Amos, the Shepherd Prophet

Amos is the first prophet whose words were gathered into a book. A shepherd of Judah, he was sent around 760 before Jesus Christ to carry the word of God to the kingdom of Israel, then rich and untroubled. His message holds in one demand: justice. To a people that multiplied sacrifices while crushing the poor, he announced that God wants right first of all.

A shepherd of Tekoa

Amos lived in Tekoa, a village of Judah south of Jerusalem, on the edge of the desert. He kept the flocks and tended the figs of the sycamore, the work of a simple man. When he was called to speak in God’s name, he described his condition thus: “I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet: but I am a herdsman plucking wild figs. And the Lord took me when I followed the flock, and the Lord said to me: Go, prophesy to my people Israel.” Amos 7:14-15. By “son of a prophet” he does not mean the son born to a prophet, but the member of those brotherhoods established around the sanctuaries, where men lived in community under the guidance of a master, trained in prayer, in song, and in passing on the messages received from God; the word “son” marked belonging to the group, as a disciple to his school. Amos did not come from there. He had received no religious training and owed his word to no one: his authority came from God alone, who had seized him in the midst of his work.

The time of Jeroboam II

After the reign of Solomon, the people had split in two: Judah in the south, with Jerusalem, and Israel in the north, with its own dynasty and its own sanctuaries. Amos, who came from the South, was sent to carry the word of God to the northern kingdom. It was the reign of Jeroboam II, around 760 before Christ, a time of peace, of military victories, and of great prosperity. The borders had widened, trade flourished, the cities grew finer. The book in fact dates these words two years before an earthquake whose memory long remained alive in Israel. In the midst of this success, the kingdom believed itself blessed by God and safe from all misfortune.

An unjust prosperity

This prosperity had a darker side. It benefited a few, who grew rich at the expense of the others: the lowly lost their lands, fell into debt, and at times into slavery. At the same time, the sanctuaries were busy and the great royal temple of Bethel gathered a sumptuous worship. This prosperous and pious society stayed deaf to the cry of the poor. It was this society that Amos was sent to awaken.