The book opens, “The words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake” (Amos 1:1). Dating by the reigns of both kings reminds us that while this was written originally for the northern kingdom that it has much to teach the southern kingdom of what will come to pass. And this shepherd, like Moses and David before him, crafted a literary masterpiece.
In Amos 7:14 he says, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs.” He does not reject the term of “seer” (Amos 7:12) and he describes his actions as prophesying (Amos 7:15). Thus Amos thought of himself as a prophet, but he was not a traditional prophet – he had been a shepherd in Tekoa before being called, he had not been trained in a school for prophets. Tekoa is a town in Judah five miles south of Bethlehem. Thus this shepherd went up to the northern kingdom to preach.
There are 8 (the wisdom pattern of 3+1+3+1) oracles in chapters 1-2. Each follows the pattern: “Thus says YHWH: For three transgressions of (place name), and for four I will not revoke the punishment, because they [he for Moab] (reason)….” Thus each oracle follows the wisdom pattern of 3+1.
The endings are as follows: “says YHWH,” “says the Lord YHWH,” (none), (none), “says YHWH,” “says YHWH,” (none), and a double “a declaration of YHWH.”
The order of the nations does for Israel something like the order of the Twelve as a whole does for Judah/Jerusalem. That is, just as The Twelve is drawing a spiral in on Judah/Jerusalem so the book of Amos is drawing a spiral in on Israel. It is helpful if you draw circles in your mind as if on a map as you hear the locations mentioned. The order in Amos 1-2 is Damascus (capital of Syria, northeast), Gaza (southwest), Tyre (northwest), Edom, Ammon and Moab (east to southeast in geographical order), Judah (south), Israel (bull’s-eye).
The Dillard/Longman introduction helpfully notes: “His listeners would readily have agreed with the denunciation of atrocities committed by neighboring states, only to be surprised at the condemnation of social injustice on the home front. … The arrangement of the oracles is itself clever and subversive; oracles that construct a circle of despised enemy peoples turn out to be a trap sprung on unsuspecting Israel” (p.380).
Normally the prophets base their sermons on the Torah of Moses. In this case, Amos appears to be indicting the surrounding Gentile nations primarily for war crimes. For example, Ammon is cited for ripping open pregnant women in Gilead and Moab is condemned for burning the bones of the king of Edom to lime. They would not be under the Torah of Moses, but they are under the Covenant of Creation and the use of the wisdom pattern suggests that these war crimes were universally recognized in the ancient world – they were violations of the order of creation.
When the prophet turns to his home nation of Judah he briefly says, “because they have rejected the Torah of YHWH, and have not kept His statutes, but their lies have led them astray, those after which their fathers walked. So I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem.” This is an important point to us in the overall Book of the Twelve. And being the seventh the original reader on a first reading may have thought it the climax of the whole. But then they read on to find the prophet spent the bulk of his time on an eighth indictment – the one against Israel. Again note that for the surrounding nations they were indicted for violations of the order of creation but for Judah and Israel it was indictments for breaking Torah.
The Torah transgressions listed for Israel were: (1) selling the righteous and the needy into slavery, (2) harming the poor and the afflicted, (3) profaning the name of God by “a man and his father go into the same girl,” (4) laying down next to every altar on the garments of people who needed the clothing and drinking wine in “the house of their God” taken as fines. Note that each of these four transgressions includes two parallel lines for a total of eight.
The rest of chapter 2 reminds Israel of what YHWH had done for them. He had destroyed the Amorites before them, even giants that lived in the land of Israel, He had brought them up out of the land of Egypt and led them for 40 years in the wilderness to posses the land, He had raised up some of their sons for prophets and young men to be Nazirites. The first half ending, “Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel? A declaration of YHWH.” And then Amos continues by relating how Israel made the Nazirites break their vows by drinking wine and told the prophets not to prophesy.
Therefore, the next verse begins, “Behold,” and tells them the doom that will come upon their mighty men. Aside from the first verse of the book, all of it has been poetry.
Listen to the poetry ending chapter 2: “Flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not retain his strength, nor shall the mighty save his life; he who handles the bow shall not stand, and he who is swift of food shall not save himself, nor shall he who rides the horse save his life; and he who is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day [he does not survive either].” “A declaration of YHWH.”
Note just with these three verses (Amos 2:14-16) the pattern of parallelism. Verse 14 has three parallel lines; verse 15 has three parallel lines. Verse 14 mentions the swift, the strong, and the mighty. Verse 15 mentions the one who handles the bow, the one who is swift of foot, the one who rides the horse. Verse 16 mentions the one who is stout of heart among the mighty.
The Amorites in the land that YHWH destroyed instead of being called giants are described thus: “whose height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks.” And concerning these giants YHWH says, “I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath.” Thus the destruction of these like cedar and oak trees is described in terms of a tree. I mention these examples because the poetry of Amos is full of superb imagery.
Amos 3-4 are judgment speeches against Israel. Much of it follows the language of prophetic lawsuits. He is continuing to present the case against Israel. They have transgressed the Torah. The book of Amos has all of the elements you would normally find in a prophetic covenant lawsuit between a suzerain king and his vassal king. It is not addressed to the northern kingdom alone but to “the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt” (Amos 3:1). YHWH says, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2).
Amos begins this with seven riddles. In the form of rhetorical questions we hear things like “Does a lion roar in the forest, when he has no prey?” and “Does a snare spring up from the ground, when it has taken nothing?” The interpretation follows, “For the Lord YHWH does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord YHWH has spoken; who can but prophesy?” It was suggested in seminary at WTS by Professor Mike Kelly that verse seven is an eighth (a +1) rhetorical question.
Among the verses of chapter 3 Amos says, “Thus says YHWH: ‘As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the people of Israel who dwell in Samaria be rescued, with the corner of a couch and part [precise meaning of the word is uncertain] of a bed’” (Amos 3:12).
After the introduction (Amos 3:9-12), the end of chapter three and all of chapter four consists of a total of eight short oracles each with the concluding formula “declaration of YHWH” or a variation of it. Some of these oracles mention disasters befalling Israel such that they should have been led to repent. Such disasters included droughts, blights and mildew, pestilence like Egypt, overthrowing of people like when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Then the conclusion: “Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” (Amos 4:12).
The chapter finishes with what some have called a cosmic hymn:
Anderson and Freedman translate it thus:
“For behold!
The Shaper of the mountains,
And the Creator of the wind,
And the One who declared his secret thought to Adam;
The Maker of dawn out of darkness,
And the One who treads upon the mountains of earth—
Yahweh, God of hosts, is his name!”
They call the next two chapters “the book of woes.” This is a good way to look at chapters 5 and 6 because it is a collection of woe oracles and lamentations. However, it is not a lament over Israel rather it is a lament against Israel. It is a prophetic lament announcing judgment. Chapter 5 begins with the subtitle: “Hear this word that I take up over you [or better, given the context, “against you”] in lamentation, O house of Israel” (Amos 5:1). The lament that follows is a quina – a three-beat colon followed by a two-beat colon imitating the wailing of mourners over the dead.
The first woe oracle (Amos 5:7-13) includes a second hymn…as translated by Andersen and Freedman it reads thus:
“The One who fashioned the Pleiades and Orion,
Who transforms pitch darkness into daylight,
Who darkens the day into night;
The One who summoned the waters of the sea,
And poured them out on the surface of the earth—
Yahweh is his name!
The One who makes destruction burst upon the stronghold,
And destruction upon the fortress when he comes.
Among the most famous lines of Amos are these in this section (Amos 5:24):
“But let justice roll down like waters,
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
In the passage Amos derides their worship including sacrifices and music and offers this verse as a contrast to that.
The last three chapters of Amos are a collection of visions. It opens: “This is what the Lord YHWH showed me…” (Amos 7:1). When he saw the judgment of locusts the prophet interceded for the people. Amos 7:4 then repeats this pattern opening the same way and when Amos sees a judgment by fire the prophet interceded for the people. The next thing Amos sees (Amos 7:7-8) opens the same way and what he sees is the Lord with a plumb line in his hand. The judgment announced is the sword against the house of Jeroboam. This one and the next required a little more elaboration than the first two visions.
Recall that Bethel (meaning “house of God”) is the place where the northern kings kept two golden calves. Amaziah was the priest of Bethel and he went to King Jeroboam and accused Amos of conspiring against the king and said, “The land is not able to bear all his words.” Amaziah told Amos to go back home to Judah and prophesy there but not at Bethel, “for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.” This was when Amos gave his famous answer about not being a prophet or a prophet’s son when he was called to prophesy to Israel but a herdsman and dresser of sycamore figs.
Because Amaziah told him not to prophesy against Israel and the “house of Isaac,” that they would go into exile and Jeroboam be killed by the sword, Amos said,
“Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city,
And your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,
And your land shall be divided up with a measuring line;
You yourself shall die in an unclean land,
And Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land” (Amos 7:17).
Amos 8:1 opens the same way and what Amos sees is a basket of summer fruit. The rest of the chapter then interprets the meaning of this vision as about the end for Israel. It depends on a word-play in Hebrew of “summer” and “end.” The first four visions are very similar, but they are different than the fifth in the last chapter.
Amos 9:1 opens “I saw YHWH standing beside the altar, and he said….” And what follows are poetic words of judgment but the chapter ends with the good news of return from exile (“restore the fortunes of my people Israel”).
The good news portion of the prophecy begins by saying the Davidic monarchy will be restored over a united kingdom: “In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name…” This is a picture of the reign of Christ and the gospel going to the Gentiles. In Acts 15:16-17 James quotes the passage to make this point.
Amos is the oldest of the written prophets in Scripture. And yet he is also one of the most artistic with his use of words. The Dillard/Longman introduction observes the following literary devices within the prophecy: “metaphors, simile, epithets, proverbs, short narratives, sarcasm, direct vituperation, vision, taunt, dialogue, irony, satire, parody.” Also, “Extensive agrarian imagery may reflect his own background as a shepherd and orchard worker (1:3; 2:13; 4:9; 5:11, 16-17; 7:1-2, 14-15; 8:1-2; 9:9-15). The prophet appears to have enjoyed structured repetition (as in the oracles against the nations or the vision reports) and the use of rhetorical questions (3:3-6) and repeated phrases (3:4,8). He makes frequent use of ‘summary quotations,’ a device in which he cites the words of his opponents (2:12; 4:1; 6:2, 13; 7:11, 16; 8:5-6, 14; 9:10). He uses a few puns (5:5; 6:1, 6, 7; 8:1-2) and often calls for the attention of his hearers with a repeated summons (3:1; 4:1; 5:1; cf. 8:4)” (p.381-382).
I quote this because I want to emphasize just how poetic or artistic Amos was in communicating the word of God.
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