{"id":77354,"date":"2020-07-13T16:55:32","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T13:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=77354"},"modified":"2020-07-13T16:55:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T13:55:32","slug":"let-justice-well-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/let-justice-well-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Let Justice Well Up!!"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"77354","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":36277,"related_cahpter":"523","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Not a blissful vision of the future - a pained cry to change the present\r\n\r\n","content":"

Many have pointed out that the ringing call in Amos 5:24: \u201clet justice well up like water and, righteousness like an unfailing stream, was a favorite verse of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He cited it in all of his most famous civil rights orations, including \u201cI have a Dream,\u201d \u201cLetter from Birmingham Jail,\u201d \u201cBeyond Vietnam\u201d and his final speech \u201cI\u2019ve been to the Mountaintop.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In a recent book on Dr. King\u2019s religious rhetoric, Professor Keith Miller argues that in his repeated return to this particular verse, King was deliberately avoiding the context of Amos chapter 5 and of the book of Amos more broadly. Miller points out that much of the chapter has a grimmer tone. For example, \u201cThe day of the Lord, shall be not light but darkness, Blackest night without a glimmer\u201d (5:20) occurs just a few verses before the iconic 5:24, but was never quoted by King. According to Miller, King avoids Amos\u2019 darker excoriations of injustice and repeatedly cites 5:24, which Miller characterizes as a \u201cbiblical vision of bliss and promise.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This seems to me a misunderstanding of both Amos and King. As the classic commentators read it, 5:24 is not a vision of future bliss, but an invocation that it may be so. Rashi, for example comments, \u201cif you do this, then the justice that you denied will be revealed, and pour out among you like flowing water.\u201d Similarly, Abarbanel adds, \u201cthe goal of his words was that the waters of justice should roll down.\u201d Amos is urging that justice well up, not prophesying that it would.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you read the context of the speeches where King quotes this verse, you see that this was how he understood these words too. In \u201cI have a dream\u201d, King declares, \u201cwe cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” The verse is not a blissful prophecy but a cry for change.<\/span><\/p>\n

Likewise, in the Mountaintop speech, King declaimed, \u201cSomehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones. And whenever injustice is around he tells it. Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and saith, “When God speaks who can but prophesy?” Again with Amos, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For both Amos and King, \u201cLet justice well up\u2026\u201d neither evokes the bitter denial of justice they both saw all around them, nor is it a prophecy of a beatific future. Rather these words are a call to a world that hangs in the balance, where we can choose, if we will, to let justice well up and where the prophet or preacher\u2019s words may make the difference.\u00a0 <\/span> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

image: Wall at Civil Rights Memorial<\/a>, Montgomery, Alabama. 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