Another Bible Commentary: Amos

Amos worked around 760 BC. It’s easy to characterize this (probably oldest) prophetic book as a Hymn of Hate screaming at people to get them to repent, but it’s more nuanced than that. Amos intercedes for the people in Chapter 7. Tekoa is south of Jerusalem; Amos preached in the northern kingdom of Israel. Israel had cut itself off from legitimate worship of God (1 Kings 12). Economic conditions resulting from war with Aram (on land called Syria at the time of this writing) allowed the wealthy in Samaria to impose debt slavery on farmers. Then, Assyria fighting Aram (taking the pressure off of Israel) led to prosperity for landholders who could impose the growing of cash crops on the enslaved poor that still lacked necessities. Warnings to the nations and prophecies of return sound like Exodus 15:11-18.

1:1 See Amos 8:8 and Amos 9:5. Josephus wrote about this earthquake (that Amos is credited with predicting).

1:3 “For three sins of Damascus, even for four” For 3 or for 4 is an idiom for plenty, like “I’ve told you a hundred times”.

1:4 “Hazael” (like 2 Kings 8:7-15) and “Ben-Hadad” were common regnal names in Aram. The threat to “send fire” is meant to evoke images of a scenario like Genesis 19, but let’s not lack poetry in our souls. Neighboring armies finished the job adequately.

1:5 is fulfilled in 2 Kings 16:9.

1:6-8 Gaza of the Philistines (Joel 3:4-6).

1:9 Also in Joel 3:4-6. For the “treaty of brotherhood”, see 2 Samuel 5:11 and 1 Kings 5:1.

1:11 Edom had claimed the former land of the cities on the plain (like where inhospitable Sodom once stood). In addition to harsh rhetoric from many prophets, Edom is the subject of their very own prophetic book, Obadiah.

2:1-3 Moab’s listed crime is burning the bones of another ruler that was under God’s judgment of fire (Amos 1:11-12), and for that, Moab was promised fire. Cremation is fine (1 Samuel 31:12, 2 Samuel 2:5); the God who spoke everything into being from nothing doesn’t need raw materials for your new body. Whether a corpse breaks down in seven years in the ground or in seven minutes in an oven doesn’t matter. What Moab did to Edom’s king was about disrespect and messing with his afterlife (per their reckoning, since no one could honor him properly or bring him gifts); nevertheless, speak as well as you can of others, even fallen angels.

2:4-5 God is everyone’s God, so Judah is addressed like any other nation.

2:6-8 Now for the northern kingdom of Israel: Much of the prophetic material we’ve read so far pertains to the sin of idol worship. This next bit calls them to account for social justice, immorality, idolatry (with social justice), and improper worship (with social justice). Deuteronomy frequently mentions aliens, orphans, and widows (like Deuteronomy 10:17-19 for example); Deuteronomy mentions foreigners 15 times, widows 10 times, and the fatherless 11 times. See James 1:27. With Baal and the golden calves, Israel didn’t care for the helpless; idols just want meat bribes for prosperity. The pattern resembled: sow, reap, order God around, believe in Him to get a new car, get your impoverished followers to buy you a Learjet, etc. Surely we’re not as bad as they were, right?

2:6 Whether they were sold into debt slavery “for” a pair of sandals or “over” the matter of a pair of sandals are both possible.

2:7 The grossness of Leviticus 18:8 and Leviticus 20:11 is multiplied by sharing the same Temple prostitute.

2:9 in Numbers 21:21-35.

3:2 “chosen” or “known” like a bridegroom.

3:6 like Isaiah 45:7.

3:7 God sent lots of prophets with the same messages over and over again presented in various ways. It’s a safe bet that anyone who drew “smite” from the 1000:4 merciful deck had ignored warnings.

3:12,15 Those nice beds, couches, winter and summer homes, ivory decorations, and mansions came along with exploiting the poor citizens, and came from being Assyrian vassals (which involved swearing by false gods).

4:1 “cow” The connotation is a fat well-fed pampered cow that hasn’t been worked.

4:4 “Bethel” was the place where Jacob saw that Ladder (Genesis 28). It became a worship site for the calf cult (1 Kings 12:25-33). “Gilgal” was the site where they entered the Promised Land (Joshua 4, Joshua 5). It is ironic that the place where they put rocks as proof of a miracle became a site for idolatry like many other “Neolithic stone circles” around the world. See Amos 5:5.

4:5 “brag” This is the opposite of Matthew 6’s secrecy about donations.

4:6-12 “empty stomachs” is poetically called “cleanness of teeth” in the KJV and NASB. This section mentions curses from Deuteronomy 28:15-68. Since the wages of sin is death, these lesser wake-up calls were loving. And then the DJ said, “Here’s the Crystals with ‘He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss).’”

5:1 Time for another funeral song.

5:2 “Virgin Israel” as though she never wed God. This reminds me of the story associated with Matthew 9:18.

5:11 More of what archaeologists call “Assyrian vassal material culture”; see Deuteronomy 28:30.

5:12 The cry for justice that goes up from people afflicted thusly is zeaqah or tzeakah; God calls for righteousness or tzedakah in verse 24.

5:18 The Day of the Lord: Jeremiah 30:5-7, Ezekiel 30:1-4, Isaiah 2:11-12, Joel 2:1-2, Joel 2:31, Zephaniah 1:14-18, and Malachi 4:5 for starters. The Day of the Lord is whenever He visits to punish or to save. This language for a notable event is similar to Isaiah 9:4 “the day of Midian”; there are a lot of people focused on one big Day of the Lord in the eschatological sense of it being the end of man’s “day”, but He’s had plenty of notable days involving floods, burning sulfur, etc. Amos’ warning of what eventually happened to the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC is likely the first use of this phrase in the prophets.

5:20 For believers in Christ, things are different. You will be as safe as Jesus on Judgment Day (Hebrews 7:25 and 1 John 4:16-19).

5:21-24 See Isaiah 1:10-17, Hosea 6:6, and Micah 6:6-8.

5:26 The Septuagint and Acts 7:43 say they lifted up the tabernacle of Molech (Leviticus 18:21) and the star of their god Rephan (also called Remphan) aka Saturn.

6:1 Bad shepherds.

6:4-7 They lived like Assyrian rulers with materials bought by exploiting and overtaxing their people, whom they also led into idolatry. See also Isaiah 5:11-13.

6:13 “Lo Debar” means nothing, the nowhere place Mephibosheth lived in 2 Samuel 9:4-5. “Karnaim” means horns, which signify strength.

6:14 God threatened to undo the gains Jeroboam II had made in 2 Kings 14:25 (that were predicted by Jonah).

7:1 Adding insult to injury, locusts were to destroy the peoples’ food after the taxes had already been paid.

7:3,6 Even in the Old Testament, God really wants to save people (Joel 2:14, Jonah 3:9-10, Jonah 4:2). We’ll discuss later why the common understanding of “predestination” is erroneous, but this tendency is proof enough.

7:4 “great deep” The original audience would have understood this to be the cosmic water of chaos underneath the observable universe.

7:7 Jesus is a carpenter. A plumb line can be used to see if a structure is vertical/level. A leaning structure may need to be torn down (Isaiah 28:17, 2 Kings 21:13).

7:9-13 For context, see 1 Kings 12:26-33.

7:14 Amos was a layman.

8:5-6 Let’s see, they increased the prices while decreasing the amount and purity of the product (and had their thumb on the scale, to boot), all while enslaving their kin all to make up for a shortfall in production caused by mandatory shutdowns. There are sermons in there about trusting God to provide as well as about a government’s idea of a “target inflation rate”, but I’m going to just keep going.

8:8 The earthquake was mentioned earlier (Amos 1:1).

8:9 This also happened at the Crucifixion.

8:10 Despite Deuteronomy 14:1, He knows what they will do when bereaved.

8:11 See Deuteronomy 8:3. There were about 400 years of silence from real prophets.

8:12 After that, the Word of God came to them (John 1).

9:1 like Samson (Judges 16:29-30). See Deuteronomy 32:39.

9:4 See Jeremiah 21:10 and Jeremiah 29:11.

9:5 “rises…sinks” More earthquake talk (Amos 1:1).

9:7 God is everyone’s God.

9:11-15 Amos provided an early glimpse of the restored Davidic order and peace to follow the Day of the Lord (Isaiah 9:1-7, Isaiah 11:1-9, Jeremiah 23:5-6, Ezekiel 37:24-28). In Acts 15, James himself (quite the fan of the Law of Moses) quoted Amos 9:11-12 to say that the Gentiles are saved without adherence to the Jewish Law.

9:12 Paul says Gentile Christians are grafted into the rest of God’s people. Greetings, future world ruler. The Septuagint and Acts 15:17 has “humanity” instead of “Edom”; they’re similar words and “all the nations” are right there in the verse, too.

9:13 like Joel 3:18. Jesus gave us a preview in John 2.

Church history tells us that the priests then clubbed Amos to death.

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