A Warning to Monsters

If you really want insight into someone’s character, find out what makes them angry. Is it being treated disrespectfully? Do they get mad when they’re inconvenienced? Or do they get angry when other people are mistreated?

A very basic description of the prophetic books of the Old Testament is that God tells the prophet to denounce this or that people because of their behavior. However, looking closer at who is being denounced and for what tells us a lot about what makes God angry.

The book of Amos begins with promises of God’s judgment against six of Israel’s neighbors. He begins the same way in each, “For three sins of X, even for four, I will not relent” (an idiom meaning “more than enough”) then names one particular sin. For example,

This is what the LORD says:

“For three sins of Damascus,
   even for four, I will not relent.
Because she threshed Gilead
   with sledges having iron teeth,
I will send fire on the house of Hazael
   that will consume the fortresses of Ben-Hadad.” (Amos 1:3-4)

Damascus “threshed Gilead with sledges having iron teeth” (1:3) — that is, driving threshing sledges over prostrate prisoners. Gaza and Tyre “took captive whole communities and sold them” into slavery (1:6, 9). Edom [descendents of Esau] “pursued his brother [Israel] with a sword and slaughtered the women of the land” (1:11). Ammon “ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead” (1:13). Moab desecrated a corpse (2:1).

They’re killing prisoners or selling them into slavery. They’re ripping open pregnant women as a show of intentional brutality.

They’re committing war crimes.

God doesn’t accuse them of breaking their covenant with him because they had none. He doesn’t accuse them of the sins common to all men or to the people of that time because they didn’t know any better. But they knew better than this. This level of inhumanity even they should have recognized as wrong.

What is angering God? War is harsh. Ancient war was brutal by our standards. But these people took it to the next level even by the rules of war of that era. And so God tells them, because you acted like monsters, the monsters will come for you. Cities will burn. People will be exiled. Rulers will die. God did it in his own time, but justice was done.

God doesn’t change. The same God who hated inhumane behavior in the Iron Age hates it now. That means those who have suffered war crimes have hope for justice. We should expect justice, both in this life and in the age to come because that is who God is. God is sometimes slow to judge by our liking, but judge he will.

“Wait a second,” some will say, “this is just God judging nations for what they did to Israel. You can’t apply that to other nations.”

Many people are uncomfortable with God showing favor to Israel over all other nations. There’s good reason for this favor that we won’t go into now, but God does not restrict his justice and mercy to Israel alone. And the last of these judgments shows us an example of this:

“For three sins of Moab,
   even for four, I will not relent.
Because he burned to ashes
   the bones of Edom’s king” (Amos 2:1)

Moab’s sin was not against Israel but Edom. God does not only punish crimes against his chosen people. Every nation is responsible for how it treats every other nation. God shows no favoritism when he brings the wicked to justice.

And that’s why even today we should tremble when nations act inhuman, because if you act like monsters, the monsters will come for you.


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