“Seek me and live; do not seek Bethel, do not go to Gilgal, do not journey to Beersheba. For Gilgal will surely go into exile, and Bethel will be reduced to nothing." Seek the Lord and live, or he will sweep through the tribes of Joseph like a fire; it will devour them, and Bethel will have no one to quench it.
There are those who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground. He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns midnight into dawn and darkens day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land—the Lord is his name. With a blinding flash he destroys the stronghold and brings the fortified city to ruin.
There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court and detest the one who tells the truth. You levy a straw tax on the poor and impose a tax on their grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine. For I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins.
There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts. Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times, for the times are evil.
Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph. - Amos 5:4b-15
Here is another chiasm example: the first paragraph and the last paragraph talk about people seeking God's will. The central three paragraphs are three examples of how the people who say that they are pursuing justice are in fact taking advantage of the poor and the powerless. The central part says that God will hold people to account.
Part of this is deliberate ignorance: these people know, at some level, about God, how he created the universe and how God is good. Yet at another level, they act as if God doesn't care, is weak and ignorant and, ultimately, not going to do anything about it. These rich people use force of arms, their position of authority and their ability to buy off the courts to act with impunity. But God does care and he is both powerful (maker of the stars, the sun and the waters) and deeply familiar with our deeds and misdeeds.
Why does God withhold his judgement? It seems he prefers to let those who are doing all these to dig our own pit to fall in. I remember an example mentioned to me while several of us were working to clean up the house of a aging church member were talking about the Varsity Blues scandal, where a few people solicited funds and were paid to get the unqualified children of the wealthy into prestigious colleges. One comment stuck out: "If the people doing this had just stopped, they probably wouldn't have been caught. But they got over-confident and did it again and again. With each success, they were sure that they weren't going to get caught." Whether they were caught, the creators of this scheme continued and cemented their characters as scam artists.
For me, I seek discernment about those people around me. Some I like, but they are scammers. Some I don't like, but they are earnest and straightforward. And every possible variation in between. These are real people and some of them I don't like. I want to give each one a fair shake and even a merciful shake. But I have gut feelings that tell me not to trust them, for whatever reason. So I pray for God to teach me in each situation when judging people, between different solutions, for the right reasons. One of the greatest lessons I have learned in my job it recall how many sayings from a boss that I didn't really like still stick with me and to admit they are true and to give my former boss credit that is due.
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