For the last of the pagan nations
which Amos addresses, we turn to Moab. This nation, like Ammon, was related to
the Israelites through Lot’s progeny (you can read about it here,
but be warned, it’s a pretty sordid story involving incest).
As you might have guessed from
today’s passage, Edom and Moab weren’t exactly best buds. Their mutual hatred
went back a long time. There’s at least one recorded instance
in Scripture in which Israel, Judah, and Edom all joined together to put down a
rebellion of Moab against Israel. The interesting thing is that although Moab
and Israel (the whole nation) had a hostile history together, please keep in
mind that Ruth, the ancestor of our Lord, was from Moab. Also you might want to
know that Moab’s main god was Chemosh, a disgusting deity to whom children were
sacrificed. So the history was mostly bad, with one bright shining
counter-example.
The actual incident that Amos
alludes to—the burning of the bones—is not recorded elsewhere, so we’re not
exactly sure of the exact circumstances. Obviously Moab and Edom were mortal
enemies, and perhaps this was revenge for the attack in 2 Kings 3, we’re not
sure.
Of course, Moab was guilty of a lot
of crimes: Seducing
Israel into idolatry and sexual immorality in the days of Moses, oppressing
Israel in the days of Ehud, and providing some of their women to lead astray
King Solomon
into idolatry. But apparently this was the last straw, the burning of the bones
of an Edomite king. Why the big deal over this?
In the Navigators Lifechange Series study on Amos, they
say “Cremation was not practiced in the ancient Near East, for people believed
that man’s spirit could rest only if the body was decently buried. Thus, as
Ammon showed utter disrespect for persons yet unborn, so Moab deliberately
desecrated a dead person. While Ammon’s motive was greed for possessions,
Moab’s was hatred.”
Please forgive me for repeating
myself so shamelessly, but it’s a point I can’t emphasize enough: Our
treatment of other people must always be informed by the fact that every human
being is created in God’s image. That means that each person is due a
certain amount of respect and dignity, even an enemy in war. God commands us to
honor him by respecting human life, not treating it as property, desecrating
it, or by wantonly destroying it.
Why do I bring this up? By burning a
set of bones, you could argue that the Moabites did the least amount of damage of all the offenders in chapter one. If all
we went by was the book of Amos, then Moab seems to be condemned for something
pretty minor. Look at the crimes noted in chapter one: Extreme cruelty in
warfare against civilians, selling communities of people into slavery, and
wholesale slaughter of pregnant women. When you compare that to what the
Moabites actually did, it seems pretty tame to us. As they say about animals at the end of movie credits, “No one was harmed. . .”
But that’s where the “image”
principle comes in. Human beings carry such innate dignity--as image-bearers of
God--that this extends to what we do to bodies after death. I’m not against
cremation as such, and I really don’t think it’s a sin per se. The issue wasn’t
the cremation itself; the issue was the utter disrespect and contempt for God’s
image. This is apparently a huge issue with our Maker.
Now,
probably none of us are guilty of literally desecrating a human corpse. But
even when no one is physically harmed, our Lord cares deeply about how we treat
his image. That should affect how I speak about image-bearers. That should
affect how I treat image-bearers who bore me, or who annoy me, or with whom I
disagree.
Father, every person I see and meet and
collide with is made in your image and is infinitely precious to you—just
because of that one fact. May that one truth make a change in the way I talk
and act. Please.
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