Amos; The Day of the Lord

Amos was the first prophet to write about the Day of the Lord;
“Woe to you who desire the Day of the Lord!
Why would you have the Day of the Lord?” Amos ch5 v18

However, he’s clearly not the first person to think about the Day of the Lord.
The very form of the question shows that people were already expecting one.
A prophet of the previous generation, Micaiah son of Imlah, refers to the same thing without using the term.
He says to Zedekiah son of Chenaanah; “You shall see [the truth] on that day when you go into an inner chamber to hide yourself [from God]” (1 Kings ch22 v25).
So the expectation of the Day of the Lord was an old idea, not a new one.

I doubt if he was even the first person to think of the Day of the Lord in terms of God’s wrath.
It’s already there in the words of Micaiah; Zedekiah will be in a panic, trying to escape from it.
I’m sure the people who “desired” to see the Day of the Lord were expecting exactly the same thing.
They were eagerly anticipating the time of God’s wrath, because their understanding was that God’s wrath against his enemies would mean the salvation of his friends.
His wrath would be expending itself on hostile nations like the Syrians.

As a broad picture, their expectation of the Day of the Lord would have been the same as the teaching of the prophets.
Their expectation was wrong only in one small, but very important detail.
They were mentally placing themselves in the wrong part of the picture.
They took it for granted that they were God’s friends, who would be made safe by his wrath against his enemies.
It did not occur to them that they might be at the receiving end of wrath themselves, like Zedekiah.

That’s why Amos uses examples which speak of a misplaced sense of security.
A man expects to find safety in flight (from a lion) and finds himself running into more danger (from a bear).
A man expects to find safety in his own home, of all places, and finds himself ambushed by a snake.
In the same way, the Day of the Lord will not be a “place of safety” for a people who have been neglecting their God.

It will be “darkness, not light, gloom with no brightness in it”.
This would be a metaphorical darkness, an “everything is going wrong” kind of darkness.
That’s probably what it means later in the book, when the Lord says;
“On that day, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight”.
The Lord then explains this in terms of “turning their feasts into mourning” (ch8 vv9-10).

This expectation of a Day of the Lord holds a place all through the rest of the Bible.
The New Testament version is what Paul calls “The Day of the Lord Jesus”.
In principle, a “Day of the Lord” would be a time when the Lord imposes himself on the world in power and gets things arranged the way he wants them to be.
But this would mean, necessarily, that he rejects what is incompatible with his nature.
The result is what we call his “wrath”, which is an operation rather than an emotion.

Yet the people addressed by Amos were at least half-right.
The expectation of wrath against unrighteousness is also the expectation of salvation for the victims of unrighteousness.
For the victims of oppression cannot be saved from it before
something is done about whatever is oppressing them.
So the Day of the Lord means wrath and salvation together, as two sides of the same coin.

My take on Amos and many other OT books is that God's wrath is to correct and purify, rather than to punish and destroy. He says several times also that He will not be angry forever.

a reply to: DISRAELI

If this is some kind of justification for civilian casualties in the war in Syria then Gods wrath will surely extend go those who use these verses to think they are doing Gods work in bombing IS targets where civilians will be killed too.

I've said it before - Since none of us can really know for sure until that day comes where we may stand, no one in their right mind wants the Day of the Lord to come. And since all of us who are genuine believers also have compassion for our fellow man, no matter how horrible he might be, no one of us in our right mind should truly want the Day of the Lord to come.

When we talk about looking forward to those days, what we seek is what we have been promised comes after - the times that are to come with no more sorrows or suffering.

It's just too bad the Day of the Lord has to come first.

He said to Abraham he would look after his descendants 12000 from 12 tribes
Two tribes are in Israel the rest is scattered across the globe
No one knows where they are

I believe I come from Asher
I know of the prophecy
And believe
God told Abraham our destiny
Is in the constellations
That's why Abraham became
A great astrologer

Nostradamus claimed he was about
The thousandth and third prophet to have
Walked the earth since the time of Adam and Eve
And that his prophecies come from God
All bounty proceeds to him

originally posted by: 0hlord
If this is some kind of justification for civilian casualties in the war in Syria...

Where did I say that, and why should you think that? My threads in the religion forum are about religion, not about topical politics.

originally posted by: Lazarus Short
My take on Amos and many other OT books is that God's wrath is to correct and purify, rather than to punish and destroy. He says several times also that He will not be angry forever.

Certainly the purpose is to purify the world and make it better, but that will sometimes feel like destruction, depending on the viewpoint. When he purifies the world by removing the state of Babylon, the Babylonians themselves experience that as destruction. His people will interpret that as the punishment of the Babylonians.

In the application of God's wrath to his own people, you are right, of course. Whatever happens to individuals, his people are being corrected and purified and will ultimately rest in his presence.

originally posted by: ketsuko
I've said it before - Since none of us can really know for sure until that day comes where we may stand, no one in their right mind wants the Day of the Lord to come.

There is something in that, but there is also the Revelation viewpoint.
When the world is attacking God's people to such an extent that God's intervention is their only hope, the recommended course is that they trustingly wait for God ("the patience and the endurance of the saints"), rather than giving up in despair.
So Paul calls the return of Christ "the Day of the Lord Jesus".

a reply to: piney
I'm not sure how your comment relates to the theme of the Day of the Lord.

a reply to: DISRAELI

It will be “darkness, not light, gloom with no brightness in it”. This would be a metaphorical darkness, an “everything is going wrong” kind of darkness. That’s probably what it means later in the book, when the Lord says; “On that day, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight”. The Lord then explains this in terms of “turning their feasts into mourning” (ch8 vv9-10).

I don't understand this the way you understand it. I don't believe it is metaphorical at all.

Amos preached in the same days as Isaiah preached and Isaiah gives more light in the day of the Lord. Have you considered that neither Amos or any of that era realized exactly what the Day Of The Lord actually meant? The People in that time believed in only one resurrection and that resurrection was not considered the end time. It was considered the ushering in of the golden age when Jerusalem would be the light of the world upon this very earth as it now stands. Israel would reinstate the sacrifice and kingship of the entire world. The throne of David would reign and rule this world from a new temple in Jerusalem.

This golden age would last till the end of the seventh thousand years when it shall be destroyed. The Sanctified would then become caught up into the bundle of life as bodiless souls who would exist forever in total bliss. The Day Of The Lord brings all of this into play by a resurrection of the dead from Sheol who are united with their earthly bodies and stand in judgment.

Act_2:20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come:

This day of the Lord is not the same as Amos understood. This day of the Lord is the first of two resurrections and not the resurrection that Amos understood. This Day Of The Lord which Luke describes is the time of Jacob's trouble (Great Tribulation) or known as the first gathering. There will utterly be darkness and great tribulation but not a final judgment as Amos perceived. The final judgment will be a thousand years in the future from this resurrection (gathering). So in effect we can see two understanding of the great and terrible day of the Lord. Not that the prophets are wrong but only that they did not have the complete picture as is shown in Revelation.

Am I understanding this wrong?

originally posted by: Seede
"Darkness"
I don't understand this the way you understand it. I don't believe it is metaphorical at all.

It seems to me that your post gets into discussing two separate questions.

One is whether the darkness involved in God's wrath on the Day is literal or metaphorical.
I still think that definitely in ch5 and less certainly in ch8 the main point of the prediction is the miserable state of those who have been opposing themselves to God's will. It is the condition of despair, the state of mourning. However, I appreciate that there is room for ambiguity.

Then you talk about the timing of the Day of the Lord, as spread out over two occasions rather than one.
But I don't see that the two questions need have an impact on one another.
If the Day of the Lord happens in two stages, as it were, it remains possible that the darkness is literal on both occasions, or metaphorical on both occasions. It could be about the appearance of the sky, or it could be about the state of despair.

Act_2:20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come:

This actually illustrates the point. You are quoting Peter's citation of Joel, but we should note that Peter regarded himself as living in the middle of the fulfilment of that passage. The previous words about the outpouring of the Spirit were actually being fulfilled around him as he spoke, as the crowds were witnessing. He must have seen the "darkness of the sun" as being fulfilled by the event on Good Friday. And of course "whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" was already beginning.
So if we are going to have two Days of the Lord, the Acts quotation would oblige us to recognise the Easter-Pentecost sequence as the first of them.

Then there is what Paul calls "the Day of the Lord Jesus", meaning the time when Jesus "returns" or "is revealed" to the world, together with a more general resurrection.

This thread is the follow-up to
The approach of judgement

So I am covering Amos in these four threads;

What's wrong with Israel?
The approach of judgement
The Day of the Lord
Return to the land