In one of the most...
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In one of the most trenchant insights into the nature of prophetic protest, Walter Brueggemann characterizes this scripture as a sociological reading of the Sabbath day. He contends that the Sabbath is the day on which commercial activity stops, when the routines of exploitation are brought to a halt. Amos characterizes the people as greedy with little more on their minds than how they can exploit more on the morrow. Anxiety about economics seems to be centered not on those who are the have-nots but is instead centered in the people who already have and who want more. [The Lyman Beecher Lectures, Yale Divinity School, February 1989 published as Finally Comes the Poet, pp. 93-94.]
