Amos (OTL)

A Commentary

James L. Mays

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 1969
• Print ISBN: 9780664224424
• eBook ISBN: 9781611645170
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This volume, a part of the Old Testament Library series, explores the book of Amos.

The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

II

COMMENTARY

1. THE TITLE: 1.1

I¹ The words of Amos, who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel, in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.

[1] Verse I is the title of the book, placed at its beginning by the collectors of Amos sayings. The title tells the reader that the book is composed of sayings (‘words’), who spoke the sayings, to whom, and when. The words come from Amos, who was one of the shepherds from Tekoa. They are meant for Israel. They were spoken during the time of Uzziah and Jeroboam ben Joash, more specifically, two years before the earthquake. The title has passed through several stages of development. The basic phrase (‘the words of Amos’) is modified by two relative clauses; the first identifies Amos, the second names the addressee of the sayings. There are also two dates; one places the sayings in the reigns of certain kings of Judah and Israel, the other dates the sayings in a time ‘two years before the earthquake’. The synchronistic dating by reigns of Judean and Israelite kings is the work of the Deuteronomistic editors of the book; its form resembles the synchronization of reigns in the Deuteronomistic historical works (e.g. II Kings 14.23; 15.1; cf. also Isa. 1.1; Jer. 1.2; Hos. 1.1; Micah 1.1; Zeph. 1.1), and the fact that Uzziah’s name precedes Jeroboam’s betrays a Judean point of view. The first relative clause (‘who was among the shepherds of Tekoa’) interrupts the connection of the second with the basic phrase which it modifies, and may also be an addition to the original title. The original title given by the first collectors may have been: ‘The words of Amos … of Tekoa which he saw concerning Israel … two years before the earthquake.’

‘Word’ is used here in the technical sense of ‘saying’, what is spoken by a prophet in one oracle; as elsewhere in the Old Testament the plural is simply a title for a collection of sayings, e.g. Eccles. 1.1; Prov. 30.1; 31.1; Neh. 1.1; Job 31.40. The term is an accurate classification of the book’s contents, for it is made up primarily of a collection of speeches in which Amos delivered the message sent to Israel by their God. The name Amos (‘āmōs) does not occur outside the book, though a longer form, Amasiah, is mentioned in II Chron. 17.16. Like Jeremiah (Jer. 1.1) Amos is identified in terms of the circle and locale from which he comes: he was one of the herdsmen (nōq^edīm) of Tekoa. Nōqēd probably means ‘breeder and tender of small cattle (sheep and goats)’. The word is used in only one other text in the Old Testament; Mesha, king of Moab, is called a nōqēd (II Kings 3.4). The term appears once in the Ugaritic texts as the title of herdsman who served the cultic establishment;^a it has been proposed that the term means hepatoscoper, so that Amos was a cultic functionary who practised augury,^b but the proposal is hardly justified.^c In 7.14 Amos called himself a ‘breeder of large cattle’ (bōqēr), who was following the flock when Yahweh called him. He lived a secular life as a landed peasant before his prophetic activity. But the use of nōqēd in the Old Testament and at Ugarit does suggest that Amos was no ordinary shepherd, but a breeder of sheep who would have belonged to the notable men of his community.

Tekoa was a village located directly south of Jerusalem within distant sight of Judah’s capital (cf. II Sam. 14.2; Jer. 6.1; and II Chron. 11.6 which reports that it was a site where Rehoboam constructed fortifications). That Amos was a Judean is confirmed by 7.12. Yet his mission was to the northern kingdom. Since the prophetic office as manifested in Amos was a function of Yahweh’s lordship over his people, the political boundary that had been set up between Judah and Israel was utterly irrelevant. Amos was concerned with Israel in their identity as the people of the Lord; the sphere of his activity was the realm of the old tribal league, all Israel under Yahweh, and not the state cult with its orientation to the current king and his kingdom.

That Amos ‘saw’ (ḥāzāh) his words is a conventional way of saying that his words were received as revelation before they were spoken (cf. Isa. 1.1; 2.1; Micah 1.1). The conventional idiom rests on the visionary experience which underlay the activities of older seers and prophets (e.g. Balaam in Num. 24.2f., 15f.; and Micaiah ben Imlah in I Kings 22.17) and the canonical prophets. Amos reports five visions (7.1–9; 8.1–3; 9.1–4) through which he received his basic message.

The reigns of Uzziah (783–742) and Jeroboam II (786–746) span the middle years of the eighth century BC. ‘The earthquake’ is mentioned elsewhere only in Zech. 14.5, which looks back on it as a memorable catastrophe of the distant past. The excavators of Hazor found traces of an earthquake in the eighth century which they dated around 760.^a If the date is correct, it would place Amos’ activity late in the fourth decade of the eighth century. The reference to a point two years before a catastrophic disaster gives the impression that those who remembered the connection thought of Amos’ activity in Israel as having been short, not more than a year. The connection may have been triggered by sayings of Amos which appear to allude to an earthquake as the coming punishment (2.13; 3.14f.; 6.11; 9.1).

Thus the title is primarily concerned to introduce the book as the sayings of a man who is carefully identified by name, home, vocation, and time. That his words were of divine origin is recognized by the note that he ‘saw’ them, and this fact is repeatedly emphasized by the recurrent ‘This is what Yahweh has said’ which introduces many of the oracles within the book. But the title stakes out a crucial hermeneutical principle; the sayings are to be read and understood as words for a particular time and place through one individual man. Rather than an embarrassment, their historicality is a key to their meaning.

2. THE VOICE OF YAHWEH: 1.2

1 ²He said,

‘When^b Yahweh roars from Zion,

from Jerusalem utters his voice,

the pastures of shepherds dry up,^a

and the top of Carmel withers.’

[2] The title (1.1) is followed by this poetic couplet which serves as an overture to the entire book. The couplet describes the awesome voice or noise of Yahweh and its devastating effect; when Yahweh utters his voice from his residence in Jerusalem, it reverberates across the earth, searing the landscape, and reaching even to the summit of Carmel in the north. The last editor of the book connected the couplet with the title by the transitional phrase ‘and he said’, and so indicated his opinion that it was a saying of Amos’. But the style and theme of the verse are those of the hymn, not the prophetic saying. Yahweh does not speak in the first person; his voice is portrayed as a devastating phenomenon. The two bi-cola are perfect synonymous parallelisms in 3+3 rhythm. The notion that Yahweh is resident in Zion is a Jerusalem cultic tradition; and the only other allusion to specifically Jerusalem tradition in the book appears in 9.11f., an oracle of salvation which is secondary. The couplet has been placed at the beginning of Amos’ sayings by an editor who understood the oracles to be anticipations of the destructive ‘sound of Yahweh’. The selection of his hymnic couplet may have been provoked by Amos’ use of the lion’s growl as an illustration of the compelling power of Yahweh’s speech in 3.8a. The reference to Carmel, a mountain on the coast of Israel, as the target of Yahweh’s voice, makes the couplet appropriate as an introduction; Amos came from Judah and proclaimed Yahweh’s judgment against Israel.

Verse 2a appears in Joel 3.16 (MT 4.16) and with variations in Jer. 25.30 (cf. also Isa. 66.6). All three texts are celebrations of the appearance of ‘the voice of Yahweh’ (nātan qōlō), locate its source in the divine residence (Jerusalem/Zion, or its heavenly counterpart), and depict the dolorous consequences of its appearance. The three are variant formulations of a basic theme; their similarity is not due to literary dependence but to common use of a significant motif from the Jerusalem cult. In each case the motif is used to depict the initiation of Yahweh’s action against his enemies in history. This suggests that the motif had this function in the cult. The ‘voice of the Lord’ is not, as in Deuteronomic texts (e.g. Deut. 8.20; 9.23; 13.4, 18) the articulate communication of the Lord’s covenant will. It is rather an awesome, dreadful noise, a phenomenon with a distinctive significance. The characteristics and setting of this qōl Yahweh are to be found elsewhere only in the ancient hymnic portrayals of Yahweh-theophanies (cf. nātan qōlō in Ps. 18.13 = II Sam. 22.14; Ps. 68.33; 46.6; and qōl Yahweh in Ps. 29), where the divine appearance is clothed in the imagery of the thunder-storm. The roaring of the Lord is a stylized metaphor based on the sound of rolling, growling thunder (Ps. 18.13; Job 37.4). The notion that thunder was the voice of a deity who manifested himself in the rainstorm came to Israel from old Canaanite sources; in the texts from Ugarit it is Baal who ‘utters his voice’ in the thunder.^a The effect of Yahweh’s voice is depicted as a searing drought, withering pastures and scorching the verdant garden ridge of Carmel; the imagery of drought is used here to represent the work of Yahweh’s wrath, a frequent motif in the prophets (e.g. Isa. 5.6; 11.15; 19.7ff.; 42.15; Jer. 12.4; etc.).

A hymnic overture presents Amos as a herald announcing the advent of Yahweh whose earthly residence is on Zion, the God whose ancient appearances wrought terror and defeat on his enemies, whose glory in judging all that resist his authority was celebrated in Jerusalem’s temple.

3. ORACLES AGAINST THE NATIONS: 1.3–2.16

In 1.3–2.16 there are eight oracles announcing the imminent action of Yahweh against the nations of Syria-Palestine. The first seven are constructed on the same pattern. This use of repetition gives the series a quality of unrelieved menace as the roll call of the nations unfolds. One after another Israel’s neighbours are included on Yahweh’s list of judgment—until finally Israel alone remains. Then the pattern of the series is broken and expanded as Israel hears its own name added to the list of those whom Yahweh will devastate.

In type the oracles are all examples of the announcement of judgment. Yahweh’s words in the first person are introduced by the messenger-formula: ‘This is what Yahweh has said.’ The oracle itself is made up of two parts: a specification of the crime of which the concerned nation is guilty, and an announcement of the punishment which Yahweh will enact. Amos has developed this basic structure by filling it out with formula-like sentences. The resulting pattern is constructed of these constants:

(a) The messenger formula: ‘This is what Yahweh has said…’

(b) The indictment: ‘For three crimes of (name) and for four I will not revoke it, because they have (specification of one crime)’

(c) The announcement of punishment: ‘I will send fire on (name), and it shall devour the strongholds of (name)’

(d) Concluding messenger formula: ‘has said Yahweh’

Element d is omitted in the oracles against Tyre, Edom, and Judah (1.10, 12; 2.5). The Israel oracle begins with elements a and b, but the indictment is expanded and the pattern is abandoned in the rest of the saying (see the comment on 2.6–16). Otherwise this pattern is used as though it were a form whose blank spaces need only to be filled in with the appropriate crimes and names. It is obviously significant for the message and theology which the prophet articulates.

(a) The prophet announces what he has heard Yahweh say. The nations are not directly addressed, but are referred to in the third person. The audience for the series must have been a group in Israel; either Bethel or Samaria are possible settings. But even Israel hears of its indictment and punishment in the third person; the departure from the third-person style within the Israel oracle is a clue that they are the actual audience (2.10–12). The style is that of reports for general announcement from a court which has already deliberated and reached its verdict.

(b) The crime which has provoked Yahweh’s judgment is introduced by the opening formula of a graded numerical saying: ‘For three … and four….’ Examples of the formula appear in Prov. 6.16–19; 30.15f., 21–23, 29–31; Job 5.19ff.; 33.14ff.; Ecclus. 23.16–21; 25.7–11; 26...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• I. Introduction
• II. Commentary