Addendum to previous post

[hermionesviolin]

I got so caught up by "But let justice well up like water, Righteousness like an unfailing stream" (which, sidebar, MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech -- "we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.") that I forgot to post the other bits that had struck me from the post:

In an especially powerful passage Amos condemns those who wait for Shabbat to end in order to resume corrupt business dealings; that still rings painfully true today.

[...]

Amos rails against the nations who behave in immoral ways, and against Israel who behaves in immoral ways. Like Elisha, he's concerned with the treatment of the poor; he knows that mistreatment of the poor is exactly what God does not want. One of the major messages I take away from Amos is that being "chosen" by God does not let us off the hook.

Indeed: being chosen puts us in an even more difficult position. "You only have I known / of all the families of the earth" -- we are the people God knows, so we're the people God gets most angry with for failing to live up to who we could be.