Ha’Arets
March 1, 2010
A response to The Last Rainbow, an apocalyptic poem for lent by James Stambaugh.
The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:12
Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a sabbath for the Lord.
Leviticus 25:2
The earth lies polluted
under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed laws,
violated the statutes,
broken the everlasting covenant.
Isaiah 24:5
O land, land, land,
hear the word of the Lord!
Jeremiah 22:29
The time is surely coming, says the Lord God,
when I will send a famine on the land;
not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
Amos 8:11
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
March 1, 2010 at 19:33
Somewhere along the line, Amos became a prominent book in “our generation.” It is self-evidently divine.
Lovely reply.
March 4, 2010 at 23:07
I love reading these verses with new eyes, seeing “land” not as the nation-state of Israel (or the nation state of the USA for that matter), but as earth, topsoil, ariable land. I’ve recently been exposed to a worship song (I think it’s a Don Moen song) that quotes that verse in I Chronicles about God will “heal your land,” and I know that in the imaginations of most the people who sing that song they’re thinging about taking America back for God or some such nationalistic stuff. For awhile I wouldn’t sing that part, but now I belt it out thinking of God healing the soil that we’re destroying.