* S. Jerome describes Amos as “rusticus” and “imperitus
sermone,” but modern writers are generally agreed that in
putting forward this view he was influenced by the statement
as to the peasant origin of the prophet.
** Amos i. 1; reference is made to it by the unknown prophet
whose words are preserved in Zech. xiv. 5.
*** The famine is mentioned in Amos iv. 6, the drought in
Amos iv. 7, 8, the pestilence in Amos iv. 10.
**** Amos v. 21-24.
The unfaithfulness of Israel, the corruption of its cities, the pride of its nobles, had sealed its doom; even at that moment the avenger was at hand on its north-eastern border, the Assyrian appointed to carry out sentence upon it.* Then follow visions, each one of which tends to deepen the effect of the seer’s words—a cloud of locusts,** a devouring fire,*** a plumb-line in the hands of the Lord,**** a basket laden with summer fruits—till at last the whole people of Israel take refuge in their temple, vainly hoping that there they may escape from the vengeance of the Eternal. “There shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them escape. Though they dig into hell, thence shall Mine hand take them; and though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down. And though they hide themselves in the top of Oarmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from My sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them. And though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will I command the sword, and it shall slay them; and I will set Mine eyes upon them for evil and not for good.”
* Most commentators admit that the nation raised up by
Jahveh to oppress Israel “from the entering in of Hamath
unto the brook of the Arabah” (Amos vi. 14) was no other
than Assyria. At the very period in which Amos flourished,
Assurdân made two campaigns against Hadrach, in 765 and 755,
which brought his armies right up to the Israelite frontier
(Schrader, Keilinschrift. Bibliothec, vol. i. pp. 210-
213).
** Amos vii. 1-3.
*** Amos vii. 4-6.
**** Amos vii. 7-9. It is here that the speech delivered by
the prophet at Bethel is supposed to occur (vii. 9); the
narrative of what afterwards happened follows immediately
(Amos vii. 10-17).
^ Amos viii. 1-3.; Amos ix. 1-4.
For the first time in history a prophet foretold disaster and banishment for a whole people: love of country was already giving place in the heart of Amos to his conviction of the universal jurisdiction of God, and this conviction led him to regard as possible and probable a state of things in which Israel should have no part. Nevertheless, its decadence was to be merely temporary; Jahveh, though prepared to chastise the posterity of Jacob severely, could not bring Himself to destroy it utterly. The kingdom of David was soon to flourish anew: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. And I will bring again the captivity of My people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be plucked up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.” *
The voice of Amos was not the only one raised in warning. From the midst of Ephraim, another seer, this time a priest, Hosea, son of Beeri,** was never weary of reproaching the tribes with their ingratitude, and persisted in his foretelling of the desolation to come.
* Amos ix. 13-15.
** Hoshea (or Hosea) was regarded by the rabbis as the
oldest of the lesser prophets, and his writings were placed
at the head of their collected works. The title of his book
(Hos. i. 1), where he begins by stating that he preached
“in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash (Jehoash), King of
Israel,” is a later interpolation; the additional mention of
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, is due
to an attempted analogy with the title of Isaiah. Hosea was
familiar with the prophecies of Amos, and his own
predictions show that the events merely foreseen by his
predecessor were now in course of fulfilment in his day. The
first three chapters probably date from the end of the reign
of Jeroboam, about 750 B.C.; the others were compiled under
his successors, and before 734-733 B.C., since Gilead is
there mentioned as still forming part of Israel (Hos. vi. 8;
xii. 12), though it was in that year laid waste and
conquered by Tiglath-pileser III. Duhm has suggested that
Hosea must have been a priest from the tone of his writings,
and this hypothesis is generally accepted by theologians.
The halo of grandeur and renown with which Jeroboam had surrounded the kingdom could not hide its wretched and paltry character from the prophet’s eyes; “for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease. And it shall come to pass at that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.” * Like his predecessor, he, too, inveighed against the perversity and unfaithfulness of his people. The abandoned wickedness of Gomer, his wife, had brought him to despair. In the bitterness of his heart, he demands of Jahveh why He should have seen fit to visit such humiliation on His servant, and persuades himself that the faithlessness of which he is a victim is but a feeble type of that which Jahveh had suffered at the hands of His people. Israel had gone a-whoring after strange gods, and the day of retribution for its crimes was not far distant: “The children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim; afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall come with fear unto the Lord and to His goodness in the latter days.” **
* Hos. i. 4, 5.
**Hos. i.-iii. Is the story of Hosea and his wife an
allegory, or does it rest on a basis of actual fact? Most
critics now seem to incline to the view that the prophet has
here set down an authentic episode from his own career, and
uses it to point the moral of his work.
Whether the decadence of the Hebrews was or was not due to the purely moral and religious causes indicated by the prophets, it was only too real, and even the least observant among their contemporaries must have suspected that the two kingdoms were quite unfitted, as to their numbers, their military organisation, and monetary reserves, to resist successfully any determined attack that might be made upon them by surrounding nations. An armed force entering Syria by way of the Euphrates could hardly fail to overcome any opposition that might be offered to it, if not at the first onset, at any rate after a very brief struggle; none of the minor states to be met upon its way, such as Damascus or Israel, much less those of Hamath or Hadrach, were any longer capable of barring its progress, as Ben-hadad and Hazael had arrested that of the Assyrians in the time of Shalmaneser III. The efforts then made by the Syrian kings to secure their independence had exhausted their resources and worn out the spirit of their peoples; civil war had prevented them from making good their losses during the breathing-space afforded by the decadence of Assyria, and now that Nature herself had afflicted them with the crowning misfortunes of famine and pestilence, they were reduced to a mere shadow of what they had been during the previous century. If, therefore, Sharduris, after making himself master of the countries of the Taurus and Amanos, had turned his steps towards the valley of the Orontes, he might have secured possession of it without much difficulty, and after that there would have been nothing to prevent his soldiers from pressing on, if need be, to the walls of Samaria or even of Jerusalem itself. Indeed, he seems to have at last made up his mind to embark on this venture, when the revival of Assyrian power put a stop to his ambitious schemes. Tiglath-pileser, hard pressed on every side by daring and restless foes, began by attacking those who were at once the most troublesome and most vulnerable—the Aramæan tribes on the banks of the Tigris. To give these incorrigible banditti, who boldly planted their outposts not a score of leagues from his capital, a free hand on his rear, and brave the fortune of war in Armenia or Syria, without first teaching them a lesson in respect, would have been simply to court serious disaster; an Aramæan raid occurring at a time when he was engaged elsewhere with the bulk of his army, might have made it necessary to break off a successful campaign and fall back in haste to the relief of Nineveh or Calah (Kalakh), just as he was on the eve of gaining some decisive advantage. Moreover, the suzerainty of Assyria over Karduniash entailed on him the duty of safeguarding Babylon from that other horde of Aramæans which harassed it on the east, while the Kaldâ were already threatening its southern frontier. It is not quite clear whether Nabunazîr who then occupied the throne implored his help:* at any rate, he took the field as soon as he felt that his own crown was secure, overthrew the Aramæans at the first encounter, and drove them back from the banks of the Lower Zab to those of the Uknu: all the countries which they had seized to the east of the Tigris at once fell again into the hands of the Assyrians.
* Nabunazîr is the Nabonassar who afterwards gave his name
to the era employed by Ptolemy.