Rents that Trample the Good

6 Seek the LORD and live,
or he will break out against the house of Joseph like fire,
and it will devour Bethel, with no one to quench it.
7 Ah, you who turn justice to wormwood
and bring righteousness to the ground
10 They hate the one who reproves in the gate,
and they abhor the one who speaks the truth.
11 Therefore because you trample on the poor
and take from them levies of grain,
you have built houses of hewn stone,
but you shall not live in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards,
but you shall not drink their wine.
12 For I know how many are your transgressions
and how great are your sins—
you who afflict the righteous,
who take a bribe and push aside the needy in the gate.
13 Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time,
for it is an evil time.
14 Seek good and not evil, that you may live,
and so the LORD, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said.
15 Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate;
it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts,
will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

Amos 5:6–7, 10–15 (NRSVue)

Almost fifteen years ago, Jimmy McMillan ran for governor of New York as the candidate for The Rent Is Too Damn High Party, and he made headlines for repeating his mantra on a televised debate. While McMillan was largely dismissed as a curiosity, the prophet Amos (for whom justice and righteousness are inseparable) just might have agreed with him. For many people, rent is a catchword for financial hardship, struggle and oppression and this text describes a society where corruption and economic inequality are so rampant that, for the prophet, it might as well burn down. Righteous living is all the more difficult when oppressive rents, profiteering officials, and crooked courts burden the needy. Yet the prophetic voice still calls out to an audience that would listen: seek good and not evil (Amos 5:6, 14), and establish justice (5:15).

At the heart of this passage is a pitiless critique of exploitative practices used by the powerful against the weak, poor and needy. Justice and righteousness, those twin pillars of a flourishing society (5:24; 6:12), are in shambles, made bitter and left lying in the dust (5:7). The text lists its specific charges in 5:10–12 where the city gate is the setting. For this ancient society and many others like it, the city gate would have been the primary location for public hearings and the administration of justice. Unlike an American courtroom, here you would not have to leave your phone in the car. This is an open, public space.

Corruption is the key point on which the prophetic critiques turn. The group accused of subverting justice and righteousness is unspecified, but it is clearly a general reference to the powerful and wealthy. They are accused of hating justice so much that they try to avoid all public or legal accountability. Given the public, courtroom-like setting of the gate, it is fair to interpret “one who reproves” as a kind of prosecutor, and “one who speaks the truth” as a reliable witness (5:10). In short, the wealthy hate how truthful, reliable speech can get in the way of their interests. This disdain for accountability manifests in outright criminality: persecuting the innocent, accepting bribes, and denying the needy a fair trial (5:12).

This bent social system is prejudiced in favor of the well-off. Political and economic interests are often linked, and here it is no different. While some of the historical details are difficult to reconstruct, a sense of class conflict is clear: the wealthy extract their gains from the poor. In order to build their Instagram-ready houses and lush vineyards wealth is extracted from those with less means. Homes like these are usually held as a sign of blessing (Isaiah 65:21–22; Amos 9:14; cf. Deuteronomy 28:30; Zephaniah 1:13), but here they have become symbols of oppression. Where our text has the word “trampling” in 5:11, it is translating a difficult term which probably refers to a set of grain taxes made within a system of land tenure known from other ancient societies in Mesopotamia. This was essentially a payment system for the use and cultivation of land. People would pay a certain fee to the landowner out of their annual harvest, much like how a renter pays a landlord. If we put Amos’ critique in more contemporary language, the “trampling” and “levies of grain” decried in 5:11 are the twin burdens of rents and fees, which often led to cycles of impoverishment and debt slavery (Amos 2:6; 8:4–6). The lifestyles of the rich are financed by extracting from the poor.

In Amos 5:13 the text notes that “it is an evil time.” What an evergreen sentiment. Many of the same issues decried in our text are a part of everyday life in America. We are living in a “new gilded age” where incredible wealth is amassed at the expense of the poor. Economic inequality in America has reached levels not seen since the 1920s, where the richest 1% own more than half of all stock and less than 5% of all debt. Despite the fact that workers are producing more wealth than ever before, they do not enjoy a fair share of their harvest. Productivity has grown nearly three times as much as pay since 1979, but the fruits of workers’ labor has only enriched the corporate managerial class and capitalist stockholders.  

Rents are a defining feature of American life. Despite mentioning the much-discussed housing crisis in the recent presidential debate, Kamala Harris said nothing about tenants and renters. More than a third of all households in America pay rent, and rental costs have increased dramatically in the past few years. According the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than 22 million renter households are cost burdened, spending at least 30% of their household earnings on rent. Brink Lindsey and Steven Telles in their book The Captured Economy describe how a huge proportion of corporate profits are driven by rent seeking behaviors. And what recourse do everyday people have? Our political system continues to deal with the same issues of corruption, bribery, and unfair courts identified in Amos 5:12. 

How does one respond to a society plagued with such political, judicial and economic problems? In our text from Amos, there is a rather odd admonition in the midst of its scathing social critique: the “prudent” should stay silent (5:13). Scholarly commentators think it does not fit the context here, but one older, mostly overlooked critical note suggests that this reference to the “prudent” is more like a reference to the “prosperous.” That is, Amos observes the logic of typical wisdom advice to do what is right “in order that you may succeed in everything that you do” (Deuteronomy 29:8). Reading the passage this way seems to fit the spirit of the prophetic message. In essence, Amos concludes his critique by noting that the well-off sit back and say nothing while the system benefits them at the expense of the poor. Prudent indeed.

Twice the text exhorts its audience to seek after the LORD, after what is good, and the conclusion brings us back to the public setting of the gate (5:15). How might we understand the twin refrains to “seek good, not evil” (5:14) and “hate evil, love good” (5:15) in the context of our own rent-burdened society? These are clearly not appeals to abstract religiosity. Religion, justice, and economics are all interconnected, and one cannot serve both God and Capital (Matt 6:24). There are no easy fixes while housing is treated as a commodity in our society, but there are still ways to work on behalf of those burdened or excluded from our current system. Social housing, rent caps, and public accountability for building projects would be good steps toward establishing justice in the gate on a societal level. On a personal level, perhaps establishing justice means not buying property to rent it, or divesting from companies who profit from indebtedness, or contributing to a debt forgiveness fund. If more of us would do so, as the prophetic voice implores, it may be the case that those in need would feel that the LORD is gracious after all.