Bite 1: Amos Has a Background

Beginning a New Study

When I start a new book of the Bible, I like to get some background information in order to understand not only the events current to the book, but also in order to understand the history of the human author who has poured forth his heart as led by the Holy Spirit.

Now, we have to keep in mind that knowing the human author from thousands of years later is limited at best. Which makes me think of the psychologist folks who are trying to establish that Martin Luther was a deranged megalomaniac. From hundreds of years later. If his writings are scrupulously examined and Hollywood’s version isn’t part of his testimony, clearly he wasn’t.

Our understanding of who our human author is and current events will help us as we observe, interpret, and carefully apply.

To be clear, I want to emphasize that we are not trying to get into the mind of Amos, or of any other author. By understanding Amos, what I’m seeking to know is his background and how it relates to what he’s written. There is a distinction to be made between what any author conveys by his writing and what he was feeling when he wrote it. His written symbols are for public consumption and were intended to be understood by his audience. On the other hand, his or any other author’s emotions are not.

Getting to Know Amos

Source Materials

Reading a little from a few different scholars about the background of Amos, I’m going to paraphrase what I’m learning. My sources are listed at the end of this article which you can go to in order to find more information. ¹² Most of what we know about our good friend Amos is found within the prophecy itself and the rest is either extrapolated or verified from historians (Jerome in particular) closer in proximity to his time and culture than we are.

Background of the Prophet

Amos was a native of Judah in the Southern Kingdom. Tekoa was his hometown which is less than 10 miles south of Bethlehem and still exists today as the ruins of Tekua. By vocation, he was a herdsman of sheep and goats, as well as a cultivator of fruit trees (sycamores). As a fellow who labored outdoors in the wilderness of Judah, scholars speculate he was a gritty sort of guy, wrestling with the earth and the elements. A servant summoned by God, he was neither a prophet through training nor the son of a prophet. As a layman, Amos was a blue collar worker without adherence to a school of thought since he wasn’t formally trained. What words did Amos speak? The words of God without stain from the organized ideology of men as contained in any school.

Even though he was a native of Judah, God sent him to the Northern Kingdom to declare the Word of the Lord (just like Hosea, though not together). Which to me sounds like Paul, trained as a Hebrew of Hebrews, being sent to the Gentiles. The timeline of Amos’s ministry was during the reigns of Uzziah in the South and Jeroboam the son of Joash in the North, in the years before the Babylonian captivity. The estimated dates vary between scholars including John Calvin, but are approximately between 810 B.C. and 750 B.C.

Background of the Audience

If we can gain information about the audience, we will also have a better chance of understanding the author. Putting ourselves in the shoes of the recipients prevents some of the bias and preconceptions we bring to study.

Here is what the Baker Encyclopedia reports about the social and economic climate during Amos’s ministry:

Background. The 8th century bc was a critical time in Jewish history. Both kingdoms of the divided nation had risen to heights of economic affluence that had not been experienced since the days of Solomon. Yet internal religious decay was sapping the strength of both kingdoms, and their social fabric was being destroyed. A new wealthy class was benefiting from the affluence of the time, growing ever richer while poor people became poorer than ever.3

Say, does that sound at all familiar? I’m not suggesting that the United States or any other country is a country like Israel and Judah are to God. As an American, I know that I am not some kind of goofy replacement for the Hebrews. If you followed along in my study of Ephesians, we learned that people of other nations who have been called by God are grafted in. Not replacing but joining.

And we are not engaging in application or implication at this point: we haven’t yet begun to study! However, I do see a correlation between then and now.

I made a list (which is not comprehensive) from a variety of sources concerning the situation in the Northern Kingdom of Amos’s day:

• Time of prosperity and ease
• Social injustice
• Calling evil good and good evil
• Rejecting God’s Law
• Ultimately rejecting God’s Word through his messenger

There really isn’t anything new under the sun, is there?

A Word About the OT

As we explore a book in the Old Testament, we also want to keep a few other things in mind. Invariably, if you are in church for very long, you will hear mutterings from the corners that we’re in the new covenant and that the Old Testament is now irrelevant. Or that the God of the Old Testament was an angry, violent God and we now have the loving, kind God of the New Testament. Heresies. Anyone who holds the Old Testament in any form of dismissiveness or derision doesn’t not understand the author who wrote it or the purpose for which he wrote it.

If you profess love and devotion to the God of the NT, you also love the God of the OT. Because they are the same God. God does not change. He is the same God throughout all time having the same intention, disposition, character, nature, and being. While many of the laws and statutes have been fulfilled in the atonement of Christ, many are also still in effect. Not for the purpose of salvation, but because they are representative of the Law-Giver’s character and nature.

Originally, I was not planning to cover too much about Law and Covenants as a genre of literature because Amos doesn’t employ it. However, as I read and listened to Amos a number of times, I realized that a gaping hole would be present in my understanding if I ignored what had happened before Amos traveled up to the North to tell them what the future held. Amos went to explain that there is in fact a law of causality.

Genres of Literature

Law and Covenant

Like I said, Amos is not a book of Law and Covenant. However, it does cover an aspect of the covenants of God as concerns the element of “Blessings and Curses”. There is a Basics article on Law and Covenant for your reading pleasure here so that you can see more of my process in study and learn some of what I learned.

So we know there is a genre of laws and covenants, how they were written, and what impact they have for future generations like the ones to whom Amos was speaking. But then there is also the immediate genre of Amos itself.

Another Genre

Let’s look at the layout of the scripture in your Bible. Do you notice anything specific? Can you see any visual clues the translators have given us English readers to be able to discern what type of literature this primarily is? I will bring the first few verses here so we can look at them together.

Hm. That seems a bit of a squirrel moment. So the text here is different and it is the indicator the English translators use to signify poetry. Since I hadn’t written a Basics article on the genre of poetry, I wandered off for a bit to learn all I could and then share it. You can read about it here.

What’s the Plan?

My intention as I was choosing the next book to study was to engage with the OT because my favorite theologian said on many occasions that the OT is where we see the holiness of God. Where we’ve been shown his character and nature.

The OT is not where I’ve spent a great deal of time studying. My plan is to rectify that deficiency. Long ago, a pastor told me that Hebrew lends itself to sentence diagramming more readily than Greek does. I haven’t experienced that yet and I don’t know if that pastor was considering poetic literature when he declared such information to me. Unfortunately, at that time, I was not an astute questioner and I no longer have contact with him. So you will be able to join me in my adventure learning how to learn from the OT.

As part of my plan, I will attempt sentence diagramming and then observe. I remember that observing isn’t simply noticing what’s there in the text but also perhaps what isn’t in the text as well as asking questions of the text. After I observe, I will interpret. Some interpretation may involve some historical research, Hebrew word studies, and even comparing the Septuagint in order to arrive closer to the author’s intent. Only after I’ve engaged in these disciplines will I find meaning in the text for myself today.

The plan is the same, so far, as studying the NT.

1. Observation
2. Interpretation
3. Application

Wrap Up

Our Bible Study Bite for today as we approach Amos (or any other book of the Bible) is to consider there is more than meets the eye. This is not an appeal to “deeper meaning” of scripture but to understand where the author is coming from. To try and stand in his sandals and see the ancient world as he did.

Briefly let’s review some of the ways we can try to travel in time, as it were.

Law and Covenants

Knowing what Israel agreed to in the Law and Covenants that came before is also part of what was supposed to be both kingdom’s culture. So then is God a cranky old man because he can’t have his way? Not even a little. The nation agreed to the stipulations God laid out. They agreed to do all that God said. Provisions were made for the reading of the covenant so that future generations would know as well. God’s patience is not infinite.

Culture and History

Keeping the cultural and historical background in mind throughout will help center my study. There will be more background study needed as I proceed because I personally don’t know the people groups that immediately pop up in the first stanzas. Damascus, Gilead, Hazael, Ben-hadad in the first four verses. What was happening there? Righteous judgment is on their doorstep. Why?

Poetry

Thinking about those locations and peoples, also keeping in mind the genre of poetry will help keep me centered. I’m aware that Amos wrote in a poetic format so what did Damascus actually do when Amos described threshing Gilead with sledges? Amos is intending to invoke emotion as he describes and I’d like to find the details so I can better understand the emotions.

These are concepts I would like to keep in mind as I proceed. I invite you to join alongside me in studying both to learn more of the art and science of hermeneutics as well as growing in knowledge of our great God. Without the OT, we wouldn’t know our God and his holiness. Are you ready? Let’s GO!

Thanks for studying with me today! If you’ve found anything helpful here, please like and subscribe. And if you know of other students of the Word, would you please share so we can all study and encourage each other with what we’re learning?

1. Bentley, M. (2006). Opening up Amos. Leominster: Day One Publications.
2. Lange, J. P., Schaff, P., Schmoller, O., & Chambers, T. W. (2008). A commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Amos. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.
3. McComiskey, T. E. (1988). Amos, Book Of. In Baker encyclopedia of the Bible (Vol. 1, p. 79). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.