The prophets of old have quite a bit to say about today’s problems.
The rich are getting richer while the poor are taken advantage of, politicians are neglecting their responsibilities, priests are abusing people entrusted to their care, and children are disrespectful of their parents, who are neglected in old age. The wicked get the best of the honorable. Immigration restrictions are inhumane. Nothing is getting done when the elders and leaders gather to legislate and judge. The environment is being destroyed, and many see in its misuse the judgment of God.
We’re talking, of course, about prophets’ complaints against Israel in the eighth century BC. Prophets such as Amos, Isaiah, and later Jeremiah warned that sins of social injustice were particularly loathsome in the sight of God and violated the covenant.
We all think we know what injustice looks like, but it might be harder to agree on what justice is. Social justice simply means the mutual responsibility humans have toward one another. Time and again the biblical writers remind us that God is just, but we are not. We need guidance and encouragement to follow in the way of justice, and we depend on prophets to show us the way.
The prophets’ message is hard to take for a variety of reasons. It is demanding. Human beings slip into conduct that benefits them although it may be harmful to others. We are tempted to prioritize our own needs and desires even if they are pursued at the expense of others. The prophets function as our conscience, especially when we lack one ourselves. They demand dedication and faithfulness to God. The prophets require us to persist in doing good and resisting evil; they urge us to a selflessness that we might prefer not to cultivate. Prophets are the better angels of our nature rather than the devilish voices of our selfish interests.
Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah are good examples of social justice prophets who minded God’s business above their own and paid a great personal price for doing so. They provide a model for prophets of succeeding ages who are challenged to listen to and interpret for God the way to justice in changing times.
Seek Justice for All: Amos
While some prophets denounce idolatry and complain that the people neglect their obligations toward God, Amos stresses the importance of social justice as justice for all, especially the disadvantaged, the underprivileged, and the defenseless. When people come to worship, seeking some refuge and comfort in their religion, Amos meets them there and instead discomfits them. It is a time of relative prosperity, but the prophet brings threats of fire and brimstone. The Israelites claim to be eagerly awaiting the coming day of the Lord, hoping that divine retribution will come down hard on their enemy, Assyria, which has caused Israel so much suffering. But Amos informs them that it will be a day of judgment, fire, darkness, pestilence—a day of terror and regret.
Amos’ oracle against the Israelites is perhaps the most fearsome, including many reasons for God’s judgment against them and excluding every conceivable human excuse for their bad behavior. In chapter 2, he charges that “they hand over the just for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals. They trample the heads of the destitute into the dust of the earth, and force the lowly out of the way.”
Amos accuses Israel’s prophets of speaking falsely to curry favor and calls out religious leaders for corruption. He warns that neither the strong nor the swift nor the warrior will elude God’s judgment. Worst of all is the hypocrisy of the religious-minded people who ask when a religious feast will be over so they can return to their cheating ways that fix the scales for injustice and trade on the dignity of the disadvantaged for their own profit (8:4–6). Business, political, and religious leaders of Israel are all indicted.
Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, falsely accuses Amos of plotting to kill the king and denounces him, saying: “Off with you, seer, flee to the land of Judah and there earn your bread by prophesying! But never again prophesy in Bethel; for it is the king’s sanctuary and a royal temple” (7:10–13). Amos charges rich merchants with gaining their wealth on the backs of the disadvantaged: “They do not know how to do what is right—oracle of the Lord—storing up in their strongholds violence and destruction” (3:10).
The natural environment also plays a role in Amos’ indictment of Israel. Famine, floods, and drought have been visited upon the people to get their attention, “yet you did not return to me—oracle of the Lord” (4:6–11).
No disaster seems to motivate them to change their ways. The people are not fazed by blight or searing wind, locusts, pestilence, or sword. Thus the prophet relays the lament of the God of all creation: “Prepare to meet your God, O Israel! The one who forms mountains and creates winds, and declares to mortals their thoughts; who makes dawn into darkness and strides upon the heights of the earth, the Lord, the God of hosts” (4:12–13) will appear on that day.
The judges are also corrupt, Amos protests. The odd leader who seeks justice and truth is mocked and threatened. Elders gather and govern at the city gates, but the poor cannot expect justice from them. Amos says: “Woe to those who turn justice into wormwood and cast righteousness to the ground. . . . Therefore, because you tax the destitute and exact from them levies of grain” (5:7, 11), he tells them that they may build houses of stone but will not live in them, and they may plant vineyards but shall not drink their wine. How ironic that Amos should add, “Woe to those who yearn for the day of the Lord!” (5:18).
Say No to Selfishness: Isaiah
Amos was not alone in his complaints. The author of Isaiah 1—39, known as First Isaiah, was a near contemporary of Amos. The northern kingdom collapsed under Assyria’s oppression during the second half of the eighth century. According to First Isaiah, sometimes called the “Book of Judgment,” Isaiah tries every trick imaginable to attract the people’s attention—from shaming them to kindly inviting them to live their high calling as God’s own people. As if to start all over, God says through Isaiah, “Come now, let us set things right” (1:18).
Judah, the southern kingdom, places its hopes in foreign powers, even when those powers threaten and subdue their brothers to the north. Isaiah shows them how wrong they are to trust in transient powers to protect them. To themselves they say “in arrogance and pride of heart, ‘Bricks have fallen, but we will build with cut stone; sycamores have been felled, but we will replace them with cedars’” (9:8–9). Isaiah mocks them, noting that even animals recognize their creator (“An ox knows its owner, and an ass, its master’s manger,” 1:3), but the people do not know God. They oppress one another and their neighbors. The child defies his or her elders, and the wicked show up the honorable (3:5). God despises feasts and sacrifices when people say they believe, yet have no trust in God.
The people might think they have the right to do as they wish, but in pursuit of selfish gains they are hurting those they should protect. Those who govern are indicted by the prophet in especially harsh language as “those who enact unjust statutes and who write oppressive decrees, depriving the needy of judgment and robbing my people’s poor of their rights, making widows their plunder, and orphans their prey.”
Rhetorically, Isaiah asks: “What will you do on the day of punishment? . . . To whom will you flee for help?” (10:1–3). The selfish pursuits of the powerful are contrasted with the peaceful rule of Immanuel upon whom the spirit of the Lord rests (11:1–9).
Reform Your Lives: Jeremiah
Like Isaiah, Jeremiah invites hope when he offers the chance for a new beginning, a New Covenant (31:31– 34), written on our hearts. Jeremiah tries in vain to dislodge Judah’s stubborn complacency. But the repercussions of their sins catch up with the people of Judah who fail, time and again, to interpret the handwriting on the wall.
Jeremiah prods the people’s conscience when they otherwise hope to enjoy the comforts of the day. Just when they are justifying their own complacency, figuring they are safe from the threat of Assyria, Jeremiah throws water on their false hopes. He tells the people that “only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds; if each of you deals justly with your neighbor; if you no longer oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow; if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place,” will God remain with them and will they be able to live freely and peaceably “in the land I gave your ancestors long ago and forever” (7:5–7).
In chapter 7, the prophet challenges: “But look at you! You put your trust in deceptive words to your own loss! Do you think you can steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury . . . and then come and stand in my presence in this house, which bears my name, and say: ‘We are safe! We can commit all these abominations again!’?” Jeremiah urges them to abandon their hopes in mindlessly repeating, “This is the temple of the Lord!” instead of reforming their ways and doing justice for the disadvantaged.
Jeremiah grieves over his people’s suffering and repeats to God some 20 times his complaint, “They do not listen,” before he is proven right when the people he has loved so well put him to death. Jeremiah endures loneliness and alienation for his prophecy, but not in silence. He is told by God not to marry or have a family (16:2). He more than once curses the day he was born (15:10; 20:14) and laments becoming the object of ridicule and scorn (20:7–18). Jeremiah is truly a spokesman for those who have no voice, a dedicated witness, a martyr to justice for all.
What about Us?
We may have evolved in many other ways, but we do not listen to prophetic voices any better now than people did some 28 centuries ago when Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah spoke.
The prophets’ words are deliberately uncomfortable, and we feel vindicated for rejecting them. Yet God invites us to partnership in an ever new creation, saying to us in each generation, “You will be my people, and I will be your God” (Ez 36:28). This is the pact that was sealed by the Exodus experience when God, in effect, said to the people, “I freed you; now you free others.”
But how can I free others? I can take time to listen, really listen. I can comfort the frightened and give hope to the despairing. I can visit the sick. I can volunteer to drive an elderly relative or neighbor to doctors’ appointments and free them of the concern for getting there.
I can be patient and wait—and that is freeing to me too. I can see the problems of my diocese and parish as challenges to make my faith more active and a better example for others. I can be a more responsible steward of the environment and use its resources reverently. That will free future generations to enjoy nature, too, as I have done. These actions are small steps toward social justice that can be translated into powerful examples in the service of the Gospel.
God’s expectations for us remain constant. We are called to live up to the covenant.
Sometimes we neglect our responsibilities, relax our vigilance, and become comfortable with the idea of getting ahead at the expense of others. Along comes a prophet to remind us that injustice toward our neighbor or even our enemy—or toward the poor, the alien, the disenfranchised, the widow and orphan, the elderly, the young child, the unborn, the defenseless—is completely unacceptable. There will be grave consequences for taking advantage of others, especially those weaker than ourselves.
The prophets’ message on social justice is nothing new, yet somehow it never gets old. We need to hear it in contemporary language, but the meaning remains the same. Today, at last, we might be ready to hear.
