amos i-ii may . . . reasonably be taken together and the
whole seen as a late addition to the book,” dating specifically from the exilic period (“Mythology
and Culture in the Oracles against the Nations,” VT 36 [1986] 129-45, at 140, see also 142; see
similarly Radine, Book of Amos, 11-22, 170-83, esp. 83); on the other hand, Coote assigns the
collection, arrangement, and textual location of 1:3-2:16 to his second (B) stage, suggesting that the
third (C) edition was working with this passage’s prefixation as a given (Amos among the Prophets,
70). The most up-to-date discussions, as far as I am aware, are those of Hadjiev, Composition and
Redaction, 40-59, esp. 53-59; and Radine, Book of Amos, 11-22, 170-83.
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 93

concerns directly impinges on the second, these two issues concerning the shape
of Amos will be handled in this order. My goal in this section is not to defend the
originality of the oracles under investigation or to argue for their secondariness
but rather to survey briefly the historical developments that commentators have
imputed to the text and to propose a literary rationale for its present structure. In
so doing, I will begin to lay the foundation for arguing that the passage as a whole
in its final form—along with its climax in the oracles against Judah and Israel in
2:4-8 (9-16)—presents us with the hermeneutical key to the resultant compilation
of the book.

The Authenticity of the Oracles against Tyre and Edom

Although the “authenticity” of the oracle against Gath has been impugned,58 most
commentators agree that only two of these oracles against the nations are later than
others, namely, those against Tyre and Edom (1:9-12).59 Those making this claim
point to a number of features setting these oracles apart from the others. First, they
call attention to the omission of any explicit divinely ordained punishment against
both Tyre and Edom. Other than the introductory lines of the framework (“For three
transgressions and for four ...”), the oracles against Tyre and Edom hold only the
common trope of destructive fire in common with the other oracles (“So I will send/
kindle a fire on GN, and it shall devour the strongholds of GN/its strongholds”;
[GN or 3.f.s.] ‫ ואכלה ארמנות‬GN ‫ושלחתי אש ב‬/‫ ;והצתי‬w. 10,12; cf. 1:4,7,14a;
2:2; see also 2:5).60 They do not, however, participate in the same trope wherein
YHWH promises to destroy or exile the ruling dynast and his successors (e.g., 1:5,
8, 15; 2:3). According to Jörg Jeremias, this apocopated description of ordained

58 For a full overview of the discussion of secondary status, see Paul, Amos, 16-27; and idem,
“A Literary Reinvestigation of the Authenticity of the Oracles against the Nations of Amos,” in De
la Tôrah au Messie. Études d’exégèse et d’herméneutique bibliques offertes à Henri Cazelles pour
ses 25 années d’enseignement à l’Institut Catholique de Paris (Octobre 1979) (ed. Maurice Carrez,
Joseph Doré, and Pierre Grelot; Paris: Desclée, 1981) 189-204. Paul defends the authenticity of the
Gaza oracle on numerous grounds (Amos, 16-17; “Literary Reinvestigation,” 189-91).
59 The oracle against Judah is commonly taken as a third late oracle but is not considered here,
since it has not yet been discussed (see the larger discussions in, among many others, Andrew
E. Steinmann, “The Ordering of Amos’ Oracles Against the Nations 1:3-2:16,” JBL 111 [1992]
683-89, at 683 nn. 1-2; and Troxel, Prophetic Literature, 44). Radine argues forcefully that all six
of the oracles against the nations (1:3-2:5, i.e., including that against Judah) should be viewed as
part of a single sixth-century b.c.e. literary stratum (Book of Amos, 170-83). This determination is
made, however, on predicating the respective historical context of each oracle to a time in which
each of the cities and rulers held under indictment (1:4-5, 7-8, 10, 12, 14-15; 2:2-3, 5) suffered a
destruction that can be correlated to the text. I agree that this is not an improbable reconstruction;
indeed, it does not provide counter-evidence to the thesis presented here, since I am concerned
primarily with the final form of the text. However, I would reiterate the caution expressed above
that a late date of composition does not necessarily impugn the historical referentiality of the
accusations against the nations.
60 E.g., Mays, Amos, 25, 34; Jeremias, Amos, 19-31, esp. 29-31.
94 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

punishment “corresponds to a heightened interest in the sin of the various nations.”61

Thus, this posited younger form of the Tyre and Edom oracles serves to “shift the
reader’s interest from the announcement of punishment to the demonstration of
guilt.”62 Moreover, Jeremias claims that the sin indicted in each type of oracle is
qualitatively different: in contradistinction to the older oracles “attesting soberly
brutal cruelty,” the younger oracles “refer to specific historical or political ties, and
[serve] to describe ‘motives and subjective attitudes’.”63 Scholars have raised a
constellation of objections against this conclusion. It is difficult to claim qualitative
difference between the accusation against Tyre and that of Gaza since the two are
rendered as almost verbatim recollections of one another. The small addition in the
Tyre oracle (“they did not remember the covenant of kinship”; v. 9bß) indeed refers
to a “historical or political tie,”64 while at the same time imputing a “subjective
attitude,” but it remains unclear that this politicization should not be taken as an
emotional heightening of the foregoing oracle against Gaza: whereas Gaza was
politically unrelated to Israel and Judah, it was all the more dastardly that Tyre
should press its advantage on Israel, since the two polities had formerly shared
a well-established political bond. Moreover, as Rudolph has pointed out, form-
critical investigation can only describe—and cannot prescribe—the conventions
of genre taken by individual biblical pericopae. An author’s divergence from an
established model need not indicate secondariness, especially in the composition
of such a formulaic text.65
Second, as noted above, the oracle against Tyre repeats the prophet’s invective
against Gaza—and does so nearly word for word.66 Several commentators have
sought to apply this datum towards an argument for the oracle’s secondary
status. However, repetition alone cannot serve as a sure indicator of the oracle’s
“inauthenticity.” Paul avers, “the literary and contextual similarity is intentional and
produced by the mnemonic device of associative reasoning, which lends conclusive
weight in favor of its originality. Furthermore, its almost literal repetition of the
charge against Philistia is of singular importance; that is, it specifically expresses
complicity in a similar crime.”67 In a related argument, some have described the
indictments against Tyre or Edom as “pale generalizations.”68 But here, too, I
would counter with the specificity of the Tyre oracle’s denunciation, which actually

61 Jeremias, Amos, 23.

62 Ibid., 29.
63 Ibid., 23, quoting Wolff, Joel and Amos, 140. For a less overtly theological (and more sober)
rationale, see Hadjiev, Composition and Redaction, 42^5‫־‬.
64 However, cf. the observations made by Hadjiev, Composition and Redaction, 45-46.
65 Rudolph, Joel-Amos-Obadiah-Jona, 119-20; see also Bartlett, “Brotherhood,” 12-13; Haran,
“Observations,” 203; and discussion in Auld, Amos, 43^44.
66 Mays, Amos, 34; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 140, 158.
67 Paul, Amos, 17-18; idem, “Literary Reinvestigation,” 191; Haran, “Observations,” 201-7;
Rudolph, Joel-Amos-Obadiah-Jona, 120.
68 The term used here is that of Paul (Amos, 18; “Literary Reinvestigation,” 191).
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 95

surpasses that of the indictment against Gaza. Generality does not seem to be an
issue worth pursuing further.
Third, the prophet’s allegations concern wrongdoing mentioned elsewhere in the
Bible as having occurred only after the eighth century. For example, some assert
that since Tyre’s participation in the slave trade appears elsewhere only in Ezek
27:13 and Joel 4:6-7 (= Eng. 3:6-7), the passage from Amos cannot describe a
historical reality earlier than the mid-sixth century.69 Similarly, doubts surrounding
the “authenticity” of the Edom oracle are anchored in the supposition that Amos
can only be recounting here the same early sixth-century Edomite depredation of
Judah mentioned in other exilic- or post-exilic era texts (e.g., Isa 34:5-17; 63:1-6;
Jer 49:7-22; Ezek 25:12-14; 35:2-5; Joel 4:19 [= Eng. 3:19]; Obad 8-14; Mai
1:4; Ps 137:7; Lam 4:21-22).70 The response to these objections is again easy to
formulate: as will be discussed in greater detail below, the social situations under
indictment in Amos were likely the result of long-standing economic ties between
the Levant and polities elsewhere in the Mediterranean basin. The continuation of
these social and economic conditions—Tyre’s participation in the slave trade and
Edom’s continual harassment of Judah’s southern border—into the sixth century
is merely an indication that the conflicts and economies involved were themselves
of prolonged duration.71
Fourth, the language of each oracle (along with that against Judah; see below) has
been analyzed as particularly Deuteronomistic in theme and tone. This datum would
itself suggest a date in the late seventh century at the absolute earliest. However,
Hans Walter Wolff claims the phrase “to remember the covenant” (‫ )זכר* ברית‬used
in Amos 1:9bß aligns more closely with the Priestly work than with texts commonly
accepted to be pre-exilic, suggesting that the date may be pushed forward somewhat
further.72 Wolff’s argument concerning the date of P may, however, be questioned
in light of some Israeli and, more recently, American scholarship asserting a pre-
exilic date of the Priestly text. Menahem Haran, for example, advocated a date of
composition during the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah,73 although his limitation of
the source’s composition to a mere fifty years or so has not been broadly accepted,
even by those who espouse an earlier rather than later date for P.74 Nonetheless, this
disagreement concerning the date of the Priestly source necessitates that we exhibit
69 E.g., Mays, Amos, 34.
70 E.g., ibid., 36; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 160; Hadjiev, Composition and Redaction, 42-45; cf.
Cripps, Amos, 282-84.
71 E.g., Bartlett, “Land of Seir,” 13-18; idem, “Brotherhood of Edom,” 14-16; Paul, Amos, 18,
19-20; see the third section of this article below.
72 Wolff, Joel and Amos, 159-60.
73 Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into Biblical Cult
Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
1985) 146-47.
74 E.g., Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School
(Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2007) 200-204, 220, esp. 200-201 nn. 4-5. See also Richard
Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1987) 188-89.
96 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

caution in assigning the passage a late date on the basis of these passages’ lexical
and thematic similarities to that Pentateuchal source text. Furthermore, regardless
of this phrase’s originating school of thought (and its corresponding date), several
commentators have pointed out the correspondence between the term “covenant
of kinship” (‫ )ברית אחים‬and the ancient Near Eastern conventions in which parity
treaties are denoted as agreements between “brothers.”75 The concept itself would
seem to be rather old.
Ultimately, these two oracles may well be late, but none of the rationales used to
support this position is decisive on its own; it is, rather, the coincidence of several
potential markers of secondariness that is suggestive. To complicate the issue,
however, the final sets of argumentation for the lateness of these two oracles are
inexorably linked with the ordering of the oracles: many interpreters have attempted
to connect the relative youth of the oracles against Tyre, Edom, and Judah with the
purportedly schematic organization of the hypothetical “original” list of nations.
They claim Amos would naturally have limited himself to five oracles in order
to balance with the five vision reports found later in the book (chapters 7-9*),76
or they assert the guiding principle always handily provided with recourse to the
number seven, the number of perfection.77 However, the subjectivity of the various
organizational proposals can hardly be denied. Any attempts to apply criteria
garnered from such proposals to the debate over the oracles’ relative antiquity
must be viewed as highly provisional, for the principle whereby the oracles have
received their organization remains elusive.

The Literary Order of the Oracles against the Nations

Typically, commentators on Amos have sought to understand the ordering of the
oracles in Amos 1:3-2:3 (and additionally 2:4-8) in relation to their subjects’
geographic positions with respect to Israel (and Judah). One of the first scholars
to make overtures in this direction was Karl Marti, who argued for a generally
circular organizational principle, beginning with Damascus, moving south through
the Transjordanian polities (Ammon and Moab), and then northwards through
Cisjordan (Judah, Israel); in this model the oracles against Gaza, Tyre, and Edom
are necessarily secondary insertions.78 Some time later Aage Bentzen compared

75 E.g., Priest, “Covenant of Brothers,” 400-406. This term is used consistently in the Amarna
Letters as well to indicate a parity status (e.g., EA 1, 2, 3, etc.; for a convenient translation, see
The Amarna Letters [ed. and trans. William L. Moran; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1992]). The metaphor is likely one element in a larger conceptual framework, as shown by J. David
Schloen, The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient
Near East (SAHL 2; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2001) esp. 259-61.1 thank Professor Hays
for drawing my attention to these sources here.
76 Jeremias, Amos, 6, 22-25.
77 Ibid., 22-25,31; Lundbom, “The Lion Has Roared,” 68-69; but cf. Paul, “Literary Reinvestigation,”
196-97.
78 Karl Marti, “Zur Komposition von Amos 1:3-2:3,” in Abhandlungen zur semitischen
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 97

Amos’s oracles to the fixed order of Egyptian execration texts.79 These texts proceed
through a stereotyped order of foreign countries and consistently end with Egypt
as the final referent. Other such geographical orders have been suggested, yet each
has its drawbacks. Working from a standpoint similar to that of Bentzen, Georg
Fohrer attempted to corroborate his predecessor’s basic thesis, again by eliminating
Tyre and Edom from the list, and adducing the pattern as north, west, east, and
center.80 However, Wolff and Meir Weiss have challenged this attempt to connect
the organizational structure of Amos 1-2* with the Egyptian execration texts.81 In
particular, Weiss was able to show that
(1) the constant order in the execration texts ... is not unique to these texts
but is the conventional sequence in which these nations are listed in all Egyp-
tian documents, magical or otherwise; (2) this fixed order was not due to “any
inherent magical design but to the fact that it was the natural expression of the
Egyptian outlook,” ... ; and (3) the directional order of the nations in Amos
... is entirely different from that in the Execration texts.82

Moreover, each of the schemata following Bentzen’s argument can be shown to

fail for similar reasons. Not only does Fohrer’s postulated movement require the
omission of some of the oracles, but also the movement itself does not correspond
closely to that typical of the Egyptian texts.83
While these early interpreters attempted to connect the ordering of Amos’s oracles
against the nations to cognate textual exemplars, others have attempted to supply
a more purely geographic rationale for the oracles’ order. For example, although
Mays admits that the omission of the Tyre and Edom oracles “leaves any geographic
pattern incomplete,”84 he nonetheless attempts to describe the order as though it
were drawn from the sheer meaningfulness of the cardinal directions and completely
intuitive: after the oracles against Damascus and Gaza, “the shift to the north-west
is exactly what one expects if Amos is moving from one point of the compass to
another; the next three lie to the south-east.”85 And with the move to Edom, “the
series moves to the fourth geographical quarter, the south-east.”86 Similarly, Joseph

Religionskunde und Sprachwissenschaft (ed. Wilhelm Frankenberg and Friedrich Küchler; BZAW
33; Giessen: Töpelmann, 1918) 323-30.
79 Aage Bentzen, “The Ritual Background of Amos i 2-ii 16,” OtSt 8 (1950) 85-99.
80 Georg Fohrer, “Prophetie und Magie,” ZAW 78 (1966) 25-47, at 40^-1; idem, Introduction
to the Old Testament (trans. David E. Green; Nashville: Abingdon, 1968) 434.
81 Meir Weiss, “The Pattern of the ‘Execration Texts’ in the Prophetic Literature,” IEJ 19 (1969)
150-57; see also Wolff, Joel and Amos, 14547‫־‬.
82 Paul, Amos, 11-12.
83 Ibid., 12. See also Barton’s observations concerning the nature of the oracles themselves:
they simply do not resemble propagandistic war-oracles all that closely in their accusations (Amos ,s
Oracles, 8-15). Without a specifically cultic setting, the oracles’ similarity to the Egyptian execration
texts dissolves.
84 Mays, Amos, 26.
85 Ibid., 34.
86 Ibid., 35.
98 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

Blenkinsopp suggests that the oracles proceed “in a counterclockwise direction

from north to east (1:3-2:5),”87 although this schema also requires the excision of
the Tyre and Edom oracles from the hypothetical “original” order. Finally, Yehezkel
Kaufmann also sought to apply a rigid geographical premise to these first oracles
of Amos, adducing an ostensibly north-south order of enemy nations in which the
author alternated between the enemies of Israel (Aram, Phoenicia, Ammon) and
the enemies of Judah (Philistia, Edom, Moab).88
All three hypotheses fail to deal with the critical issue of the necessity of such
orderings. Nowhere has Mays developed the underlying presupposition that
northeast, southwest, northwest, and southeast are the four directions in which
the ancient Israelites thought, nor has he mustered an adequate case that this is an
intuitive order of those quadrants. Likewise, even with the excision of the oracles
against Tyre and Edom, Blenkinsopp’s perceived movement of the oracles in
the southeast is not perfectly counter-clockwise, since Ammon precedes Moab
in 1:13-2:3. Paul counters Kaufmann’s analysis with two observations, both of
which disturb the precision of the model. First, the proposal “presupposes that all
the oracles are of national significance, that is, that the crimes were committed
against Israel or Judah, an assumption that is very problematic and that still leaves
the final oracle concerning the conflict of Moab against Edom (and not against
Judah) difficult to reconcile.” Second, it is not clear that the Philistines are to be
understood as having attacked Judah and not Israel in Amos 1:6-8.89 In short, the
ordering of Amos’s oracles against the nations is nearly impossible to decipher
from an a priori geographical standpoint.90 Accordingly, Barton suggests, “The
simplest solution seems to be that the order is more or less arbitrary, or that other
considerations than geography have dictated it.”91
Over the past few decades, scholars have begun to employ methods more
sensitive to the oracles’ literary context in order to come to grips with these chapters’
composition. As many have argued, Aram and Philistia are frequently paired in
prophetic oracles (cf. Isa 9:11 [= Eng. v. 12]; Amos 9:7b),92 as are Philistia and Tyre
(Jer 47:4; Ezek 25:15-26:21; Joel 4:4-8 [= Eng. 3:4-8]; Zech 9:3-6; Ps 83:8).93
In much the same way, the three remaining nations (Edom, Ammon, and Moab)

87 Joseph Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel (rev. and enlarged ed.; Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 1996), 75.
88 Yehezkel Kaufmann, Toledoth Ha-Emunah Ha-Yisrealith (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1957)
6:63 [Hebrew], cited by Paul, Amos, 12. A reformulation of this thesis is evident in the work of
Jeremias, who similarly bases the order of the oracles on the principle of pairs (Amos, 24-25). For
an additional schematization of these oracles’ order, see that of Nils W. Lund (Chiasmus in the New
Testament [Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1942] 87-88; cited and described
in Lundbom, “The Lion Has Roared,” 69-70.
89 Paul, Amos, 12.
90 E.g., Steinmann, “Ordering,” 683-89.
91 Barton, Amos’s Oracles, 13 (see also 23-24).
92 Paul, Amos, 12-13; Jeremias, Amos, 25.
93 Paul, Amos, 13.
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 99

evidence a number of explicit and implicit interconnections to one another and to

Israel and Judah as well. Not only are they all southern Transjordanian polities,
but they are also connected to Israel through bonds of filial relation (e.g., Gen
19:37-38). Moreover, these three appear together in a number of contexts (Deut
23:4-8 [= Eng. vv. 3-7]; Isa 11:14; Jeremiah 48-49; Ezek 25:2-14; and Dan 11:41 ;
cf. the pairing of two of the three in, e.g., Gen 19:37-38; Zeph 2:8-11). Here, too,
the observations of interconnectedness may be valid and thus descriptive, but there
is simply no prescriptive principle of arrangement whereby one might predict the
order of these nations.94
Paul has argued cogently for the “concatenation” formed by the intricate
interweaving of “catchwords, phrases, or ideas shared only by the two contiguous
units.”95 Each stanza contains at least one word, and sometimes a whole phrase,
derived from the preceding stanza. In the one case where this stricture does not
apply—the transition from the Edom oracle to the Ammon oracle—the crime is
ostensibly the same (i.e., the slaughter of defenseless women and children), couched
in divergent terminology. Paronomasia exists between the two oracles as well:
Edom’s action with the sword (‫ )חרב‬is not only assumed in the description of the
Gileadites’ massacre, but the word’s consonants are played upon in the rationale
behind the Ammonites’ actions as well (96.(‫ הרחיב‬Paul summarizes, “whether
such a sequential, concatenous pattern is a product of originally independent units
welded together by Amos or by a later editor or is explained as a single literary
composite, the process of an internal associative patterning provides the key to its
correct interrelationship.”97
Paul’s literary observations cannot be disputed.98 However, while historical-
and redaction-critical scholarship may be able to diagnose and organize the
diachronic development of the text, the resulting judgments calling into question the
“originality” or “authenticity” of some oracles do not usually seek to interpret the
text in anything other than strictly political and materialist terms: if the authenticity
of the oracle is debatable, its historical referent is immediately impugned,
unattributable to an eighth-century context, and the rhetorical force of the passage
is depleted. Likewise, redaction-critical analysis tends to end its interrogation with
the final form of the text, but it does not usually evaluate the book’s structural
composition and rhetorical thrust as a whole. In short, both modes of analysis have
traditionally halted at an arbitrarily selected point, although providing much needed

94Ibid., 13.
95 Ibid.; idem, “Amos l:3-2:3,” 397-403; see also the elaborations of Paul’s thesis given by
Andrew Steinmann (“Order,” 687-89).
96 Paul, Amos, 14.
97 Ibid., 15.
98 This is not to say, however, that his observations prove the attribution of the oracles against
Tyre and Edom to the historical Amos, either. As Hadjiev has shown, a redactor may easily have
crafted these oracles so as to heighten their “concatenation” with the others (Composition and
Redaction, 54-55).
100 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

information for a literary analysis along the way. For example, the precision and
thoroughness of Paul’s historical-literary analysis allow him to suggest not that
extant oracles were juxtaposed with those sharing the catchwords, common phrases,
etc., but that the oracles were deliberately constructed to interact with one another
at a visceral level. This is an important recognition concerning the passion with
which the editors continued to imbue the product of their labors. Nonetheless, this
resulting proposal for the passage’s internal organization continues to avoid the
question of a larger, corpus-oriented interpretation of these oracles: why did the
editors who collected, organized, and supplemented Amos’s work begin the book
with these oracles against the nations? In the overarching scope of the book, these
nations play a small role, if any. Far more prominent is the ominous omnipresence
of Assyria, which, though never explicitly named, lingers belligerently in the
shadows of the book of Amos, threatening the Israelites with war, despoliation,
deportation, exile, and death.
At the outset of his own exposition of these oracles, John Barton wondered
concerning the present arrangement of Amos 1:3-2:3 at the beginning of the
prophetic book:
Is it a remnant of an older way of prophecy, the way of Balaam and of the
four hundred prophets of Ahab, reinforcing a narrow nationalism with a
word of power; is it the expression of a radically new insight, the discovery,
made for the first time in the eighth century, that not just Israel but all na-
tions, whatever their prestige and vaunted might, stood under the judgment
of Yahweh; or is it a literary device, designed to throw the urbane and com-
fortable sins of Israel into high relief by seeing them against the background
of the apparently grosser outrages perpetuated by barbarian nations, whom
the prophet’s complacent hearers would be only too ready to condemn,
not noticing until too late that in condemning them they were condemning
themselves?"

Taking a different tack, John Geyer suggested that this entire section of Amos
(specifically, 1:3-2:5) was added secondarily in order to provide Amos with one
of the (otherwise missing) “integral part[s] of the structure of prophetic books,”100
namely, oracles against the nations. But this suggestion is overly reductionist
when one considers that three of the minor prophetic books—Obadiah, Jonah,
and Nahum—do not overtly concern themselves with Geyer’s other posited
“integral part” (oracles “against the homeland”).101 Subsequent interpreters have
usually accepted, to a greater or lesser extent, many of the reasons alluded to by
Barton for the fronting of these oracles, even if Barton himself ultimately settled
on the overriding importance of “international customary law” governing nations
as one of the major principles motivating these oracles’ position at the beginning
99 Barton, Amos’s Oracles, 1.
100 Geyer, “Mythology and Culture,” 140.
101 For a similar (anticipatory) critique, see Barton, Amos’s Oracles, 5. Cf. Auld, who poses the
question somewhat differently {Amos, 41).
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 101

of Amos.102 But if this is the case, what should be made of the gross disconnect
between the heinous acts of violence for which the other nations are condemned,
and the economic oppression for which Israel is blamed (not to mention the cultic
and legal transgressions of Judah)? It would seem that the reader is forced to return
to the same basic questions: Why these oracles? Why here?

■ Amos 1:3-2:3 as Witness to the Ancient Economy

Relating these chapters to economic concerns may be an unexpected departure
from the consensus view. Most scholars have anchored their readings of Amos
1:3-2:3 in the sickening depredations committed by the surrounding nations. I do
not dispute that the modes of violence enumerated here are the direct actions placed
under yhwh’s judgment in the text.103 Nevertheless, in the remainder of this paper
I proceed from the recognition of many previous scholars that a properly situated
contextual reading of Amos 1:3-2:3 cannot end with the oracle against Moab but
must continue with the oracles against Judah and Israel (2:4-8 and beyond), and, in
that light, I argue that a reframing of Amos’s excoriating oracles against the nations
is warranted which examines humans’ conflicts from an economic perspective.

Amos 1:3-2:3 and “War Crimes”

It is neither uncommon nor irresponsible to turn our focus on the correspondence
between the condemned actions of Amos 1:3-2:3 and the category of “war crimes”
that has received international codification and legitimation in the wake of the
World Wars of the twentieth century. Matthew R. Schlimm has recently compared
the six oracles addressed above to international warfare law as encoded in the
stipulations of the Geneva Conventions (GC).104 Although he correctly recognizes
the differences between the prophetic text of Amos 1:3-2:3 and such legal corpora,
Schlimm argues for the thematic correspondence between Amos’s accusations and
the precepts in the GC: the former, he states, “adumbrate international humanitarian
law in significant ways.” Although the two literary corpora derive from different
genres, comparison can be made between the two documents: “Each of Amos’ six
oracles against the nations condemns war crimes broadly understood as inhumane

102 Barton, Amos's Oracles, 39-45.

103 The root of yhwh’s criticism of these acts also remains, of course, under dispute. Barton
categorizes the various proposals under four headings: 1) it was Amos’s nationalism that compelled
him to criticize the foreign nations; 2) Amos’s excoriation of the nations is a logical extension of
the “ethical obligation incumbent upon Israel”; 3) Amos’s criticism of the nations can be traced to
the belief that they had violated divinely mandated moral laws (of which, not coincidentally, they
would have been unaware); and 4) a form of “international customary law” in which “the principles
at stake ... are essentially part of a conventional [viz., human-originated] morality, which God is
assumed to back up with fiery sanctions.” Barton adopts the fourth position {Amos Oracles, 39-45).
104 Matthew R. Schlimm, “Teaching the Hebrew Bible amid the Current Human Rights Crisis:
The Opportunities Presented by Amos 1:3-2:3,” SBL Forum 4.1 (2006), n.p., accessed October
2013, http://sbl-site.org/article .aspx?articleld=478.
102 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

actions committed in times of violence. Each crime that Amos focuses on would be
deemed, at least by today’s standards, a crime against humanity and a severe human
rights violation.”105 Schlimm then provides for each indictment levied against the
nations an analogous legal prohibition found in the GC.
Reading the crime of Aram as a literal description of the torture of Gileadite
civilians (cf. above), Schlimm points to Prot. I, Art. 75, which forbids mutilation
“at any time and in any place whatsoever, whether committed by civilians or by
military agents.”106 Schlimm notes a variety of related prohibitions as well, all
forbidding the infliction of torture on civilians and prisoners of war: Conv. I, Arts.
3,12; Conv. Ill, Art. 17; Conv. IV, Art. 32; Prot. II, Art. 4, Sect. 2a. In comparison
to Gaza’s and Tyre’s deliveries of “entire populations” into forced labor in the
copper mines of Edom, Schlimm cites Conv. IV, Art. 49 and Conv. Ill, Art. 52,
“which specifically forbid the mass forcible transfers of civilians, as well as forced
labor that is unhealthy or dangerous.... The entire Fourth Convention specifically
concerns itself with the protection of civilians, and there are special provisions for
the most vulnerable, such as children.”107 Similarly, passages of the GC demonstrate
concern with such activities as the killing of civilian refugees (Prot. I, Art. 85, Sect.
3; cf. Prot. I, Arts. 57,73), to which Schlimm likens the indictment against Edom
in Amos 1:11;108 the despicable wartime atrocities committed against women,
including rape, murder, and dismemberment (Conv. IV, Art. 16; cf. Conv. IV,
Arts. 27, 38, 89,132; Prot. I, Art. 76; Prot. II, Art. 6, Sec. 4; cf. Amos 1:13); and
the desecration of the dead (Conv. I, Art. 17; cf. Amos 2:1). Schlimm thus argues
for a rough correspondence between the transgressions attributed to each nation
in Amos’s oracles and many of the inhumane acts perpetrated all too often during
the course of warfare in the modem era.
Schlimm’s reading of Amos 1:3-2:3 is an affirmation of the universality of
humanitarian principles, recognized both within the prophet’s mediated word
of YHWH and within a multi-national (and multi-religious) secular organization.
However, Schlimm himself recognizes the variance in these two modes of

105 Ibid.
106 I follow here the conventions of citation used by Schlimm: Conv. = Convention; Prot. =
Protocol; Art(s). = Article(s); and Sect. = Section. All texts are cited from the Geneva Conventions
published at http://genevaconventions.org/, established and currently maintained by the Society of
Professional Journalists.
107 Schlimm, “Teaching the Hebrew Bible.” See also Prot. I, Art. 57, Sect. 2b; Prot. I, Art. 85,
Sec. 3; Conv. IV, Arts. 17, 23-24, 50; Prot. I, Arts. 76-77; Prot. II, Art. 4, Sect. 3.
108 Presumably the fleshing out of the very terse allegations against Edom (cf. above) as “the
complete destruction (herein) of a people or the killing of refugees” is based in part on Schlimm’s
acceptance of the chronological secondariness of 1:11-12 and their correspondence to the accusations
against Edom found in Obad 12-14. Particularly informing Schlimm’s reading, one surmises, is the
accusation that Edom “stood at the crossings to cut off his [i.e., Judah’s] fugitives (‫תעמד על־הפרק‬
‫)להכרית את־פליטיו‬.” Compare the analysis presented above, which would suggest adherence to the
following set of passages protecting the rights of women in times of violence.
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 103

ethical discernment,109 and he proves himself to be aware of the resultant ethical

ramifications. In the final major section of the paper, he addresses the challenges
posed to readings of Amos 1:3-2:3 as a witness to natural law, including the
objection that the category “War Crime” is itself a Western invention, concocted
through reliance on culturally-conditioned principles—the same principles, not
coincidentally, that pervade Amos.
More problematic for Schlimm’s thesis is the omission of any discussion of the
oracles against Judah and Israel. Although it is quite tempting to relegate these
oracles to a separate literary unit, commentators have long recognized that the
oracles against the nations in Amos 1:3-2:3 do not end before the movement to
Judah and Israel but rather climax in it.110 Formal indicators signal this necessary
continuation with 2:4-16, since both oracles take up the formulae with which the
preceding oracles are introduced (“For three transgressions of GN, and for four, I
will not turn it back”; vv. 4,6), and since the Judah oracle concludes with the same
threat of destruction by fire found ubiquitously as well (“So I will send/kindle a
fire on Judah, and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem”; 2:5; cf. 1:4,7,10,
12,14a; 2:2).111 Yet Schlimm’s analysis has had to omit these oracles, presumably
because their content is incommensurate with his thesis.112 Amos castigates Judah,
because they have rejected the law of the Lord,
and have not kept his statutes,
but they have been led astray by the same lies
after which their ancestors walked. (2:4b)

The scholarly consensus holding that this passage is Deuteronomistic (and

concomitantly secondary) places this oracle in what appears at first to be a different
social location. The “crimes” in which Judah is implicated here are commonly
described as cultic (esp. 2:4bß) rather than as “a breach of the moral law.”113 As
with the oracle against Judah, so too does Amos bring Israel under indictment for

109 “One must be aware of the danger of anachronism and recognize that modem laws of war

are obviously different in a variety of ways, such as their lack of God-language. Nevertheless, the
clear points of connection suggest that Amos’ words dimly prefigure what would later be codified
in international humanitarian law” (Schlimm, “Teaching the Hebrew Bible).
110 E.g., Cripps, Amos, 117; Barton, Amos's Oracles, 3,36-38; Jeremias, Amos, 20-21; Hadjiev,
Composition and Redaction, 57.
111 The omission of any punishment of Judah beyond this threat has typically been taken as an
indication of the oracle’s secondary status. However, one might suggest that in the book’s presumable
earliest and actual current arrangement, the remainder of Amos 3-9* comprises the extended divine
diatribe detailing the punishment to be meted out against the sinful covenant people.
112 In Auld’s formulation, “The wrongs are no longer national and military but domestic and
social” (Amos, 45), and in Barton’s, “[Amos’s audience] saw these [social obligations] as in no
way comparable with the international conventions infringed by the nations” (Amos’s Oracles, 48).
113 Paul, Amos, 74. Paul continues: “[Judah] is charged with the ‘spurning of the teachings of the
Lord.’” Similarly, Wolff describes the oracle against Judah as “specifying no crimes against human
beings, but only those committed directly against Yahweh” (Joel and Amos, 163).
104 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

crimes that are seemingly much more mundane—at least, in comparison to those
of Tyre or Ammon:
because they sell the righteous for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals—
they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,
and push the afflicted out of the way;
father and son go in to the same girl,
so that my holy name is profaned;
they lay themselves down beside every altar
on garments taken in pledge;
and in the house of their God they drink
wine bought with fines they imposed. (2:6-8)

Although these actions are indeed repugnant, nowhere does the level of violence
approach that found in the preceding oracles. Instead, the largely economic concerns
of the oracle against Israel reveal a severe difficulty with Schlimm’s analysis.
Schlimm does not account for the prominence of the economic abuse perpetrated
on society’s lowest classes in the book Amos. By concentrating so fully on the
egregious and horrific modes of violence employed in the Iron Age II, Schlimm
misses the socio-economically circumscribed arena in which this violence occurs.

Amos 1:3-2:3 in Geographical, Social-Scientific, and Literary Perspectives

The criticism proposed here is not an effort to dismantle Schlimm’s ethical
stance; I fully concur that the oracles against the nations condemned such extreme
expressions of violence. Nor is this caveat a thinly veiled attempt to return to
categories and philosophies familiar from Marxist idealism. What I am arguing,
however, is that in focusing so much on the particular modes of violence described
in Amos 1:3-2:3, commentators have not yet turned adequate attention to the social
and economic conditions in which that violence was manifested. Resituating the
modes of violence described in Amos 1:3-2:3 within their historical, geographic,
and economic context(s) opens up a new perspective on the text. When properly
contextualized, these opening chapters divulge Amos’s portrayal of Israel’s and
Judah’s national economies as inextricably connected with those of the surrounding
polities. Though neither the prophet himself nor the editors of the biblical book
conceptualized their work in strictly economic terms, it is precisely the international
economy of the Iron Age II (and Persian Period) southern Levant that lies in the
background of these oracles.
The need to attend more closely to the economic context of Israel in the Iron
Age II was driven home prominently by the work of Coote and Whitelam.114 By
adopting a long-term view of the cyclical oscillation of settlement expansion and
contraction in the Iron Age southern Levant, Coote and Whitelam were able to
isolate a number of variables constraining the socio-economic and political history

114 Coote and Whitelam, Emergence of Early Israel.

 JEREMY M. HUTTON 105

of the region. One of these, of course, was interregional trade.115 Because of its
position astride several major trade routes, all constrained to the narrow swath
of land comprising Cisjordan and Transjordan by exigencies of topography and
climate, the southern Levant—and each of its constituent polities—occupied a
prime position along the interregional trade networks: “The strategic position of the
overland routes traversing Palestine means that it has often found itself very near
the centre of world economies and benefited greatly from its privileged position.”116
Although Coote and Whitelam recognize that “the interregional trade economy is
interlinked with the local subsistence economy,” they also stress the disjunctures
between these two economies:
The subsistence economy is local and rural involving primarily food produc‫־‬
tion for the local workforce. It also involves production for taxes, rents, and
other creditors and elites, as well as efforts to produce in return for cash
which peasants need for purchasing or bartering what they themselves do not
produce. The trade economy is urban, interregional, and involves commodi-
ties, strategic military items, and luxuries.117

As many studies have demonstrated, the urban elites dominated both economies,
although the precise mechanisms of this domination remain somewhat unclear.
For example, Coote and Whitelam claim, “It was the ruling family, or ‘house’,
whether the imperial or state ruling house, which conducted and benefitted
from the commercial activities conducted through the urban centres.”118 Stager,
complementarily, allows for the action of a slightly more decentralized model.
In his “Port Power” model, independent merchants bear the onus of the actual
overland transportation of the trade commodities to the various seaports serving as
the connective nodes of oversea trade networks, while the small regional polities
lying between the production facilities and their eventual markets would each take
a cut of the profit.119 Regardless of the precise organization of the trade economy,
it should be clear that polities had every incentive to extend their territory far
enough to control the major routes of trade, each extracting its own share of the
total economic value moving through its control. With the increase in international
trade during the eighth century b.c.e., the urban elites of the southern Levant would
increasingly have been able to leverage their financial and coercive advantages
over the local subsistence economies under their control through the imposition

115 Ibid., 63-80.

116 Ibid., 63.
117 Ibid., 65; see also John S. Holladay, who distinguishes between an “internal economy” and
an “international economy” (“Hezekiah’s Tribute, Long-Distance Trade, and the Wealth of Nations
ca. 1000-600 BC: A New Perspective,” in Confronting the Past: Archaeological and Historical
Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever [ed. Seymour Gitin, J. Edward Wright, and
J. P. Dessel; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006] 309-31).
118 Coote and Whitelam, Emergence of Early Israel, 66. See also ibid., 68: “The income from
transit fees, tolls, customs, and trade profits for intermediaries can support local rulers.”
119 Stager, “Port Power,” 625-38.
106 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

of increased taxation,120 in order to afford the costly imports both constituting and
indicative of higher status in an international economy. Marvin Chaney describes the
increasing disparity between the elites and those trapped in a subsistence economy
that provided ever-decreasing levels of “subsistence”: “Imports mostly benefited
an elite minority, while the exports necessary to procure them cut deeply into the
sustenance of the peasant majority.”121 And further: “Only a tiny percentage of those
populations initiated, benefited from, and favored the process, but they held the
reins of power.”122 Undoubtedly, this process of economic exploitation by the urban
elite was not necessarily limited to the eighth century, but could have continued
on into subsequent eras.123 Nonetheless, Walter Houston has argued persuasively
that the eighth century does provide a suitable context for much of the material in
Amos. In part, the political and military rise of Assyria in the northeast around the
midpoint of the eighth century brought about the conditions of this social crisis in the
southern Levant. Houston points especially to the concomitant economic pressure
Assyria exerted on the ruling elites of the entire Levant through the imposition of
tribute and the increasing control it levied over trade in commodities and luxury
goods, as factors in Israel’s deepening crisis.124

120 This is an admittedly brief description of the types of extraction polities no doubt imposed
on the commodities flowing through their borders towards foreign destinations. Holladay provides a
much longer list: merchants would have been subjected to “transit tolls, palace taxes, bribes, enabling
preferential purchases for the palace at discounted rates, or bearing all the other costs that attended
international traffic elsewhere” (“Hezekiah’s Tribute,” 311). Further, Holladay estimates that 20-25%
of the commodities (initially) carried by the international caravaneers would have wound up in the
treasuries of the polities through which the merchants passed (“Hezekiah’s Tribute,” 325, 327).
121 Marvin L. Chaney, “Whose Sour Grapes? The Addresses of Isaiah 5:1-7 in the Light of
Political Economy,” Semeia 87 (1999) 105-22, at 107. For other discussions of political economy
in ancient Israel and Judah, see, among others, idem, “Systemic Study of the Israelite Monarchy,”
Semeia 37 (1986) 53-76, esp. 60-74; Devadasan N. Premnath, “Latifundialization and Isaiah
5.8-10,” JSOT 40 (1988) 49-60; David Hopkins, “Bare Bones: Putting Flesh on the Economics
of Ancient Israel,” in The Origins of the Ancient Israelite States (ed. Volkmar Fritz and Philip R.
Davies; JSOTSup 228; Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) 121-39; Walter Houston,
“Was There a Social Crisis in the Eighth Century?” in In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel: Proceedings
of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (ed. John Day; London: T & T Clark, 2004) 130-49, esp.
131-33; and Holladay, “Hezekiah’s Tribute,” 309-31. Again, I am indebted to Professor Chris Hays
for much of the bibliography here.
122 Chaney, “Whose Sour Grapes?” 109.
123 On this point, Houston cites previously Richard J. Coggins, Joel and Amos (New Century Bible;
Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000); and Ehud Ben Zvi, “Wrongdoers, Wrongdoing
and Righting Wrongs in Micah 2,” Bibint 7 (1999) 87-100, esp. 88 and 99.
124 For discussion, see Houston, “Social Crisis,” esp. 131-33, and particularly 142-47; and,
previously, Hopkins, “Bare Bones,” 136-39. In the central pages of his article (137-42), Houston
surveys the work of two prominent scholars arguing that the “social crisis” of the eighth century
was not as deeply cutting as the biblical texts portray it (John S. Holladay, “The Kingdoms of Israel
and Judah: Political and Economic Centralization in the Iron IIA-B [ca. 1000-750 bce],” in The
Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land [ed. Thomas E. Levy; London: Leicester University Press,
1995] 368-98 [but cf. Holladay, “Hezekiah’s Tribute,” esp. 327-28]; and Shunya Bendor, The Social
Structure in Ancient Israel [Jerusalem Biblical Studies 7; Jerusalem: Simor, 1996]), then proposes
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 107

In short, the bifurcation of the economy of the southern Levant in the Iron
Age II into an interregional, urban-based trade economy and a series of local,
subsistence-based agricultural economies, along with the consolidation of trade
benefits within the elite circles of society who became increasingly subject to the
economic and political whims of Assyria, necessitated to a large degree that the
interregional trade economy effectively bypass the local subsistence economies,
while at the same time extracting more and more value from them. Unsurprisingly,
the majority of the encounters enumerated in Amos 1:3-2:3, insofar as they can be
identified accurately, seem to have taken place along the borders between various
ethnic groups and states. Most commentators have identified this much already.
What is not so readily apparent is that in each case, Amos draws ethical connections
between these polities; these connections follow precisely the major economic trade
routes of antiquity. The vast majority of the international conflicts cited in Amos
1:3-2:3 assume the continual struggle over control of the overland trade route
running from the west coast of the Arabian peninsula through the major Judahite
port Elath, northwards to Damascus and, beyond it, Syria and Mesopotamia.*125 This
longitudinal trade route—or possibly cluster of trade routes126—ran the length of the
Transjordanian highlands through Edom, Moab, Ammon, Gilead, and Aram. Along
this main north-south artery goods flowed northward from the Hejaz in modem
Saudi Arabia, including incense and spices bound for Syria, Mesopotamia, and Asia
Minor. And, as Holladay points out, equally precious goods from these northern
regions would have flowed southward on the merchants’ return trip.127 Although
the Bible nowhere explicitly attaches the various Transjordanian campaigns of the
kings to international competition over the trade routes, there are plenty of indicators
that control of trade along the so-called “King’s Highway” was a major concern
for Cisjordanian royalty.128 Furthermore, when Israel or Judah controlled a portion
of this eastern escarpment of the Great Rift Valley, the polity was no doubt able to
siphon off a greater portion of the trade westward toward its favored Mediterranean
port, taking an increased cut of the profits along the way.129

a rereading of the evidence cited by each to conclude that the prophetic texts purporting to derive
from the eighth century do, in fact, attest that a certain threshold of “social crisis” had been reached.
125 This route goes by the name “The King’s Highway”; see Aharoni, Land of the Bible, 54-57.
For further descriptions of the trade route and its primary commodities, see Susan Sherratt and
Andrew Sherratt, “The Growth of the Mediterranean Economy in the Early First Millennium BC,”
World Archaeology 24 (1993) 361-78, at 364.
126 There were at least two different routes running parallel to one another. These two routes
joined briefly at Rabbath-ammon before diverging again; Aharoni, Land of the Bible, 54-55.
127 Holladay, “Hezekiah’s Tribute,” 320-21.
128 E.g., Aharoni, Land of the Bible, 57, also 16, 45, and esp. 40.
129 For discussion of two routes crossing Israelite territory and culminating in shipping centers
on the Mediterranean, see Holladay, “Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” 383-86. Elsewhere, Holladay
makes the point that traders would have had a choice of routes, and thus, I would paraphrase, of
their “trading”‫־‬partners (“Hezekiah’s Tribute,” 328). Even if there was some degree of choice on the
part of the traders as to which route they took to market, the interpreter should remain cognizant of
108 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

Given the international economic background laid out here, it should come as
no surprise that the trade route’s environs feature as the primary military theater(s)
in Amos’s oracles against Damascus, Edom, Ammon, and Moab: 1) Damascus is
excoriated for its brutality during a southward push against Gilead (1:3). Any such
push would have served, at least in part, to extend Damascene control over a greater
portion of the longitudinal trade route. 2) Ammon, too, receives castigation for its
viciousness in a similar, westward push against Gilead (1:13). Although it is difficult
to know where exactly the line of ethnic or political demarcation fell (and it surely
did not remain in one place for too long, any way), economic benefits would no doubt
have followed whenever the Ammonites were able to “extend their border” (‫הרחיב‬
‫)את־גבולם‬. The further Ammon was able to push its boundaries against the Israelite
tribal areas in the Transjordan, both north towards Ramoth-gilead and south towards
Heshbon, the greater the portion of the King’s Highway it would have controlled.
3) If the description of the Edomites’ incursion into Judah in 2 Chr 28:17 is based
on historical realities, this short note may give an indication of the degree to which
Judah’s southern border was beleaguered (compare Amos 1:11). Besides the literary
reminiscences of the biblical text, epigraphic markers of Edomite presence in this
area may also indicate the long-term presence of tensions surrounding the latitudinal
routes between Transjordan and the Mediterranean running through southern Judah:
an ostracon dating to the beginning of the sixth century b.c.e. and bearing the divine
name Qaus (i.e., the Edomite deity) was discovered in Horvat ‘Uzza, east of Arad.130
4) Moab’s aggression towards Edom (alluded to in 2:1) would also have had the
effect—even if only of secondary concern at the time—of extending the projection
of Moabite power southward, thereby claiming a greater swath of the longitudinal
trade route and the attendant taxes and transit fees. In short, each one of these
oracles presupposes the importance of the economic artery coursing the length
of the Transjordanian highlands and of the nodes at which goods may have been
siphoned off westward. Bolstering this interpretation, Susan and Andrew Sherratt
note in their study of the first-millennium b.c.e. economy that one of the emergent
features of the new economy of the Iron Age was that “territorial definition became
important both at the boundaries of city states and of larger entities, giving rise to
new forms of empires based on direct politico-military control and involving new
forms of regional surplus extraction and tribute.”131
In addition to the military activities along the longitudinal King’s Highway,
it is possible to reconstruct the common destination of the enslaved populations

the political and economic ramifications of such alternatives: one suspects that merchants would be
more likely to choose as a trading and transit partner (and, more plainly, the overlord to whom taxes
and transit fees were paid) the polity able to exert the most power over its neighbors, guaranteeing
safe passage and offering the maximal rate of return on said fees.
130 See, e.g., Itzhaq Beit-Arieh and Bruce Cresson, “An Edomite Ostracon from Horvat ‘Uza,” Tel
Aviv 12 (1985) 98-101 ; and Shmuel Ahituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions
from the Biblical Period (A Carta Handbook; Jerusalem: Carta, 2008) 351-54.
131 Sherratt and Sherratt, “Mediterranean Economy,” 363.
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 109

in the indictments of Gaza and Tyre and the populations’ respective routes of
travel. Jeremias has correctly pointed to the latitudinal trade route from Gaza on
the Mediterranean to Edom in the southern Transjordan (Amos 1:6).132 The slave
populations coming from Phoenicia (v. 9) would presumably have been shipped
down the coast to a northern port city such as Dor or Akko, then transported overland
through the Esdraelon and Jezreel Valleys, and driven into the Transjordanian
highlands to meet the King’s Highway. In both cases, the fate of these populations
likely ended in the copper mines of Edom, where they were enslaved and in whose
rocky soil their bodies were wrecked with toil.
In other words, every one of the oracles in Amos 1-2 other than those against
Israel and Judah finds its arena along the King’s Highway or culminates in the
major cities located along it. Many of these cities are held under judgment in the
punishment verses of Amos’s oracles—Damascus (1:3, 5), Teman (v. 12), Bozra
(v. 12), Rabbath-ammon (v. 14), and Kerioth (= Kir-haresheth;133 2:2). In this
reading, the text develops its portrayals of two interconnected trade networks, both
of which engendered regional disputes employing despicable acts of dehumanizing
violence. On the one hand, Amos portrays a large-scale slave-trade network in the
southern Levant, with its regional distribution and collection centers on the shore
of the Mediterranean and its central market in Edom.134 On the other, Amos alludes
to the arterial trade route running longitudinally through Transjordan. Attempts
to gain control of this route or its tributaries occasioned outright brutality in the
treatment of civilians as the bickering polities sought to intimidate, harass, expel,
and in some cases exterminate the resident populations.

■ Situating Amos 2:4-8 (and Beyond) within the Ancient

Economy
In the previous section, I described the convergence of the oracles contained in
Amos 1:3-2:3 with historical and economic reconstructions of Levantine society.
But we should not stop here in our investigation of Amos’s oracles against the
nations; as noted above, the devastating critique of these polities’ reprehensible
acts does not end before but rather culminates in Amos’s oracles against Judah and
Israel. Also as noted above, the apparently quotidian wrongs committed by Judah
and Israel enumerated in Amos 2:4-8 belie a much deeper analysis of the actual
iniquities imputed to these two polities. For example, Judah is held accountable for

132 Jeremias, Amos, 27.

133 Aharoni, Land of the Bible, 56.
134 For the increasing size of the slave trade in the first millennium b.c.e., see Sherratt and Sherratt:
“Slaves became a commodity traded in large numbers and were applied to large-scale construction
and industrial works, including agricultural work and mining. Slave populations might now be
ethnically distinctive, often brought from considerable distances” (“Mediterranean Economy,” 363;
this observation is made already in the section detailing the developments of the tenth century). See
also Stager, “Port Power,” 625-38.
110 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

its refusal to adhere to the laws and statutes of the Torah; as mentioned previously,
this is recognizably Deuteronomistic language135 and thus correspondingly alludes
to a vast repertoire of legal injunctions governing interactions between human
individuals. Judah’s rejection of the (Deuteronomic) law (‫ )תורת ה״‬and its deliberate
obliviousness to yhwh’s statues (‫ )חקיו‬may be crimes against the deity,136 but
if so, they are perpetrated at least in part against one’s human peers. This legal
corpus features injunctions against such exploitative and destructive behaviors
as attacking a city without first offering its inhabitants the terms of surrender
(Deut 20:10-12) or wantonly annihilating a city’s fruitful orchards during times
of siege (vv. 19-21).137 We find also prescriptions mandating a periodic remission
of debts (‫ ;שמטה‬Deut 15:1-3) and a release of servants—who were, according to
Deuteronomy, to be treated as though they had all along been indentured servants
rather than permanently acquired slaves (vv. 12-14). Profligate disregard for
these stipulations could reasonably be construed as an economically-charged and
intentional neglect of many of the same basic “human rights” enumerated above,
even if this neglect constitutes operation in a much less overt manner, with the
economic benefits accruing to the slave-owner or money-lender proceeding in a
correspondingly muted way.138
Similarly, the prophetic excoriation of Israel seems at the surface level to depart
dramatically from the foregoing oracles against the nations: Israel is placed under
indictment for its practices of debt-servitude (Amos 2:6b) and oppression of the
economically marginalized (v. 7a), for its sexual deviancy (v. 7b), and for its
hypocritical merger of economic exploitation and cultic practice (v. 8). Although
portrayed as heinous in their own right, none of these practices rises to the level of
raw violence and depredation manifested in the oracles against the foreign nations.
In fact, Wolff sharply distinguishes this oracle from those preceding:
The list of accusations in 2:6-9 is clearly distinguished from the reproaches
against the foreign nations by the fact that it does not include war crimes,
for which the national leadership would primarily be accountable. The an-
nouncements of punishment against the foreign nations always name those

135 For the reference as Deuteronomic in tone, see Mays, Amos, 41; and Wolff, Joel and Amos,
163-64. Radine provides a helpful review of the debate surrounding this judgment {Book of Amos,
15-17).
136 So Mays, Amos, 41-42; Wolff, Joel and Amos, 163; Paul, Amos, 74.
137 On this latter passage (Deut 20:19-20) in particular, see, among others, Jacob L. Wright,
“Warfare and Wanton Destruction: A Reexamination of Deuteronomy 20:19-20 in Relation to
Ancient Siegecraft,” JBL 127 (2008) 423-58.
138 We should not neglect the fact that the Deuteronomic law code is primarily concerned with
the well-being of the Israelite community, so that many of its protections extend only as far as does
Judahite (or Israelite) identity (cf., e.g., Deut 15:3, which allows members of the community to
maintain claim on loans made to foreigners; and v. 12, which limits the release of slaves only to
“Hebrew” men and women [‫)]העברי או העבריה‬.
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 111

politically responsible, whereas in the oracle against Israel this is nowhere

the case.139

Yet at the same time, the exposition of the Iron Age II economy of the Levant given
above should provoke a reanalysis of our initial reading of this oracle. On closer
examination, we find that the violence lying at the root of Amos’s diatribe still
festers beneath the surface, masked only by the façade of economic due process.
The people of Israel are criticized in Amos 2:6 for “their selling the innocent for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals” (‫)על־מכרם בכסף צדיק ואביון בעבור נעלים‬. No matter
the precise reading of the final prepositional phrase,140 the concern here is with the verb
*‫מכר‬. Amid a number of possible variations in the interpretation of this verb, the most
likely scenario seems to be the one in which “the chaige is sale into slavery to pay a
real or assumed debt; the party sold is otherwise guiltless.”141 A similar castigation is
found in 8:6, where the colon ‫ ואביון בעבור נעלים‬follows a colon worded similarly
to the first stich of 2:6b: ‫(“ לקנות בכסף דלים‬so that we may) purchase the poor for
silver.” In effect, 8:6 merely represents the opposite end of the economic transaction
portrayed in 2:6, contrasting *‫“ מכר‬to sell” with *‫“ קנה‬to buy,” and substituting
the plural ‫( דלים‬see the use of this word in 2:7) for the singular ‫צדיק‬. Couched
in a diatribe against unfair business practices (“[so that we may] make the ephah
small and make the sheqel great, and skew the unfair scales”; 8:5), there can be
no reasonable doubt that this passage portrays the deceitful business practices of
Israelite merchants, full of avarice and greed (v. 5), as leading directly to the debt-
servitude for which they are condemned in v. 6 (and 2:6). Similarly, the pernicious
violence—metaphorical or actual—alluded to in 2:7a finds restatement in 8:4. In
both passages, the persons under criticism are accused of being “ones who trample”
(‫“ )השאפים‬on the heads of the poor” (2:7 ;‫)בראש דלים‬, or simply “(on) the needy”
(142.(8:4 ;‫ אביון‬The second hemi-stich in 2:7a describes how the elites of Israel “turn
aside the path of the humble” (‫)ודרך ענוים יטו‬. Although this passage has received
a judiciary explanation by some commentators,143 Paul asserts through reference to
a similar passage in Job 24:4 that “The indictment here makes the similar charge
that the needy are ‘turned aside’..., that is, pushed off the road. This figuratively
expresses the same idea that the underprivileged class is bullied and oppressed
by the wealthy, who deprive and block them from obtaining the privileges and
prerogatives to which they are naturally entitled.”144 A similar accusation is lodged
in 5:12, where Amos criticizes the “ones who bind up the innocent [‫ ]צררי צדיק‬, take
139 Wolff, Joel and Amos, 164.
140 Readings vary for this final phrase, with Paul referring to a text-critical issue in LXX 1 Sam
12:3, thereby advocating a textual emendation to ‫בעלם‬, with the translation “(for a) hidden gift/
payoff’ {Amos, 77-79). See there for additional discussion of other suggestions.
141 Paul, Amos, 77; see there for further discussion of the variety of interpretations. For similar
readings, see Wolff, Amos, 165.
142 See further Wolff, Joel and Amos, 166; Paul, Amos, 79-80.
143 E.g., Cripps, Amos, 140.
144 Paul, Amos, 81.
112 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

a bribe [‫]לקחי כפר‬, and tum aside the needy at the gate [‫]ואביונים בשער הטו‬.” Here
too, the criticism revolves around the obstinate resolution of those in society vested
with social and economic power to maintain their economic advantages at any cost.
Although examples of this sort could be multiplied almost indefinitely from the
book of Amos, the preceding synopsis is sufficient to illustrate the interconnections
established between the crimes of which the prophet and his tradents accused Israel
and the world economy lying in the background of the oracles against Judah and
Israel (2:4-8). In perfect symmetry with the preceding oracles, Amos suggests that,
underlyingly, the same respect for human dignity at stake in the foreign kingdoms
is at stake in Israel as well. It was precisely the upper class’s participation in and
hegemony over the avenues of international, long-distance trade that permitted
their exploitation of the smaller-scale regional subsistence economies embedded
in the geographically and topographically confined subregions of the Levant. The
participation of the economic elites in the trade of luxury-goods throughout the
Levant and beyond effectively constitutes participation in the same economic
system driving their increasingly parasitic extraction of subsistence goods from
the local economies held under their sway. These elites inhabit the nexus uniting
the two levels of the ancient economy: those political players fighting for control
of the trade routes at the cost of their subjects’ lives in the international arena are
the same loan-sharks gaming the lending system at the local level. Military and
financial success in the former context translates to further financial success in the
latter economic sphere; the capital gained through military violence from the one
is used to sustain and expand the exploitative practices of the other.
In conclusion, the “organizing principle” of Amos 1:3-2:8 is not one that orders
polities politely and moves neatly from one to the next. Instead, the organizing
principle is the movements themselves between the polities—movements that take
place upon a well-established system of trade routes, bringing with them violence
and depredation. Each act of violence Amos describes adds a filament connecting
two nodes of economic interaction—most likely founded on the exchange of
precious commodities—in the Iron Age (and, likely, Persian Period) Levant. These
threads are laid down in an interlaced network around and through Israelite and
Judahite territory. With the application of each small textual thread, a spider’s web
of economic interactions slowly takes shape, spreading across the southern Levant.
With the culmination of Amos’s criticism in Judah and Israel, these gossamer
threads are pulled taut. Amos claims thereby that, even if the inhabitants of Israel
(and, through reference of its unfaithfulness to the Deuteronomic legislation,
Judah) are not guilty of the aforementioned crimes in the strictly legal sense of
the term, they remain complicit in any wrongdoing committed in the production
and transportation of the luxury goods available for import. Even if they were to
buy these items legally, from reputable sources, they are inextricably bound up
in the exploitative economies that thrive on the manufactured scarcity to which
consumers naturally (and often unwittingly) contribute. In the Iron Age II and the
 JEREMY M. HUTTON 113

Persian period, eras of increasing “globalization” and economic interdependency,

the book of Amos drew out the potential pitfalls of national wealth, of a widening
economic disparity between the richest echelons of society and its poorest strata,
and of the nations’—or at least their leaders’—collective complicity in others’
barbarism. While Amos’s intended audience may have believed itself to be guiltless
in this regard, the oracles collected at the beginning of this book claim exactly the
opposite: namely, that it was impossible for the people of Israel to escape guilt of
some form or another in a world in which economic interaction and oppression
went hand in hand. It should be unanimously recognized that the remainder of the
book of Amos systematically lays out at Israel’s—and, by extension, Judah’s145—
feet the nations’ own culpability in the oppression and negligence of their
respective economies. What is not always recognized is that the opening chapters
of Amos already anticipate this trajectory, in that they serve to locate Israel and
Judah inextricably at the crossroads of the international economy. These opening
chapters are neither inconsistent with nor ancillary to the remainder of the book’s
imprecations. Rather, regardless of any redactional insertions that may have been
added after the initial publication of the text, regardless of any intrusions into or
deliberate (re-)arrangements of the opening oracles, Amos 1:3-2:8 comprises a
cohesive, coherent opening salvo that leads directly into the book’s castigation of
Israel and Judah. The book’s crucial assessment of Judah’s and Israel’s respective
locations in the international economy—namely, that any attempt on their part
to escape complicity in the brutality that derives from economic interaction is
impossible—occupies an irrevocably central position in Amos. This assessment
fuels the ensuing excoriation leveled upon the northern kingdom of Israel (and,
implicitly, upon Persian-period Judah in which the book received its final form),
thus providing a hermeneutical key for the remainder of the book and rendering the
book all the more powerful a denunciation of those polities’ consumer economies.

145 For this claim, see the very perceptive argument by Hadjiev. He argues that Judah—the later
audience of the redacted book of Amos—should not be differentiated too sharply from its precursor
Israel: “after the collapse of the Northern kingdom it is Judah that remained as the ‘true Israel’ and
what was said in former times of the Northern kingdom was seen as applicable in some way to the
Southern” (Composition and Redaction, 57).
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