They who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, In chapter 4, Amos/God declares deadly judgment on “You cows of Bashan who are on Mount Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to their husbands, ‘Bring something to drink!'” And here’s another pre-Jeremiah jeremiad against injustice from Amos chapter 2, verses 6-8:Īnd for four, I will not revoke the punishment īecause they sell the righteous for silver, We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, Here’s more just from chapter 5:Īh, you that turn justice to wormwood, and bring righteousness to the ground! … They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth … you trample on the poor … For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins - you who afflict the just, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate.Īnd here’s Amos (or God, according to Amos), railing against injustice in chapter 8: That’s the point of the entire chapter and, indeed, of the entire book of Amos, which offers an angry litany of injustices. The people have neglected justice and, without that, anything else they do is worthless and hateful to God. I will not listen to the melody of your harps.Īnd righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Take away from me the noise of your songs Or this bit from Amos 5:Īnd I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.Įven though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,Īnd the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals Their message is akin to what Paul writes in that passage we read at weddings - that without love and justice, even worthy-seeming things are worthless, nothing more than clanging gongs and tinkling cymbals. Those prophets were more sweeping in their dismissal and condemnation of all forms of religion apart from “the weightier matters,” but they also allow that such things might be of some worth if they were done in addition to the pursuit of justice. (Nobody in first-century Palestine knew what an elephant was, so the “elephant in the room,” for them, was a camel.)Īnd Jesus isn’t really that far off from Isaiah and Amos. Jesus’ point here is that there are “weightier matters,” and he illustrates the vast difference in significance by contrasting something proverbially tiny with something proverbially huge.
Look - there’s Jesus himself commanding us not to neglect such commandments!īut treating this passage as a confirmation of the equivalence of every sin is, well, a desperately strained reading. Don’t mock those pious religious leaders for tithing their spice racks - get on your knees and beg for God’s forgiveness for your own failure to do the same. A sin is a sin is a sin, they insist, and every sin - no matter how apparently insignificant - separates us from God and makes us deserving of eternal damnation. Highlighting Jesus’ severe contrast tends to rankle many of my white evangelical friends. Even little baby camels are too big to swallow. He doesn’t wholly dismiss the pious virtues these religious leaders were practicing in lieu of justice and other, “weightier matters.” Where Isaiah and Amos depict God as despising prayer, worship, sacrifices and tithes, Jesus allows that they may have some value too - albeit a lesser, slighter, importance. Jesus isn’t quite as harsh as Isaiah or Amos. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel! It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.
Woe to you, pastors and theologians, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. That’s an old song but it borrows, perhaps, from an even older bit - one of Jesus’ funnier rants in the Gospel of Matthew: She’s dead? Of course.” And the song ends, because swallowing a horse is much more serious than swallowing a fly. Until finally, “I know an old lady who swallowed a horse. She swallows a spider to catch the fly, then swallows a bird to catch the spider, then swallows a cat to catch the bird, etc. That’s the point of the song - that the old lady would certainly have survived swallowing the fly if not for the increasingly drastic measures she took thereafter. It’s gross, but it probably won’t kill you - which is why the song is joking when it says, “Perhaps she’ll die.” Swallowing a fly is unpleasant and not at all something to be recommended. “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly,” the old song begins.