For thus says the Lᴏʀᴅ to the house of Israel: “Seek me and live;
but do not seek Bethel, and do not enter into Gilgal or cross over to Beersheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into exile, and Bethel shall come to nothing.”
Seek the Lᴏʀᴅ and live,
lest He break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, with none to quench it for Bethel, O you who turn justice to wormwood and cast down righteousness to the earth!
Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the LORD, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
Priorities. So much of life comes down to our priorities. The Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘priority’ as something that is very important and must be dealt with before other things. 1
When the LORD says,
He includes the what not to seek—each one of these sites had a tie to the past victories and yet became places of idolatry. Sometimes past victories become worshiped as something we accomplished or as places having special connections to powers not remembered as of God. The second plea is,
Giving the LORD not only first place of priority but the only priority serves to keep us aligned with Him so we don’t add other priorities which edge Him out of supremacy in our lives. Israel had a tendency to wander away from God and establish lesser gods to whom they gave priority as they lived out daily life. It is surprisingly easy to mis-focus our lives onto things that do not matter as much as the LORD. Justice and righteousness which would never be forsaken while God was supreme can be wandered away from when we become enamored with elements of life we elevate in our minds and attentions. God is rather easily displaced and so the LORD through Amos encourages,
God reduces the choices of attentiveness to ‘seek good, not evil, that you may live’ ‘hate evil, love good, live just’ and the LORD God of host will be with you and be gracious to you. Sometimes we need to reduce priorities to such a simple contrast—God or not. Is it time to renew our priorities?