Metacommentating Amos* Metacommentary, what is that ... - Fontes

2 Interested Partiesus that it has been kept from us. We innocent members of thepublic, who go on laying out good money on commentaries,need protection against these commentators who are failing totell us what it is they are failing to tell us. So it becomes anurgent public duty to create a neighbourhood watch committeeof metacommentators who will investigate for us how we arebeing shortchanged.You can search high and low for metacommentary on Amosand Amos commentators, for it is a rare scholar who will stepoutside the ideology of the text and notice how severely traditionalcommentary has been constrained by the outlook of thetext. But I did find one, whose feminist perspective gave her avantage point, outside the text, from which the Amos landscapesuddenly took on new and surprising contours. Judith Sanderson,in The Women’s Bible Commentary, noticed, as everyone elsehas, how the oracles of Amos vigorously condemn the wealthywomen of Samaria for oppressing the poor, but also, as no oneelse has, that they they do not champion the women amongthose poor. And when Amos condemns the wealthy women ofSamaria, because Sanderson is a feminist reader she does notautomatically adopt the prophet’s standpoint, but suspects thathis condemnation is yet another scapegoating of women, whoare being blamed now not only for sexual sins (as usual) but forsocial and economic injustices in society as well. 1 ‘A survey ofmodern commentaries on Amos 4.1 reveals the alacrity withwhich women are blamed for societies’ evils, [and] their relativepowerlessness is disregarded’, she writes, metacommentatingly. 2She is quite right; but her feminist critique is only a paradigm forseveral types of criticism that can be made. 31 . These women, we must recall, are ‘the pampered darlings of societyin Israel’s royalist culture . . . ruling the society of Israel from behind thescenes with sweet petulant nagging for wealth to support their indolentdalliance’ (James L. Mays, Amos: A Commentary [Old Testament Library;London: SCM Press, 1969], p. 72).2 . Judith Sanderson, ‘Amos’, in The Women’s Bible Commentary (ed.Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe; London: SPCK, 1992), pp. 205-209(205-206).3 . I am speaking here only of more or less contemporary commentators.Some older commentators, especially when writing from an avowedlyChristian perspective, did not feel the same degree of inhibition towards