I will send fire on the walls of Gaza that will consume her fortresses. – Amos 1:7

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 27, 2026): Amos 1

The Gaza Strip is a narrow strip of land forty kilometers long and eight to twelve kilometers wide on Israel’s Mediterranean Coast, and it is rich in history. The name first appears in the military records of Pharaoh Thutmose III, who reigned in Egypt from April 28, 1479, until March 11, 1425 B.C.E. Then, the city of Gaza was indicated in the area. Today, it is a province whose capital city remains Gaza City.

Politically, it has been ruled by the Palestinian group known as Hamas since 2007. Hamas’s leadership has been problematic because they refuse to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist. Hamas supports a policy where they want Israel to be evicted from the area. This eviction from the area is the meaning of the phrase “from the river (Jordan) to the Sea (Mediterranean).”

On October 7, 2023, Hamas led an attack on its enemy, Israel. In the process, it killed indiscriminately, including youth who were attending a music festival. It was a horrible provocation. The killing of innocents is something that is universally condemned in our contemporary age. Hamas’s attack and the kidnapping of innocents were soundly denounced by world powers, as was Israel’s subsequent killing of innocents in its counterattacks.

As Israel rained missiles down on the Gaza Strip, it was hard not to think of this passage in Amos. Was Israel’s response a fulfillment of Amos’s prophecy? I don’t think so, although the sins in both cases might have had some similarities. In Amos’s case, the Prophet was speaking about the city. He accuses the Gaza leadership of taking “captive whole communities and [selling] them to Edom.” Bible teacher James Boice (1938-2000) explains it this way.

“The condemnation here is not against slavery in and of itself … The crime is not that soldiers were enslaved after being taken in battle, which was the standard practice, but that the Philistines used their temporary supremacy to enslave whole populations – soldiers and civilians, men and women, adults and children, young and old – for commercial profit. Gaza did not even need the slaves. She merely sold them to Edom for more money.” (James Boice)

Selling slaves was an even deeper stain than just the normal practice of taking slaves. However, we should note that wherever there is sin, there is a counter-response. In every act of war, there is a response, and someone will pay. It was true in Gaza, and it was true in Israel. Two wrongs never make a right. And maybe we should seek to live our lives in a way such that fire doesn’t have to fall from the sky to stop us from what we are doing. As we learned in the Gaza-Israeli conflict, fire from the sky rains down on everyone. Fire from the sky is not restricted to the most sinful, whoever that might be. In fact, those who bring the fire are often protected from the fire that falls on ordinary people.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Amos 2