Amos 1
The LORD roars from Zion, and a herdsman from Tekoa delivers the first of eight indictments that will close on Israel itself.
Summary
The Book of Amos opens with a superscription identifying the prophet as one of the shepherds of Tekoa — a village six miles south of Bethlehem in the hill country of Judah — and placing his vision in the days of Uzziah king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. The date is the 760s or 750s BCE, in the long prosperity of Jeroboam II. The book then opens immediately with a theophany: the LORD roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem; the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the top of Carmel withers. The roar is not metaphor. The God of Amos is one whose voice has physical force in the world.
The oracles of chapter 1 indict five nations in succession — Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, and Ammon — each by the same tripartite formula: for three transgressions and for four, I will not revoke the punishment. The formula implies accumulation beyond the point of patience. Damascus has threshed Gilead with threshing sledges of iron. Gaza has carried a whole people into exile and delivered them to Edom. Tyre has delivered a whole people to Edom and has not remembered the covenant of brotherhood. Edom has pursued his brother with the sword. Ammon has ripped open pregnant women in Gilead to enlarge his border. For each, the LORD announces he will send fire on the cities and break the bars of the gates and cut off the enthroned. An audience in the northern kingdom would have heard five indictments of their enemies. They do not yet know that the circle is closing.
- Amos 1The chapter opens with the superscription placing Amos in the reign of Jeroboam II, two years before the earthquake, then immediately with the roar: the LORD roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem.
- Amos 2The chapter opens with the sixth and seventh oracles — Moab, for burning the bones of the king of Edom to lime, and Judah, for rejecting the law of the LORD — and then, having walked the full circle of nations, lands on Israel.
- Amos 3The chapter opens with the address Hear this word, the first of three such addresses that structure chapters 3 through 5.
- Amos 4The chapter opens with the cows of Bashan address — the wealthy women of the capital whose only recorded speech is telling their husbands to bring more wine — and announces that hooks and fishhooks will take them out through breaches in the wall.
- Amos 5The chapter opens with a lament — a dirge for Israel in the present tense, as if the fall has already happened: Fallen, no more to rise, is the virgin Israel; forsaken on her land, with none to raise her up.
- Amos 6Chapter 6 opens with a double woe — against those at ease in Zion and those who feel secure in Samaria — and then invites the audience to look around the region: are these nations better than Israel, are their territories larger? Then it describes, with a precision that reads like a reporter's note, the world of the upper class: they lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches; they eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall; they sing idle songs to the sound of the harp; they drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but they are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.
- Amos 7The chapter opens with the first two visions.
- Amos 8The fourth vision opens with the LORD showing Amos a basket of summer fruit.
- Amos 9The fifth and final vision gives no object and no question.