Amos 7 Study Notes

7:1-8:3 This section contains four visions (locusts, 7:1-3; fire, 7:4-6; plumb line, 7:7-9; basket of summer fruit, 8:1-3). Between the third and fourth vision is a biographical unit describing a confrontation between Amos and Amaziah, the chief priest of the Bethel shrine.

7:1-3 In the Bible locusts are a common image of God’s wrath. Locusts were one of the plagues of Egypt (Ex 10:1-19). A locust plague struck Judah and became emblematic for the day of the Lord in Jl 1. In this case, however, Israel was not actually struck with a locust plague; Amos merely saw it in a vision and, in response to his pleas, God relented and no locust plague came.

7:3 The phrase, the Lord relented, here and in v. 6 distresses and confuses some readers because it implies that God changed his mind. The same expression is used in Ex 32:14, where God relented in response to the intercession of Moses after he had announced his intention to wipe out Israel and make a new nation from Moses’s descendants. Readers wonder how an omniscient God could change his mind. Two errors must be avoided. First, the conclusion that God is not fully omniscient and that there are things in the future that he cannot know. Second, the conclusion that God’s relenting (or changing his mind) is only a pretense and that Amos’s and Moses’s acts of intercession did not really change anything God was planning to do. God is fully omniscient, and our prayers do matter. These two truths are certain even if they seem mysterious. Additionally, the “change” of God’s mind would of course be something he foreknew he would do in response to intercession by prayerful men such as Moses and Amos.

7:4-6 The vision of fire is probably symbolic of a ferocious, all-consuming drought. Amos tells us that the land had endured a partial drought (4:7-8), but this was evidently a drought so severe that the whole land would become like a desert. But in response to Amos’s intercession, it did not happen.

7:7-8 The Hebrew text does not contain a word meaning vertical, and the word translated as plumb line is an enigma; no one really knows what this Hebrew word means. Medieval interpreters proposed the translation “plumb line”; the Greek Septuagint translated it as “adamant” around 200 BC and the Latin Vulgate, around AD 400, translated it as “plaster.” Many scholars today, on the basis of an Akkadian parallel, argue that it means “tin,” but it is difficult to see why God would hold tin in his hand. Our confusion about the meaning of this key word makes vv. 7-8 difficult to interpret.

If the CSB is correct, God is about to bring a plumb line to show that the people of Israel are crooked. This may be a reference to the function of the law in bringing sin to light (Rm 7:7). A wall that was not plumb would be torn down.

7:9 The high places referred to are probably the sanctuaries at Bethel, Gilgal, Beersheba, Samaria, and Dan. The term Isaac being used to refer to the northern kingdom is unique here and in v. 16. Perhaps it is because Isaac worshiped at Beersheba. The house of Jeroboam II ended with the assassination of his son Zechariah in 753 BC.

7:10-17 The account of Amos’s confrontation with Amaziah in this section interrupts the sequence of visions. Amaziah represented the Israelite hierarchy, who considered Amos to be either a charlatan or a conspirator against King Jeroboam. Ironically, Amaziah called Amos a seer (someone who had visions; v. 12), and the context shows that Amos did in fact have visions from God and that he was a genuine seer. In addition, Amaziah accused Amos of plotting against Israel and the king (v. 10), but in fact Amos was interceding for Israel (vv. 2,5).

7:14 The Hebrew for I was not a prophet is ambiguous; it could be past tense, as here in the CSB, or it could be present tense, “I am not a prophet.” Both the past and present tenses are appropriate. On the one hand, Amos was not a prophet until God called him and gave him a message (v. 15). On the other hand, Amos is not a prophet in the sense that Amaziah meant it: a hireling who peddles his messages for gain (v. 12). Amos earned his bread as a herdsman, not by his prophesying. A son of a prophet refers not to a prophet’s biological son but to a member of a prophetic guild.

Sycamore figs had to be scraped or split in order to ripen properly. Apparently one part of Amos’s occupation was cutting such figs, but we do not know if he did it as a day laborer and was therefore poor or if he actually owned a grove of fig trees.