Five visions
1 This is what Yahweh showed me. He was forming a swarm of locusts just as the late sowing began to come up. It was the second growth which follows the king’s mow ing.
2 When they were about to finish devouring all the crops of the land, I said, “Yahweh, forgive! How shall Ja cob survive, small as he is?”
3 Yahweh repented and said, “It shall not happen.”
4 This is what Yahweh showed me: he was calling for burning heat. It consumed the great deep and was consuming the land.
5 I said, “Yahweh, stop! How shall Jacob survive small as he is?”
6 Yah weh relented and said, “This too shall not happen.”
7 This is what Yahweh showed me. He was standing beside a wall with a plumb line in his hand.
8 The Lord asked me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I answered, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “Be hold, I am measuring my people Israel with a plumb line. I will forgive them no more.
9 The high places of Isaac are to be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel laid waste. For I will arise, sword in hand, against the family of Jero boam.”
Conflict with the priest Amaziah
10 Amaziah, the priest of Bet hel, then sent word to King Jero boam of Israel, “Amos is conspiring against you in the very center of Israel; what he says goes too far.
11 These are his very words: Jero boam shall die by the sword and Israel shall be exiled from its land.”
12 Amaziah then said to Amos, “Off with you, seer, go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there by proph e sying.
13 But never again prophesy at Bethel for it is a king’s sanctuary and a national shrine.”
14 Amos replied to Ama ziah, “I am not a prophet or one of the fellow-prophets. I am a breeder of sheep and a dresser of sycamore trees.
15 But Yahweh took me from shepherding the flock and said to me: Go, prophesy to my peo ple Israel.
16 Now hear the word of Yahweh, you who say: No more prophecy against Israel, no more insults against the family of Isaac!
17 This is what Yahweh says:
Your wife shall be made a harlot in the city, your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword, your land shall be divided up and given to others, and you yourself shall die in a foreign land, for Israel shall be driven far from its land.”
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Comments Amos, Chapter 7
• 7.1 The prophets are never content with simply threatening their people. They always intercede for them before God (see Ezk 33 and 22:30). In the first two visions, Amos tries to stop God’s anger. In the third, he runs into God’s firm purpose to destroy Israel.
• 10. Notice the boldness of Amos’ action. He goes to preach in the national Temple, or to put it another way, in the country’s cathedral. He does so though he has no title, nor the priest’s permission and begins to denounce the false order which allows the accumulation of so much private wealth. Naturally Amaziah, the king’s chaplain, is scandalized. In our days, Amos would have been arrested, beaten and perhaps killed.
For Amaziah, his priesthood is a well-paid position and he is convinced that Amos is preaching against his way of earning a living. In those days, there were many prophets who made a living from giving advice without having been called directly by God as the great prophets were, (and as Amos was as well).
Amos is not a prophet in the ordinary sense. He is a lay person to whom God entrusted a mission when called personally. Apparently he loses out in the meeting with the religious authorities. It is not said that he used any other weapons than God’s word and God knows how to judge his envoys. We do not know if Amaziah succeeded in throwing him out of the country or if he only forbade him to preach in well-attended places.