The Fourth Crime:

The Law of Nations According to the Prophets

The List

The Book of Amos, immediately after introducing and identifying its eponymous prophet, opens with a resounding rebuke to six nations, before discussing Judah and Israel, each of them have committed three crimes before, but broke the proverbial camel’s back with a fourth one, which dooms them to some terrible punishment:

1.      Aram Damascus: Northern Israel’s main enemy

Crime: “For they have threshed Ramoth Gilead with iron shears”.

Punishment: The Lord shall set the kings of Aram’s palaces on fire, break Damascus’ gate’s crossbeam, desolate ‘the Valley of ‘Awen’ and ‘Beith-Eden’, and have them exiled with the rest of Aram to ‘Qir’.

2.      Gaza: As emblematic for the Philistines as a whole, Israel’s oldest enemy.

Crime: “They have turned over an entire exile to Edom”

Punishment: The Lord shall set Gaza’s wall on fire, which shall consume its palaces. Desolate Ashdod and Ashkelon, bring destruction upon Ekron, and “annihilate the remnants of Philistia”.

3.      Tyre: Israel’s oldest external ally.

Crime: “They have turned over an entire exile to Edom, and have not remembered the alliance of brothers”

Punishment: The Lord shall set Tyre’s wall on fire, which shall consume its palaces.

4.      Edom: Formerly a Judahite vassal, and an independent nuisance for 2 generations by Amos’ time

Crime: “He hath prosecuted his brother by the sword, he had degenerated his mercy, his rage is preying forever, his anger always kept”

Punishment: The Lord shall set Teiman (“The Southland”, a Judahite term for the land of Edom) on fire, which shall consume Basra’s (Edom’s capital) palaces.

5.      Ammon: Israel’s old enemy and main rival over the Transjordan lands

Crime: “They have broken open the pregnant women of Gilead to expand their own border”.

Punishment: The Lord shall set the walls of Rabbah (Amon’s capital) on fire, which shall consume its palaces “on the day of war, the day of storm and whirlwind,” and have Ammon’s king and lords exiled.

6.      Moab: Sometimes Judah’s ally against either Ammon or Edom

Crime: “He hath burned the bones of the King of Edom to lime”

Punishment: The Lord shall set Moab on fire, which shall consume the palaces of “The City/ies” (Moab’s capital), and Moab shall die with noise, with a blast and the sound of horns. The Lord shall extinct Moab’s judges and kill all their lords by the sword.

Interpretation and a Problem

Amos lived and prophesied in the respective reigns of Jeroboam II of Israel, Amaziah of Judah, and his son Uzziah / Azariah. This was a period of pan-Israelite expansion – Jeroboam had expanded the Northern Kingdom "From the gates of Homs to the Sea of Arabah" (That is, he conquered the better part of Aram, subdued the Ammonites and Moabites, and retrieved the entirety of the Transjordan).

Meanwhile, Amaziah and his son Uzziah had subdued Edom, re-established Eilat as a military naval colony, and fortified the border – not even the brief and tragic inter-Israelite conflict that ultimately cost Amaziah his life managed to halt these swings of the Israelite twin swords (II Kings 12:1-29).

In short, Amos could not have been admonishing Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Aram for acts committed in his own lifetime, since they were in no position to do so.  

Rather, these acts seem to have occurred during the alliance between Jehoshaphat and the House of Omri, when the two Israelite kingdoms joined in a series of wars against Aram, Damascus, and Edom. This, at least, is the closest in the Prophetic record (II Kings 3:1-27, there the King of Moab is explicitly said to have sacrificed the King of Edom[1]'s firstborn son upon the wall which would fit Amos' reference) where we find conflicts involving Moab, Edom, Israel (especially Gilead) and Aram (I Kings 22:1-39) (Gaza and Tyre is corollary to the conflict with Edom, while Ammon seems to be related to the Aramean campaign against Gilead).   

The crimes involving Edom, that is, Gaza and Tyre, turning over an entire “exile” to Edom, and Edom “persecuting his brother by the sword,” seem connected.

Further, the only “brother” Edom was in the territorial position to “prosecute by the sword was Judah (as we have mentioned in the last article. “brotherhood” can imply either real kinship or manufactured kinship through longstanding diplomatic ties, such as Edom’s vassalage to Judah before its revolt). The word “exile”, גלות, here seems to indicate not a forcefully dislocated population, whose proper term is גולה (there was no significant numbers of Judahite exiles in Tyre or Gaza at the time) but rather, what we would call “expatriate communities”. We know that Jehoshaphat had established a trade colony in Eilat to “bring gold from Ophir,” only to have his “ships broken”. Now we can assume that this was a literal series of shipwrecks, or one major disaster affecting the entire fleet, or we can connect the dots: The merchants of Tyre and Gaza had collaborated with an Edomite land raid on the Eilat colony, capturing (or “breaking”) the Judahite ships and turning the sailors, the whole גלות of Eilat, to the Edomites, who “prosecuted them by the sword”.

These conflicts took place not only in another era, but during the reign of, in Amos' preferred stomping grounds of Northern Israel, the previous dynasty, the House of Omeri, which the ruling House of Jehu deliberately set its image in opposition to.

Possible Solution and Amos’ Rhetorical Inversion

We must therefore assume that almost every Israelite was aware of the events Amos had referenced. It is rather possible that the "three crimes" of each nation on the list, which Amos mentions but does not list, were also known to most Israelites. It even stands to reason that the new Jehu dynasty would emphasize the grievances of these nations against Israel to stress the weakness of the Omriites, thus justifying their overthrow (in the South, the same material, mainly regarding Edomite wrongs, would help justify the plot against Omriite Athaliah and the Neo-Davidic monarchy under Joash and his descendants).

Thus, we are approaching an understanding of Amos’ rhetoric:

Utilizing a list of crimes which all Israelites would be familiar with and able to recite, and which justified (rightfully so!) the military enterprises against all of the kingdoms above, Amos than turns and tell both Northerners and Southerners alike “You are as bad as they are, since you also have committed similar crimes, against each other and against God”.

Amos’s Understanding of National Crimes and Morality

While Amos utilizes (and affirms) Israelite grievances against their neighbors to deliver the point of the Israelite’s own guilt, it gives us a solid cross-section of things which Amos (and therefore, El-Y.H.W.H) considers crimes even when committed between states, or, if you will, breaches of international law which God, as the Eternal King[2] and “Judge of all the Earth” is bound to arbitrate and punish. Amos rejected the Hobbesian State of Nature theory of international affairs. For him, it was obvious that nations can and do commit crimes against each other and that the Lord Eternal sits in judgment of such crimes just as he judges individual injustices.

The crimes Amos lists can be divided into two categories:

1.      Spoliation of inherently sacred things.

2.      Breaking of Covenants, either created ones or natural ones.

To the first category belong the crimes of Aram, Moab, and Ammon:

They have destroyed fruitful fields (El, the giver of life-enabling fruit[3] is explicitly opposed to the destruction of anything fruitful, as Deut. 20:19 ought to be understood), have deliberately killed expectant mothers and their unborn children (El is repeatedly portrayed as the “Opener of wombs”[4] and the one which grant children to women by “remembering them”[5] and is particularly nauseated by crimes against the helpless, and especially defenseless women and children[6]), and have desecrated the bones of the dead (as evident by both the placement of God’s name on amulets in Keteph-Hinnom and other distinctly Israelite burial practices, not to mention repeated references in Scripture[7], El-Y.H.W.H was understood to be the protector of souls in and their rescuer from Deathland, and thus the enforcer of the dignity of the Dead). In the comparison to the Israelites, the Northern Kingdom is guilty of “selling the righteous for silver, and the poor for shoes, who conspire for the sake of the dust of the earth against the heads of the impoverished, and pervert the path of the humble”[8], all groups which are sacred to God, as well as two more acts of desecration “… a man and his father go to the (same) girl to desecrate my name” (an act that violates the sacredness of family bonds) as well as “they recline in mortgaged clothes by every altar, and drink extracted as interest in the house of their God”[9].

However, the second group of crimes relates to the violation of covenants. As we have established before, it was the basic understanding tin the Ancient Near East that the gods of both sides are signatories and guarantors of their alliances, however, El, as the one true God and Most High, takes upon Himself the role of the universal guarantor not only of all agreed upon and sworn alliances, but the implied, natural covenants of kinship, help and hospitality. Thus, Tyre and Gaza are guilty for turning over the Israelite expatriates who were either living in their lands as part of Jehoshaphat’s commercial scheme or who attempted to escape to sea from the Edomite raids on Eilat. Similarly, Edom has betrayed “the covenant of brothers” by “prosecuting his brother by the sword”. The comparison to Judah is clear: just as Tyre, Gaza and Edom betrayed their covenants with Judah, thus Judah betrayed its covenant with God “For they have despised the instruction of the Lord, and have not kept His Law, and their falsehoods (/ “false ones”, i.e. their “idols”) deceived them, whom their fathers’ hath followed[10]”.

Are Amos’ Standards Applicable to the Modern World?

In the previous essay, we discussed the consistently disappointing quality of Israel’s ancient alliances. We saw how God brought Egypt to account for their repeated self-interested betrayals of the Israelite kingdoms. Now we have seen the justification God has to judge nations for failing to uphold their alliances; as El Berith, “God of (the) Covenant”, God is the guarantor and adjudicator of nations.

This, therefore, gives us a new definition of international law: not an amalgam of random treaties, but natural law, the principle of justice between persons applied to all nations. For the judge, we have not glorified ambassadors to an international “court” but God Himself, who alone can rule without prejudice and favor.

This yields to us an inevitable conclusion: God views the abrogation of His Law on both the international and personal and national levels as equally severe offenses. One cannot argue to be loyal to God and His Law while advocating the violation of treaties, the betrayal of longstanding alliances, and other things which would desecrate that which God always holds holy. I can think of no greater rebuke to Kahanism. Further, one cannot ally oneself to powers that commit evil acts on the international stage, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or China’s innumerable crimes within and without its borders, and escape God’s wrath.

 

[1] The original text is:

...וַיָּקֻ֤מוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ וַיַּכּ֣וּ אֶת־מוֹאָ֔ב וַיָּנֻ֖סוּ מִפְּנֵיהֶ֑ם וַיַּ֨כּוּ־בָ֔הּ וְהַכּ֖וֹת אֶת־מוֹאָֽב׃ וְהֶעָרִ֣ים יַהֲרֹ֡סוּ וְכׇל־חֶלְקָ֣ה ט֠וֹבָ֠ה יַשְׁלִ֨יכוּ אִישׁ־אַבְנ֜וֹ וּמִלְא֗וּהָ וְכׇל־מַעְיַן־מַ֤יִם יִסְתֹּ֙מוּ֙ וְכׇל־עֵֽץ־ט֣וֹב יַפִּ֔ילוּ עַד־הִשְׁאִ֧יר אֲבָנֶ֛יהָ בַּקִּ֖יר חֲרָ֑שֶׂת וַיָּסֹ֥בּוּ הַקַּלָּעִ֖ים וַיַּכּֽוּהָ׃ וַיַּרְא֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ מוֹאָ֔ב כִּֽי־חָזַ֥ק מִמֶּ֖נּוּ הַמִּלְחָמָ֑ה וַיִּקַּ֣ח א֠וֹת֠וֹ שְׁבַע־מֵא֨וֹת אִ֜ישׁ שֹׁ֣לֵֽף חֶ֗רֶב לְהַבְקִ֛יעַ אֶל־מֶ֥לֶךְ אֱד֖וֹם וְלֹ֥א יָכֹֽלוּ׃ וַיִּקַּח֩ אֶת־בְּנ֨וֹ הַבְּכ֜וֹר אֲשֶׁר־יִמְלֹ֣ךְ תַּחְתָּ֗יו וַיַּעֲלֵ֤הוּ עֹלָה֙ עַל־הַ֣חֹמָ֔ה וַיְהִ֥י קֶצֶף־גָּד֖וֹל עַל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וַיִּסְעוּ֙ מֵעָלָ֔יו וַיָּשֻׁ֖בוּ לָאָֽרֶץ׃

While, in isolation, "בנו הבכור" - "his firstborn son" sounds like the king of Moab (the besieged)'s son, the context suggests an alternative chain of events: The king of Moab recognized Edom to be the weak link in the tripartite alliance. So first he tried to kill the Edomite king hoping that will lead to the Edomite force dispersing (since Edom was involved only as a vassal of Judah or Israel, and the ties of vassalage would have been severed with the death of the king until a new king can be appointed and sworn as a vassal of Jehoshaphat or Ahab), when this failed, he provoked the King of Edom by sacrificing the Edomite crown prince, which caused dissention between the allies, and led to the failure of the entire enterprise. The destruction of trees and fountains is commanded explicitly by Prophet Elisha a few lines before:

וְהִכִּיתֶ֞ם כׇּל־עִ֤יר מִבְצָר֙ וְכׇל־עִ֣יר מִבְח֔וֹר וְכׇל־עֵ֥ץ טוֹב֙ תַּפִּ֔ילוּ וְכׇל־מַעְיְנֵי־מַ֖יִם תִּסְתֹּ֑מוּ וְכֹל֙ הַחֶלְקָ֣ה הַטּוֹבָ֔ה תַּכְאִ֖בוּ בָּאֲבָנִֽים׃

The fact that the prophet needs to explicitly command this rudimentary ancient siege tactic shows that it was NOT the Israelite norm, and in fact, ran contrary to longstanding Israelite taboos, as we asserted in the article.

[2] מלך עולם:

“King of Eternity” or, alternatively, "Eternal / Ancient King", the word “עולם” comes from the Akkadian for “What was before”, and does not acquire the meaning of “world” until the 2^nd Temple Period

[3] Compare the characterization of El in the pre-Baalist myth as a King-Hosting-Banquet (or a מרזח), repeated in the Israelite ritualistic understanding of the Altar as “The table of the Lord”, and as the planter of a fruitful garden in Genesis 2:8 as well as a vintner in Isiah 5:1-2).

[4] Genesis 29:31, 30:22

[5] Ibid 30:22, as well as 21:1, and many other examples

[6] Deut. 10:18

[7] Ibid 21:23, as well as Psalms 90-91.

[8] Amos 2:6-7

[9] Ibid, 2:7-8, on God’s aversion to lenders retaining, not to mention consuming, goods given as collateral, see Exodus 22:26, especially when such goods are clothing. I believe “יין ענושים” ought to be translated as “wine extracted as usury” due to its alliteration with על בגדים חבולים יטו.

[10] Amos 2:4