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

8 Interested Partiesdoes the author literally mean, ‘built upon the misery of theweak’? It is no doubt true enough that in a competitive andentrepreneurial society the weakest go to the wall if there are noprogrammes for social care; but we cannot simply assume that aprosperous society owes its prosperity to the deprivation of itspoor. 11 You couldn’t say that about modern Switzerland, forexample. Should not biblical commentators have to do a coursein economics before they deliver themselves of opinions aboutIsraelite society that they proffer in their own voice? Certainly,they shouldn’t be allowed to parrot the prophets and pretendthey are doing scholarly analysis.Expensive furniture, indolent ease, succulent food, the sound of music,and extravagant indulgence—so the affluent in Samaria live. Everyitem represents a luxurious sophistication that had been possible inearlier times only for royalty, and remained a world apart from the lifein the villages. The hollowness of it all only becomes apparent in 6cwhere this heedless hedonism is thrown into relief against the ‘ruin ofJoseph’ from which it is completely insulated. 12What authority has the commentator to take this high moraltone? Would he care to compare his own living standards in,let’s say, Richmond, Virginia, with those of the affluent inSamaria of the eighth century BCE? Why does he seem to sneer atthe spread of wealth and sophistication from the court to a widersection of the populace? Why does he not approve, as a loyalAmerican, of the democratization of privilege that his textattests? Why does he suggest that if the villages cannot havecable TV no one else should? And what right has he to talk of‘heedless hedonism’ when he himself, if he is anything like mostof us academics, has probably never contributed to the grossnational product, having devoted himself to the selfish pursuitof non-practical knowledge, and being parasitic, like mostscholars, upon the wealth-creating sectors of the community for11 . Mays actually says that ‘The economic base of such luxury isviolence . . . against the poor’ (p. 117). What economic theory, we suddenlywonder, does Mays subscribe to? Can it be perhaps that he is a Marxist? Oris this not a serious economic and political remark, but only preacher’srhetoric?12 . Mays, Amos, p. 116.