A lion has roared

The meanings of calamities

Peter Carruthers

Photo by Nicolas Lindsay on Unsplash

Will a lion roar in the forest, when he has no prey?
Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he has caught nothing?
If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid?
If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it?
Surely the Lord God does nothing,
Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.
A lion has roared! Who will not fear?
The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy?
(Amos 3:4,7-8)

Amos is, arguably, the most ‘agricultural’ of the prophets. He, himself, is both pastoralist and horticulturalist (Amos 7:14), and his prophecy is replete with farming similes (eg Amos 3:12) and metaphors (eg Amos 4:1). The Lord, he declares, uses agricultural woes, including severe weather, pests and diseases, and wildfires, to warn and judge His wayward people and turn them back to Him (Amos 4:6-10; 7:1-2). But, as his prophecy concludes, He intends a glorious future for the nation, characterised by agricultural abundance (Amos 9:13-15).

The Lord roars

The prophecy opens with a startling and fearsome announcement.

The Lord roars from Zion,
And utters His voice from Jerusalem;
The pastures of the shepherds mourn,
And the top of Carmel withers.
(Amos 1:2)

In what follows, we learn how the Lord roars and how His people should respond.

‘Prophetic geography’

Amos is from Judah,¹ the southern kingdom, but he is called to prophesy to the northern kingdom of Israel (Amos 1:1). And his opening proclamation reflects this geography. It is from Zion, from Jerusalem, His chosen dwelling place (Psalm 132:13), that the Lord speaks. But in Amos’ case, His judgements are directed at and experienced by those dwelling in the separated kingdom of Israel.² Applying this to our own time, we might see this as suggestive of a call to Christian believers and churches to prophesy to a nation, which, by departing from its Christian heritage, has, in some sense, severed itself from God’s presence, rule and blessing.

Continuing the geographical theme, in the first discourse that follows this announcement, ‘boxing the compass’, Amos declares the Lord’s judgement first on the surrounding nations, on Judah, and finally, and in some detail, on Israel itself. In each case, in common with other prophetic writings, there is a pattern of indictment and sentence. For the heathen nations, the critical sins are violence, bloodshed, enslavement and treachery. The Lord’s contention with Judah is over its faithlessness to His law (ie they still have the Temple, the priesthood, the City, so they should know better). For Israel, the critical issues are greed, social injustice, debauchery and sexual immorality. In contrast to utterances later in the book (eg Amos 4:14) and in the writings of other prophets, these declarations contain no call to contrition or repentance.

The Lord has spoken

The opening eight verses of Chapter 3 set out the principles that undergird Amos’ prophesying, his ‘prophetic methodology’, and that determines how the Lord speaks to, and deals with, His chosen people.

First, the Lord treats His people differently from the way He treats any other people: because He has “only known” them of “all the families of the earth”, they are to be judged by a much higher standard (Amos 3:2). In a similar vein, Peter declared, “for the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (1 Peter 4:17). As we ponder our present troubles, in our nation and the world, these words urge us, who are God’s people, followers of His Son, and call ourselves Christians, to consider our own ways first, before pronouncing judgements on the wider populace.

Second, the Lord, who “roars from Zion” is like a roaring lion, who “has roared”, ie to freeze its prey, suggestive of getting His people’s attention (Amos 3:4,8). How does He roar? The Lord roars through calamities and through the interpretive voice of His prophets, to whom He reveals the meaning of His judgements and who are beholden to declare it.

If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it?
Surely the Lord God does nothing,
Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.
A lion has roared! Who will not fear?
The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy?
(Amos 4:6-8)

US theologian, Walter Brueggemann sees the prophetic task as making visible God’s ‘hidden governance’ over visible states of affairs.

“The effect of prophetic  rhetoric .. is to link in decisive ways the rule of YHWH and the lived reality of history .. public history understood and presented as an arena of God's purpose and activity. The prophetic tradition .. insists on the real agency of YHWH in public affairs, a hidden governance .. only made visible and recognisable through prophetic utterance.”³

The prophets are ‘enforcers’ of the covenant, and the subsequent text sets out the specific ways in which the people have broken God’s law and been unfaithful to the covenant, and, recapitulating the warnings of Deuteronomy 28, the consequences of disobedience.

‘Farmer are dismayed’

Spring’s Seeds of Prayer drew our attention to, and urged prayer for, the many troubles and calamities that have come upon farming and the land in recent times (some of which read very much like the book of Amos!).

1. Extreme weather - record-breaking rain and flooding over the winter months severely delayed field operations and, while things have now taken a better turn, this will almost certainly reduce food output this year (eg potato prices reached record highs!).

2. Changes and uncertainty in the financial support of farming (including the risks to food security of shifting land from food production to environmental ‘goods’).

3. Injustice in the farm tenancy system.

4. Livestock and plant disease epidemics, over the last decades, including bovine TB and avian ‘flu.

5. The climate-change phenomenon, and the public policies, regulation and legislation, cultural values and social behaviour, arising from it.

As we ponder these ‘surface’ phenomena, Seeds also urged us to “pray for prophetic discernment of ‘God’s hidden counsel behind visible states of affairs’”, ie to see these (and many other) troubles from God’s viewpoint.

Can Amos help us here? I believe he can.

‘If there is calamity.. will not the Lord have done it?’

As we saw above, Amos sets out the dynamic of calamities. Ultimately, they are the Lord’s doing, but immediate responsibility for them lies with people, who have ignored His laws and strayed from His ways. Calamities, plagues and pestilences are both ‘acts of God’ and ‘acts of Man’.

Below are some (not mutually exclusive) biblical understandings of how this works.⁴

A fallen world

Due to the first man’s and woman’s sin, God’s “very good” creation (Genesis 1:31), characterised by peace and harmony, has been subjected to futility (Romans 8:20). The “ground is cursed”; agriculture is hard labour, a struggle against the ‘forces of nature’ (Genesis 3:17-19). Creation is still wonderful and reveals God’s glory (Psalm 19; Psalm 104; Romans 1:20), but it is also ‘red in tooth and claw’. Nature may be peaceful, beautiful and bountiful, but there is also predation, parasitism, decay and death. Many of the calamities that are simply part of life for all people, arise ultimately from human sin and God’s judgement on it. We cannot, therefore, always expect to attribute specific calamities to specific sins - of ourselves, others or our ancestors.

Sinful people

Psalm 104 devotes 34 verses to celebrating the glory of God in creation, but ends with words “let sinners be consumed from the earth and the wicked be no more”. The one thing that sullies a good creation is bad people.

As a result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, sin and death entered the world (Romans 5:12). They were ejected from the garden and disharmony and conflict entered, not only the created order, as above, but relationships between God and humanity, among people, and between people and the creation - as the subsequent chapters of Genesis evidence.

Hence, many calamities and troubles, if not most, can be traced back to the actions of sinful humanity, to the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21), to love of the things that are in the world (1 John 2:16). “Do not the rich oppress you”, writes James (2:6), suggesting that the rich and powerful (tend to) oppress the poor and weak; it is not the fault of the victim, for example, as in the case of tenancy injustices above, in the way the removal of farm support impacts the smaller farm businesses the most, or in the way that both extreme weather, and, arguably, measures to reduce emissions, hit the poorest people and nations the hardest. ‘Natural’ disasters so often hurt the poor the most. In most cases, starving people are not starving because they do not have food, but because they do not have money.

Reaping what you sow

The principle of cause and effect is central to Amos’ understanding of the divine economy.

Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?
Will a lion roar in the forest, when he has no prey?
Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he has caught nothing?
Will a bird fall into a snare on the earth, where there is no trap for it?
Will a snare spring up from the earth, if it has caught nothing at all?
If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid?
If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it?
(Amos 4:3-6)

As Amos and all the OT prophets make clear, actions have consequences, and consequences have causes. ‘As you sow, so you reap’ (Proverbs 22:8; Galatians 6:7-8). “Those who plough iniquity and sow trouble reap the same” (Job 4:8). “They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7).

Throughout human history, over-exploitation of natural resources has led to the wasting of God’s good creation, and prompted or exacerbated famines, droughts and floods, soil erosion, dust-storms and desertification, deforestation, wildfires, animal and human plagues and pestilences, and other ‘natural’ disasters.

The Lord anticipated this and put restraints on His people’s use of His creation through the sabbath and Jubilee: the weekly sabbath was a rest, not only for workers, but for livestock (Exodus 20:8-11); the seven-yearly sabbath included a rest for the land (Leviticus 25:1-7).

In contrast to the law codes of the neighbouring pagan nations, the law given by God to ancient Israel included care and concern for animals (eg Exodus 20:10, as above; Leviticus 22:8; Deuteronomy 22:6-10, 25:4); as the writer of Proverbs observes, “a righteous man takes care of his animals” (Proverbs 12:10).⁵

One contemporary (albeit contested) example of this effect (relevant to this spring’s Seeds), is the relationship between intensive livestock production (ie ‘factory farming’) and the spread of animal disease through domestic herds and flocks, from farmed to wild animals, and to human populations. This matter merits more space than I have here, so it is considered in an accompanying article.

Defiling the land

There are physical cause and effect mechanisms linking ‘sowing and reaping’. But the Bible makes clear that there is also a ‘moral conduit’. That sin defiles the land is a recurrent theme in OT scripture.

“Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean), lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.”
(Leviticus 18:24-28)

“But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you….
Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks.
(Deuteronomy 28:15,18)

The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants,
Because they have transgressed the laws,
Changed the ordinance,
Broken the everlasting covenant.
(Isaiah 24:5)

Hear the word of the Lord, You children of Israel,
For the Lord brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land:
There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land.
By swearing and lying, killing and stealing and committing adultery,
They break all restraint, with bloodshed upon bloodshed. 
Therefore the land will mourn; and everyone who dwells there will waste away,
With the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air;
Even the fish of the sea will be taken away.
(Hosea 4:1-3)

The above passages speak about defilement or pollution of the land. The core issue is that of moral pollution, but this has ecological and agricultural consequences. Sin, and especially certain types of sin, ie idolatry, homicide and sexual immorality, bring a curse on and defile the land and this impacts both nature and farming.

I brought you into a bountiful country, to eat its fruit and its goodness, but when you entered you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.
You have polluted the land with your prostitutions and your wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withheld and there has been no latter rain.
(Jeremiah 2:7; 3:2-3).

…. they have transgressed My covenant, and rebelled against My law…
They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no bud; it shall never produce meal. If it should produce, aliens would swallow it up.
(Hosea 8:1,7)

Moral impurity repels the divine presence, and, for ancient Israel, the ultimate outcome of continued defilement was exile from the land.

“The Holy God of Israel will not and cannot stay in a place that is defiled”. Where land has been defiled, “Yahweh refuses to stay in such a place or to grant blessings of fertility in such a context” (Brueggemann).

“Land that is repeatedly defiled, the holy land of God that is repeatedly defiled by sexual transgressions, for example, cannot be purified. Eventually it will simply ‘vomit out’, the biblical text says [Leviticus 18:24-30, as above], it will simply ‘vomit out’ those who dwell in it. This is a reference to exile” (Hayes).

Even neglect of the Lord’s concerns, of putting His work and worship below their own interests, resulted in agricultural and economic dearth, as Haggai declared.

“Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your panelled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.”
(Haggai 1:3-6)

We would do well, I suggest, to ponder and reflect deeply on how these principles might apply to our present situation, in the UK and the West.

A trumpet call

How ever else we might explain calamities, they are always ‘God’s wake-up call’ and a call to repentance (2 Chronicles 7:13-14). This is at the centre of the book of Amos.

In his oracle in Chapter 4, which follows some of the pattern of 2 Chronicles 7:13 (ie drought, locusts, pestilence), Amos declares that a series of calamities were intended to cause the people to return to the Lord, but they did not respond.

“‘I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in all your places, yet you did not return to me’, declares the Lord.
”’I also withheld the rain from you’ … yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord.
”^’I struck you with blight and mildew; your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured; yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord.
“‘I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt; yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord.”
(Amos 4:6-10)

Significantly, this theme is recapitulated on a much larger scale in Revelation 8. After a series of judgements announced by six trumpets (including, after the fifth trumpet, a plague of locusts), we are told that, despite the enormity of these terrible plagues and the number of people destroyed by them, the rest of mankind who survived still do not repent.

“The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshipping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts".
(Revelation 9:20-21)

Calamities may be God’s wake-up calls and calls to repentance, but that does not mean people will necessarily respond.

Nevertheless, until God’s final judgement, there is always the possibility of repentance. And in Amos’ next oracle, the Lord issues a call to “seek me and live” (Amos 5:4) and to “seek good and not evil, that you may live, and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate” (Amos 5:14-15).

Calamities, therefore, should always be understood first as calls to ‘humble ourselves, pray, seek God and repent’ (2 Chronicles 7:13-14). And, as Jesus warned, in the face of tragedies, our first resort must be our own repentance, rather than seeking to ascribe blame or responsibility to others.

“There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
(Luke 13:1-5)

Signs of the times

Finally, the Bible clearly indicates that calamities, including disturbances in the natural order, plagues and pestilences, as well as lawlessness and lovelessness, wars and conflicts, will characterise the ‘end times’.

“There will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.”
(Luke 21:11).

“And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”
(Luke 21:25-26)

“And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.”
(Matthew 24:12).

“But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”
(2 Timothy 3:1-4).

‘Calling the farmers to mourn’

So, God’s dealings with His people are different from His treatment of any other people, and calamities are ultimately His doing, but occasioned by the people’s sins. As we have already seen above, the third insight Amos provides is that God’s judgements can be held back by contrition and repentance. This theme runs through the whole OT prophetic corpus. And ultimately it is as the heart of the Gospel. Jesus’ death and resurrection makes it possible to escape God’s just eventual judgement through repenting and believing (Acts 2:36-40). And, just as judgement begins with God’s people, so also must contrition and repentance (2 Chronicles 7:13-14).

Seek good and not evil, that you may live;
So the Lord God of hosts will be with you,
As you have spoken.
Hate evil, love good;
Establish justice in the gate.
It may be that the Lord God of hosts
Will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

“There shall be wailing in all streets,
And they shall say in all the highways,
‘Alas! Alas!’
They shall call the farmer to mourning,
And skilful lamenters to wailing.
(Amos 5:14-16)

Standing in the gap

The exchange between the prophet and the Lord recorded in Amos 7:1-6 adds a further dimension to the prophetic task, that of interceding on behalf of the people to hold back God’s judgements. The Lord prepares, first, a plague of locusts, and then “conflict by fire”. But, responding to the prophet’s appeal, He relents from releasing the full force of both of these.

“O Lord God, cease, I pray!
Oh, that Jacob may stand,
For he is small!”
So the Lord relented concerning this.
“This also shall not be,” said the Lord God.
(Amos 7:5-6)

‘The ploughman will overtake the reaper’

In the closing section of his prophecy, Amos reveals the fourth dimension of God’s dealings with His people - the possibility and promise of restoration. Beyond the judgement is renewal. And, in Amos, this is expressed in terms of agricultural abundance, in the ‘joy of the harvest’.

“Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord,
“When the ploughman shall overtake the reaper,
And the treader of grapes him who sows seed;
The mountains shall drip with sweet wine,
And all the hills shall flow with it.
I will bring back the captives of My people Israel;
They shall build the waste cities and inhabit them;
They shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them;
They shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them.
I will plant them in their land,
And no longer shall they be pulled up
From the land I have given them,”
Says the Lord your God.
(Amos 9:13-15)

The lion is roaring

Is the lion roaring now? I believe He is.

Are the agricultural calamities described in Seeds, and the many others, God’s calls to repentance and prayer? I believe they are.

The first reason is because, as I point out above, every calamity needs to be understood as a call to personal and corporate repentance. And the calamities affecting farming and the land place a special responsibility on ‘God’s farming people’, ie Christians living , working and ministering in rural and farming contexts, to respond.

The second reason is because the troubles facing farming are just part of an almost unprecedented global confluence of disturbance and disruption affecting both the natural order and human society. The nations are raging, the waters are roaring and the mountains are shaking (Psalm 2:1; Psalm 46:3,6).

The third reason is that many of these phenomena are ‘signs of the times’, indicators among many others that we are at a (or the) ‘eleventh hour’, warnings of an approaching flood and gathering storm, harbingers of a time of deepening crisis, as I have written many times before.

If the Lord is speaking through these signs, as I believe it is, then it is surely the prophetic task of God’s people in our nation to hear and heed, to interpret the signs and declare His word to His people in the tradition of Amos.

A lion has roared! Who will not fear?
The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy?
(Amos 3:8)

As with all our articles, the views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily shared by the trustees or others associated with Village Hope.

1. “The farming village of Tekoa has been identify with Khirbet Tequ’a, about 57 miles south of Jerusalem in 5 miles south of Bethlehem” (Walton, J H, Matthews, V H & Chavalas. M W. 2000. The IVP Bible Background Commentary, Old Testament, p 764. InterVarsity Press, Illinois.

2. Carmel is in northern Israel and was the site of Elijah’s earlier confrontation with King Ahab and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:20-46).

3. Brueggemann, W. 2007. The theology  of the book of Jeremiah. Cambridge University Press, New York.

4. There is no attempt here to address the ‘problem of evil’ (‘theodicy’) - the perennial question, ‘why does a good God allows bad things to happen?’. But a vast amount has been said about and written on the subject!

5. And there was no tolerance for animal cruelty or animals being killed for entertainment; it was the neighbouring pagans who hunted and killed animals for pleasure (eg as evidenced by the reliefs of ancient Assyrian lion hunts in the British Museum).