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‘Who Makes the Morning Darkness’: God

and Creation in the Book of Amos

Susan Gillingham

Scottish Journal of Theology / Volume 45 / Issue 02 / May 1992, pp 165 -

184
DOI: 10.1017/S0036930600038631, Published online: 30 January 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/

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How to cite this article:

Susan Gillingham (1992). ‘Who Makes the Morning Darkness’: God
and Creation in the Book of Amos. Scottish Journal of Theology, 45,
pp 165-184 doi:10.1017/S0036930600038631

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Scottish Journal o/Thtology Volunu 45, pp 165-184

'WHO MAKES THE MORNING DARKNESS':

GOD AND CREATION IN THE BOOK OF
AMOS
(A paper delivered at the Oxford-Barn Seminar on the theme
'Creation and the Kingdom of God' in Oxford on 9 April 1991.)

by Dr SUSAN GILLINGHAM

T his paper has been the result of teaching and compar-

ing two very different Old Testament texts, both of
which are concerned with the relationship between
God and the created order. One is Genesis 1, with its priestly
concerns for harmony within the created order; the other is
the book of Amos, where one encounters a profoundly pessi-
mistic view of the coming disorder throughout the natural
world. In making associations between these two texts, one
cannot help but ask why the earlier reflections in Amos offer
such aradical and developed understandingof God's relation-
ship with creation — quite distinct from the view of God
evidenced in the first chapter of Genesis.
This question will be assessed in three ways. Thefirsttwo
parts of the paper will follow more familiar lines of argument,
identifying and clarifying those parts of the book of Amos
which suggest this more pessimistic 'creation-theology'. Part
One will look at the way Amos perceives God's relationship
with the natural order, assessing the ways in which the book
presents a foreboding picture of a God who comes not to
provide for his people but to destroy them. Part Two will look
at the way Amos understands God's concern for justice, exam-
ining the ways in which Amos holds that all nations throughout
the known world are accountable in some way to Israel's God.
The aim of both Parts One and Two is to discuss the different
aspects of God as Creator which are found in the book of
Amos: Part One first focusses on the people's belief in an
immanent God who is able to provide the seasonal rains which
bring life to the land, whilst Part Two suggests more the idea
of a transcendent God whose power extends far beyond the
165
166 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
land into the nations of the world. Part Three will then address
the implications which arise out of this portrayal of Israel's
God: here, the main concern is with why Amos should depict
a deity who comes intentionally to destroy his creation, rather
than being present in preserving and nurturing it. There is a
certain paradox in believing in a God who turns deep darkness
into morning but who also darkens the day into night (Am.
5:8), o n e ' . . .who makes the morning darkness' (Am. 4:13) —
a God who not only overcomes chaos and evil but also uses
them for his own ends. A study of the implications of this
enigmatic depiction of the God of Israel should offer signifi-
cant insights into our understanding of God as Creator else-
where in the Old Testament.
It is by no means irrelevant to note in passing the growing
interest in so-called 'creation theology' over the last fifteen or
so years of Old Testament scholarship. 1 The texts used have
mainly been from the exilic and post-exilic literature — for
example, from second Isaiah, from the work of the priestly
writer, from the hymns of praise, and from the wisdom poetry
in the Psalter, in Proverbs and in Job. As far as the pre-exilic
literature is concerned, Gen. 2-3 has of course been a focus of
interest, as also parts of eighth and seventh century prophecy,
and speeches and narratives from the deuteronomistic his-
tory, particularly where these offer any evidence of an implicit
belief in God's provision for his people through the sun and
seasonal rains. A good deal of attention has also been given to
the various myths of creation used by the writers of this period
— for example, myths which have been incorporated into the
communal lament forms of a couple of exilic psalms (Pss. 74
and 89) as areminder of God's control over the forces of chaos
(see Ps. 74:12-17 and 89:9-13 [10-14]).
In spite of this interest in the relevant 'creation tradi-
tions' in the pre-exilic period, the book of Amos has not been
given the full attention it deserves in this matter. This may be

1
See the collection of essays in H. H. Schmid's AUorientalische Welt in der
alttestamentlichen Theologie (Zurich, 1974); also W. Zimmerli, Grundriss der
alitestamentlichen Theologu(Sl\mgan, 1972,1982 S), ET Old Testament Theology in Outline
(Edinburgh, 1978); B.W. Anderson, CnationintheOldTestament (Philadelphia, 1977);
C. Westermann, Theologie des Alien Testaments in Grundzugen (Gottingen, 1978) ET
Elements of Old Testament Theology (Atlanta, 1982).
 GOD AND CREATION IN THE BOOK OF AMOS 167
because Amos is not a book which simply re-echoes a received
belief in God's creative power (beliefs which were certainly
endorsed in the later creation account of 'P'); rather, its
overall message is a profound critique of Israel's reception of
that belief. From what we know of the historical setti ng and the
religion of the northern kingdom from other sources, the
significant religious issues in Amos' day were concerned with
the power and efficacy of Israel's God within the created order
— questions about God's provision within the realm of nature,
and questions about his power and military control over all the
nations.2 In view of this fact, it is not surprising that so much of
Amos' imagery speaks of God in terms of natural portents and
disasters which would occur throughout the whole known
world: the difference in Amos is the extent to which such ideas
are taken, and the theology of God as Creator which emerges
out of this.

(I) God and the Natural Order in the Book of Amos

The main argument of this section should by now be clear
— that although the message of Amos offers critical insights
into the way that Israel's God is ever-present through the
processes of nature, this is rarely expressed with positive
connotations: Amos' God comes as the destroyer of the natu-
ral order he has created. This theme is evident in at least four
different blocks of material in Amos. First, it is taken up
throughout Amos 4; second, it is found in the 'Day of the Lord'
oracles in Amos 5 and 8; third, we may note it in the first pair
of visions in Amos 7; and fourth, it is seen in the doxologies of
4:13, 5:8-9 and 9:5-6.
(i) Amos 4:4-5, 6-12: Amos 4 moves towards its climax in
verse 12c: 'Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!' This motif of
'threat' underlies the natural imagery used throughout this
chapter. The 'threat' begins in w. 4-5, in the parody of the
cultic call to worship: 'Come to Bethel and transgress . . . to

8
An account of Amos' defence of Yahweh's control over nature is found in H.
M. Barstad, The Religious Polemics ojAmos SVT XXXIV (Leiden, 1984), pp. 49ff., 67ff.
For example (p. 69): 'Amos is trying to convince his fellow countrymen that it is
T&hwism that is the fertility cult.' Whether or not this is the case with Amos, passages
such as Hos. 2:2-13,14-15 and 21-23 illustrate the conflict with fertility practices during
this period in northern Israel.
168 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
Gilgal, and multiply transgression'. Israel's great liturgical
traditions are recalled not so much to indicate the well-being
of the people as to serve as warning and announcement of
judgment.* Thus at the beginning of this chapter we note a
familiar technique of Amos — that of reversing a popular
belief in well-being (in this case, that all cultic activity was
pleasing to God and brought its due rewards) into an indict-
ment of the legitimacy of that belief. To these verses have been
added w. 6-12, recalling yet another confident hope, namely
that Israel's God was able to provide the rich harvests of the
land and to sustain the seasons. It is not that the people do not
know of God's control of the natural elements — far from it:
Amos assumes that they do know, and shows them the radical
implications of such knowledge. Self-satisfied complacency,
whether in cultic practice or in a belief in God's natural
providence, is turned on its head: Israel's God is also the one
who brings famine, drought, blight and mildew to warn his
own people (w. 6-9) — a theme developed, probably later, in
similar terms, in the curses of Deuteronomy — for example,
see Dt. 28:22."
Of course the people would have understood this darker
side of God's creative power, but they would have believed that
normally it was unleashed only against other nations, for
example in the plagues in Egypt (which presumably forms
some of the background to this passage). 5 Amos typically takes
the people's belief one stage further: the God of Israel has the
freedom and power to work even against the interests of his
own people. This 'reversal' technique clearly demonstrates

' See H. W. Wolff, 'Das Zitat im Prophetenspruch', EvThBah4 (1937), pp. 3-

112, also in CesammelUStudien, Munich, 1964, pp. 36-129; A. Weiser, Das Buch derzwoif
KldnenProphetenX, ATD (Gottingen, 1949);J. L. Mays, Amos, OTL, (London, 1969, pp.
8ff.;J. A. Soggin, HpmfetaAmos (Bescia, 1982), ET The Prophet Amos, OTL, (London,
1987), pp. 20ff.;alsoJ. L. Crenshaw, Hymnic Affirmation ofDivine Justice: The Doxobgies
of Amos and the Related Texts in the Old Testament SBLDS 24 (Montana, 1975), pp. 38ff.
' Reading in Dt. 28: 22.ppT31 J1DTO3M ... mrr r o y
Compare Am. 4:9: |ipT31 po"TO3 D3nK VT3n
5
Normally the people would have understood destruction as punishment from
their God in military terms (for example, the cycles of defeat and victory in the
traditions of the judges) rather than through his reversing the natural order against
them. An exception is the drought/famine cycle found in the traditions of Elijah in
1 Kgs. 17 and 18 — but there the story ends with the victory through fire on Carmel,
and the giving of the rains (cf. 1 Kgs. 18:36-39 and 41-45.)
 GOD AND CREATION IN THE BOOK OF AMOS 169
that the positive tradition concerning God's power over na-
ture was well established in Israel by the time of Amos. It may
not have been the more developed understanding of God and
creation we find in the exilic literature (namely in 'P' and
second Isaiah), but, as we shall see below, this radical critique
of the popular belief in God's creative goodness is repeated in
several passages of Amos with a relentless insistence.6
(ii) Amos 5:18-20 and 8:9-10: The same negative procla-
mation of God's creative power is further developed in the
'Day of the Lord' oracles in chapters 5 and 8. The expected
Day, in popular thinking, was probably associated both with
military victory and with bountiful harvest; again, this is 're-
versed', so that it comes to judge the people rather than to
deliver them. Itwill be a Day of darkness, not of light (5:18,20).
The interesting motif in these 'Day of the Lord' oracles is their
emphasis on the inversion of the natural order — for example,
the description of a phenomenon we would describe as a solar
eclipse: 'I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the
earth in broad daylight' (8:9). The effects will be experienced
locally (not least at an infamous altar, probably Bethel (9:1)),
but the disaster is portrayed on a cosmic scale (9:2-4). It is a Day
when God will manifest his power over the entire cosmos, and
it will be a Day not of order and light, but of chaos and
darkness. This is not therefore a replay of the traditions which
referred to 'the Day' only in terms of military disaster and
enemy nations; the crisis will encompass the natural order as
well. On this account, the book uses several lament forms,
where creation itself is bound up with the process of mourn-
ing: the land itself trembles (8:8a) and those in the farms and

8
The depiction of the deity as both Creator and Destroyer is found outside the
biblical accounts, some of which almost certainly antedate Amos. Cf. Tablet IV, 18-26
of the Enuma chs, (of Marduk):
Lord, truly thy decree isfirstamong gods.
Say but to wreck or create; it shall be.
Also Tablet VI, 124-133 (again, of Marduk):
.. . Creation, destruction, deliverance, grace —
Shall be by his command.
(ANET3(1969) pp. 66,69)
This again confirms the fact that a radical relief in the creative activity of the gods (to
preserve and to destroy) was prevalent at the time of Amos, at least outside Israel.
Amos is the first prophet to develop this belief within Israel, and to apply it to Israel's
one Cod who now works against his own people.
170 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
vineyards weep over their loss (5:16-17). The cosmic upheaval
is compared to the rise and fall of the Nile of Egypt, whose
indulating waters were also in God's hands (8:8b). On this
account also it is no surprise that the earthquake occurring
shortly after Amos ministry was associated with the coming Day
which Amos proclaimed (1:1).7
(iii) Amos 7:1-3, 4-6: The negative aspects of God's
creative power are again developed in the first pair of visions
which introduce the narrative concerning Amos' conflict at
Bethel. Although at the beginning of chapter 7 the context is
not so much one of threat and judgment against the people as
of intercession on their behalf, the prophet's visions are again
of natural disasters, and he sees them as controlled by Israel's
God ('O Lord God, cease, I beseech thee!' in 7:3). The first
pestilence is commonplace enough: a plague of locusts, eating
the king's mowings (7:1), echoing the plague-like themes in
chapter 4. The second vision, with its reference to the deep,
also has a familiar ring about it, albeit with somewhat more
sinister overtones: a threatening form of chaos broods within
the waters of the deep, about to dry them up by fire — a fire
which moves on to devour the dry land (7:4). It is clear that
these visions have a good deal in common with what has
already been noted about God's power over nature in chapter
4: there, as here, Israel's God is not simply another fertility
deity, for he has power over death as well as life; nor is he
merely a local clan or tribal god, for he has the power to hold
back or to burn up even the primordial waters of the under-
world. This belief in God's power over nature leads on to the
belief in his sovereign control over the cosmos; or, conversely,
to believe in God's providence through nature may even be a
consequence of a belief in God's power throughout the
cosmos. Either way, Yahweh, according to Amos, is far more
than another nature god: he is the one God, and he uses even
the darker forces of nature for his purposes. 8 This point will
receive further attention later.

7
This association is made clear in the later references to the Day of the Lord in
Zech. 14:5.
' The book of Job, which has several stylistic affinities with Amos, has a similar
but more developed understanding of God as Creator: 'Shall we receive good at the
 GOD AND CREATION IN THE BOOK OF AMOS 171
(iv) Amos 4:13, 5:8-9 and 9:5-6: The doxologies in Amos
may also be understood within the same theological context of
God being Destroyer as well as Provider. In style and form, the
doxologies show the influence of psalmody, not only in their
hymnic praise of a Creator God (cf. Pss. 29; 33; 100; 103; 104;
147; 148) butalsoin their concluding affirmations of the name
of God.9 The obvious problem is that the creation psalms and
other passages which praise the name of Yahweh (the God) of
Hosts (e.g.Jer. 10:12-16; 31:35; Is. 51:15) are all most difficult
to date, a factor which affects any attempts to contextualise the
doxologies.10 There are two main possibilities. Either they
were incorporated into the book after the fall of Samaria and
during the reappropriation of the prophet's words within the
southern kingdom (a likely time for such activity being the
reign ofjosiah, although some would argue for the time of the
exile).11 Or Amos, coming from Tekoa in the southern king-
dom (1:1) and being well-versed in cultic language and cultic
forms (for example, the call to worship in 4:4-5; the lament in
5:2; the priestly decision word in 5:21; and the frequent use of
theophanic language whereby God appears in clouds, winds,
fire or thunderstorm and shakings of the earth, in 7:4; 8:8,9; 9:1)
used fragments of liturgy known to him from cultic worship.12

hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?' (2:10). On Job and Amos, cf. Crenshaw,
op. at, pp. 155ff., andon this theme in Jobalone, comparingjob 3 and 38-9, cf. ".Alter,
The Voice from the Whirlwind1, Commentary 77 (1984), pp. SMI.
' The psalms proliferate with acknowlegements of the 'name' of God: the
psalmists blessfpa), call upon ( Nip), glorify (1133 |nJ),fear (NT),love (arm),sing
praise to fi'St), declare (Tin), remember (ibV), and give thanks for (mil) the
'name' (usually OV) of God. That this was an early idea iseviden t in its use in early cultic
poetry such as Ex. 15:3 0»» mrp) and Ps. 68:4 [Heb. 5] (1»W n-3 1DD). It may well be
associated with the sanctuary at Shiloh and the 'ark of the Lord of Hosts'. See
Crenshaw, op. at., pp. 15ff., discussing the views of Wambacq, Maag, Eichrodt and
Eissfeldt; also Ch. Ill, discussing the fourteen other uses of this refrain.
10
Cf. Crenshaw, op. at, Chapter I, assessing the doxologies in their context and
their supposed elevated theology and their late language. Although Crenshaw assigns
them to the exilic period, he nevertheless concludes (p. 122): '. . . there is nothing
within the doxology that Amos could not have taught'
11
SeeF. Horst, "Die Doxologien im Amosbuch', 1AVV47 (1929), pp. 45-54; S. B.
Frost, 'Asseveration of Thanksgiving', VTV1I (1958), pp. 380-90; also H. W. Wolff,
Dodekapropheton. AmosRKAT (Neukirchen, 1967), ET Amos the Prophet (Philadelphia,
1973). Soggin, op. at., pp. 78-80,93, 123-4 is strangely ambivalent.
18
Cf. V. Maag, Text, WortschaU und BegriffsweU des Buches Amos (Leiden, 1951), pp.
57ff.;alsoA. Weister, op. at, p. 194;J. D. W. Watts, Vision and Prophecy in A mos( Grand
Rapids, 1958), pp. 51-67;alsoj. L. Mays, op. ciL, pp. 83-4,95-6,155-6;J. H. Hayes, Amos
the Eight-Century Prophet, Nashville, 1988, pp. 149-50, 160-1, 217-8.
172 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
This second option fits well with Amos' own interest in 'revers-
ing' commonly held cultic forms: like the use of laments, and
the use of the calls to worship, the hymnic phrases are used as
a parody to warn the people that what they sang with their lips
they hardly believed or practised in their lives.15
Both of these theories about the date of the doxologies
nevertheless share the same assumption — that they are
fragments of liturgy, and that their function in the book is to
serve as warning of the judgment which is imminent through-
out the whole created order. Furthermore, a similar pattern of
thought is found within all three: the first two doxologies
depict a God who brings in order and harmony as well as
destruction and chaos, through the rhythms of day and night,
light and dark; the last doxology, whilst clearly upholding
God's creative power, is the one most concerned with the
coming destruction upon his creation, through the darkness
and the deep: '. . . for all who dwell in (the earth) mourn/all
of it rises like the Nile and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt'
(9:5). The literary context of all three is persistently one of
judgment (cf. 4:12 and 5:1; 5:6-7 and 16-17; 9:4, 7-8). Thus
overall, the evidence clearly shows that the purpose of all three
doxologies was to proclaim in hymnic form that Israel's God
was able both to create and to destroy. Crenshaw's term
'judgment doxology' is a useful one, for it shows how hymnic
praise might be used to remind the people that their particular
beliefs in God's creative power should be reflected in their way
of life.
The conclusion at this stage is obvious. Amos is address-
ing the already established beliefs of the people, and challeng-
ing their understanding of Israel's God as the sole provider for
Israel from all that nature had to offer. (Where and how such
beliefs first arose is unclear. They might have been made
known to the people from some cultic recounting of the
traditions about God's provision in thewilderness wanderings;
there might even have been, by the time of Amos, some

"This technique used with other cultic material is also found in the lament in 5:2;
in the phrases'I will never again pass by them'in 7:8 and 8:2and'I will set my eyes upon
them for evil' in 9:4,8; and in the theophanic language throughout the book, where
God comes not as Deliverer but asjudge. See A. S. Kapelrud, 'God as Destroyer in the
Preaching of Amos and in the Ancient Near East'JBL 71 (1952), pp. 33-38.
 GOD AND CREATION IN THE BOOK OF AMOS 173
knowledge of the Yahwist's story about a paradise garden
where man and woman were first created; or stories and
praises about Israel's God and his provision for his people
from nature might well have been sung and enacted through
festivals at harvest times in local sanctuaries.) The main point
is that throughout the book of Amos, this understanding of
God and the natural order is used to show how God works
against his people, not for them.
Amos may be the first prophet to speak of God in these
terms, but it is important to note that this way of combining
images of God as Creator and as Destroyer is also found, to a
lesser extent, in the book of Hosea. Unlike Amos, Hosea uses
many more positive images to describe God's provision for his
people: he is the sole Provider of the gifts of the arable land
(2:5 [7] and 2:8 [10]); he will be to Israel 'as the dew' (14:5
[6]); his going forth is 'as sure as the dawn' (6:3); he is like 'an
evergreen cypress', and from him 'comes your fruit' (14:9).
Yet, precisely in order to demonstrate that Yahweh is greater
than any fertility deity, the book of Hosea (like that of Amos)
speaks not only of the rhythms of nature whereby the fertility
of the land is renewed, but also of broken rhythms, whereby
the devastated land becomes a wilderness. Hos. 2:9-13 [11-15]
is most important in this respect, echoing the same ideas as in
Amos 4: Yahweh is as much in control of natural disaster which
may befall Israel as he is of her natural abundance. At times,
the images of devastation are even more strikingin Hosea than
in Amos because they are depicted in such stark, personalised
metaphors: see, for example Hos. 9:11 'Ephraim's glory shall
flyaway like a bird — no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!'
and Hos. 13:13,15-16 which uses the similarly shocking images
of stillbirth and of the brutal death of infants whose life has
barely begun.
Thus this breaking down of the assumed link between
God and the natural order is not distinctive to Amos: it is found
both within other biblical records of about the same period
and also in some that fall outside it. Nevertheless, of all the
earlier writers who speak of God's creative power in pessimistic
and destructive terms, Amos does so with a relentless consist-
ency. A most poignant epiphany is found in the book of Amos:
God appears in and through the natural order, but he appears
first and foremost as darkness, not as light.
174 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
(II) God and NaturalJustice in the Book of Amos
Two paradoxical tensions in Amos illustrate well that the
message of the book overall (i.e. taking into account the
theological emphases of the collectors and redactors as well as
those of the prophet) offers important insights into the belief
that Israel's God, Yahweh, has sovereign power over the
nations of the world.14 This is another aspect of the creation-
theology in Amos, and is a different tradition from the belief
in the God of Israel as the sole provider of therains and fertility
of the land.
(i) The first tension involves the belief in Yahweh as both
the national God of Israel and a universal God of all peoples.
On the one hand, God is the God of Israel, a bond which in
Amos is formed when God calls his people out of Egypt (2:10).
On the other hand, he is not limited to Israel alone; other
nations are also part of God's concern. The book begins with
an indictment against the war-crimes of other nations (1:3-2:3)
and ends with the cutting observation that God's call of Israel,
resulting in the exodus, was of little more consequence than
the Philistines leaving Caphtor and the Syrians leaving Kir
(9:7). The book of Amos thus presents us with an interesting
example of the tension between God's particular dealings with
Israel and the broader concerns with the whole created order
of things.
Yet this tension is strangely resolved by the common
message ofjudgment expressed in terms of cosmic disaster on
both Israel and the nations. All peoples, north, south and east
of Israel are to suffer natural disaster on the same basis and for
the same reasons as Israel herself— namely for crimes against
humanity and for blatant acts of injustice against their neigh-
bour.15 The issue at stake here is that such crimes against
humanity, whether they are the particular war-crimes of other

" For example, Crenshaw,o/>. at, pp. 93ff., refers to other scholars who posit that
the belief in God as Creator dates from pre-exilic times; he cites von Rad, Eichrodt,
Hyatt, Vriezen, Cross and Freedman, concluding'... there can be no question about
the fact that belief in creation played a more formative role in early Israelite thought
than is generally recognised' (p. 97).
15
SeeJ. Barton, 'Natural Law and Poeticjustice in the Old Testament', JTS50
(1979), pp. 1-14; also Amos s Oracles against the Nations: A Study of Amos 1:3-2:5, SOTSMS
6 (Cambridge, 198C .
 GOD AND CREATION IN THE BOOK OF AMOS 175
nations or the social and economic abuses in Israel, are all
violations against the order and harmony intended for the
created order, and thus nature itself cries out against them.
For example, we read of Damascus; 'They have threshed
Gilead with threshing sledges of iron', and the imagery which
follows is that of the devouring fire. Or again, the complaint
against Gaza is that'... they carried into exile a whole people
to deliver them up to Edom' — an oracle which is again
followed by the picture ofjudgment by devouring fire. So too
for Edom, 'pursuing his brother with the sword, casting off all
pity'; and for Ammon '... because they have ripped up women
with child in Gilead that they might enlarge their border': 'So
I will kindle a fire . . . and it shall devour her strongholds.'
The repetition of the imagery of fire has obvious associa-
tions with the 'fire of the deep' in Am. 7:4. The fact that it is
used after the description of the crimes of inhumanity, is also
significant: any nation, whether Israel or another, who so
devalues humanity in this way violates the laws of nature, and
so the God of creation (who, as we have seen, is not confined
by the cycles of the natural order) uses nature to prevent the
continuation of such violation.
Two illustrations from the Yahwist in Gen. 3-4 are perti-
nent here. This point made above seems to be evident also in
the story of Cain's act of inhumanity against his brother: Gen.
4:10-12 reads'...And the Lord said, What have you done? The
voice of your brother's blood is crying from the ground. And
now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its
mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When
you till the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength
. . . " Nature shrieks at the perpetration of injustice; the
processes of nature become reversed, so that chaos ensues;
chaos then meets chaos, as it were, so that in the end, nature
is purged and vindicated, the vulnerable of humanity are
protected, and natural justice is restored. In Genesis 4, as in
Amos 1, justice is restored by means of the Creator God using
the natural order in a negative way where the issue ofjustice is
at stake. The same point is made less explicitly in the curse on
the ground in Genesis 3:17-19: '. . . Cursed is the ground
because of you; in toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you;... In the sweat
176 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall
return.' Adam, once from the dust of the ground, and thus at
one time being one with the created order, is now at odds with
it, so that creation itself, defiled and degraded by Adam's act
of defiance in Eden, seems to fight back, and Adam, like Cain
his son, is denied the means of survival by the natural order.
The beauty and order of creation is marred by Adam, yet
because it remains God's creation it is still on God's side, with
the result that its creative nurturing is withdrawn and man is
the object of destruction rather than of provision.16 This issue
will be discussed later in Part Three; at this stage, the impor-
tance of this 'poetic justice' not only in the Yahwist but
particularly in the book of Amos needs to be noted. Natural
justice—an'ethic'to which all peoples are ultimately account-
able — is an important theme in Amos, and another aspect of
the 'creation theology' in the book as a whole.
(ii) The second tension in Amos follows on from this,
although it is related more to the violation ofjustice in Israel
alone, and hence chiefly concerns Israel's particular guilt
which far exceeds that of the other nations. Outside Amos 1
(the only chapter which is directed to the foreign nations) the
oracles are specifically addressed to Israel and speak of Israel's
guilt in two ways — not only in relation to a particular revealed
standard of righteousness but also to a more natural self-
evident sense of justice. On the one hand, the reference to a
particularly 'Israelite' guilt is implied in the references to the
blatant lack of 'justice and righteousness' in the land (5:7;
6:12) — a standard Israelites should have known through the
teaching and the liturgy at various sanctuaries (cf. 4:4; 5:4-5).
Here we might surmise that this is a reference to an early
collection of laws concerning the protection of the poor and
the upholding ofjustice without partiality.17 But, on the other
hand, the reference to 'justice and righteousness' carries with
it a much broader connotation, associated more with the use
of proverbial wisdom and questions and sayings common to

16
Cf. D. Atkinson, The Messages of Genesis 1-11 (Leicester, 1990), pp. 95-7.
" See for example A. Phillips, 'Prophecy and Law' in Israel's Prophetic Tradition:
Essays in Honour of Peter A ckroyd (eds. R. Coggins, A. Phillips and M. Knibb), Cam-
bridge, 1982, pp. 220ff.
 GOD AND CREATION IN THE BOOK OF AMOS 177
many cultures of the ancient Near East. Here we may note
suggestions of a more popular morality, a common-sense
wisdom shared by all peoples: 'Do horses run upon rocks?
Does one plough the sea with oxen? But you have turned
justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into worm-
wood . . . "For behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O
house of Israel,"says the Lord of Hosts' (6:13-14). Even when
addressing Israel alone, Israel's God is as concerned with all
violations of natural justice and righteousness as he is with
particular offences which would have constituted Israelite
'law'. In this sense the nation is made to appear doubly
accountable — to the God who created her in the same way as
all other nations, and to the God who chose her specially from
out of all the families of the earth.
The diagnosis of Israel's guilt — that she has failed to
attain even to a standard of righteousness andjustice befitting
all people — is closely linked to the prognosis in the book,
which is concerned with the way that the flagrancy of such
offences against righteousness and justice demands a re-
sponse from the natural order. The book of Amos is essentially
about a God who creates yet must also destroy in order to
create anew. Amos' God is a one who acts in judgment by using
the natural order when issues of natural justice are ignored.

(Ill) Some Implications of A mos' View of God and the Created Order
To my mind, three clear implications arise from these
observations that Amos' God is the one who destroys as well as
creates, the one who uses chaotic forces to bring about order
as well as order chaos.
The first implication is, I hope, the most obvious. What
we have in the book of Amos is an eschewing of any dualism.
Here is a belief in one Creator God rather than in a pantheon
of deities. Hence Amos' God brings in both nurture and
destruction, both chaos and order, for both are necessarily
part of his same continuous activity. (I cannot help but reflect
here on Shiva and Vishnu of Hinduism, on Ahura Mazda and
Ahriman of the Parsis, and on Yangand Yin of the old Chinese
religions.) The theology of Amos, to my mind, is an attempt to
portray the transcendent power of the one God of Israel,
whose creative purposes involve using both chaos and order.
Of course we perceive difficulties (which probably Amos
178 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
did not perceive) in this view, difficulties which other biblical
writers seem to have perceived in upholding what has some-
times been termed 'ethical monotheism'. For example, the
Yahwist's depiction of chaos entering the created order is
presented in an ambiguous way: the Yahwist tells us of the
serpent in the paradisal garden and the 'doorstep demon'
crouching to lead Cain to ruin. An intermediary other than
God brings about the temptation and the disaster, although
ultimately God is actively involved in this process and is
accountable for it. But the reader cannot help but note a
certain resistance on the part of the Yahwist to associating
Yahweh too closely with the destructive powers in the created
order — a reluctance which is not evident in the book of Amos!
Another example of this same difficulty avoiding any form of
dualism is found in the priestly writer: here the ambiguity is
found in the references to the 'waters of the deep" — waters
of chaos which are frequently close to threatening the liveli-
hood of man; yet again, although 'P' can speak of God's
control of these flood waters in creation, and although more
than once in the Flood Narrative he speaks of God using them,
the main concern in 'P' is that God brings into the world order,
goodness and harmony. The chaos motif recedes, and even
the story of Noah ends with a rainbow and the promise never
again to destroy the world by using the forces of nature in this
way. The priestly view of God, like that of the Yahwist, cannot
associate God too closely with the destructive forces at work in
the created order. Against this background the message of
Amos, which speaks unreservedly of God directly and repeat-
edly inflicting chaos, darkness and destruction on his people
through the created order, is distinctive: every possibility of
dualism is eliminated within the predominant understanding
of the freedom of relationship between God and creation.
The second implication follows from this. A theology
which affirms that God is able to use chaos as well as order
offers an adequate explanation for the imminent judgment,
but it also provides a broader context for perceiving that
judgment (experienced as 'chaos') within the scope of salva-
tion (experienced as 'order'). This theology is more explicitly
developed elsewhere, not least in the priestly account of
creation: there, the flood account is, as it were, set between two
 GOD AND CREATION IN THE BOOK OF AMOS 179
great acts of 'creation' — the creation of the cosmos by the
word of God, and the creation of a people by the call of
Abraham. But it is nevertheless implicit within the book of
Amos, where the relationship between judgment and salvation
is developed not only in the use of the traditions about
creation but also in the prophet's equally pessimistic use of the
traditions concerning the exodus from Egypt. Both the tradi-
tions, creation and exodus, serve initially as warning and
judgment: Amos repeatedly rejects any facile trust in the
guarantee of protection simply because the people assume
that God is present either within the cosmos or through
history. The people know full well their history of enslavement
and escape from Egypt, and against this backcloth, the follow-
ing indictment is most telling:
You only have I known
of all the families of the earth
therefore I will punish you
for all your iniquities. (3:2)

However, even within such threats of punishment, hope

is paradoxically present — and this hope resides as much
within the traditions about God and creation as it does within
the traditions about God and the exodus. For Yahweh who
mysteriously creates darkness, who is the cause of natural
pestilence and who is somehow behind cosmic disaster, is also
able to create light and to effect a re-created order. If he could
not do this, he would be little better than the localised fertility
gods of Canaan or the cantankerous creator deities of Babylon.
And if he is the Creator of all mankind and of all history, then
death and destruction are but one aspect of his activity; new
life and restoration must necessarily also be within his sover-
eign power. Amos chooses the dark side of the character of
God to focus attention on one particular situation, but the
whole character of Amos' God is not exhausted by the contin-
gencies of prophetic circumstance, and thus we see within the
book as a whole flickers of light against the blackness of the
present moment (e.g. 5:3, 6, 14; 7:2, 5; 9:8, 11-12, 13-15).
In this respect the doxologies are vital in helping us to
understand further the relationship between the 'dark' and
the 'light' purposes of God. More explicitly than anything else
180 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
in the book they speak of both these purposes together. They
speak of God as Creator of light and life, yet also of darkness
and death. Their form, as hymnic praise set within a context of
judgment, serves their dual purpose well: although empty
praise is worthless if it isrobbed of its inner content (5:23), any
hymns offered to God are of course impossible without the
renewed worship of the re-created community of faith. The
very form of doxology demands the continued existence of a
purged created order for its utterance.
Several scholars have already noted that each doxology
praises God's creative power by way of contradiction. 18 God
may make the morning darkness, but this is because he also
forms mountains and creates the wind and treads on the
heights of the earth (4:13). He may darken the day into night,
but this is because he it is who makes the stars and the morning
light, and who calls forth the waters above and below the earth
(5:8). He may cause the earth to melt and its inhabitants to
mourn, but this is the God who builds his upper chambers in
heaven and who founds his vault upon the earth (9:5-6) .19 This
is an all-encompassing theology of God as Creator, establish-
ing again God's utter freedom in his relationship with his
created order; without such a theology, the message of judg-
ment would have no basis and the suggestions of salvation
would be trivialised. It is in accord with the 'creation-theology'
found in these doxologies that the book ends with a message
of salvation and restoration — and the way of describing this
is by using again the cosmic creation imagery, this time set

18
Cf. Crenshaw, op. dL, pp. 38-46,120-3, noting how the doxologies are close to
the prophetic 'lawsuit' form (the Rub); also F. Cnisemann, Studien zurFormgeschichte
von Hymnus und Danklied in Israel, WMANT (Neukirchen, 1969) who notes the
international hymnic form of participial praise in these doxologies affirms Yahweh,
not other Canaanite deities, as creator of the wind, stars, storm, rain, earthquake. W.
RudolphJoeMmoj-Ote^'a^oTW KAT(Gutersloh, 1971) pp. 180ff. also understands the
contradictions in the doxologies to be polemic against foreign cultic practices. See
also J. Jeremias, Theophavie. Die Geschichte einer alUestamenlUchm Gattung WMANT
(Neukirchen, 1965) and von Rad, 'Gerichtsdoxologie', Schalom (A. Jepsen turn 70.
Geburststag),ed. K. H. Bernhardt (Stuttgart, 1971), pp. 28-37.
" The idea of God summoning water from the earth's streams, by which the land
is watered (also in Am. 5:8), has interesting correspondences with the earlier J / E
accountof creation (cf. Gen. 2:6, where the mist ("IX flood) goes up from the ground),
rather than the later P account where the water appears to pour in from the heavenly
ocean over the earth, through special windows (cf. Gen. 7:11, 8:2).
 GOD AND CREATION IN THE BOOK OF AMOS 181
within the form of thanksgiving rather than of lament: the
whole natural order, mountains and hills, vineyards and gar-
dens is depicted as celebrating in universal and local re-
creation (9:13-15). Whenever this passage was added — and
the exile appears to be the most likely time — it would make
less theological sense if the belief in the purposes of the one
Creator God had not already been expressed within the earlier
corpus associated with the prophet himself.
A later prophetic book, more developed in its proclama-
tion of God's creative activity, offers several correspondences
with the celebration of creation in Am. 9:13-15. Second Isaiah
has several similar references to creation rejoicing in the
imminent restoration of the people (for example, Is. 43:19-21;
45:8; 49:11-13; 51:3; 55:12-13). In second Isaiah, as in Amos,
the concern is with the one Creator God who has within his
providence the might of all nations. Furthermore, in second
Isaiah, as in Amos, God's creative activity in relation to his
provision from the natural world is also linked to his creative
activity in relation to his power over all nations: one conse-
quence of this immanent and transcendent 'creation theol-
ogy' is the clear rejection of any dualism: everything finds its
origin in the one Creator God of Israel. There is a striking
similarity in theology and language between second Isaiah and
Amos, for example:
'I am the Lord, and there is no other.
I form light and create darkness,
-pri NTDI TIN -ixr
I make weal and create woe,
I am the Lord, who do all these things.'
Isaiah 45:6-7)

In this context, where judgment and salvation are pre-

sented as being part of the same activity of the one Creator
God, second Isaiah, like Amos, connects a theology of creation
in an intricate way with a theology of exodus. Second Isaiah not
only uses the creation motif of God's victory over the chaos
waters (51:9-11 — note here the correspondences with the
refrain in Amos' doxologies), but the prophet refers to the
wilderness becoming a place of God's providence from na-
182 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
ture, often using the imagery of life-giving water (41:18-19;
42:15; 48:21; 49:8-10).20 In Amos, predictably, the exodus
traditions are used entirely as a means of indictment, although
even this indictment is dependent upon received traditions
concerning God's control over the dark and the light side of
the natural world. In second Isaiah, the exodus traditions are
used as a means of comfort, and here this comfort is depend-
ent upon received traditions regarding God's control over the
entire created order. We are brought again to the conclusion
that Amos portrays the darker side of the purposes of a
Creator-God to address a particular situation. The message of
Second Isaiah enables us to see beyond this to the other
implications of salvation after judgment; to speak of God's
creative activity must imply order as well as chaos — light as
well as dark — as the doxologies in Amos and the oracles in
second Isaiah well testify.
A third implication is also evident from these observa-
tions. We have already noted that in Amos there is no hint of
any dualism: God works freely through the created order not
only to bring in disaster and destruction, but also to re-create
in terms of nurture and restoration. What follows from this is
the depiction of one transcendent God who cannot and will
not be 'domesticated' by his creation. He works within the
natural order, yet is mysteriously beyond it. Hence he is not
confined by the cycles of nature, but has the ability to turn
nurture into destruction, light into dark, destruction into
nurture, darkness into light, as he so wills. In this way Amos'
God is able to 'perform' in exactly the same way as the fertility
deities, but equally he is able to operate conversely and
unpredictably i n order to demonstrate that his ways are not the
ways of other gods. There is in the book of Amos a profound
link between the natural order and natural justice, and it is this
which distinguishes the actions of Amos' God from the actions
of other gods; to put things starkly, the preservation of justice
and righteousness throughoutall humanity is more important
than the perpetuation of the natural order for its own sake.

M
Cf. C. Westermann, Das BuchJama AID 19 (Gottingen, 1966), ET Isaiah 40-66
OTL (London, 1969), pp. 21-22 and 240-43; also B. W. Anderson, Exodus Typology
in Second Isaiah', hard's Prophetic Heritage, eds. B. W. Anderson and W. Harrelson,
(New York, 1962), pp. 178-95.
 GOD AND CREATION IN THE BOOK OF AMOS 183
Hence the idea of God using chaos, destruction and darkness
is vital within Amos, for it demonstrates that Israel's God is
more concerned with justice and righteousness than with the
perpetuation of the rhythms of nature simply for the sake of
complacent prosperity.
Set against the background of the moral breakdown of a
society which attempted to placate and domesticate its deity,
the appeal to God as destroyer of his own created order
actually makes some sense. To speak of the destructive power
of Yawheh is to express starkly that chaos generates its own
type: in brief, chaos is met by chaos. A people who choose to
live with the violation of humanity around them will experi-
ence that same violation from the natural order, particularly
when they live in the false belief that they have control of that
order. In simple terms, Israel judges herself, and she receives
her due. I am reminded of those lines (in a completely
different context) from T. S. Eliot's 'East Coker':
0 dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant

1 said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings,
with a movement of darkness on darkness . . .21

The idea of the movement of'darkness upon darkness',

'the darkness of God', is a most striking image when we relate
it back to Amos, for in the book as a whole we see chaos
encountering chaos, darkness meeting darkness — and this is
as much a statement of what has been brought about by the
people as what comes from God. Creation must be true to
itself. The analogy of the wild vineyard in Isaiah 5 is helpful in
this respect: all one can expect is wild grapes, and these must
be destroyed. To my mind nowhere else in the Old Testament
is the tension between Creator and creation better expressed
than in the book of Arnos, and nowhere is it so poignantly
expressed because it points ultimately to the possibility of

21
Cf. Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot (London, 1963), pp. 199-200.
184 SCOTTISH JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
recreation out of chaos. And, if one might dare to end with a
conclusion which has a contemporary application, the same
diagnosis and prognosis which we find in the book of Amos has
a ring of truth about it even today.

Susan Gillingham
Worcester College
Oxford OX1 2HG