50 Fun Facts About Book of Amos

Whose Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery carries Amos 5:24, 'until justice rolls down like waters'?

Maya Lin set the line on a granite fountain bearing the names of 41 people killed in the civil rights movement between 1955 and 1968, the wording borrowed from Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech.

Besides herding, which crop did Amos say he gathered when he denied being a prophet's son at Bethel?

Sycamore figs come from a tree the ancient Egyptians prized so highly that some mummy caskets were carved from its wood. Amos added that the LORD took him 'as I followed the flock'.

Amos 1:1 dates his prophecy to 'two years before' which event, traced in an excavation layer in Jerusalem?

An earthquake in the 8th century BC left a layer that archaeologists found in the City of David, matching the book's dating. Zechariah 14:5 still recalled people fleeing it two centuries later.

What did Amos 8:9 say the LORD would make 'go down at noon', a line some link to a 763 BC eclipse?

The sun going down at noon may echo the total eclipse of 15 June 763 BC recorded in Assyrian eponym lists, which passed over Nineveh in the middle of the reign Amos preached under.

Beds of which luxury material, later excavated by the hundred at Samaria's palace, did Amos denounce?

Ivory inlays, some 500 pieces carved with animals, plants and foreign deities, turned up in the palace at Samaria, matching Amos's 'beds of ivory' and his warning that 'the houses of ivory shall perish'.

Which prophet was 'the son of Amoz', a different Hebrew name that English readers often confuse with Amos?

Isaiah son of Amoz was a younger contemporary of Amos in the 8th century BC, and admirers of Amos's style have called him Isaiah's spiritual progenitor.

A man in Amos 5:19 escapes a lion and a bear, leans on a wall at home, and is bitten by what?

A serpent finishes the chain of escapes that fail, Amos's picture of a 'day of the LORD' that no one will slip away from.

Which insects did Amos see the Lord form 'after the king's mowings' in the first of his five visions?

Locusts (the KJV's 'grasshoppers') came at the late growth, the crop left after the king had taken his share, so the threat was total famine. Amos pleaded for Jacob and the LORD relented.

Which builder's tool did Amos see the Lord holding as he stood upon a wall in the third vision?

A plumb line tests whether a wall stands true, and the LORD told Amos he would set one 'in the midst of my people Israel: I will not again pass by them any more'.

Under which king, whose 41-year reign was the northern kingdom's most prosperous, did Amos preach?

Jeroboam II pushed Israel's borders back to 'the entering of Hamath', a boom built on olive oil and wine that Amos saw breeding arrogance and the oppression of the poor.

Which 52-year king of Judah, struck with leprosy for burning incense in the Temple, is named in Amos 1:1?

Uzziah, also called Azariah, took the throne at 16, and Amos's opening verse pairs him with the king of Israel to date the prophecy to the first half of the 8th century BC.

How many chapters has Amos, third of the Twelve in the Hebrew order but second in the Septuagint?

Nine chapters hold the whole book: oracles against the nations in 1–2, sermons in 3–6 and the visions in 7–9, ending with a promise of restoration.

Amos is widely counted as the first prophet to do what with the messages he received?

Write them down is the innovation, and the book is all we know of Amos; admirers of his diction have treated him as the model for those who came after him.

Which image did the northern kingdom's first king set up at Bethel, the shrine Amos denounced, to rival Jerusalem?

A golden calf stood at Bethel and a twin at Dan so that northerners need not travel to Jerusalem, and Amos's priestly opponent calls the shrine 'the king's chapel'.

Because the LORD knew Israel 'only' of all the families of the earth, Amos 3:2 says he will do what?

Punish them 'for all your iniquities' is the conclusion, because being chosen raises the standard rather than waiving it, one of the book's central ideas.

Which neighbour did Amos condemn for burning the bones of the king of Edom into lime?

Moab's crime was an outrage against a corpse rather than against Israel, and Amos promised fire on 'the palaces of Kerioth' in return.

Which king of Aram, whose 'house' Amos said fire would devour, seized Israel's land east of the Jordan?

Hazael turned Aram into an empire ruling much of Syria, and his threshing of Gilead 'with threshing instruments of iron' is the first crime in Amos's oracles against the nations.

Which Philistine city opens Amos's second oracle, accused of handing 'the whole captivity' over to Edom?

Gaza is named first, but Amos spreads the fire to Ashdod, Ashkelon and Ekron too, so that 'the remnant of the Philistines shall perish'.

To which place did Amos say the people of Syria would go captive, the land Amos 9 says they came from?

Kir is where 2 Kings says Tiglath-Pileser did deport the Arameans after taking their capital, and Amos 9:7 names it as the place the LORD had first brought 'the Syrians' from.

From where did Amos 9:7 say the LORD brought the Philistines, just as he brought Israel out of Egypt?

Caphtor is traditionally identified with Crete, and Amos's point is that the Exodus gave Israel no monopoly on divine rescue.

Amos called the pampered women of Samaria the 'kine', or cows, of which region famed for rich pasture?

Bashan's pastures 'were very rich', one commentary notes, and Amos's 'kine' oppress the poor and tell their husbands, 'Bring, and let us drink.'

Which constellation does Amos 5:8 pair with 'the seven stars' as the work of the God Israel must seek?

Orion stands beside the Pleiades, the KJV's 'seven stars', in a hymn fragment that also credits God with turning 'the shadow of death into the morning' and calling up the waters of the sea.

Amos warned those who longed for 'the day of the LORD' that it would be what, 'and not light'?

Darkness, not light, is the twist: Israel expected a day when God would beat its enemies, and Amos made Israel the enemy. The phrase became a staple of later prophetic and apocalyptic writing.

Amos 3:3 opens a run of cause-and-effect riddles: can two walk together unless they have what?

Agreed is the KJV's word; the NIV asks 'unless they have agreed to do so', and the riddles build to the roar of a lion that no one can ignore.

Amos 3:7 says the Lord GOD will do nothing without first revealing his secret to which 'servants'?

The prophets are told first, Amos says, which is why a prophet cannot stay silent: 'the Lord GOD hath spoken, who can but prophesy?'

Which warning closes Amos 4's list of famine, drought, blight and pestilence that Israel ignored?

Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel, follows repeated rounds of 'yet have ye not returned unto me', after hunger, drought, blight, pestilence and an overthrow like Sodom and Gomorrah's.

What euphemism does Amos 4:6 use for the famine the LORD sent to 'all your cities'?

Cleanness of teeth means nothing to chew: it is the first of the disasters Amos lists in chapter 4, each ending 'yet have ye not returned unto me'.

For what did Amos 2:6 say Israel sold the poor, the first charge in the oracle against Israel itself?

A pair of shoes (sandals in modern versions) was the price of a poor man's freedom, paired with selling 'the righteous for silver'; Amos 8:6 repeats the charge.

Which vow-bound abstainers did Amos say Israel plied with wine, alongside silencing God's spokesmen?

Nazirites, sworn off wine and strong drink, were raised up by God as a sign, Amos says, and Israel corrupted them while telling those who spoke for God, 'Prophesy not.'

Amos 6 opens with a woe on those 'at ease' where, alongside those who 'trust in the mountain of Samaria'?

Zion is included so that Judah's elite are condemned with Israel's: both sets of grandees are 'named chief of the nations' and equally complacent.

Who quoted Amos's promise to raise 'the tabernacle of David' at the Acts 15 council on admitting Gentiles?

James, the brother of Jesus, quoted Amos 9:11–12 mostly from the Greek version, then proposed what became known as the Apostolic Decree.

Which speaker in Acts 7 quotes Amos's 'tabernacle of Moloch' charge, moving the exile to 'beyond Babylon'?

Stephen's speech before the Sanhedrin follows the Greek Amos, with 'the star of your god Remphan' for the Hebrew Chiun, the speech that made him the church's first martyr.

Amos twice turned the LORD from judgment by pleading 'by whom shall Jacob arise? for he is' what?

Small is Amos's whole argument, weakness rather than innocence, and twice the text says 'The LORD repented for this' before the third vision closes the door.

What title did the priest of Bethel give Amos, 'O thou ___', when ordering him to flee to Judah?

Seer is the priest's word, and Amos's reply that he was 'no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son' disowns the professional visionary the title implies.

Which two measures did Amos 8:5 accuse merchants of rigging, shrinking one and inflating the other?

The ephah and the shekel were the grain measure and the silver weight, so a short ephah and a heavy shekel cheated buyers twice, on top of 'falsifying the balances by deceit'.

Amos 8:11 foretells 'a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water', but of what?

Hearing the LORD's words will be what people starve for, Amos says, wandering 'from sea to sea' to seek the word and not finding it.

In Amos's closing promise, which worker will 'overtake the reaper' as the mountains drop sweet wine?

The plowman catching the reaper means a harvest so heavy it is still being gathered when the next planting begins, and the treader of grapes likewise overtakes the sower.

Whose 'top' does Amos 1:2 say will wither when the LORD roars and the shepherds' pastures mourn?

Carmel's withering, the lush coastal ridge turning brown, is the first sign of judgment, and Amos returns to it in 9:3 as a hiding place the LORD will search out.

Which king's records claim 27,290 Israelites deported around 720 BC, ending the kingdom Amos had warned?

Sargon II of Assyria finished what Amos foresaw a generation earlier: the deportation cost the northern kingdom a fifth of its people and gave rise to the legend of the Ten Lost Tribes.

Where, in Amos 5, is judgment to be 'established', the same place where the man who rebukes is hated?

In the gate is where a town's elders sat to judge, so to 'hate him that rebuketh in the gate' is to despise honest justice; Amos's cure is 'Hate the evil, and love the good'.

Amos 5:11 warns the rich who built houses of what, trampling the poor, that they would never live in them?

Hewn stone houses and 'pleasant vineyards' will pass to others, Amos says, because they were paid for with 'burdens of wheat' taken from the poor.

Which patriarch's name does Amos 7:9 unusually apply to the northern kingdom, in 'the high places of' whom?

Isaac, normally the quietest patriarch, stands for Israel here and again in 7:16, where the priest's charge is quoted as prophesying against 'the house of Isaac'.

With which planet did Ibn Ezra and Kimchi identify 'Chiun', the star-god named in Amos 5:26?

Saturn is what Chiun means in Arabic and Persian ('Chevan'), the medieval commentators noted, and the Greek Bible turns the name into Rephan or Remphan.

Amos 5:27, captivity 'beyond' Aram's capital, plays a key role in which Essene text from Qumran?

The Damascus Document quotes the verse, and fragments of Amos 5 itself survive among the scrolls in 4Q82, copied around 25 BC.

What did a 1910 dig at Samaria find over a hundred of, recording deliveries of aged wine and refined oil?

Inscribed pottery shards, the Samaria Ostraca, date largely to the reign Amos preached under and record the very trade in oil and wine that bankrolled the luxury he attacked.

Which shrine 'shall surely go into captivity' in Amos 5:5, right before 'Beth-el shall come to nought'?

Gilgal, where Joshua's Israel first camped after crossing the Jordan, had become a rival shrine; some scholars think the memorial circle Joshua raised there was the very sanctuary Amos attacked.

Amos 5:24 asks that judgment 'run down as waters' and righteousness as what?

A mighty stream is the KJV's image for the righteousness Amos demands in place of feasts and offerings, and Martin Luther King Jr. cited the verse in his 'I Have a Dream' speech of August 28, 1963.

Which priest of Bethel accused Amos of conspiracy and ordered him back to Judah to 'eat bread' there?

Amaziah called Bethel 'the king's chapel', and Amos answered that the priest himself would die 'in a polluted land' as Israel went into captivity.

What did Amos see in a basket in his fourth vision, after which the LORD declared 'the end is come'?

Summer fruit at the end of harvest stood for a nation ripe for judgment: 'The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.'

Where did Amos see the Lord stand in the fifth vision, ordering the lintel hit so the posts shook?

Upon the altar, most likely Bethel's, the Lord declares that none will escape: though they dig into hell or climb to heaven, his hand will take them. Amos makes no plea this time.