Ethics & Public Policy

Essays by Harry T. Cook

June 20, 2008

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To read "Remembering Amos and Jeremiah," this weekend's essay, scroll down a bit. What's true about the unfolding general election campaign is that the right-wing press is wrapping Barack Obama in what it takes to be the albatross known as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. That preacher had the audacity, not only of hope, but of outspokenness. Wright challenged a system in much the same way as the Old Testament figure called Amos challenged an unjust system in his own time. Wright has been banished, even by his Former Parishioner. Wright will outlast it all, though, even as Amos has.

Harry T. Cook

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By Harry T. Cook

Amos was an 8th Century B.C.E. part-time public intellectual. His utterances captured in an eponymous document suggest that he worked two day jobs like a lot of people we know - one as a tender of flocks and the other as a tree surgeon (or what he called a "dresser of sycamores"). He somehow found time to undertake what must have been a rigorous trek through hilly, rugged territory from his home in the Judean hamlet of Tekoa to the city of Bethel where at that time the king of Israel was holding court. The king in question was Jeroboam II during whose reign Israel was at the apex of its territorial expansion and national prosperity. Military might had secured it all, leading the populous to believe that Yahweh had anointed them and sponsored their good fortune.

Onto that stage walked Amos, probably looking the part of the scruffy two-wage earner man with a message, who in our time might have appeared with denunciatory leaflets and placards. His perceived mission? To speak harsh words to a self-satisfied citizenry. If the text can be said to represent the facts, Amos barged uninvited into the royal precincts, unloaded on the king's economic and social injustices and inveighed against the mile-wide, inch-deep religious piety that supposedly legitimized Jeroboam's policies. In effect, Amos said, "God damn Israel" because it sells the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, push[es] the afflicted out of the way, all the while reveling in the pomp of its solemn assemblies.

Enough, Amos said, rather let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. Amaziah, Jeroboam's spokes-tool, confronted Amos, saying You! Out! Return to Judea whence you came. Never again speak here, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom. Establishments don't care at all for truth-tellers. They upset carefully constructed apple carts. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, at last disowned and dishonored by his one-time parishioner Barack Obama, has suffered the same fate as Amos 2,700 years ago. But here's the thing: Jeroboam II would hardly merit mention outside a graduate seminar in Judaic studies, if there, had it not been for Amos whose words against him are read and heard in synagogue, temple and church unto this day. Heard but not heeded.

Is it not ironic that those civic and political sins for which Amos denounced the Jeroboam Administration are virtually the same civic and political sins for which Wright has denounced the Bush Administration and by extension America itself? Jeroboam's proud and mighty kingdom eventually came to grief because hubris generally undoes those who traffic in it. Wright knows that. History will vindicate him as it has vindicated Amos. Both are parts of a long line of speakers of truth to power, which includes the other Jeremiah for whom the Hebrew document is named, John the Baptist and his contemporary Jesus of Nazareth. All were banished or outright killed for their trouble. As the latter once observed, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.

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© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.