Judgment Upon the Violent: Amos 1:13-15
God calls us to respect life and uphold His order. This world is created by His hand; we should see Him in it. The people are created in His image; we should see semblances of Him in the people around us.
Amos declares the Ammonites guilty. The Ammonites were descendants of Lot, which means they are also cousins to the Hebrew people. Through Lot – and thus through Abraham – they should have gained exposure to God and His ways. Unfortunately, while Abraham tried to pull Lot in the direction of God, Lot was far more interested in towns, population centers, and wealth.
When speaking about the Ammonites, Amos mentions their violent tendencies. The image he gives – ripping open pregnant women in Gilead – is very graphic and quite disturbing. Amos’ point is to highlight they valued the land and their possession of it more than the sanctity of life.
Conflict is inevitable. When warfare happens, people frequently die. While loss of life is never a topic treated callously, it is a reality. Militaries do not march out against other militaries without some combatants suffering death.
The problem is the Ammonites attacked the Hebrew people, not just the soldiers. They slaughtered the elderly, the women, and the children. The Ammonites wanted the land for themselves. They didn’t want to share the land like Abraham did. They weren’t interested in claiming the land and taking Hebrew people as indentured servants because they didn’t want to risk the Hebrew culture influencing their own. The Ammonites wanted the land, leaving nothing left of the prior occupants.
To explain why, consider that one of the chief deities of the Ammonite people is called Molech in the Bible. Molech might be the name of the deity, but it could also be a Hebrew bastardization word melek, which means king. Ancient cultures often corrupted words to disparagingly identify the deities of other cultures. In this case, the consonants of the word melek (king) are combined with the vowels from boshet (shame) to produce Molech (shameful king). Molech was a violent god, demanding child sacrifices from the Ammonites.
The Lord tells Amos the king will go into exile with all his princes. Since Molech is likely a corruption of melek and boshet, Amos is probably referring to their god rather than a human king. During the Assyrian conquest, the Ammonites would become a vassal state. They would then be taken over by the Babylonians, then the Greeks, and finally the Romans. Under the Romans, the Ammonites would lose their identity altogether and never reemerge as a people group under that name.
The Ammonites were willing to sacrifice their own children and slaughter foreigners. They butchered innocent people to forcibly take what did not belong to them. They did not care about the sanctity of life. Because of this, God judges them harshly. Eventually, the Ammonites are erased from the record completely. God calls us to respect life and uphold His order.
