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Chapter One The Cry of the Oppressed

The first book of the Bible . . . Exodus?

Well, yes, and, of course, no.

No, because the first book of the Bible is Genesis. At least when a person picks it up and starts reading from the “in the beginning God created” part.

And yes, because many scholars see Exodus, the second book of the Bible, as the book in which the central story of redemption begins—liberation from Egypt.1

Egypt, the superpower of its day, was ruled by Pharaoh, who responded to the threat of the growing number of Israelites in his country by forcing them into slavery. They had to work every day without a break, making bricks, building storehouses for Pharaoh.2

Egypt is an empire,

built on the backs of Israelite slave labor,

brick by

brick by

brick.

But right away in the book of Exodus, there is a disruption. Things change. And the change begins with God saying:

“I have indeed seen the misery of my people . . .”

“I have heard them crying out . . .”

“I have come down to rescue them . . .”

“I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them . . .”3

A God who sees and hears. A God who hears the cry. The Hebrew word used here for cry is sa’aq, and we find it all throughout the Bible. Sa’aq is the expression of pain, the ouch, the sound we utter when we are wounded.4

But sa’aq, is also a question, a question that arises out of the pain of the wound. Where is justice? Did anybody see that? Who will come to my rescue? Did anybody hear that? Or am I alone here?

Sa’aq is what Abel’s blood does from the ground after he’s killed by his brother.

The Israelites are oppressed, they’re in misery, they’re suffering—and when they cry out, God hears.

This is a God who always hears the cry.

This is central to who God is: God always hears the cry of the oppressed.

The cry inaugurates history. It kicks things in gear. It shakes things up and gets them moving. The cry is the catalyst, the cause, the reason that a new story unfolds.

But God in this story doesn’t just hear the cry. God does something about it. The exodus is how God responds to the cry.

Think about your life. What are the moments that have shaped you the most? If you were to pick just a couple, what would they be? Periods of transformation, times when your eyes were opened, decisions you made that affected the rest of your life.

How many of them came when you reached the end of your rope?

When everything fell apart?

When you were confronted with your powerlessness?

When you were ready to admit your life was unmanageable?

When there was nothing left to do but cry out?

For many people, it was their cry,

their desperation,

their acknowledgment of their oppression,

that was the beginning of their liberation.

When we’re on top, when the system works for us, when we are capable of managing our lives, what is there for God to do?

But the cry—the cry inaugurates redemptive history. These slaves in Egypt cry out and God hears and something new happens. Things aren’t how they were. Things change.

These slaves are rescued from the oppression of Egypt.

Egypt

In the Bible, Egypt is a place, a country, a nation where the story begins. But it’s much, much more. To understand how central Egypt is to the flow of the biblical story, we have to go back to the introduction to the Bible, to the garden of Eden.

We’re told Adam and Eve chose to go their own way, to explore outside of the boundaries given to them by their maker, and as a result, their relationship suffers. This story is immediately followed by the story of their son Cain killing their other son, Abel.

This is a rapid, dramatic progression from Adam and Eve to their sons. We’ve gone from eating fruit to murder in one generation. Things are falling apart very quickly.

Not only that, but right after the murder, a close descendant of Cain’s, Lamech, laments that if “Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.”5 The escalation of societal violence is so intense that a close relative of Cain’s says things are eleven times worse than they were before. And then by chapter 6 of Genesis, just a few chapters after Cain and Abel, we find out that the whole world is headed for destruction except for one man and his family. And then by chapter 11, people have gotten together to build a tower that they are convinced will make them gods.

What started with two people and some fruit has escalated to murder among family members, to an entire civilization at odds with God.

The story is a tragic progression: the broken, toxic nature at the heart of a few humans has now spread to the whole world.

What started in a garden is now affecting the globe.

The word for this condition is anti-kingdom.6

There is God’s kingdom—the peace, the shalom,7 the good that God intends for all things. And then there is what happens when entire societies and systems and empires become opposed to God’s desires for the world.

Imagine a slave girl living in Egypt asking her father why he’s got a bandage on his arm. He tells her he was beaten by his master that day. She wants to know why. He explains to her that the quotas have recently been changed and he’s now required to make the same amount of bricks as before, but he has to get his own straw.8 He tells her that he’s been falling behind in his brick production and that’s why he was beaten. She then asks why his master couldn’t just let it slide—why the beating? He explains that if the quotas aren’t met, his master will be beaten by his master. And if his master doesn’t make the quotas, he’ll be beaten by his overseer, and so on up the chain of command, which goes all the way to Pharaoh. The father tries to make the daughter understand that yes, the beating came from one particular man, his master. But his master is part of a larger system, a complex web of power and violence and industry and technology that exploits people for its expansion and profit.

The bandage on the father’s arm is from a wound inflicted by one man, and yet it’s also from an entire system of injustice. This girl’s family is facing an evil in the individual human heart that went unchecked until it gathered a head of steam and is now embedded in the very fabric of that culture.

That is anti-kingdom.

Egypt is an anti-kingdom.

Egypt is what happens when sin builds up a head of steam.

Egypt is what happens when sin becomes structured and embedded in society.

Egypt shows us how easily human nature bends toward using power to preserve privilege at the expense of the weak.

Imagine this girl asking her father more questions—questions not just about their life in Egypt but about their history: How did we get here in the first place? If we’re Israelites, why aren’t we living in Israel?

Imagine this young slave girl being told the Genesis story of how they became slaves. The escalation of violence that began with the first sons culminates in chapter 11 with the story of the Tower of Babel. And what are they building the Tower of Babel with?

Bricks.9

These slaves in Egypt, being forced to make bricks all day, would understand the Tower of Babel story. They would probably say, “We know what happens when people start building empires out of bricks.”

Exodus is about a people, a tribe, a nation being rescued from slavery.

It’s about liberation from occupation.

It’s about the insurgent power of redemption from empire.

God sends a shepherd named Moses to lead them out of Egypt. Moses challenges Pharaoh, they go back and forth over who exactly this God is and why Pharaoh should even listen, and eventually the night comes when they gather up their things and leave Egypt. Three days later the Israelites cross a sea, an event that is later referred to as the baptism of Moses,10 and on the shore they dance in celebration of their liberation.11

Which would make a nice ending to the story.

But it’s not the end. It’s actually a beginning. Their journey takes them to the foot of a mountain—a mountain called Sinai.

And what happens at Sinai is revolutionary,

not just for these former slaves,

and not just for the story of the Bible,

but for all of humanity.

Sinai

It’s here, at Sinai, that God speaks.

God hasn’t talked to a group of people since Eden. Things have been quiet, an eerie sort of silence. There have been exchanges with individuals—such as Abraham and Noah—but not with the masses.12

So when Moses tells the people at Sinai to “prepare yourselves” and then leads them out of the camp “to meet with God,”13 this is about way more than a group of wilderness wanderers gathering for a message from the heavens. This is about humanity estranged from its maker. This is about the primal distance that exists between the divine and the human, the gap deep in the soul of humanity. Sinai is an answer to God’s question to Adam, “Where are you?” This moment at Sinai is about the reversal of the consequences of Eden.

Sinai is the breaking of the silence.

God is near.

God is about to speak.

It’s believed that this is the only faith tradition in human history that has as its central event a god speaking to a group of people all at one time.14

It has simply never happened in the history of the world.

And it happens in the wilderness, which has global implications. Because the Sinai event happened in the wilderness and not in the midst of a nation or city or province where someone could make ownership claims, it was for all the people of the world.15

Before God speaks directly to the people, God tells Moses to remind them of the exodus. “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.”16

It’s all grace.

It’s all a gift.

Rescue, redemption, liberation—it’s all received from God.

“Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant . . .”17

The word covenant is the Hebrew word berit. It’s where we get the word testament, as in Old or New Testament. Berit carries the idea “to cut a deal.”18 It comes from an ancient Near Eastern practice relating to business, legal, and marriage agreements. God invites the people to make a covenant—a marriage of sorts. The divine and the human, coming together in a sacred wedding ceremony.

God continues, “Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”19

Priests?

A priest mediates the divine. To mediate is to come between. A priest comes between people and a god or gods. A priest shows you what his or her god is like.

When you go to a temple or shrine and you see the priest there—what they do, what they say about it, the rituals they perform—you get a sense for what their god cares about, who their god cares about.

So when God invites the people to be priests, it’s an invitation to show the world who this God is and what this God is like.

Now there were hints of this invitation earlier, before they left Egypt. In Exodus 7, Moses was going to confront Pharaoh and command that he let the people go. The text reads, “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh.’ ”20

Like God?

God is telling Moses that Pharaoh will see him as God, or at least “like God”?

And this is not Moses’s idea; it’s God’s idea. What’s going on here?

The answer leads us to a universal truth: God needs a body. God needs flesh and blood. God needs bones and skin so that Pharaoh will know just who this God is he’s dealing with and how this God acts in the world. And not just so Pharaoh will know but so that all of humanity will know.

This is the God who liberates from oppression.

But God doesn’t just invite them to be priests; he invites them to be a “holy nation.”21 The word nation takes us back to Genesis. Genesis is about the progression of sin, violence, and death—what started with one son killing the other quickly led to an entire civilization in opposition to God. And then Exodus begins with the Israelites22 enslaved by a nation. Sin always gains a head of steam when it goes unchecked. And that always leads to institutions and cultures and structures that are anti-kingdom. This leads to dehumanizing places, like Egypt had become, which these former slaves standing at the base of Sinai know all too well. And God’s response is to form a different kind of nation, a “holy” one shaped not by greed, violence, and abusive power but by compassion, justice, and care for one’s neighbor.

It’s as if God says, “You’ve experienced Egypt; now I’m calling you to be the anti-Egypt.” Up until now, God has been speaking to the people through Moses. But a point comes when God speaks directly to the people, beginning with the words, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”23

Of course.

The only way to understand this covenant relationship between God and the people is to understand what they’ve already been through together. Their relationship is rooted in an act of deliverance that God has performed on their behalf.

This is not an abstract God who floats above the blood and dirt and pain of the world. This is a God who is fundamentally defined by action on behalf of the oppressed.24

“I am the LORD . . . who brought you out.”

And then it’s here, at Sinai, with the reminder of their liberation floating in the air, that God gives them the Ten Commandments.

Many people are familiar with the Ten Commandments, which are often portrayed as strict rules given by a fire-breathing God to keep people in line. But when they’re seen in their original context, the commandments take on all sorts of new meanings.

Remember, these people have been living, up until very recently, as slaves. Slavery is a fundamentally inhumane condition. Being owned and treated as property robs people of the dignity and honor of being a human. This has deeply affected how these Israelites see themselves and the world around them. What God begins here at Sinai with the Ten Commandments is the long process of teaching them how to be human again. These commands are vital truths about what it means to live in authentic human community.

The first commandment instructs the people to “have no other gods.”25 Their humanity is directly connected to their ability to remember their liberation, which was a gift from God. If they forget God—the one, true God who freed them—they are at that very same moment forgetting their story. If they forget their story, they might forget what it was like to be slaves, and they might find themselves back in a new sort of slavery.

The second commandment builds on the first, prohibiting any “image in the form of anything.”26 In the ancient Near East, people conceptualized their many gods using images. They made statues and carvings and idols as physical representations of the divine beings they believed controlled their fate. A statue or carving gives shape and size and depth to the divine. An idol helped people understand just who their god was and what their god was like.

But this exodus God is different. This God is inviting these people to be priests, to show the world what this God is like through their lives. This God doesn’t need images in the form of wood or stone or marble, because this God has people.

This God is looking for a body.

The command about idols and images leads to the third commandment, the prohibition not to “misuse the name of the LORD your God.”27 The Hebrew word for “misuse” here can also be translated “carry.”28 God has redeemed these former slaves and is now inviting them to be representatives in the world of this redemption and the God who made it happen. They are how the world will know who this God is. God’s reputation is going to depend on them and how they “carry” God’s name. The command is certainly about the words a person speaks. But at its heart it is far more about how Israel carries itself as those who carry the name of God. Will it act on behalf of the poor and oppressed? Because that is how this God acts.

The fourth commandment is to take a Sabbath, a day each week, and not do any work.29 In Egypt, they worked every day without a break, being treated as objects to be exploited, not people.30 The Sabbath is the command to take a day a week to remind themselves that they aren’t in Egypt anymore, that their value doesn’t come from how many bricks they produce. Their significance comes from the God who rescued them, the God who loves them.

The Ten Commandments are a new way to be human, a new way to live and move in the world, in covenant with the God who hears the cry of the oppressed and liberates them.

Everything about the rest of the commandments speaks to this newfound liberation. God is inviting, God is looking, God is searching for a body, a group of people to be the body of God in the world.

Following the Ten Commandments are all sorts of laws and commands about how to live in this new way.31 The Israelites are told not to charge interest. “If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can your neighbor sleep in? When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.”32

Do you hear the echoes of Egypt in the command? If they begin to oppress on an individual basis, God says that when the oppressed cry out, “I will hear.” The warning is sharp here: don’t become another Pharaoh, because God acts against people like Pharaoh.

They’re commanded, “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. . . . Do not deny justice to your poor people.”33

And God continually warns, “If you do [any of this] and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.”34

It’s as if God is saying, “The thing that has happened to you—go make it happen for others. The freedom from oppression that you are now experiencing—help others experience that same freedom. The grace that has been extended to you when you were at your lowest—extend it to others. In the same way that I heard your cry, go and hear the cry of others and act on their behalf.”

God measures their faith by how they treat the widows, orphans, strangers—the weak—among them. God’s desire is that they would bring exodus to the weak, in the same way that God brought them exodus in their weakness.

God’s words to the people through Moses begin with “if you obey me fully.”35

It’s an invitation, an opportunity,

but it’s a giant if, isn’t it?

“If you obey me fully.”

Which raises the question, Did they?

Were they true to the covenant?

How did they respond to the invitation?

We started with Egypt, we then went to Sinai, but to answer the “if” question, we now need to go to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem

Generations later, the descendants of these wandering slaves have settled into the land they were promised. Their great king David has secured their borders, the land and people are experiencing peace, and David’s son Solomon comes to power. Solomon is brilliant and wise and wealthy, and Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom, begins to gain a global reputation. A queen from the land of Sheba comes to visit Solomon.36 She’s from far away, from a different land, from a different kind of people, with a different religion. And she wants to know more about these people and their king and their God in Jerusalem.

Wasn’t this what Sinai was all about?

God was looking for a body, a nation to show the world just who God is and what God is like. And now it’s happening: foreigners from the corners of the earth are coming to ask questions and learn about just who this God is.

Sheba tests Solomon with hard questions,

she eats meals with him,

she watches him worship his God at the temple,

she gets a tour of his palace and all that he has built and acquired with his wealth,

and after surveying his kingdom,

she says, “Because of the LORD’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you king to maintain justice and righteousness.”37

Notice that she doesn’t say he is maintaining justice and righteousness—only that there can be only one reason why he has received so much blessing from God.

And what does she mean by “justice and righteousness”?

Freedom, liberation from violence, protection from anything dehumanizing. She understands that God has given all of this wealth and power and influence so that Solomon would use it on behalf of those who are poor, weak, and suffering from injustice.

What impresses her most about this God of Solomon’s is that this God is the God of the oppressed. This “pagan” queen from a foreign land understands what God is up to with these Jewish people living in Jerusalem.38

Sheba gets it.

So what did Solomon do with his wealth and power and influence? What kind of kingdom did he build? Did he maintain justice and righteousness with his vast resources?

Because it can go one of two ways in Jerusalem, can’t it?

Solomon, like us, can use his power and wealth to do something about the cry of the oppressed, or he can turn a deaf ear.

The Bible tells the story: “Here is the account of the forced labor King Solomon conscripted to build the LORD’s temple, his own palace, the terraces, the wall of Jerusalem.”39

Another word for forced labor is, of course, slavery.

Solomon had slaves. Slaves who labored to build his temple, palace, and other buildings.

Wait.

The LORD’s temple?

This is the same LORD who sets slaves free, correct?

The defining event of Solomon’s ancestors was the exodus, right?

And now Solomon is building a temple for the God who sets slaves free . . . using slaves?

This is a major moment in the Bible.

In just a few generations, the oppressed have become the oppressors.

The ancestors of people who once cried out because of their bondage are now causing others to cry out.

The descendants of people who once longed for freedom from Egypt are now building another Egypt.

Solomon has created an empire of indifference. He has forgotten the story of his ancestors. He hasn’t remembered how Moses demanded that the people be set free, how they escaped from Pharaoh, how they were brought out on “eagles’ wings.”40

In a few generations these wandering former slaves who were newly rescued from an oppressive empire have become empire-builders themselves.

Solomon isn’t maintaining justice; he’s now perpetuating the very injustice his people once needed redemption from and, in the process, building a kingdom of comfort. He dines in his palace and strolls on terraces constructed by human suffering.

But it isn’t just his comfort and indifference that stand out; it’s what exactly he builds. In the section where we’re told he was using slaves to build God’s temple and his palace and the terraces, it also says that Solomon used these slaves to build “Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer.”41

This is one of the many places in the Bible where it is easy to read through the lists of Hebrew names and miss what’s going on right below the surface. So what are Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer?

They’re military bases.42

Megiddo is in a valley in the north of Israel. It’s the valley where Africa, Europe, and Asia meet. It’s a strategic location, to say the least. Megiddo is where we get the English word Armageddon.

Solomon is using his massive resources and wealth to build military bases to protect his . . . massive resources and wealth.

His empire-building leads him to place a high priority on preservation. Protecting and maintaining all that has been accumulated is taking more and more resources as attention is given to homeland security.

Not only that, but later in the text we’re told that Solomon accumulated “fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem.”43

Horses? Chariots?

Pharaoh’s soldiers rode on horses and in chariots as they chased the Hebrew slaves when they were escaping Egypt.

And the text goes on to say that Solomon imported them from Egypt!

Jerusalem is the new Egypt.

There’s a new Pharaoh on the scene, and his name is Solomon, the son of David.

Not only is he accumulating horses and chariots, which were the tanks and fighter planes of his day, but the scriptures add that Solomon and his leaders “imported a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. They also exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and of the Arameans.”44

Two words: import and export.

Solomon is buying horses and chariots, but he’s also selling them. Solomon has become an arms dealer. He’s now making money from violence. He’s discovered that war is profitable.

Is that maintaining justice and righteousness?

Is that hearing the cry of the oppressed?

Is that looking out for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner?

Shortly after this we read that Solomon “had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. . . . His wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God.”45

Seven hundred wives?

Three hundred concubines?

But the point for the storyteller is not the numbers; it’s how his wives affected Solomon. They turned him away from God, and “his heart was not fully devoted.”

This passage forms a significant contrast with what we learned earlier about the slaves and military bases. Those were systemic evils—Solomon creating an anti-kingdom—but now we learn about a different kind of failure, not a systemic one but the turning of an individual’s heart.

Solomon breaks covenant with God.

This goes back to the first of the Ten Commandments, the one about having no other gods. Sinai was a marriage covenant between God and the people, a coming together of the divine and the human. And so the first commandment was that the people couldn’t have other lovers. The relationship simply wouldn’t work if they were unfaithful. Solomon’s many wives and his infidelity to God are representative of the infidelity of all the people—they’ve turned from God. Tragically, Solomon’s people had been warned that this could happen.

Moses said earlier that the king “must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, ‘You are not to go back that way again.’ He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.”46

Did Solomon “acquire great numbers of horses”? Check.

Did he “take many wives”? Check.

Was his “heart led astray”? Check.

The text reads, “The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents.”47 That’s about twenty-five tons of gold.

Did he “accumulate large amounts of silver and gold”? Check.

And that number 666, the weight of the talents of gold? That’s a very Jewish way of saying that something is evil, dark, wrong, and opposed to God.

Because it can go one of two ways in Jerusalem.

And with Solomon, the story takes a tragic turn.

Solomon goes “back that way again.”

Jerusalem is the new Egypt,

Solomon is the new Pharaoh,

and Sinai has been forgotten.

This puts God in an awkward place.

Remember, God is looking for a body, flesh and blood to show the world a proper marriage of the divine and human.

What happens when your body looks nothing like you?

What happens when your people become the embodiment of everything you are against?

What happens when you’re being given a bad name?

What happens when your people are unfaithful to the vow they made to you?

What happens when your people “go back that way again,” the way you rescued them from?

Babylon

The Hebrew scriptures have a very simple and direct message:

God always hears the cry of the oppressed;

God cares about human suffering and the conditions that cause it.

God is searching for a body, a community of people to care for the things God cares about.

God gives power and blessing so that justice and righteousness will be upheld for those who are denied them.

This is what God is like. This is what God is about. This is who God is.

To forget this, to fail to hear the cry, to preserve prosperity at the expense of the powerless, is to miss what God has in mind.

At the height of their power, the Israelites misconstrued God’s blessings as favoritism and entitlement. They became indifferent to God and to their priestly calling to bring liberation to others.

There’s a word for this. A word for what happens when you still have the power and the wealth and the influence, and yet in some profound way you’ve blown it because you’ve forgotten why you were given it in the first place.

The word is exile.

Exile is when you forget your story.

Exile isn’t just about location; exile is about the state of your soul.

Exile is when you fail to convert your blessings into blessings for others.

Exile is when you find yourself a stranger to the purposes of God.

And it’s at this time that we meet the prophets, powerful voices who warned of the inevitable consequences of Israel’s infidelity.48

The prophet Amos said, “Hear this word, people of Israel, the word the LORD has spoken against you—against the whole family I brought up out of Egypt: . . . ‘See the great unrest within her and the oppression among her people. They do not know how to do right,’ declares the LORD, ‘who store up in their fortresses what they have plundered and looted.’ ”49

One of Amos’s first charges is that some people are being neglected while others are stockpiling surplus. But then he says that because of this, Jerusalem is going to be destroyed: “ ‘I will tear down the winter house along with the summer house; the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed and the mansions will be demolished,’ declares the LORD.”50

The prophet Isaiah tells the people of Israel that when they pray, God says, “I will hide my eyes from you” because “your hands are full of blood.”51 God sees their military bases, chariots, and warhorses for what they are—unacceptable costs of empire.

And the prophets didn’t stop with condemning the empire; they reserved their harshest critiques for the religion that animated it all. Isaiah declares that God hates “with all [his] being” their feasts and festivals and “evil assemblies.”52

God calls their church services “evil assemblies”?53

God hates their religious gatherings?

When God is on a mission, what is God to do with a religion that legitimizes indifference and worship that inspires indulgence?

What is God to do when the time, money, and energy of his people are spent on ceremonies and institutions that neglect the needy?

Amos says, “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy.”54

The cows of Bashan were known for how big and healthy and well fed they were. Amos compares the wealthy women of Israel to cows who graze gluttonously while others starve. God doesn’t have a problem with eating and drinking and owning things. It’s when those things come at the expense of others’ having their basic needs met—that’s when the passionate rants of the prophets really kick in.

And that word Amos uses: oppression? We first heard that word in Egypt.

Amos insists that God hates their worship: “Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! . . . You who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, . . . buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.”55

God is patient but also pragmatic. God has a plan. God cares about the suffering of the world and will not allow the indifference of his people to stand in the way of his plans to relieve that suffering.

Through Amos, God delivers the crushing blow: “Therefore you will be among the first to go into exile; your feasting and lounging will end.”56

Amos predicts that the oppressors will be the first to be hauled away to a foreign land. How offensive would this be if you were a leader of Israel living in Jerusalem?

Amaziah the king, a descendant of Solomon, says in response to Amos’s rants, “Get out! . . . Don’t prophesy anymore . . . because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.”57

Of course the king hates this message. How dare Amos bring these crushing words into the inner sanctum of power! Amos answers, “I was neither a prophet nor the disciple of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. But the LORD took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ . . . Therefore this is what the LORD says: ‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword. . . . And Israel will surely go into exile, away from their native land.’ ”58

The scene is overwhelming. A simple shepherd confronting the most powerful man in the nation with the message that the king is about to lose it all, the empire is over, it will not last, and when the king kicks him out, Amos says, “Oh, and by the way, your wife will become a prostitute and all your kids are going to be murdered.”

Isaiah, Amos, Hosea—the prophets came to remind the people of Sinai, to bring the people back to the covenant they made with their God, to help them remember that God is looking for a body.

But Israel doesn’t listen. It’s written in 2 Chronicles that God sent them these prophets because God “had pity on his people and on his dwelling place.”59

God wants to live among the people in the sacred union of the divine and human, but they aren’t interested.

Chronicles continues, “But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets.”60

Amos gets kicked out of the palace,

Jeremiah gets beaten up and put in stocks and thrown in a pit,

and the people don’t change.

They don’t remember Egypt.

They’ve forgotten Sinai.

They’re too comfortable.

The system works for those with the power and influence to change the system. They can’t hear the cry.

And so God suffers,61 God is patient, God waits, but there comes a point when nothing more can be done.

Eventually “the king of the Babylonians . . . killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young woman, the elderly or the aged. . . . He carried to Babylon all of the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the LORD’s temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. They set fire to God’s temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there. He carried into exile to Babylon the remnant, who escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his successors until the kingdom of Persia came to power.”62

Everything falls apart, the temple is destroyed, many are killed, and those who survive are carried off to a foreign land called Babylon.

And in Babylon, the survivors become “servants.”

And what are servants who serve against their will?

Slaves.

The Israelites find themselves slaves in a foreign land.

Does this sound familiar?

Sounds a lot like Egypt, doesn’t it?