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AMOS

(Heb. ʿāmôs), BOOK OF

A compilation of speeches, sayings, and vision reports attributed to the career of an 8th-century b.c.e. prophetic figure. It is the earliest of the OT books that contain the messages of individual prophets, preserved in antiquity as part of the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets.

Amos the Prophet

According to the scant information within the book itself, which is the only available historical source, the prophet Amos was a resident of the southern kingdom of Judah who prophesied in the northern kingdom of Israel during the middle part of the 8th century. Amos is identified as a resident of Tekoa, a village 10 km. (6 mi.) S of Jerusalem, on the boundary of the Judean wilderness. Amos 1:1 describes him as a nōqēḏ (“shepherd”), while in 7:14 Amos refers to himself as a bôqēr (“herdsman”) and a “tender of sycamore fig trees.” This combination of vocational terms suggests that Amos was either a seasonal worker of varied skills or possibly a person of some means who owned sheep, cattle, and land sufficient to raise sycamore figs as cattle fodder. Although Amos engaged self-consciously in the activity of prophesying, he explicitly denied the vocation of a nāḇîʾ (7:14), a professional prophet supported by a cultic or royal shrine. He was at effort to show that he prophesied only by divine compulsion under extraordinary circumstances (3:8; 7:15). That Amos’ message portrayed contemporary religious institutions as corrupt perhaps explains why a nonspecialist such as Amos was compelled to perform the prophetic role of a religious intermediary.

Historical Setting

Amos 1:1 places his activity during the reigns of Jeroboam II in Israel (786-746) and Uzziah in Judah (783-742). These two monarchs were able to exploit a period of relative weakness among the regional superpowers of Egypt and Assyria, thereby securing political stability and territorial expansion. Control of the intercontinental trade route passing through the Transjordan region fueled economic prosperity and bureaucratic expansion of Jeroboam’s monarchic government. Excavations of Jeroboam’s capital city of Samaria have yielded archaeological evidence of urban population growth and the development of an economic elite possessing large houses furnished with imported luxury items. The accelerated redistribution of land, economic resources, and social authority from a kinship- and land-based society to the centralized bureaucracy of an expanding state created much of the social upheaval that provides the setting for Amos’ message. Amos is portrayed as Yahweh’s spokesperson for those who were disenfranchised as a result of rapid social change.

Amos 1:1 dates Amos’ prophesying to “two years before the earthquake.” His message employed earthquake imagery (8:8; 9:1, 5, 9) to describe Yahweh’s impending judgment of Israel. An earthquake during the reign of Uzziah was apparently severe enough to be remembered some three centuries later in Zech. 14:4-5. Archaeological evidence from the northern Israelite city of Hazor indicates a severe earthquake occurred during the mid-8th century. Amos also uses the image of a solar eclipse (8:9) to describe divine judgment. Two solar eclipses can be dated within Amos’ presumed lifetime (784 and 763). Amos’ message perhaps owes its preservation to the perception among some of his hearers that he had identified a connection between cosmic disturbances of heaven and earth and the social upheaval of 8th-century Israel.

Contents

The superscription in 1:1 very briefly describes the book as “the words of Amos . . . which he saw concerning Israel,” indicating the visionary and revelatory nature of Amos’ message. Amos 1:2 functions as a thesis for the entire book. The angry roar of an enraged Yahweh from his universal throne in Jerusalem signals distress and destruction encompassing the entire created order, and demonstrates the cosmic dimension of Israel’s social and moral offenses.

Chs. 1 and 2 contain a unified speech comprised of seven highly stylized oracles of judgment against Israel’s neighboring states, concluding with Judah and followed by an eighth, extended oracle of judgment against Israel itself. Each oracle begins with the formula “Thus says Yahweh, ‘For three transgressions of ———, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,’ ” followed by a general description of the nation’s offense and a declaration of punishment. The rhetorical effect of the first seven oracles is to emphasize the concluding judgment against Israel itself. Unlike the general accusations against their neighbors, Israel’s crimes are spelled out in a list of seven offenses that are violations of Israel’s covenant traditions. In a reversal of Israel’s sacred traditions of election and salvation that is characteristic of Amos’ message, Israel’s salvation history does not exempt them from judgment, but instead intensifies their punishment because of their unique relationship and responsibility to Yahweh (3:1-2).

Chs. 3–6 employ a variety of rhetorical devices and speech forms to describe Israel’s sins and to announce Yahweh’s judgment. The rhetorical versatility of this section includes the use of riddles (3:3-8; 6:12), a parable (3:12), a taunt (4:1), satire (4:4-5), doxologies (4:13; 5:8-9), a funeral lament (5:1-2), and woe oracles (5:18; 6:1; 6:4). Amos’ denunciation of Israel is based upon the irony of increasing social and economic exploitation, on the one hand, and a heightened degree of religious activity, on the other. Israel’s prosperity is described in references to “winter houses,” “summer houses,” “houses of ivory,” “great houses” (3:15), and “houses of hewn stones” (5:11), where the wealthy live in leisure and indulgence (6:4-6) at the expense of the disenfranchised poor (4:1; 5:10-12). Their myriad religious practices are declared to be abhorrent to Yahweh (5:21-24) because they serve to insulate the wealthy from the plight of the poor and to mitigate the demands of conscience. Amos satirizes Israel’s religious observances as activity that actually increases their transgression (4:4-5). Though they love to bring sacrifices, tithes, and freewill offerings, Israel’s copious religious acts do not demonstrate that they had “returned” to Yahweh (4:6, 8, 9, 10, 11). Military conquest (3:11) and exile (5:27; 6:7) describe the judgment to be visited upon Israel.

Chs. 7–9 contain a series of reports of five visions of impending doom for Israel. In the first two visions (7:1-6), Amos is shown threatening images of judgment, first by locust plague and then fire. After each vision, Amos intercedes for Israel and Yahweh reverses the decision of judgment. The third vision of a plumb line (7:7-9), however, is followed by a declaration of judgment, with no intercession and no revocation of punishment.

The vision reports are interrupted in 7:10-17 by a narrative of Amos’ confrontation with Amaziah, priest of the royal shrine at Bethel. The purpose of this narrative, which depicts the intractability of Israel’s religious establishment, is to explain why Yahweh’s announced judgment will not again be reversed. Yahweh’s irrevocable judgment is restated in the fourth vision (8:1-3) by means of a wordplay in Hebrew. The vision of a basket of summer fruit (qāyiṣ) is interpreted to mean that the end (qēṣ) has come to Israel.

In the fifth vision, Amos sees Yahweh standing by the altar of the temple pronouncing utter and complete destruction for the people and the land in language evocative of an earthquake. The vision is followed by an oracle (9:2-4) describing the comprehensive scope of Yahweh’s destruction and by a final doxology (9:5-6) that affirms the justice of the omnipotent deity who executes such judgment.

The final section of the book (9:7-15) softens the oracles of doom in the preceding sections by limiting the extent of Israel’s destruction. Amos 9:8 states that Yahweh will not utterly destroy “the house of Jacob.” Amos 9:9-10 uses the metaphor of a sieve, by which the sinners of Israel are sifted out through judgment while a remnant remains. Amos 9:11-15 is the most hopeful passage in the book, with its promise of a time of restoration and salvation for the people of Israel at some undetermined future date. This final passage is at such variance with the doom of the rest of the book that many conclude that it was a late addition. The cosmology of the book of Amos, however, suggests that if divine judgment is a corrective to corporate injustice, then the expected result would be a restored harmony once judgment is completed. The promised restoration of Amos 9:11-15, whatever its origin and however stark its contrast with the rest of the book, is nevertheless compatible with the cosmic dimension of Amos’ message.

Composition

In addition to 9:11-15, other passages such as the three doxologies, certain references to Judah, and some of the oracles against the nations have also been questioned as late additions to an “original” collection of Amos material. Although numerous reconstructions of the various literary layers of composition of the book have been proposed, each proposal is based upon a subjective view of what “earlier” forms of the book must have been like. Recent studies have sought to demonstrate how the entire content of the book may be understood within the 8th-century historical context of the prophet Amos, or as the coherent work of an editor not far removed from Amos’ historical situation. Whether or not one accepts all of the book of Amos as a product of the 8th century, the book in its present form presents a consistency of message and a coherence of thought from the diverse sayings and speech forms preserved within it. The echoes of the prophet Amos’ overriding message of a created order established upon the foundation of social justice continues to inspire readers and reformers across the millennia.

Bibliography. F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Amos. AB 24A (New York, 1989); J. H. Hayes, Amos, The Eighth-Century Prophet (Nashville, 1988); S. M. Paul, Amos. Herm (Minneapolis, 1991); M. Polley, Amos and the Davidic Empire (Oxford, 1989).

Barry A. Jones

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

AMOS

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)