Amos I

AMOS. I. The Book.—Like others of the Prophetic books of the Old Testament, the Book of Amos is a compilation which probably reached its present form long after the time of the prophet whose words it enshrines. We can trace the usual three types of source: (a) oracular matter, comprising most of this book; (b) reminiscences either written or dictated by the prophet himself, usually in prose (vii. 1-8, viii. 1-3, ix. 1-4)—these are accounts of the prophet's intercourse with his God while in the familiar condition of "ecstasy"; and (c) narrative by a third per son describing an event in the life of the prophet (vii. 10-17) . The passages under heading (a) consist of short, sometimes frag mentary, sections, each embodying an individual and.separate mes sage ; some of them seem to be snatches from hymns of praise, which may or may not be the work of Amos himself (e.g., v. 7,8-9), and the final compiler seems to have appended to his collection a hopeful section by a later hand (ix. 8b-15), which was intended to tone down the uniform gloom of the prophet's predictions. Possibly the prophet himself was responsible for the arrangement of the oracles on the nations (i. 3–ii. 7a) ; if not, then the compiler of this section shows a rhetorical and dramatic power not unlike that of the prophet himself.

The Man.

Amos,whose activity is to be dated about 76o B.C. (viii. 9 suggests that Amos had experienced the eclipse of 763), was a native of Tekoa, in southern Judah. He belonged therefore, to a social order which still remained largely pastoral, and, though he knew the agricultural and commercial life of cen tral Palestine and its cities, he approached it as an outsider. He himself lived the life of the semi-nomad, accustomed to the wide spaces of the southern hills, where the appearance of two travel lers together was a rarity to be explained only on the ground that they had planned to journey together. He knew the habits of the lion, the bear, the birds, the snakes, and of those who hunted them or feared them. Though clearly an "ecstatic" (Heb. nabi'), he in dignantly repudiated the suggestion that he belonged to the pro fessional party of "prophets" whose interference in politics had produced a revolution zoo years before his time. But he had the clearness of insight which comes from lonely communion with nature, and he had, too, the intense conviction that it was the word of his God that he had to deliver.

His Message.

Since the days of David, Israel had been growing steadily out of the old nomad social and economic order into that of a commercial and agricultural state. Such a transition is always attended with risks, and these had become most obvious in the century preceding Amos. The old system of small proprie tors, prevalent up to the middle of the gth century, had given way to large estates worked by serf or slave labour. The result was a national emasculation, and the means by which the change was produced involved not only a failure to appreciate the demands of humanity, but also commercial immorality and shameless judicial corruption. Popular religion, to some extent inherited from the Canaanites, gave no help ; on the contrary it condemned the would-be reformer (vii. Io seq.), and its methods and ritual proved to be diametrically opposite to the real interests of moral ity. On the one hand, Amos found extravagant luxury, jingoism and oppression ; on the other a proletariat from whom all viril ity had been crushed. Such a state could not hope to survive.

Unlike the Rechabites, who stood for a return to the simpler conditions of the nomad stage, Amos had no social programme to offer. Instead, he called men back to the God of their fathers, and insisted that the nation could find safety only in moral and spir itual reform. He presented men with a God who was essentially Law, acting not by casual whim but on invariable principle. To him the God of Israel was the Lord of creation, of history and of universal morality, and His supreme demand was for justice. That alone could save the people from t heir impending fate, for that alone would admit in practice the rights of human personality. The supreme contribution of Amos to the world's religious think ing was that he insisted that God is good.

Among English works on Amos the most advanced is Harper's Commentary (Internat. Crit. Comm.), to which should be added Driver's Joel and Amos and Sir G. A. Smith's Twelve Prophets. More recent work of a popular type is to be found in J. E. McFadyen's Cry for Justice and the chapter on this book in Prophecy and the Prophets in the Old Testament by T. H. Robinson, who has also published a translation in colloquial English. (T. H. R.) AMOSITE, a variety of asbestos characteristic of a definite geological horizon in the Lydenburg and Pietersburg districts of the north-eastern Transvaal; it possesses well developed fibrous structure and the colours range through greys and whites to yellowish greys. The material is a silicate of iron containing also magnesia and lime or soda. The deposits contain a high percentage of long fibres; spinning stock 4-7in. in length is common and lengths up to 1 1 in. have been observed. The name is derived from the synthetic word Amosa, made by combining the initial letters of the name of one of the principal producing companies, Asbestos Mines of South Africa; the term was suggested as a distinctive trade name by A. L. Hall (Geol. Survey, Union of South Africa) in recognition of the distinctive characteristics of the fibre.