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Themes in Amos

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Based upon Amos 5:18-25, please address the following:

(1) What are the themes and ideas listed?

(2) How are these themes and ideas reflected in other parts of the Hebrew Bible?

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Solution Summary

The themes and ideas listed are provided. The ideas which reflect the other parts of the Hebrew Bible is given.

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What are the themes and ideas listed?
How are these themes and ideas reflected in other parts of the Hebrew Bible?

If expanded to the limit, the themes here would encompass the entire Bible. This passage contains everything: God, wrath, ritual, sin, punishment, justice, class and the journey from Egypt, just to name a few.

However, being more specific, the theological themes, among others are:

The Day of the Lord:
The issue here is prosperity. It is fickle. It creates a world different from the righteous. Prosperity almost invariably means that one small group is doing well, while others might be doing slightly better than before, or not at all.
Prosperity is a problem because it makes people proud. Almost all of the prophets dealt with the economic realities of a settled, stable Israel. Money and power distort the perception and understanding of the elite. In their desire to justify their wealth or to hold that, somehow, they deserve it, they invented their own theology that stated the present system is in accordance with the Law.
In Isaiah 2:12, he also mentions that the proud, the powerful and the elite will be humbled in their "Day of the Lord." They cannot see that their riches are trifles, and putting faith in it must come from some disease, which sin, in fact, is. Isaiah 13:6 states too that the day of the Lord "will come like destruction from the Almighty." In Jeremiah 5:30, the prophet states that on that day "Cries of fear are heard—terror not peace."

Justice:
The class division and corruption of the Israelites here is unjust. It is a manifestation of injustice, rather than it being injustice itself. Other parts of the Old Testament might shed some light on this:
Jeremiah 22:3, "This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place." In Leviticus 12:17, one of the concepts of natural is laid out briefly, "Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God. I am the Lord your God."
Again in Jeremiah,

They aroused my anger by burning incense to and worshiping other gods that neither they nor you nor your ancestors ever knew. Again and again I sent my servants the prophets, who said, 'Do not do this detestable thing that I hate!' 5 But they ...

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