7 This is what he showed me: behold, the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. 8 And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said,
“Behold, I am setting a plumb line
in the midst of my people Israel;
I will never again pass by them;
9 the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”
10 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. 11 For thus Amos has said,
“‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword,
and Israel must go into exile
away from his land.’”
12 And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and prophesy there, 13 but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”
14 Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. 15 But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.
I am rather proud of this table I built. My computer is sitting on it right now as I type these words. It seats six comfortably and expands to receive a couple of leaves. We have squeezed ten or more around it when company has come. But it is not quite square. When you pull the table top apart to insert the leaves or when you push it back together, the mechanism, a geared thing I purchased, howls. It sounds like some cow is in great distress or a moose is being attacked by wolves in my dining room. My daughter, whose bedroom is on the main floor not far from the dining room, has told me that I do not need to do that while she is sleeping.
God has put a plumb line to the wall of Israel. A plumb line is a merciless measure. There is no tolerance for or margin of error. It is either straight or not. The plumb line of God’s justice has revealed Israel to be a crooked wall. The only thing to do in that situation is tear it down. A lot more is at stake than my daughter’s sleep. A crooked wall will eventually be a catastrophe. The people in Florida saw that a few years ago as they picked through the rubble of a fallen condominium to retrieve bodies. Built-right saves lives.
Amos’ audience did not want to hear that. The priest of Bethel and the king of that time just wanted to ignore the problem. God would not ignore the problem. In truth, Jeroboam did not see the problem. He presided over a period of unprecedented prosperity in ancient Israel. But as Amos had earlier noted, not everyone participated in the good times. The poor man was sold for a pair of sandals while the wealthy women, Amos calls them the fat “cows of Bashan,” reclined on ivory couches and demanded another mixed drink of their servants. Who made your shoes? Look at the label; it will tell you where they are from. Was it a poor man or woman working in slave-like conditions in some distant country? Have we sold that person’s life for a pair of cheaper sandals? Peel back the veneer of our prosperity, does a loud cry ascend to God for justice?