Tag Archives: Israel

Amos: Still Famous

It’s so exciting! God Himself says he is mad at Gaza for their transgressions against the poor victimized Zionists. YEAH! Go get’em God of Israel. King David, teach those Philistim a lesson. They get punished for taking those captives, see? It’s all in the Holy Bible:

Thus says the Lord:

“For three transgressions of Gaza, and for four,
I will not turn away its punishment,
Because they took captive the whole captivity
To deliver them up to Edom.

Amos 1:6

WOW. God even said he would destroy Gaza’s walls completely. YEAH ! Go God!

But I will send a fire upon the wall of Gaza,
Which shall devour its palaces.
I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod,
And the one who holds the scepter from Ashkelon;
I will turn My hand against Ekron,
And the remnant of the Philistines shall perish,”
Says the Lord God.

Amos 1:7 & 8

Wait— what? God will also smite Judah? You mean the righteous Jews, the apple of His eye, His CHOSEN PEOPLE? The ones we are so guilty of mistreating over and over?

Thus says the Lord:

“For three transgressions of Judah, and for four,
I will not turn away its punishment,
Because they have despised the law of the Lord,
And have not kept His commandments.
Their lies lead them astray,
Lies which their fathers followed.
But I will send a fire upon Judah,
And it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem.”

Amos 2:4 & 5

Oh. Well . . . gosh. I thought He was against all those vicious hateful anti-Semitic thugs and sworn to bless and protect His Chosen People.  Well, at least Israel is safe. Thank the Lord for that . . . What’s that? What did you say? Read on?

Thus says the Lord:

“For three transgressions of Israel, and for four,
I will not turn away its punishment,
Because they sell the righteous for silver,
And the poor for a pair of sandals.
They pant after the dust of the earth which is on the head of the poor,
And pervert the way of the humble.
A man and his father go in to the same girl,
To defile My holy name.
They lie down by every altar on clothes taken in pledge,
And drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their god.

Amos 2:6-8

Hmmm. This sure is complicated. Maybe I should stop trying to understand Israel’s woes at the hands of their distant cousins for a while. Luckily it’s just a lot of Hebrew folktales and crazy old men ranting at society many centuries ago. Perhaps I should become a Buddhist (sigh). Ok back to following sportsball.

 

 

 

Shema Yisrael

What then? What the people of Israel sought so earnestly they did not obtain.
The elect among them did, but the others were hardened, as it is written:

God gave them a spirit of stupor,
eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear,
to this very day.

And David says:

May their table become a snare and a trap,
    a stumbling block and a retribution for them.
May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see,
    and their backs be bent forever.

Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all!
Rather, because of their transgression,
salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious.
But if their transgression means riches for the world,
and their loss means riches for the Gentiles,
how much greater riches will their full inclusion bring!

Romans 11 (NIV)

Next Christmas in Jerusalem

Susan J. Dallion, AKA Siouxsie Sioux is one of my favorite musical artists.  I have great respect for her music, her band, and her art.  Their songs make me wonder whether rock music can be considered as poetry in its own right. Do lyrics hold their own when read without the music? I am the type of person who considers the words FIRST—the message, whether subliminal or explicit, is paramount.

The song Israel analyzed as text has several diverging strands of sub-text:

  • Anti-semitic Goth-Rock sensationalism (shock value)
  • The singer’s personal disenchantment with Judeo-Christian religion
  • a critique of the commercialization of Christmas
  • The founding of Israel in 1948
  • Yearning for the glory of a vanished Davidic past
  • Israel’s rejection of Christ’s new covenant

Each of these conjectures would be worth exploring but I want to simply show you the lyrics and post some meanings I have discerned in the words. The song has always conjured up for me an image from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck: the Five of Pentacles.

rider-Waite_5_Pentacles_large
Little orphans in the snow / With nowhere to call a home
Start their singing, singing
Waiting through the summertime / To thaw your hearts in wintertime
That’s why they’re singing, singing…
Waiting for a sign to turn blood into wine
The sweet taste in your mouth / Turned bitter in its glass
Israel…in Israel…
Shattered fragments of the past / Meet in veins on the stained glass
Like the lifeline in your palm
Red and green reflects the scene / Of a long-forgotten dream
There were princes and there were kings
Now hidden in disguise / Cheap wrappings of lies
Keep your heart alive with a song from inside
Even though we’re all alone, we are never on our own when we’re singing
There’s a man who’s looking in, and he smiles a toothless grin
Because he’s singing, singing…
See some people shine with glee, but their song is jealousy
Their hate is clanging, maddening…
In Israel…will they sing Happy Noel?
Israel…in Israel..in Israel will they sing Happy Noel ?

The song is cryptically open-ended.  It can  be spun in any direction because it is so vague. But I love the divinatory/liturgical  imagery of these verses:

Shattered fragments of the past / Meet in veins on the stained glass
Like the lifeline in your palm
Red and green reflects the scene / Of a long forgotten dream
There were princes and there were kings…
Now hidden in disguise / cheap wrappings of lies
Keep your heart alive with a song from inside . . .

It all comes together in some kaleidoscopic way; the light shining through the stained glass, the divinatory desperation, the Christmas colors in the cheap wrappings of holiday gifts now given a deeper and richer Hebraic dimension of meaning.  There is even a possible Merovingian sub-text because she uses the Frankish word Noël for Christmas.
Yet it ends with a self-negating riddle: 

“In Israel will they sing Happy Noel ?”

The more I think I am pinning it down the more elusive it is!

I recently found some words by J.I. Packer in his book Knowing God which, for me, immediately summoned lines from this cryptic song. I have no way of knowing what Siouxsie’s original  intent was. I feel the lyrics stand on their own right as poetry. There are certainly dark possibilities in the song but I prefer to dwell on the transcendent metaphysics of the imagery. What I found in Packer’s writing [* on the subject of Divine Adoption]:

” There are no distinctions of affection in the divine family. We are all loved just as fully as Jesus is loved. It is like a fairy story – the reigning monarch adopts waifs and strays to make princes of them. But, praise God , it is not a fairy story; it is hard and solid fact, founded on the bedrock of free and sovereign grace. This, and nothing less than this, is what adoption means.”

Siouxsie and the Banshees will have to forgive me. I have read my own message into their music, but that is what great art makes us do:  search for meaning in Life.

* Packer, J.I. Knowing God. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1973, p. 216