What did Amos see?
This week’s Old Testament lectionary reading in Amos 7 includes the wonderful plumbline illustration. I felt it could be brought up to date a little.
How about something like: “What do you see Amos?”, “I see an ipod touch running the latest level app!”
But just when I thought I’d managed to get my latest toy into a sermon, I discover that no serious scholar thinks it actually says that. The word translated in verse 7 is אֲנָךְ (’anakh) and occurs only in this passage. In the middle ages, some bright spark thought it meant “lead” so obviously Amos was looking at a plumbline. The plumbline makes for a great illustration; tin on the other hand doesn’t seem to make much sense, even if most scholars seem to go it. That is, all except Marvin Sweeny, who writes in the wonderful Berit Olam series of commentaries.
Sweeny suggests the word might actually mean plaster and his argument makes a lot of sense, given that all the images Amos is relaying to us are from his work in agriculture. He sees locusts, a common problem in that time and particularly critical at the time of year in which this is set. He sees fire – fires happen all the time in that climate and pose a continual threat to livelihoods. Then Plaster – well after the long dry summers, plaster would be used to fill in the cracks appearing in walls, before the rains came. You’ll have to read Sweeny for the full argument, but he is about the only scholar to have an alternative to plumbline that makes some kind of sense. The significance of the word however is the pun that the word suggests. The word is similar to that for lament and mourning and so Yahweh is to put lament and mourning amongst the people. Whether you say the word means tin or plaster, the pun in Hebrew is still there!
How annoying! The ipod illustration would have gone down rather well in church. Instead, I need to find an ipod app that does the plastering.
livingos on flickr
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