Structural Abuse
Long before Christian morality the Jews had some fairly clear ideas about what we now associate with human rights and Amos identifies abuse of power at three possible points: people, law and religion.
In Moab, it’s people. What they did would be regarded as sacrilege in most communities. In the ancient Near East defilement of a corpse or tomb was regarded with horror and it was not uncommon to find curses on anyone who disturbed the contents of tombs or coffins. Burning bones like this would be unthinkable. But is there more to this than mass graves and violation of cemeteries? What about the violation of human rights leading to abuse of people who are still living?
Judah’s offence is the abuse of the law. Moab might be forgiven on the grounds that ‘people like that know no better.’ Judah, with the Law, did know and they weren’t keeping it. Nobody ever does in every detail, but these people were positively rejecting it. Like rulers who think they are above the law and can get away with anything, sometimes by rejecting it outright and sometimes by clever twists and turns so that they can claim to keep the word when flouting the spirit. If it can happen within a nation, think how much more difficult it is when you get to the UN or international law and agreements.
In Israel’s case it was abuse of religion. They were forgetting that they were once slaves in Egypt and their faith required them always to pay due respect to the under-privileged (the poor, the needy, the diseased and the afflicted), to people in debt (v 6) and to the abuse of women (v 7) whether it be a sister or daughter, a maid or one of the temple prostitutes. This is not just about what goes on in the office or the factory but among ‘the faithful’ where it is even more reprehensible and its effects often far more damaging. The issue is not ‘who’ or ‘where’ but what it says about our attitude to people.