Amos

Amos was a Hebrew prophet of the eighth century BCE, counted among the Twelve Minor Prophets of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. The superscription of the book that bears his name identifies him as one of the shepherds, or sheep breeders, of Tekoa, a town in the hill country of Judah about ten miles south of Jerusalem. He also described himself as a dresser of sycamore-fig trees. Unlike many other biblical prophets, Amos insisted that he was neither a professional prophet nor the son of a prophet, but a herdsman whom the Lord took from following the flock and sent to prophesy to Israel. His activity is dated to the reigns of Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam II of Israel, and is further specified as occurring two years before a notable earthquake. Historians generally place this ministry in the mid-eighth century BCE, a period of relative prosperity and territorial expansion in both kingdoms. No historically reliable source records his year of birth or death, nor any spouse or children.

Amos’s recorded preaching was directed primarily toward the Northern Kingdom of Israel rather than his native Judah. He appears to have delivered oracles at Bethel, the principal royal sanctuary of Israel. There he came into conflict with Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, who reported him to King Jeroboam as a conspirator against the crown and ordered him to flee to Judah and earn his living by prophesying there. Amos answered that he was no court prophet but one commissioned by God, and he pronounced judgment upon Amaziah and his household. The biblical narrative does not record what became of Amos after this confrontation. A later Jewish work, the Lives of the Prophets, claims that Amaziah’s son struck Amos on the temple with a club, that the wounded prophet was carried back to his own country, and that he died there and was buried with his ancestors. That account is traditional rather than historically verified, and no contemporary source confirms a burial site, though later local tradition has associated a tomb at Tekoa with his name.

The Book of Amos, regarded by most modern scholars as the earliest of the prophetic books in something like its present form, contains oracles against the nations surrounding Israel, oracles against Israel itself, a series of visions of judgment, and a concluding promise of restoration. Amos denounced the exploitation of the poor, the corruption of the courts, the idle luxury of the wealthy, and the assumption that lavish sacrifice could take the place of justice. He proclaimed that the Day of the Lord would be darkness rather than light for a people who had broken covenant, and he announced the coming destruction of the northern kingdom and the exile of its population. Among his most frequently cited words is the demand that justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. His insistence that God required righteousness rather than ritual, and that election brought responsibility rather than immunity from judgment, became foundational for later prophetic and ethical tradition in Judaism and Christianity.

In Christian hagiography Amos is venerated as a saint and prophet. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him on 15 June; the Roman Martyrology records him on 31 March; the Coptic Orthodox Church commemorates him on 6 Koiak. He was never the subject of a formal papal canonization, his cult belonging to the ancient, pre-congregational veneration of biblical prophets. He held no patriarchal or papal office and belonged to no religious order. His enduring importance lies in his witness to eighth-century Israelite religion and in his place as a classic voice of social justice within the biblical canon.