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Essay on Amos
Amos is a prophetic book of the Bible. The majority of its oracles are chronologically earlier than those of the Bible are other prophetic books. His activity is dated c.760 BC The prophet was a shepherd of Tekoa in the southern kingdom of Judah, but he preached in the northern kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam II (c.786-746 BC). Israel was at the peak of its political power but was ridden with social injustices. Amos preached especially against hypocritical worship, oppression of the poor, and immorality. Not surprisingly, he was ordered to cease his preaching. The book falls into three parts: God's judgment on various neighboring Gentile nations climaxing with oracles against Judah and Israel, an indictment of Israel, and visions of destruction. The final oracle, an oracle of salvation, is usually regarded as an addition since it presupposes the destruction prophesied in the rest of the book and the restoration of the Jewish state after the exile in the 6th cent. The chief thought of Amos is that worship of God necessarily entails protection of the poor and the weak in society. Not even God's people can hope to escape the wrath of God if the social responsibilities that go with election are neglected (Andersen, Francis I., and David N. Freedman., 1989, pg 168).
The literary tradition hardly allows us to recognize more than two dozen short individual oracles. All the more surprising, then, is the wealth of rhetorical forms which the prophet himself has displayed. We will treat here only Amos' own language;
When Yahweh comes to the fore in the messenger speech, it is consistently as the first person speaker. This is a reliable characteristic, though one that is not everywhere apparent. The other characteristic is a framework formula wherein the messenger announces that it is Yahweh who speaks in the first person. The formula is indispensible but variable......
