THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET AMOS Amos is the third of the twelve prophets in the Book of the Twelve. The Book of the Twelve Prophets was originally on one parchment roll because of the brevity of the text, and together formed one Book of the 24 Books of Hebrew Scripture. These twelve prophets were sometimes named the minor prophets, not because they are of lesser importance, but because their writings are brief. The Twelve include Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The Book of the Twelve follows the writings of the four Major Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. All together the 16 prophets are called the Latter Prophets, as they began writing after the Division of the United Kingdom of Israel. The Prophets followed the Torah, the five Books of the Law of Moses beginning with Genesis, and preceded the Writings beginning with Psalms and the Wisdom Literature in Hebrew Scripture, our Old Testament of the Bible. The Prophet Amos lived in the Eighth Century BC in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, during the peaceful reign of Jeroboam, and is the first Prophet to have a Book of the Bible named after him. His book should be first if the listing was chronological, as he lived just prior to Hosea, and his writings parallel the First Book of Kings. While Israel was prosperous at the time, it was also a time marked by social injustice - a time similar to our own! Amos castigated the extravagance of the Northern Kingdom, who trampled the head of the poor into the dust of the earth (2:7). Amos called for justice and righteousness. We live in a time of corporate greed and domination, a time of social inequality when 20% of the world consumes 80% of the worlds goods. The Book of Amos is relevant to this day! The Book of Amos begins and ends with references to an earthquake (1.1 and the images of shaking in 9:1-9), and a severe earthquake did occur circa 760 BC. Was this validation of the prophecy of Amos? The Apostle James in the Acts of the Apostles 15:15-18 quotes Amos 9:11-12 and interprets this passage in a Messianic sense. The following Scripture is from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible, now in the public domain. King James I commissioned a group of Biblical scholars in 1604 to establish an authoritative translation of the Bible from the ancient languages and other translations at the time, and the work was completed in 1611. The original King James Bible included the Apocrypha but in a separate section. A literary masterpiece of the English language, the original King James Bible is still in use today!
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 20:20:26 +0000
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