CHEATERS AND EXTORTIONISTS - 25th Sun in OrdTime

First Reading: Amos 8:4-7 (18 September 2022)

“We will diminish the ephah, add to the shekel, and fix our scales for cheating! We will buy the lowly for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals; even the refuse of the wheat we will sell” (Am 8:5b-6).

This is how Amos describes the social injustice happening in Israel. In the desire of the few to gain more money, the poor were cheated on and extorted. Because of this socio-economic abuse, Amos listed the punishments God would inflict on these evil-doers: “I will make the sun set at midday and in broad daylight cover the land with darkness”; “I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into dirges …” (v. 10); “I will send a famine upon the land …” (v. 11); “They shall stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east …” (v. 12); “On that day, beautiful women and young men shall faint from thirst …” (v. 13); “They shall fall, never to rise again” (v. 14).

These graphic images of God’s wrath stemmed from a big sin committed by Israel, i.e., they “trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land” (v. 4).

The context of the prophecy of Amos is the rampant exploitation of the poor in the desire to make Israel prosperous. The monarch then was King Jeroboam II, whose reign was marked by military expansionism and rehabilitation of Israel. In fact, many great nations fell to his invasions, such as Moab, Syria, and the city of Damascus. This success brought along material wealth all over Israel, leading to many commercial activities within and without.

However, this materialism led, too, to the manipulation of the lowly and the neglect of the plight of the poor.

True to his profession as a shepherd of Tekoa (1:1; 7:14), Amos was concerned of the well-being of the forgotten sheep of Israel. For him, the only way he could protect the latter is by talking straightforward to the authorities about their evil deeds; he even called them “cows of Bashan … who oppress the destitute and abuse the needy” (4:1). He additionally delivered three woes to indict these oppressors: “Woe to those who turn justice into worm-wood and cast the righteous to the ground” (5:7); “Woe to those who yearn for the day of the Lord …. It will be darkness, not light” (5:18); and “Woe to those who are complacent in Zion, secure on the mount of Samaria, leaders of the first among the nations, to whom the people of Israel turn” (6:1). Amos was not shy either in lambasting Amaziah, a priest in Bethel: “Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword….” (7:17).

On September 21, the Philippines will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the infamous declaration of the Martial Law by Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. Despite its aim of establishing peace and order and the banishment of communist activists (albeit these claims may have just been fabricated), nobody can hide the anti-poor and inhumane acts performed during this time. Based on the Report of the Amnesty International Mission in 1975, the Martial Law committed “3,257 known extrajudicial killings, 35,000 documented tortures, 77 ‘disappeared’, and 70,000 incarcerations”. The Philippines as one nation toppled down this administration in February 1986 with the battle cry “Never Again” but it seems that everything turned full circle with the return of the Marcoses to Malacañan, that only perpetuated the proverbial sweeping under the rug of the large-scale atrocities, cheatings and extortions done to the Filipino nation.

Let us be emboldened like Amos to speak against injustice especially when it affects badly the poor.

- Rex Fortes, CM