The evangelical left loves to use the book of Amos to bludgeon conservative Christians, the vast majority of evangelicals, who promote capitalism. After all, they say, does not this passage from chapter six describe the luxury of the American lifestyle?
4 Those who recline on beds of ivory
And sprawl on their couches,
And eat lambs from the flock
And calves from the midst of the stall,
5 Who improvise to the sound of the harp,
And like David have composed songs for themselves,
6 Who drink wine from sacrificial bowls
While they anoint themselves with the finest of oils,
Yet they have not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.
For example, Mere Orthodoxy published this before the election in 2024:
"In the Old Testament, the prophets after Amos keep affirming with particular vigor the requirements of justice and solidarity and the need to pronounce a very severe judgment on the rich who oppress the poor. They come to the defense of the widow and the orphan. They threaten the powerful: the accumulation of evils can only lead to terrible punishments. Faithfulness to the Covenant cannot be conceived of without the practice of justice. Justice as regards God and justice as regards mankind are inseparable. God is the defender and the liberator of the poor."
The US is the richest country its size on the planet today and in history. A few tiny European countries are slightly richer, but several regions of the US the size of those tiny nations are as rich or richer. The US is so rich that half of the European Union lives below the US poverty line.
Those on the left who see Amos as condemning the US see our wealth as poof of our evil; we are a society just like Israel in Amos' day. But they don't pay attention to what Amos actually says about Israelite society. Yes, the rich oppressed the poor, but who were the rich and how did they oppress the poor? Amos said,
They hate him who reproves in the gate,
And they abhor him who speaks with integrity.
11 Therefore because you impose heavy rent on the poor
And exact a tribute of grain from them,
12 For I know your transgressions are many and your sins are great,
You who distress the righteous and accept bribes
And turn aside the poor in the gate.
The gate in the Old Testament was the location of the courts where criminals were tried and disputes settled. Amos said the people hated those who reproved them in court and testified honestly. In verse 12 he said they accepted bribes. Who? The judges, the only institution of government besides the law that God had given Israel in the Torah. The situation is exactly like that of Ahab who coveted Naboth's vineyard in I King 21. Jezebel got the vineyard for Ahab by bribing false witnesses to accuse Naboth of a capital crime. The court convicted innocent Naboth, had him executed and his vineyard given to the king. Jezebel probably bribed the judge, too.
Who had the political power and wealth to bribe judges and witnesses with impunity? Only those in government, the king and his sons, the princes. Amos indicts the government of Israel for perverting justice, the only job God gave government. Amos doesn't mention the princes, but other prophets do, Isaiah especially:
Isaiah 1:23: "Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow's cause does not come to them."
In Isaiah 5:23, he exposes leaders "who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!"
Isaiah 3:14-15: "The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders of His people and His princes: ‘For you have eaten up the vineyard; the plunder of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing My people and grinding the faces of the poor?’"
Amos and Isaiah also condemn the government officials, the princes, for loaning money to the poor, usually to buy seed, and charging interest when the Torah prohibited it. Not only did they charge interest on loans to the poor, but they set the interest rate so high that they guaranteed the poor couldn't repay the loans. Then the princes would sell the poor farmer and his family as slaves and take possession of his land.
These were evil people and part of the government. But God had warned Israel that this sort of evil would happen when it demanded a king in I Samuel 8:
14 "He will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. 15 And he will take a tenth of your seed and your vineyards and give it to his high officials and his servants. 16 He will also take your male servants and your female servants, and your best young men, and your donkeys, and use them for his work. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants."
The left assumes that the US is guilty of similar crimes because it is wealthy. Partly that assumption comes from Marx, who claimed that all profits are theft from workers, and partly from the ancient idea that one cannot grow wealthy except at the expense of others. The later was true for most of history until the advent of capitalism. Before capitalism, people considered the honorable ways to gain wealth were through looting in war, kidnapping for ransom, and taking bribes as a government official. Capitalism made those illegal.
Since the advent of capitalism, most have earned their wealth by creating new wealth, for example by reducing the cost of food through better farming methods and the use of tractors, or by making clothing cheaper for common people through the use of machinery. Business people aren't angels and many have been crooks, but it's the government's job to punish them. For the most part, businessmen are not crooks today.
Amos and the other prophets mostly condemn the governments of Israel and Judah for oppressing the poor by bribing false witnesses and judges and charging exorbitant interest rates on loans to the poor. The Bible never condemns wealth earned honestly. It sees such wealth as a blessing from God. It condemns the wealthy who gained it by dishonest means, as did the government officials in Amos' day.
Similar practices Continued in Jesus' day. Jesus wasn't using hyperbole when he said the high priest had turned the temple into a den of thieves. And James condemned the rich for refusing to pay laborers who had worked in their fields:
"Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, and which has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord" (James 5:).
Thanks to capitalism, such practices are rare today.
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