Amos 7:7-15 by Rola Al Ashkar

I want to start off by drawing a quick historical sketch to better understand the demography of the land. After the death of King Solomon in 997 B.C. the 12 tribes of Israel did not agree on a successor and split into the Northern kingdom which was called Israel and the Southern kingdom called Judah. Usually there was enmity between the two kingdoms, which lasted until Jesus’s days -a thousand years later.

Our story events are happening in the northern kingdom, and Bethel –which literally means the house of God- and all other sanctuaries were built on the highest places of the city because Jews believed that way they would be closer to God. But here Bethel has obviously become also the house of the king and of his priests. Nonetheless, this very house of God will not stand the judgment of a plumb line.

As I was pondering this plumb line metaphor, I called my brother to ask him how do plumb lines work, and the first thing he said was: what the heck do you have to do with a plumb line? And what possibly could have brought it to your attention? It isn’t even something people use in daily life, let alone church! So I explained to him that there is an Old Testament prophet who talks about it, and he replied: Old Testament? That makes sense! I guess those were the days when a plumb line was last used. So anyway, here is how he described it: it is a weight suspended from a string, which serves as a vertical reference line to ensure a wall or any other structure is centered. It uses the force of gravity, the gift of sight and the builder’s judgment to assess whether what is being built is straight up and down. The builder has to use the plumb line after placing each block or two, my brother emphasized; it is the continuous measurement that ensures the wall is built upright.

According to our reading this morning, when measured against a plumb line, Israel was found unleveled, there were found highs and lows, and thus Amos predicts: the highs shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste… a very harsh judgment that is not taken well by the priest Amaziah the chief priest of Bethel. I mean no one likes criticism, or to be told that they are doing something wrong, and especially if they are a chief priest with such a high position.

Let me read few more verses from the rest of the story:

Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel . . . For thus Amos has said, ‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.'” And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”

Amos was from the southern kingdom of Judah, but his prophetic mission as seen in his passage was in the northern kingdom of Israel! So Amaziah’s “go back to your country” attitude illustrates this enmity and segregation in ancient Israel, and just emphasizes that insider/outsider classification, that high and low mentality that prevailed in the royal court.

The king and his priests in this story were literally and symbolically sitting in their high places, consciously neglecting those in lower places. No wonder they feared the plumb line.

Imagine someone walking around with a plumb line, measuring up things in your life and telling you about all the things you have built wrong. How does that feel?

Amaziah then accuses Amos of conspiracy against Israel. Note that he does not challenge his right to prophesy, but only his authority to speak against the royal household. He says that if Amos wants to remain a prophet, that is fine, as long as he doesn’t do his prophesying in Israel anymore.

This shows just how completely he had identified religious faith with establishment power. He has become so much of an insider that he almost forgot that his religious duty is to bring high the lowly instead of protecting the highs of the society and keeping them as far as possible from the lows.

But here comes Amos with his plumb line, measuring things out and calling things for what they are: ‘Your high places are not going to survive, because they were not built up straight according to God’s plumb line.’ What is God’s plumb line? I am quoting Isaiah 28 “And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plumb line.”

My father works in something similar to construction, he lays tiles, and he’s been doing that for long time that he brags that he doesn’t even need lines or plumb lines to measure the straightness of his tiles. However, he uses them anyway, because “when using plumb lines,” he says, “the slightest differences that are unnoticed to the naked eye, could now be measured and noted.”

Friends what if someone had to take a look at your life the way my dad looks at the wall, what would they think? This story of Amos and his plumb line calls us for self-reflection. You and I have trouble keeping things straight in our lives. In that sense we are no different from the people of Israel. We need a plumb line.

How do you measure your life? How do you keep things straight and by what tools of measurement? And how do you make the right decisions? The Bible has a lot to teach us on this matter. Thanks be to God.