"Who is this man who dares to lift his voice against the high and powerful in behalf of the poor and downtrodden?"
"Who is this man who dares to proclaim the doom of the Kingdom of
Israel in the days of its greatest prosperity?"
CHAPTER III.
The Man Who Dared.
There lived a man in the little town of Tekoah, in the Kingdom of Judah, twelve miles south of Jerusalem, who made a living from "dressing sycamore trees."
In ancient Palestine, the fruit of the sycamore that grew in Judah was dried, ground into flour and used for making coarse bread. This bread was eaten by the very poorest people, who could not afford to buy wheat.
Now, the man who lived from gathering poor fruit, out of which poor bread was made, for poor people, must, himself, have been very poor.
But a poor man may love his country as much as a rich man; and, when the foolish war between Amaziah of Judah and Joash of Israel broke out, this "dresser of sycamore trees," from Tekoah, followed his king on the battlefield.
At the battle in which Amaziah was defeated and Joash gained his greatest victory, leading to the destruction of part of the fortifications of Jerusalem, this man, fighting valiantly in the front ranks, with many other patriotic Judeans, laid down his life for his country. He was buried in the trenches, an unknown hero, whose name is not even in the records.
But history gives us the record of his son, named Amos. Left with his widowed mother, after the war, the burden of finding a living for the two was soon thrust upon him. There was only one thing that he knew by which he could earn money—"dressing sycamore trees."