Amos begins his preaching to the northern kingdom in a clever way. Not clever with deceit, but with a disarming cleverness. He first proclaims the judgments coming on the neighboring enemies of Israel: Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, the Ammonites, and Moab. He even declares he southern kingdom is targeted for judgment.

About one hundred years before the northern kingdom was carried into exile by Assyrian armies, and just two years before the earthquake, the Lion roared from Zion. Yahweh raised up and sent his prophet, Amos of Tekoa, into the northern kingdom to announce a coming inescapable judgment. Exile.

Amos, a rural sheep herder and dresser of sycamore figs, was an unlikely choice for the Lion’s roar. Not only was he a country farmer sent to preach against an urban decadence that was crushing the poor, he was also from the southern kingdom of Judah. With Amos the Lord was about to smuggle an outsider into the north because Israel had officially silenced their own prophets (2:12). Jeroboam would try to silence Amos too (7:10-17).

Amos begins his preaching to the northern kingdom in a clever way. Not clever with deceit, but with a disarming cleverness. He first proclaims the judgments coming on the neighboring enemies of Israel: Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, the Ammonites, and Moab. He even declares he southern kingdom is targeted for judgment.

All of this perfectly paced to get Israel listening. They might welcome a new prophet after all, if he speaks to their advantage. But then, cleverly mentioning them last, the northern kingdom becomes the chief concern of Amos’s word of doom.

What entrenched and multiplied transgressions brings the Lord to come against his own people? In a word, oppression. In more words, oppression of the poor by an unchecked appetite for luxury and leisure.

The wealthy and powerful of Israel – and those who wish to be – “sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals” (2:6). They “trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted” (2:7).

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