Amos arrives in the richest years the northern kingdom ever had, and tells them they are finished. Nothing in front of him supports the claim. That is the difficulty of the book, and the reason it is worth your time.

The man from the bleakest place in the country

Amos came from Tekoa, a small town about six miles south of Bethlehem and eleven from Jerusalem, exposed on top of a hill 2,700 feet high and looking out over the wilderness of Judah. The desert, the desolate ravines and the Dead Sea to the east make it the bleakest spot in either kingdom.

There he herded sheep and tended sycamore figs. He had not attended a recognised school of the prophets and held no ordination — a point he makes himself, and rather sharply, when he is finally challenged.

“I’m not a prophet, and I’m not a disciple of the prophets. I am a rancher and a grower of figs. But the LORD took me away from herding the flock and said to me, ‘Prophesy to my people Israel.’”Amos 7:14–15 · GW

It is worth noting that no Old Testament prophet attended such a school. His preparation came from the wilderness, where in the solitude and the bleating of the sheep he discovered the majesty of God and His covenant justice — the justice of a God bound to His people by promise.

Because Tekoa stood exposed and remote at the edge of the wilderness it served as a defence against invasion from the south (II Chronicles 11:6), and it was associated with war, fear and the sound of the trumpet (Jeremiah 6:1). He also shows a complete knowledge of how life was lived across the whole country — probably picked up travelling market to market, selling wool.

A foreigner, and everyone knew it

Tekoa was in Judah. Amos was sent north, specifically to Bethel (7:10–13), and from there he addressed all of Israel — and in a secondary sense Judah too.

That crossing of the border matters more than it looks. He is a southerner denouncing a northern king’s national sanctuary, which is exactly the objection the priest Amaziah raises: go home and earn your bread there. Amaziah, quite possibly the king’s own chaplain, shows no interest whatever in hearing a word from God (7:12–16).

Bethel was one of the religious centres of Israel. Jeroboam I, on taking the ten tribes from Rehoboam, created a counterfeit religion with golden calves as the object of worship — the story is in I Kings 12:25 onwards. By the time Amos came, some hundred and seventy years later, calf worship was established as simply the way things were done. The shrine at Bethel and the other at Dan were busy and well attended (4:4–5).

It was a religion divorced from any divine revelation and born in the mind of man. Amos sees it as self-pleasing, and as arousing the anger of God (5:21–23).

Everything was going extremely well

This is the part to slow down on, because it is what makes Amos hard to hear and hard to dismiss.

Israel was prosperous and confident. Both kingdoms had expanded their boundaries — read II Kings 14:23 – 15:7 and II Chronicles 26. Some forty years earlier Elisha had prophesied that Israel would enjoy political power (II Kings 13:17–19), and more recently Jonah had promised a restoration of borders not seen since Solomon (II Kings 14:25).

Both prophecies came true. So the nation drew the obvious conclusion: God is evidently pleased with us, and we can do no wrong.

They were not being stupid. They were reading the evidence the way anyone reads it. Every measure a nation normally uses to know whether it is doing well said the same thing, and it said so loudly.

Amos is sent to say that the measure is the wrong one. As prosperity increased the nation had degenerated morally and spiritually, and within a generation of his preaching it would be scattered in the Assyrian captivities.

What he saw when he looked around

“How horrible it will be for those who sleep on ivory beds. They sprawl out on their couches and eat lambs from their flocks and calves from their stalls. … They rub the finest oils all over themselves and are not sorry for the ruin ⌜of the descendants⌝ of Joseph.”Amos 6:4–6 · GW

Read the last line again. The charge is not the ivory and it is not the oil. The charge is are not sorry — comfort that has stopped noticing. That is the specific sin of a rich society, and it is not a sin of appetite. It is a sin of attention.

• An affluent society  3:12, 15 · 4:1 · 6:4, 6
• Alongside it the neglected poor, being exploited  2:6–7 · 5:10, 12 · 8:5
• Money-making and greed ruling the minds of the rich  8:5
• A people who despised law and order, with the rulers helping the breakdown along  5:10–12 · 6:1–6
• Women living for excitement; the king and the lords of the land living to be entertained  4:1 · 6:1–6
• Morality at an all-time low  2:7

Note as you read that the judgment is directed against a compassionless, self-centred society — not against a poor one or an unsuccessful one. And it is to the honour of God that He sent an untrained shepherd out of a wilderness village to call the nobility of Bethel to repent.

The sentence the book is remembered by

Worship was not the problem in the sense of there being too little of it. There was a great deal of it. God’s answer to the whole apparatus is 5:21–23 — I hate your festivals, take away the noise of your songs — and then, immediately, what He wants instead:

“But let justice flow like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”Amos 5:24 · GW

The image is chosen with care. In that country most streams are wadis — torrents after rain, dry stone the rest of the year. An ever-flowing stream is the rare one, the one that runs in the dry season too. Justice that only appears when conditions are favourable is the ordinary kind. He is asking for the other kind.

And then the worst threat in the book

“The days are going to come, declares the Almighty LORD, when I will send a famine throughout the land. It won’t be an ordinary famine or drought. Instead, there will be a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. People will wander from sea to sea and roam from the north to the east, searching for the LORD’s word. But they won’t find it.”Amos 8:11–12 · GW

Said to people who currently cannot get a prophet to be quiet. The punishment for not listening is not thunder; it is silence — and by the time they want it, wanting it will not be enough.

An outline of Amos

I. Introduction  1:1–2

II. God’s judgments  1:3 – 2:16 — on the surrounding nations (1:3 – 2:3), on Judah (2:4–5), and on Israel (2:6–16): a compassionless attitude to the poor, sexual immorality inside the religion itself, and a way of life that demands judgment.

III. Prophecies against Israel  3:1 – 5:17 — judgment on the covenant people (chapter 3), on their unrepentance (chapter 4), and on their injustice (5:1–17).

IV. Prophecy of exile  5:18 – 6:14 — against Israel’s counterfeit religion (5:18–27), against their carelessness and pride (6:1–7), and judgment on the nation (6:8–14).

V. Visions of divine judgment  7:1 – 9:10 — judgment relented, in the swarm of locusts and the consuming fire (7:1–6); then judgment unrelented, in the plumb line (7:7–17), the basket of ripe fruit (chapter 8), and the Lord standing by the altar (9:1–10).

VI. Restoration of Israel  9:11–15

Understand as you read that what we have here are Amos’ sermon notes, set down in written form — probably after he had gone back to Judah.

Where it lands

“On that day I will set up David’s fallen tent. I will repair the holes in it. I will restore its ruined places. … They will capture the few survivors of Edom and all the other nations that were under my authority.”Amos 9:11–12 · GW

That last passage should be read with the Holy Spirit’s own commentary on it. At the council in Jerusalem, with the question on the table of whether Gentiles could belong without becoming Jews first, James stands up and settles it by quoting these verses (Acts 15:12–18).

Under the inspiration of the Spirit he identifies the Church of Jew and Gentile in Christ as the fulfilment of the prophecy Amos gave. You and I are the Israel of God, spoken of by the prophets. We would do well to listen to the Spirit’s commentary in the New Testament, rather than to the opinions of men.

Read Hosea next. Same kingdom, same years, same complaint — and a man who belonged to the nation he was sent to condemn.