buy the destitute for silver and the needy in exchange for sandals” (8:6), when YHWH swears: I will never forget all their doings. Is it not for this that the land/earth shakes and all who dwell on it mourn, and it rises like the Nile, all at once, and churns and sinks like the Nile of Egypt? (8:7–8) The key theological issue raised by the way Amos draws this connection concerns our understanding of causality with respect to what we normally call “natural disasters”—but insurance companies call them