Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Amos · About this commentary
I Was No Prophet
Amos 7:10-17
10 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the middle of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. · WEB
The only narrative in the book is a confrontation, and the prophet's defense is that he never wanted the job.
Amaziah, priest of Bethel, reports to the king first and speaks to Amos second — the order tells the reader what kind of institution this is. The charge is conspiracy, and the complaint is telling: the land is not able to bear all his words. Not that they are false; that they are too heavy for the country to carry.
The quotation he sends to the palace is accurate. Amos had said the sword would come against the house of Jeroboam Amos 7:9.
Amaziah's instruction is a professional one: go home to Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there. He assumes prophecy is a trade with a fee, practiced wherever a man is paid. And the reason for the ban is given without embarrassment — Bethel is the king's sanctuary, a royal house.
Verse 14 refuses the category. I was no prophet, neither a prophet's son — no office, no guild, no inheritance. He was a boqer H951, a cattleman, a word found only here in Scripture, and a dresser of sycamore figs H8256, fruit of the tree that stood for the commonplace 1 Kings 10:27.
Then verse 15, and it is the whole reply: Yahweh took me from following the flock, and said, Go, prophesy. Amos does not claim credentials. He claims conscription — which is exactly what the questions of chapter 3 had already established about him Amos 3:8.
The sentence on Amaziah is personal and precise, and it ends where the priest's own report ended: Israel will surely go into exile.
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