18Woe to you who long
for the day of the LORD!
Why do you long for the day of the LORD?
That day will be darkness, not light.
19It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
20Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?
21“I hate, I despise your religious feasts;
I cannot stand your assemblies.
22Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
25“Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
forty years in the desert, O house of Israel?
26You have lifted up the shrine of your king,
the pedestal of your idols,
the star of your god—
which you made for yourselves.
27Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,”
says the LORD, whose name is God Almighty.
Original Meaning
THIS SECTION IS divided into three paragraphs: 5:18–20 addresses the sad state of Israel’s deceptive theology concerning the Day of the Lord, 5:21–24 undermines the people’s false hopes in their unacceptable worship, and 5:25–27 predicts their exile because some Israelites worship false gods. These sections question the people’s basic beliefs about their relationship to God.
This questioning does not raise doubts concerning the Israelites’ knowledge of temple worship or eschatological events but inquires about their deceptive approach to these topics. They have turned worship into something worthless and eschatology into escapism. It is a tragedy to hear that someone is tricked into believing in a baseless illusion, but it is especially regrettable to find out that religious people, who know biblical traditions and participate in religious services, have deceived themselves by constructing a theological perspective that twists God’s truth into a nonexistent mirage.
Since there is no sign of a positive response to Amos’s lament in 5:1–17 and the book continues with additional warnings, one can assume that most people have not internalized the prophet’s call to seek God. Some in the prophet’s audience could have defended themselves by claiming that Amos is all mixed up in his theology. The day of God’s judgment will bring the destruction of their enemies, not Israel. The Day of the Lord will be a glorious day of victory over these enemies, not Israel’s demise. In response, Amos’s woe oracle (5:18–20) attempts to destroy these false hopes of security and divine blessing by reversing the people’s expectations concerning the Day of the Lord. Although most long to see that great day, it will in fact be a day of darkness and humiliation for Israel.
Several woe oracles in the Old Testament are associated with a lament for the dead (1 Kings 13:30; Jer. 22:12–13; 34:5),1 so one should hear this message as sorrowful words, similar to the lament in the preceding section. Amos’s lament (5:1–17) and these woe messages (5:18–27) are tied together because both relate to upcoming divine judgments that will obliterate false hopes. Both condemn the people for their inattention to justice and righteousness (5:7, 10–13, 24). Since God does not accept the people’s worship, how can they expect to escape God’s judgment on the Day of the Lord?
The Day of the Lord Will Bring No Hope (5:18–20)
THE CONCEPT OF “the day of the LORD” was likely used in Israel before Amos spoke,2 but Amos has the earliest reference to this as a technical term describing God’s future victory over his enemies. Amos seems to have several themes in common with later prophetic references to this day. The Day of the Lord is often associated with the military defeat of a nation (Isa. 13; 34; Ezek. 30; Joel 2), various symbols (such as darkness and gloom), and a theophany appearance by God.3 The preceding sermons of Amos also tell of God’s plan to fight against Israel (Amos 2:13–16; 3:11–15; 4:2–3; 5:2–3) and destroy it when he passes through her midst (5:17).
Amos describes his audience as people longing for or yearning for the coming Day of the Lord (5:18). At first this sounds positive because this was seen as the day when God would vindicate himself and destroy his enemies. Why would the Israelites not long to see that day? Amos’s audience views this day as the time when they will have a guaranteed victory over their enemies. They also have great expectations concerning what God will do for them when he establishes his divine kingdom on earth on that day.
When Amos, however, laments over those who want this day to come, many of his listeners probably wonder what is wrong with this crazy prophet. Why would anyone not look forward to the time when God will bless his people and defeat their enemies? Amos’s answer to his rhetorical “why” question in Amos 5:18b reveals that he has a different conception of this day. He reverses his audience’s understanding because he sees it as a day of darkness for Israel. Israel will suffer God’s judgment with the ungodly because they are a sinful people, just like the foreign nations. They will experience the gloom and darkness of political defeat. Darkness symbolizes danger, hidden things that one cannot see, an absence of safety, and no divine protection (Job 18:6; Ps. 27:1; Isa. 9:1–2; Lam. 3:2; Joel 2:10). This must have seemed like a heretical statement. Will God judge his own people?
To help persuade his listeners of their misunderstanding, Amos illustrates the danger of this day with a rural example showing that the disastrous consequences of this day are inevitable (Amos 5:19). A person fleeing from one danger (a lion) will run into another (a bear). Those who finally reach the safety of home will not escape either, because something there will get them when they least expect it (a snake will bite them as they relax, leaning against a wall). There will be, in other words, no place to run or hide.
To emphasize this point Amos ends this short message with the reminder that this will be a very black day, without a single ray of bright hope for the future (5:20). The reality of this day will be horrible; it will not be the day the people are longing for. Thus, Israel’s theology is right (on the Day of the Lord God will defeat his enemies), but their theological expectations of what God will do for them are false (he will judge all sinners—in Israel and the nations).
God Rejects the People’s Ritualistic Worship (5:21–24)
THE PRESENT TEXT makes no overt causal connection between the Day of the Lord (5:18–20) and Israel’s unacceptable worship (5:21–24), but their juxtaposition suggests that Israel’s unacceptable worship is a main reason why the people will suffer under God’s powerful hand on the Day of the Lord.4
Amos reintroduces his critique of the nation’s sacrifices and singing (see also Amos 4:4–5) with powerful persuasive clauses that claim God’s vehement opposition to what is happening at Israel’s temples. “I hate, I despise . . . I cannot stand . . . I will not accept . . . I will not listen” are emphatic statements of God’s unmovable disposition toward Israel’s worship. These statements bristle with force and deep resolve; this is not politically correct or tolerant language. The verbs carry the intense emotions of rejection and repudiation. They reverse God’s normal and expected attitude toward those who worship at Israel’s temples. Although God asked the people to offer burnt offerings, grain offerings, and fellowship (peace) offerings in Leviticus 1–4 and exhorted them to sing his praises (Ps. 92:1; 95:1–2; 96:1; 98:1, 4–6; 100:1–2), he does not accept mechanical offerings and rote songs that do not come from a heart of love and a commitment to act in righteousness.5
Verse 24 exhorts the people to pay close attention to the implications of what it means to worship God. If you worship him, you must walk in his ways. If worship does not further the development of spiritual character, it may just be empty emotions. When worshipers offered sacrifices to God, they were supposed to confess their sins as they put their hands on the head of the animal being sacrificed (Lev. 1–4), turn away from their past failures, and commit themselves to keep his guidelines for daily behavior. Since the Israelites are not doing these things, their sacrifices have no value. What should be a sweet-smelling aroma to God (3:5, 16) is becoming a putrid stench he cannot stand. The beautiful harmony of their singing and the trumpet blasts of their music are turned into obnoxious noises. Their sin separates them from God (Isa. 59:1–2).
Justice among individuals should have been a hallmark distinguishing Israel from her neighbors, but God does not see this moral value in the lives of many Israelites. Amos exhorts the people to let righteousness and justice characterize all their activities. Justice should flow continually like a year-round river, not like an undependable wadi that has water in it only when it rains. Justice is not an optional trait that one can choose to practice; it is a key value that must characterize the behavior patterns of those who claim to love and follow God.6 If these people would let justice govern their action, God would look at their worship in a different way. They are not deceiving him with their meaningless worship; rather, they are only fooling themselves.
False Worship Will Bring Exile (5:25–27)
THERE IS A fair bit of confusion among translators and commentators about the text and interpretation of these verses. Everyone agrees that Amos is predicting a future exile of Israel beyond Damascus because they are worshiping other gods (5:27), but the details in verses 25–26 are not clear. There are two main problems. (1) How does one interpret the question concerning sacrifices when the Israelites were wandering in the desert in 5:25 (or should this verse even be translated as a question)? (2) Should one follow the New Testament translation of 5:26 found in Acts 7:43 (which is heavily dependent on the LXX) or keep with the Hebrew text and relate these terms to Assyrian gods the Israelites worshiped?
(1) Verse 25 can be read (a) as a question whether God gave Israel any laws about sacrificing while they were in the desert of Sinai; (b) as a suggestion that people did not sacrifice during the desert years because they did not have many sheep (cf. Jer. 7:21–23); (c) as a claim that the desert generation offered sacrifices to other gods and “did not bring them to me [Yahweh]”; or (d) as a question whether the people only brought sacrifices and nothing else to God.7
Since the Pentateuch records God’s instructions concerning sacrifices and many examples of the people sacrificing (Ex. 20:5, 22–26; 23:14–19; 24:4–6; 29; 32:6–8; 34:13–20; 40:29), interpretations (a) and (b) seem unlikely.8 Except for the golden calf incident (Ex. 32 and Num. 25), there are few indications that the Israelites regularly worshiped other gods during the desert period, as option (c) suggests. Thus, Amos is probably asking whether the central aspect of Israel’s relationship to God is based only on their sacrificing (interpretation [d]). The assumed response to this questions is negative. In other words, Amos is hinting that the people’s relationship with God is not primarily based on sacrifices, but on their covenant love with God. This is supposed to be the central feature of their relationship (Deut. 6:5), and it is missing.
(2) Verse 26 is even more controversial. The NIV refers the time of the verb to past events (like v. 25),9 but S. Paul and others translate the perfect consecutive verbs in the future tense and connect them to the exilic experiences in verse 27.10 Either translation is possible, but it seems that verse 26 is not part of Israel’s exilic experience (“therefore” in v. 27 begins a new subparagraph about their exilic judgment). There are also major differences on how to translate some of the nouns in verses 26–27. The Hebrew text did not originally have written vowels, so it was possible for people to pronounce words in different ways and thus give different meanings to the same series of consonants (e.g., if you drop out the vowels in English, bt could refer to bet, bit, bat, bait, boot, but, or beet). Different vocalizations (and some editorial shifts) produce the following variations:
Masoretic Hebrew | Acts 7:43 |
Sakkuth/Sikkut | tabernacle |
king | Molech |
Kaiwan/Kiyyun | Rephan |
Damascus | Babylon |
The Masoretic Hebrew vocalization makes the first word the name of an Assyrian god Sakkuth/Sikkut (Ninurta or Ninib), which was identified with the planet Saturn. The third word Kaiwan/Kiyyun is another name for this same astral deity (a star god). This pronunciation of these words suggests that Amos is condemning the people for worshiping pagan Mesopotamian gods. If the Greek translators who lived many years later did not know the names of these gods, it would be natural for them to read the words with a pronunciation that would make sense to them. The Greek translators thought that sikkut could refer to a tent in which a god would be placed and malkekem (“your king”) could be taken as a reference to the Ammonite god Molech (1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:10).11 A scribal confusion between k and r accounts for some of the confusion with the third word, while the change from Damascus to Babylon seems to be a later historical revision.
We believe that Amos is talking about the people’s worship of Assyrian astral gods and that the Greek translators misunderstood the meaning of several words here. Even though there is some level of misunderstanding of this text, the Greek translation also condemns pagan worship, so it has not missed the central thrust of the original. These conclusions are totally opposite those who suggest that “Amos is here not depicting and condemning pagan deities nor criticizing Israel for apostasy. The items noted should be seen as traditional elements of the Yahwistic cult.”12
Finally, it is not clear if the verb nśʾ refers to the “transporting, carrying” of an idol or the “lifting up” of the idol for purposes of worship.13 The second interpretation seems to fit the context better if verse 26 is an accusation of improper worship.
This message ends with a concluding statement of punishment that outlines the consequences of improper worship of God. There is no doubt about what will happen, who will do this, or where the people will go. God will exile the Israelites into some nation far away, into an unknown land beyond Damascus. Later records in 2 Kings 17:23–24 verify that God did send these people into Assyria about forty years after Amos’s prophecy (721 B.C.).
Bridging Contexts
THIS PROPHECY MAKES specific accusations about Israelite misconceptions concerning God, worship, and his future plans for Israel. We cannot directly translate his warnings about Mesopotamian astral idolatry or the unacceptable sacrificing of burnt offerings into many modern cultures. Missionaries living in countries where pagan idols are still worshiped with sacrifices will have a more direct application to their setting. But regardless of the contextual setting where we minister, each paragraph focuses around a central problem that has parallels in the lives of people who attend worship services in our settings.
True theological ideas can be turned into deceptive lies. Although people may be put off by the forcefulness of the terminology Amos uses, humanly created interpretations of biblical ideas can sometimes miss the intention of the text so much that they should properly be called deceptive lies. This is true of some interpretations of human depravity, Christ’s deity, and events at the end of time. Throughout history a few individuals have claimed special knowledge about things that will happen to destroy the world and begin God’s kingdom. Groups have reinterpreted numbers and symbols, found secret insights into God’s plan through extrabiblical revelations (e.g., the Mormons), and used their special knowledge for creating their own little kingdom. Too often this special knowledge is employed for the purpose of scaring people into their group.
Eccentric approaches are usually characterized by bizarre hermeneutics and suspect methods of interpretation. Although most Christians are not deceived by these movements, we have our own hermeneutical idiosyncrasies that blind us. All believers need to search for the truth, realizing that they too can fall victim to deceptive teachings not completely consistent with God’s point of view.
A fundamental hermeneutical problem for all deceptive theological reconstructions is one’s view of God. Some approaches seem to be based on the premise that God is trying to keep secret truths from the common-sense interpretations of devoted believers. These leaders claim that God reveals the deep mysteries of his ways only to a few insightful leaders and is still in the process of giving new “canonical” revelations through them. Others have taught that God is such a wonderful God of love and compassion that everyone will go to heaven (Amos’s audience seems to think that God will favor them on the Day of the Lord). Of course God is a God of love, but his holiness and justice will result in the merciless destruction of rebellious sinners who refuse to love him and deal justly with others.
One characteristic of God that underlies the Day of the Lord idea in Amos 5:18–20 is that God is a divine warrior who will execute holy war against his enemies. Although this is not a popular part of our picture of God, the all-powerful Lord praised by Moses and the children of Israel after the crossing of the Reed Sea is a divine “warrior” (Ex. 15:3), who “shattered the enemy” (15:6) and consumed them with the majestic presence of his holiness.14 The battle for the possession of Canaan was God’s holy war to destroy the sinful people in the land and keep his holy chosen people separate (Deut. 7:1–6). Battles by Joshua, the judges, and David were really the Lord’s battles because he gave the wicked nations into their hands (Josh. 2:24; 6:2; 8:1; 10:8; Judg. 3:28; 5:4–5; 1 Sam. 23:4) and fought for his people (Deut. 1:30; Josh. 10:14; 1 Sam. 17:45–46).15
The prophets describe God’s final battle with Gog and Magog (Ezek. 38–39), God’s plan to destroy all the evil kingdoms of the earth (Hag. 2:21–22; Isa. 24; Dan. 2; 7), and God’s victory over the nations that will attack Jerusalem (Zech. 14).16 T. Longman and D. Reid extend this theme into the New Testament’s treatment of Jesus, the slain warrior who is finally triumphant over sin, Satan, and his evil kingdom (Matt. 12:28; Luke 10:18–20).17 Jesus had twelve legions of angels at his disposal (Matt. 26:53) and spoke of the future coming of the Son of Man in the clouds in power (Matt. 24:29–31; Mark 13:24–27; Luke 21:25–28). Paul also referred to Christ’s battle against the power of sin, the defeat of his enemies at the cross (Col. 2:14–15), and the victory over his final enemy, death (1 Cor. 15:24–27). The New Testament ends with a symbolic description of Jesus as the divine Warrior coming on a white horse with the armies of heaven in one final victorious battle (Rev. 19:11–21).
A complete biblical view of God must avoid the illusory tendency of focusing mainly or only on God’s love, while downplaying his role as a divine warrior. Amos is against any slanted view of God that deceptively reimagines God as a loving power who will pour out his blessings on his people regardless of their behavior. God is a warrior who will wipe out all evil—both the abhorrent idolatry of pagans and the rebellious sinfulness of his own people. This concept of God provides us with clear criteria to evaluate various hypothetical predictions of what his future action will be. False reconstructions about God’s action on the Day of the Lord existed in Amos’s day and still do today, but the biblical record demonstrates what God has done and will do to destroy sin from the world. False notions about God can turn worship into nothing more than playing church.
Does God accept all worship? The second and third paragraphs (Amos 5:21–27) deal with two kinds of unacceptable worship: Proper forms of worship are rejected because the worshiper’s life is not characterized by justice or righteous action, and deceptive forms of worship are rejected because the worshiper does not distinguish between proper and improper conceptions of God. Both errors happen to religious people concerned about their relationship with God, not to atheists who have no interest in spiritual things.
Although Amos does not explain how God’s people have strayed from doing what pleases him, it appears that these worshipers have made two mistakes. (1) They have not paid close attention to the biblical warnings about accepting other notions of God common in the culture in which they live. These include prohibitions against making images of God that other religious groups use (Ex. 20:1–5; Deut. 4:9–20), against following the ideas of spiritual leaders who claim to do miracles in the names of other gods (Deut. 13:1–18), against bringing anything other than one’s best to God (Lev. 22:17–33; Mal. 1:6–14), and against accepting cultural forms of worship (mediums, necromancy, astrology) that defile a person’s holiness (Lev. 20:1–6).
(2) The Israelites think that the primary way of pleasing God is to get involved in the ritual acts of worship. This misconception ignores his emphasis on holiness throughout the Levitical instructions (Lev. 11:44–45; 19:2; 20:26). Psalm 15 indicates that God requires worshipers to have a blameless walk, do what is righteous, speak the truth, honor those who fear God, keep their oaths, and do not accept bribes, while Psalm 24:4 requires the worshiper to have holy hands and a pure heart, reject idols, and commit oneself to tell the truth.
Samuel reminds Saul that obedience is more important than sacrifices (1 Sam. 15:21–22; Hos. 6:6), and David realizes that the main thing God desires is a pure and contrite heart (Ps. 51:16–17). After Amos, Isaiah condemns the sacrifices given by sinful people in the temple (Isa. 1:11–15), and Jesus rejects the tithe of the Pharisees because they ignore the most important things—justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Matt. 23:23). Both Isaiah and Jesus find people who “honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isa. 29:13; Matt. 15:8–9).
Contemporary Significance
DECEPTIVE THEOLOGICAL ISSUES in the church. In light of the strength and pervasiveness of the theme of God’s role as a divine warrior, it is important for believers to balance this important theme with other key ideas about God. This is no time for Christians to live securely in their fortresses, thinking they have won the victory. People in the church cannot afford to forget that they are in a battle to influence the minds and hearts of people in this world. This war is not primarily “against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12). The battle requires defensive armor as well as offensive tools (6:13–18).
When believers come prepared to fight and bathe their efforts to share the mysteries of the gospel in prayer, they are able fearlessly to communicate their faith in a persuasive manner. Paul describes the struggle between the power of sin and the words of God within himself as a war between two conflicting ways (Rom. 7:23). He exhorts believers to “fight the good fight” as he had (1 Tim. 1:18; 6:12; 2 Tim. 4:7).
If people picture God only as a kind, loving Father who is merciful and forgiving of all human mistakes, they will probably not expect him to hate sin, reject unacceptable worship, or judge his own unfaithful people at the end of time. A slanted view of God that does not recognize his holy and just nature is an illusion that will produce a false perception of what God expects of people today. Jesus warns about the people who will say “Lord, Lord” and think they should be allowed into his kingdom, but he will reject them because they have not done the will of the Father and because he never knew them (Matt. 7:21–23).
The audiences of Amos and Jesus have the same deceptive beliefs: They think they will automatically be included in God’s kingdom on the Day of the Lord because they have been involved with “appropriate religious activities.” A true understanding of who God is and what he desires will eliminate false expectations and destroy theories of cheap grace.
As Amos persuasively lays out the truth to his deluded audience, people must be honest with the teachings of Scripture about God and faithful to give a full picture of his character and roles. When God’s promises become more important to people than his character and presence, a deceptive hope can easily arise.18 A slanted and incomplete understanding of God is no better than none at all. A popular presentation that guts the truth and eliminates any correspondence with God’s actual plans for the Day of the Lord is worse than no knowledge at all. Those teachers and preachers who lead people astray with false information will be held accountable to a higher standard (James 3:1). It is hard to imagine the bitterness some will feel toward spiritual leaders who have distorted God’s character and twisted his revelation in Scripture.
What does it mean to worship God? The prophet Amos addresses two kinds of unacceptable worship (Amos 5:21–27) that are still a problem in the church. (1) Although many churches are struggling with people’s preferences for different styles of worship format (seeker, contemporary, or traditional), a much deeper and more serious issue is the lifestyle people follow after the worship service is over. As E. Underhill suggests:
A ceaseless moral striving, a steady effort to please God—must be part . . . of worship . . . therefore he [the worshiper] cannot divorce faith from works, or adoration from ethics. To worship well is to live well. . . . This idea of the sanctification of life, as the creative goal toward which Christian worship must tend, is found under different forms of expression in all types of Christianity.19
Several key phrases emphasize the same theological point made in Amos’s message. The ethics of a worshiper matter. If the lives of church members do not overflow with justice and righteousness, one must ask if the “creative goal of worship” has been achieved and if God will in any way be pleased. True and acceptable worship is not so much about issues of the style adopted by a particular congregation, but the extent to which the worshiper’s life is transformed by being in the presence of a holy God. That transformation should result in adoration of the Almighty, praise of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thankfulness for God’s grace and mercy, and a recommitment to walk in his ways.
(2) A second application flows from this first principle. God hates, despises, rejects, and abhors deceptive worship that draws no connection between worship and ethics. No one can be neutral before God. The ethics of justice and righteousness are not optional characteristics that would be nice to see in a few worshipers. The text makes its case without reservation or qualification: God will not accept certain kinds of Hebrew or Christian worship. He does not say that anything goes, or do the best you can, or do what makes people feel good about themselves so that they will have a high self-esteem.
God does not, of course, demand that a certain style of worship be instituted in every culture or every setting. Paul himself seems to suggest that the hour or day of the week is not the most important thing about worship (Rom. 14:5–8). He concludes that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (14:17). That is, the way we carry out our worship practices (eating and drinking) is not as important as the change God brings about in our lives through worship. Times and cultures will create new and effective ways of worshiping God that are meaningful to believers, but there is no room for compromising justice and righteousness. God hates fake worship.
Who should we worship? In the final section of this passage (Amos 5:25–27) Amos describes deceptive forms of worship that are rejected because the worshiper does not distinguish between proper and improper conceptions of God. Missionaries must contend with people who actually have images of gods in their homes or places of worship. This passage gives practical support to a missionary’s exhortations to remove all idols because God will judge people who worship false gods. More sophisticated Western intellectuals may not worship any kind of idols in their homes, but they may believe there is truth in the predictions of the horoscopes, so they trust in the alignment of the stars and planets instead of the Creator of the stars.
A contemporary area where the church may need to apply lessons from this passage is seen in the new interest in Sophia, the goddess figure that some feminist groups have deified. Sophia, the Greek word for wisdom, describes the wisdom of God (Rom. 11:33; 1 Cor. 1:24; Eph. 3:10). The strong connection between God and wisdom is especially prominent in Proverbs 8–9, where wisdom says, “I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began” (Prov. 8:23). Wisdom is personified as a female figure, yet is closely identified with God himself. Although some authors may use the term as just another name for God,20 others have crossed far beyond that threshold and introduced a foreign female goddess.
Those attending the “Re-Imagining” conference heard about a “Second Reformation” for the church. S. Cyre reported that “working from a basis in feminist theology, conference participants looked to pantheistic religions and the heritage of the Gnostic gospels to ‘reimagine’ a new god and a new road to salvation. The attendees blessed, thanked, and praised Sophia as a deity.”21 Mack B. Stokes viewed the conference as “theologically ignorant . . . ontologically superstitious . . . Christologically blasphemous . . . ecclesiastically irresponsible.”22
T. Finger takes a less confrontational approach to the subject, but clearly recognizes wisdom in Proverbs 8–9 as “a personification of one of Yahweh’s attributes.”23 Finger finds traces of the idea of wisdom in Proverbs 8–9 and Wisdom of Solomon 7:24–26, where sophia “pervades and penetrates all things. For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty . . . a reflection of the eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God.”
Finger also sees a connection between “wisdom” and Jesus as the “Word” in the Gospel of John (both were with God at creation and both manifest God’s glory). The wisdom connection with Jesus is also evident in 1 Corinthians 1:24, where Jesus is called the “wisdom of God” (cf. also Col. 1:15–17).24 Finger does not object to the use of “Wisdom” as a name for God to enrich our appreciation and understanding of him, but he does object to the current trend because “much current Sophia worship . . . is so focused on an immanent divine presence, and seems to regard Jesus as so little different from us.”25
L. Lafebure has traced the history of Sophia in the church and finds that Catholics have often identified Sophia with Mary while Russian Orthodox thinkers have developed a mystical tradition around reflection on Sophia.26 Second-century gnostic heretics developed elaborate mythologies about Sophia, while the early church tended to follow the lead of Philo of Alexandria, who made a connection between Sophia and the Logos.27 Origen saw that Christ was called wisdom and suggested that Sophia was “begotten beyond the limits of any beginnings that we can speak of or understand.”28 Irenaeus, by contrast, identified Sophia with the Spirit rather than with Jesus.29 This desire for a female goddess by some women has and will continue to challenge the limits of church tolerance and inclusiveness. Although there is nothing wrong with imagining God as a mother caring for a child, a failure to distinguish between metaphor and reality can lead the church into further strife.
Many people are not even aware of the Sophia movement, but everyone is involved with reimagining God based on scriptural metaphors, church traditions, and meaningful cultural models. Thus, there is a danger that anyone can imagine God in a way that is so far from the truth that a false god is created in the mind of the worshiper. Drawing the line between heresy and an unbalanced picture is not our concern at this point. The main need is for each person to evaluate his or her own conception of God (as Amos is encouraging his audience), and for pastors and teachers to make sure that their representations of God are not out of focus or lopsided pictures of the fullness of the mystery and majesty of God.
Do we use the term Father too much and thus give a male gender to God? Do we emphasize God’s love, grace, and mercy but ignore the fact that he can hate and despise evil? In a world of democracy and individual rights, do we ever picture God as the all-powerful King of kings, who is to be absolutely obeyed? Have we caused people to be afraid of God by making him a stern judge who is sitting in heaven and watching us so that he can catch us in some small mistake? Or has God become so much a friend and buddy that there is no majesty or fear? What emphasis is placed on his holiness? Do we emphasize the justice of God and thus encourage justice in relationships between genders, races, employees and employers, and nations?
How we imagine God does make a difference. People tend to develop their worldviews (including religious images) from their social relationships, so the church has an awesome responsibility to give the world an accurate picture of the sovereign God that is biblically, rather than culturally, based. God’s decision to destroy Israel because they misconceived who he is demonstrates that the way one reimages God does matter to him. In Amos’s time the nation adopted a popular cultural model (an Assyrian image). But this mistake is an issue each generation faces—the threat of allowing our culture to remold God into its own image.