Includes the Books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

Who did I hear say this, not all that long ago? Could they have been talking about Washington, DC? Was it Bill Moyers maybe, or Keith Olberman? Could it have been Molly Ivins speaking to me in a dream? Did I read it in the Nation or Sojourner? It couldn’t have been one of the presidential candidates, making a stump speech, could it? I heard the words, clear as day.

Oh! Can you believe it? The chaste city
has become a whore!
She was once all justice,
everyone living as good neighbors,
And now they’re all
at one another’s throats. . . .
They sell themselves to the highest bidder
and grab anything not nailed down.
They never stand up for the homeless,
never stick up for the defenseless.

Was it the same person I heard talking to today’s religious leaders? To robed theologians in mainstream denominations? To televangelists raising money right and left? To evangelical leaders in their righteous assemblies?

Quit your worship charades,
I can’t stand your trivial religious games:
Monthly conferences, weekly sabbaths, special meetings—
meetings, meetings, meetings—I can’t stand one more!
Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!
You’ve worn me out!
I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion,
while you go right on sinning . . . .

Clean up your act!
Sweep your lives clean of your evildoings
so I don’t have to look at them any longer.
Say no to wrong.
Learn to do good.
Work for justice.
Help the down and out.
Stand up for the homeless.
Go to bat for the defenseless.

Did I hear the same person talking to Congress?

Doom to you who legislate evil,
who make laws that make victims—
Laws that make misery for the poor,
that rob my destitute people of dignity,
Exploiting defneseless widows,
taking advantage of homeless children.

Could this message have been addressed to political operatives? to DC lobbyists? to the current administration? to leaders on Capitol Hill?

You pretend to have the inside track.
You . . . work behind the scenes,
Plotting the future as if you knew everything,
acting mysterious, never showing your hand.
You have everything backwards.

Actually, the voice I heard speaking—not all that long ago—was the Hebrew prophet Isaiah I (chapters 1, 10, 29). Eugene Peterson translated Isaiah I’s message into straightforward modern English, language you and I can understand—language probably equivalent to that Isaiah actually used, talking about their capital Jerusalem, talking to priests and rulers and “good citizens” of that day. It’s good to read The Message: The Prophets (NavPress, 2000), not in fine print, not on tissue thin paper, not in Elizabeth English or a committee’s prose.

Amos has always been one of my favorites.”Amos towers as defender of the down-trodden poor,” Peterson says, in his introduction, “and accuser of the powerful rich who use God’s name to legitimize their sin.” Here’s the Message Amos brings from God, in Peterson’s blunt translation:

I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,
your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me!
Do you know what I want?
I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
That what I want. That all [italics for emphasis] I want.

Justice! Fairness! Caring for the homeless! For the defenseless? Strange the emphasis put on these values by the prophets. Not all that much on marriage and divorce, on raising money for ministers or building tabernacles or temples. And more on those topics than on homosexuality and birth control and evolution and prayer in the schools. There’s a message there, somewhere, if we could but hear it.

The message has always been there. We can just hear it a bit more forcefully in Peterson’s contemporary English.

Here’s how Amos sounded in the NIV (New International Version), perhaps the most literal of the modern translations:


Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Here he is in the good old King James Version (KJV):

Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.
Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols
But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

And in my favorite, the new Revised Standard Version (RSV):

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Now I’m not qualified to judge the accuracy of these translations. I suspect that all of them are closer to the words of the original than Peterson, and I suspect that Peterson comes closer to the directness and everyday language of Amos than the others. To be frank (as my name requires me to be), I almost always read Peterson along with either the NIV or the RSV. But I’m glad Peterson makes me listen to the prophets in down-to-earth, honest-to-God talk, like that I might hear on the street or around my dinner table. “I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music” and of scriptures that are prim and prudish. Say it to me in plain English, please.

Let me read it in a type-face meant for normal eyes, like a modern novel or a book of essays, say, by Bill Moyers or Milly Ivins.

So get yourselves together. Shape up!
You’re a nation without a clue about what it wants. . . .
Seek God, all you quietly disciplined people.
Seek God’s right ways. Seek a quiet and disciplined life.
(Zephaniah, chapter 2)