Keep silent— A meditation on prophets & prophecies

“Keep silent!”

(Amos 8:3c)

“…and they will never be uprooted again.”

(Amos 9:15)

Keep silent!  Last time I was reflecting on the fascinating question of who was actually speaking in the Bible, especially when it was supposed to be God.  But now, I am wondering:  Who is being spoken to?  The other morning, sitting on the porch with my coffee and my Bible, waving to the few people who walk by at 6:45 in the morning, listening to the cars pass on the distant tollway, and wondering what will be for breakfast, I was reading this section of Amos and getting kind of lulled into a scriptural stupor by all the woes and unto yous and thus says the Lords –as often happens when I am reading—my mind began to wonder. I probably was starting to drift off into a daydream of famine and drought, locust and destruction when all of a sudden I read:

That day, the palace songs

will turn to howls,

--declares the Lord, Your God—

the corpses will be many

that are thrown down everywhere.

Keep silent!

And I was startled out of my drowsing.  I was stunned by how direct that final command felt. And my immediate thought was: who is God talking to?

Was He talking to the Israelites who are howling in their palaces and throwing bodies everywhere?  Telling them to hold it down; what did they expect after all their sin and betrayal?  Was He talking to Amos?  Telling the prophet to keep this horrible secret to himself; i.e. Keep this between us! Don’t speak a word! Don’t tell the Israelites what is in store for them! Let it be a surprise.

A little research and I soon discovered that other translations have interpreted that “Keep silent” as a description of how the bodies of the slaughtered will be disposed: “Many shall be the bodies. They shall cast them forth in silence.” (NASB)

But I was still struck by that “Keep silent.” It sat there in front of me; a directive, a command even.  And I couldn’t help but wonder, if this is God’s word, in the end isn’t God really talking to me?  I was the one reading it? I was the one whose mind was wandering. Whose head was full of blue jays and car sounds and strollers and scrambled eggs. I was the one who was drifting aimlessly through God’s word, watching only for some new phrase to hang another essay on.  I wasn’t really paying attention. I was too busy being distracted by all the voices in my head…

Keep silent.

And from that moment on, I was focused. The voices inside me, the distracted anxious voices telling me I was wasting my time stopped. They were quiet. Even that voice that kept asking about those dishes in the sink from last night. Shouldn’t I get to those first. After I finished those dishes and made another pot of coffee, then I’d be able to give the Word of God the attention it deserved! Then… then… then… For the moment, they were all still. Silent.  And I read on.

Toward the end of Amos there is a beautiful simple statement:

“…and they will never be uprooted again.” (9:15)

Reading that I began to ponder anew: In hindsight what does a statement like that mean to a people who were to see their temple destroyed, their kingdom conquered, and so many dragged off into exile? A people who have (it seems) never really known the kind of stability it seems to promise; at least not for over 2500 years?   

It comes at the end of a prophecy of destruction; God’s wrath unleashed.  And yet God promises to plant them in their own soil and “they will never be uprooted again.” It seems to be a promise of peace and harmony, of permanence and stability in Israel. And yet, reading this promise 2500+ years later, one has to ask:  Is it just some words in a story? Is it a fairy tale? Some kind of magical thinking? Or worse, a lie? 

If it is a prophecy of God’s chosen people finding permanence and stability in the Promised Land, then it seems like foolishness. Historically the Jews have been displaced time and again.

But, as I sat –being silent—quietly contemplating this phrase, I began to wonder: is it possible God means something else entirely? Is it possible God is speaking not to a limited group of people here, but to all of His people everywhere.  Is it possible that this promise, though made specifically through the prophet Amos to the people of Israel, was actually meant to transcend that time and place; was meant not for a specific tribe or race, but for all God’s children? It is a promise to all of us, from God, that we can never again be uprooted; because He has planted us beyond the reach of the one who would uproot us. 

The LOVE of God became flesh, became a gardener (cf. John 20:15), a gardener who plants the seed so deep and so true it can never be uprooted. And His plow, His shovel, His spade, is the Cross. By His plow He opens the universe, opens eternity, opens even His own heart, and plants us so deeply within His love that we can never again be uprooted.

It is not by our efforts that we are saved, not by our lack of sin, but simply by His love, His grace, His Cross.  The peace, the harmony, the stability comes not from our prayers, not from our fasting or sacrifices, not from any restraint or self-control on our part, but from God’s love.

However, teaching our ears to hear and appreciate the harmony and beauty in God’s love takes some effort, at least for some of us.  We can’t find peace in it while we are letting our ego wnder, our eyes wander, our desires wander freely, and so we may find ourselves tugging at our own roots, agitated by wants and old nurtured longings.  And so, in such cases, we may find that prayer and fasting make good choir masters for the soul. They can help us train our ear to hear in God’s mysterious melody a beauty and glory we could never imagine on our own. All our desires are fulfilled in it, this endless glorious song of permanence and peace, if only we allow ourselves to hear it. 

If only we “keep silent” and listen.

The Word of God & the Prophet Who lied

“As they were sitting at table, a word of the Lord

came to the prophet who had brought him back…”

--1 Kings 13:20

The other day I wrote about going home by a different route, and how seeing the world (or my neighborhood and neighbors) from a different point of view could also help me see myself in a new way.  My experience had strange echoes of that story from a story in 1 Kings 13 in which God commands a prophet (or “holy man”) to take a message to the king of Israel (Jeroboam) and warns him that when he is done, he should not eat or drink anything and should return home by a different route than the one he came by.  So, on my morning walk I took that little command literally and tried a different route.  Click here to read that essay, if you want to know what happened.

But there was something else in that odd little story that also caught my eye.  It was the character of a second prophet who lies to the “man of God” and convinces him to come back and eat and drink with him.  Though there are certainly more striking elements in this story, particularly the shriveling of the King’s hand, and the lion who kills but doesn’t eat his prey; the part of the story that I keep thinking about is that prophet who lies to the man of God.  Here is the part of the story that I am pondering:

Now an old prophet dwelt in Bethel, and his sons came and told him

all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel; they also

told their father the words which he had spoken to the king. And their father

said to them, “Which way did he go?” For his sons had seen which way the

man of God went who came from Judah. Then he said to his sons, “Saddle

the donkey for me.” So they saddled the donkey for him; and he rode on it,

and went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak. Then he

said to him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?” And he said, “I am.”

Then he said to him, “Come home with me and eat bread.” And he said, “I cannot

return with you nor go in with you; neither can I eat bread nor drink water with

you in this place. For I have been told by the word of the Lord, ‘You shall not

eat bread nor drink water there, nor return by going the way you came.’”

He said to him, “I too am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the

word of the Lord, saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your house, that he may

eat bread and drink water.’” He was lying to him.  So, he went back with him,

and ate bread in his house and drank water. As they were sitting at table, a

word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back…

  --1 Kings 13: 13-20

And that last bit there, that “word of the Lord” coming to the prophet who lied, that is what catches my imagination most in this story.   When I am reading a poem or any work of literature actually, I look for those clues. I listen for what sticks with me.  I don’t think of myself as any grand arbiter of what is important theologically or mystically or artistically… In fact, I try not to think of myself. I try to (instead) watch and see what I react to… and by doing so, try to understand myself just a little better.  So, clearly I may miss something of the utmost importance by focusing on a small detail that caught my imagination; it is not unlike being fascinated by the thorn that snags our sleeve and missing the beautiful rose that drew us to the garden in the first place.  But, so it goes.

And my question is: why would God give His word to a liar? Isn’t lying (bearing false witness) forbidden by the Ten Commandments? What gives?  God gives His word to this lying prophet.  What does this mean? 

First, it says to me that the ways of God are not the ways of man[1] and we should not presume to judge them.  And second, it reminds me of the famous saying that God writes straight with crooked lines.  He can use anyone He likes to convey His message –and it may not always seem fair or fine or glorious to us. It may seem downright inappropriate, even!  Regardless –it is not for us to judge the ways of God. 

Which makes me think back to the story of Saul, a handsome, tall young man who seems to be humble and obedient to his father (cf. 1 Samuel 9).  He was God’s chosen man to become the king of God’s chosen people, yet even before Saul was anointed, God warned His people about the king they were about to receive: he was going to take their property, enslave their children and by and large make a mess of their lives (cf. 1 Samuel 8: 10-22), but the people still wanted a king and God let them have him. And the results, one might say, were as sad for Saul as they were for Israel.  And yet we say God is a loving God.  A just God. A faithful God.  Certainly, one might be tempted to ask: are you sure?

Which brings me back to this poor “man of God” who obediently carries a fearful message from God to the wicked king –a heroic tale, one might say—yet ends up killed by a lion because he believes a lie told by another prophet who claims to have received a message from an angel of the Lord. My immediate reaction was how unfair that seems.  The man of God, for all we know, sincerely believes that the prophet has heard a message from God.  So, what is the lesson the story teller is trying to teach? That when we get a mission from God, we should follow it through completely without worrying about what anyone else says --including prophets? 

And that prophet who lied about God, yet is still given, by God, a prophecy to speak: the doom of the man he has lied to.  That moment at the table when he receives this message and must deliver it, that is an astonishing moment literarily. It is like something out of Shakespeare or Tolstoy.  The message he must deliver is a two-edged sword; and I wonder who it cuts worse?  The hearer knows that he has failed to be true to his mission from God, and knows now that he must suffer the consequences.  But the speaker must face the fact that what he has done, his lie, has brought about the doom of another… and the weight of that lie, like a millstone, is now hung around his neck.  Wow. This little story, with two unnamed characters, dropped down in the middle of a lengthy 2 volume history of kings and wars and corruption is astonishingly alive with meanings and lessons for us today: not only a lesson about being faithful to God’s call, but also about the cost of even the most innocent seeming lies, and one that we should probably remember every time we turn on the news: sometimes even a liar will tell the truth.

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[1] cf. Isaiah 55:8-9; Romans 11:33; Job 11:7; actually just about the whole book of Job & several Psalms, including 92:5; 139:6 & the book of Ecclesiastes