Amos HaNavi
790 BCE–740 BCE · Biblical · Tekoa
Amos was a herdsman from Tekoa in Judah who was sent to prophesy to the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the days of Uzziah and Jeroboam II, 'two years before the earthquake' (Amos 1:1) - an earthquake still remembered in Zechariah 14:5. He insisted he was no professional prophet: 'I am not a prophet, and I am not a prophet's disciple', but a herdsman and tender of sycamore figs whom God took 'from following the flock' (Amos 7:14-15). At the royal shrine of Beit El the priest Amaziah reported him to the king and ordered him back to Judah (Amos 7:10-13). His message attacks the comfortable rich of Samaria who 'defraud the poor' (Amos 4:1) and demands 'let justice well up like water, righteousness like an unfailing stream' (Amos 5:24). The Talmud lists him with Hosea, Isaiah and Micah as prophets of one era (Pesachim 87a). A teaching in the Talmud (Makkot 24a) says Amos reduced the commandments to one principle, 'Seek Me and live' (Amos 5:4), though the Gemara then prefers Habakkuk 2:4 as that single principle.
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TekoaJudea (Judean hills, south of Bethlehem)
What they did here
Amos is introduced as one of the sheep breeders of Tekoa (Amos 1:1), a town in the Judean hills, and calls himself a herdsman and tender of sycamore figs (Amos 7:14).
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Amos HaNavi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Graeco-Roman world
Works
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