Amos 1

We're working through the Book of Amos.

Um, and today we're working through the whole of Amos 1 and 2.

Margaret read Amos 2, 'cause I asked her to, 'cause Amos 1's more of the same, and you can have too much of a good thing sometimes.

[laughs] Amos, as we've heard, was a manual laborer from the poor southern kingdom of Judah.

He was from a village called Tekoa about five miles outside Jerusalem.

And then the Hebrew, and then the Hebrew words as we understand them, Teruah.

So let's go to Amos 1.

Hosea, Joel, Amos, we're into the minor prophets towards the end of the New Testament here.

So in Amos 1, in verse 14, we read another reference here.

I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah, and it shall devour its palaces amid shouting in the day of battle.

In a tempest in the day of the world, when their king shall go into captivity, he and his princes together.

Amos, the very first words from that prophecy.

Amos 1 verse 1.

The words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Jerash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.

And then from chapter 7, I want to single out two verses there.

And the impression we get as we read this book is that Amos never gives up his ordinary job He remains a worker prophet.

In today's terms, we would say he's a lay preacher.

Amos 1 verse 1 spoke of him as one of the shepherds of Tekoa, but your Bible may have a footnote there because the Hebrew doesn't use the normal word for shepherd there.

It uses a word that's used only in one other place, a Moabite king who was a sheep breeder.