Abstract:
The rhetoric of Amos includes a wonderful mixture of humour and threat, sarcasm and irony,
hyperbole and prediction. Holding the fabric of this conversation together is Amos’s place
within the prophetic minority – the Yahweh-only party (his anti-society). Making use of
sociolinguistics, and particularly the idea of anti-language, I take a closer look at Amos,
including his use of overlexicalisation, insider-humour and all the shades of irony one might
expect. Typically of a member of an anti-society, Amos exaggerates the differences between
insider and outsider, in this case, speaking of ‘ivory houses’, ‘the cattle of Bashan’ while
appealing to his successful attempts to save the rich from the wrath of God. The offenses of the
outsiders are sometimes crystal clear and at other times shrouded in metaphor, and so too is
the fate of these people. In reading Amos, we are constantly in danger of falling victim to the
persuasive power of his rhetoric. We are drawn into the world of Amos, quickly accepting his
boundaries and the ideology of his anti-society, his depiction of reality and his stark caricature
of the rich. The rhetoric is persuasive and the irony is divisive forcing a choice of black and
white, believer and unbeliever, rich and poor, oppressors and oppressed. We struggle to swim
against the current and instead long to respond to Amos’s invitation to live (Am 5:5) – perhaps
even to discover that elusive hope at which the book hints:
Most of history has been the forging of structures of security and appropriate loyalty symbols,
to announce and defend one’s personal identity, one’s group, and one’s gender issues and identity.
(Rohr 2011:4)
Description:
Prof. Dr Domeris is
participating in the research
project, ‘Biblical Theology
and Hermeneutics’, directed
by Prof. Dr Andries van
Aarde, professor emeritus
and senior research fellow in
the Faculty of Theology of
the University of Pretoria,
South Africa.
