Prophets and prophecy Author:William Henry Green Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AMOS. The prophet Amos was by some early fathers confounded with Amoz, the father of Isaiah. This mistake arose from the two words being alike in the Greek. T... more »hey are altogether different in the Hebrew. Atnos means burden ; Amoz means strength. He was taken from the herdsmen of Tekoa, twelve Roman miles from Jerusalem, six miles south of Bethlehem. The word " herdsman " is applied to the king of Moab as the owner of flocks, 2 Kings 3 : 4. Was Amos an owner of sheep, or a tender of flocks belonging to others ? We learn that he did not own them from 7 : 14,15. Further he says he was not a prophet—nor his previous vocation, not the son of a prophet, ¿. e., he had not been taught in the schools of the prophets under Elijah, Elisha, etc. It would seem that he was sent on this single errand to Israel from Judah, and this may have been the whole of his ministry. Time.—The time of the delivery of this message is seen in 1: 1. Compare 1 Kings 13: 1. The time is still further defined by saying it was two years before the earthquake. Zech- ariah speaks of it, 14: 5, the beginning of threatening judgments. But this does not aid us, for we do not know when it took place. Divisions.—Chs. 1-6, literal ; 7-9, allegorical ; Amos consists of three parts. The three parts are : (a) ch. 1 : 2 ; 2:5, introductory ; (Z) 2 : 6 ; 9 : 10, denunciatory ; (c) 9 : 11-15, promissory. Theme.—The theme is announced in 1 : 2, a sentence partly taken from Joel 3: 1(5. (a) He does so first in a preliminary denunciation of seven nations in succession. Six contiguous Gentile nations, Syria, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and finally Judah. The judgments are successive stanzas of like construction, suggesting argument a fortiori. If these heathen nations are to be punished, how much more Israel. The he...« less