Amos 5:4

"For thus saith Jehovah unto the house of Israel, seek ye me, and ye shall live."

Seek ye me ..." "This does not mean, `inquire about,' or `search for' something or someone lost or inaccessible. When Yahweh is the object, the meaning is, `turn to Yahweh,' and `hold to Yahweh' as a way of life."[10] Many have noted that this passage does not in any sense mean that the Lord is hiding from Israel, or even that he is not available to them. "It must be understood as meaning, to seek out and observe God's commandments."[11] W. R. Harper noted the audience-response type of thing which we mentioned in the chapter introduction; these words, "suggest at once the question, `Are we not zealouly engaged in the worship of Yahweh? Why are we then to suffer?'"[12] Very well, Amos will respond to such a question, whether or not it was actually raised by any of his hearers. The answer is simple, and simply devastating: "Their religion is false!" We deplore the apparent blindness of so many who do not see in Amos' prophecy anything except the social injustice and oppression of the poor. Of course, those aspects of Israel's sins are courageously denounced in Amos, but no more so than are condemned the vanities of their religious system. To deny that God was also gravely concerned about that is to miss the principal relevance of this prophecy for modern man. Thorogood accurately observed the intention of this section of Amos when he declared that: "The chief theme in Amos 5 and Amos 6 is the contrast between true religion and false religion."[13]

This is a good place to mention the scholarly superstition to the effect that, "The editors who put together the Book of Amos, divided his sayings into sections; but the divisions are not very clear, etc."[14] Of course, no "editors" or "redactors" had anything to do with Amos. The so-called "evidence" of any such thing is usually pointed out in this fashion:

"(This chapter has): a funeral song (Amos 5:1-3); a call to repent (Amos 5:4-7); part of a song of praise (Amos 5:8-9); a warning about injustice (Amos 5:10-13); a further call to repent (Amos 5:14-15); and a further funeral song, or vision of death (Amos 5:16-17)."[15]

With all due deference to the intelligence and understanding of those scribes who take the piece-meal nature of this chapter as the work of some "editor," they are simply mistaken, the mistake being due to an apparent total ignorance of the art of preaching. What we really have here is a typical "shotgun type" of sermon; and this writer is free to confess that he has preached a hundred just as strangely put together as Amos' words in this chapter. One need look no further than the prophet himself to account for the motley arrangement which confronts us here. Of course, such a thing would seem inconceivable to a seminarian! Amos was no seminarian, but a shepherd! To fasten this hodge-podge chapter upon some later "editor" or "redactor" must be to suppose that the one or ones doing the scissors and paste job here were phenomenally stupid. Any "editor" worthy of the name would have put the elements of the dirge together and also those of the hymn of praise. By far the most logical and reasonable explanation of the piece-meal, intermittent style which is seen in these chapters is that they are the result of an extemporaneous, give and take, free-for-all confrontation between Amos and Israel, with many interruptions to answer questions, either actually propounded by the audience, or astutely discerned by the speaker before they were propounded. Instead of criticizing the style of these chapters, the really discerning student will recognize them as the impassioned outflow of a soul in tune with God, burning with righteous indignation against the gross abuses of Israel's social order, overburdened by the tragic weight of the message of destruction he was commissioned to deliver, and yet motivated by a passionate patriotism and love of God's "chosen people," and an unspeakable grief at the tragic words he faithfully delivered. The message of such a man with such a burden of his soul and spirit could never have taken the form of neat little tidy messages such as many so-called sermons of the present day. No indeed! The impassioned words flow forth without any Particular organization, tumbling over each other like red-hot rocks out of a volcano. Behold here the truly magnificent structure of genuine prophecy!