AMOS

In Amos we possibly have the earliest of the prophets whose writings have come down to us. He, with Hosea, lived in the reigns of Uzziah and Jeroboam II.; but while to Hosea the Northern Kingdom is tottering to its fall, Amos sees a powerful and prosperous monarchy, the strong hand of Jeroboam evidently still grasping the helm. Affliction is to fall on Israel 'from the entering in of Hamath to the river of the wilderness' (vi. 14). These were the limits of Jeroboam's kingdom, the widest extent attained since the golden days of Solomon (2 Kings xiv. 25). By Amos the agent of punishment is unnamed; on Hosea it is borne in that it is to be Assyria. The reference to the earthquake (i. 1, cp. Zech. xiv. 5) gives no further help as to the date as it would do to the earliest readers, but confirms the view, which is otherwise probable, that the prophecy was published at once as a complete whole.

Unlike most, possibly all, of the prophets, Amos is no member of a prophetic guild. The wind blows where it listeth, so the Holy Spirit saw in this simple herdman an instrument fitted for His work. Yet though Amos was untrained in the schools, though he draws his illustrations from the simple sights of the fields and the hills, there is nothing rude or uncultured in his language. He lacks the stately grandeur of Isaiah, but his language flows in beautiful, simple cadence. His outdoor life brought home to him a fund of illustrations-the lion assailing the flock (iii. 12), the plowman (ix. 12), the reaper (ibid.), the treader of the grapes (ibid.), the aftermath of hay (vii. 1), the cart laden with sheaves at harvest home (ii. 13), the locusts devastating the rich vineyards and oliveyards (vi. 9), and when in the course of a shepherd's care he lay on the hills at night, the Pleiades and Orion fixed his gaze (v. 8), till God 'turned the deep darkness into the morning' (v. 8).

His home, Tekoa, was doubtless the village about ten miles south of Jerusalem, where once dwelt the wise woman whom Joab made his tool (2 Sam. xiv.). It has been thought that the high rocky side of Tekoa would be unsuitable for the growth of sycomores (vii. 14), but no other place is known of the name. Thus Amos is a Judæan, with a message primarily and mainly to the Northern Kingdom.

The prophecy may best be grouped into three leading divisions. First, the threat of doom on various nations bordering on Israel, culminating with Israel itself, so privileged and yet apostate to its God (i. 1-ii. 16). Three discourses follow, invectives we may call them, with the heading, 'Hear ye this word,' which dwell on the evils crying for God's judgment, idolatry, luxury, oppression of the poor, while warning after warning has passed unheeded (iii. I-vi. 14). Lastly, come a series of five visions (vii. I-ix. 10), the symbolism of which may teach when direct protests have failed. Amid these is inserted the account of the visit of Amos to Beth-el, carrying there the message of God's judgment, as an earlier prophet at the same spot in the days of Jeroboam I. Throughout all the varied strain of threat and appeal, of direct address and symbolism of vision, a striking unity of aim is apparent, God's judgment on sinful Israel. Yet from the midst of the gloom of darkness shines forth the Messianic hope (ix. 11 f.), when God will build up the tabernacle of David as in the days of old.

Though Hosea and Amos are charged with the same message, there is a marked difference between them, and we can well fancy two very different types of men-Amos, full of burning

zeal, full of the thought that, far from being merely the God of Israel, Jehovah was the God of all the earth, and Israelite sinners held no more favoured position than the Gentiles; Hosea moved and shaken with strong emotion for his people, so that we could almost fancy him saying with St. Paul, 'I could wish to be Anathema for my brethren's sake.'

Although in Amos we have our first writing prophet, yet the finish of his style and the nature of his teaching presupposes a line of prophets before him; a definite Divine teaching, and a theological phraseology, may we say, underlies his utterance. On the nature of the knowledge he shows of the Pentateuch we cannot here speak. Yet through whatever shaping the latter may have passed to its present form, there are unmistakable traces of a knowledge of it on the part of Amos. A striking instance is ii. 8, compared with Exod. xxii. 26, a law of a special kind, and there are numerous passages referring to events and usages recorded in the Books of Moses.

Uttered though it was some seven-and-twenty centuries ago, the Book of Amos appeals in a very striking way to present-day Society. History repeats itself: the evils against which the prophet inveighed might be seen in full in the later days of the Roman Empire, in the France of Louis XIV., but never in more startling guise than in the Christendom of the present dayextremes of wealth and poverty grievously accentuated, the pursuit of pleasure and luxury treated as the supreme end of life by many, embittered struggles between capital and labour, and with it all a fading of the recognition of One above all Who sees and judges-such evils, reproducing those of an earlier day, should warn the nations that obstinate refusal to attend to God's message must be again to invoke the same doom.

OBADIAH

This short prophecy falls naturally into three divisions: vv. 1-9 proclaim the doom coming on Edom, while vv. 10-16 declare that its unbrotherly conduct towards Israel was the cause of its destruction. Yet (vv. 17-21) Israel itself, after all its sufferings, shall be restored, and shall possess the territory of Edom and its other foes.

As to the date of the prophecy, there exists a wide difference of opinion, some critics seeing in it a pre-Exilic portion joined to a post-Exilic one; and, in any case, a comparison of vv. 1-6, 8, with Jer. xlix. 7-16 shows that either one prophet has borrowed from the other, or that both have drawn from some earlier writing.

It seems to us that what is said of Jerusalem (vv. 10-16) can only refer to its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar. The doom pronounced on Edom fell stroke after stroke. It suffered first at the hand of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. xxvii. 3 f.), and, in later times, more severely from Judas Maccabæus and John Hyrcanus. It may be thought that, on this view of the date, its position so high up among 'the Twelve' is strange, but perhaps the editors viewed it as an expansion of the promise in Amos ix. 12.

The prophecy of Obadiah has always been a special favourite with the Jews. They realise, what indeed is plain, that the prophecy has yet to receive its true fulfilment; and they see in it a typical reference to Rome. To them the Edomites represent Christians, at whose hands in earlier ages they suffered so terribly.

JONAH

Alone among the books of the prophets, Jonah is essentially a narrative teaching by means of an object-lesson. It does not claim to be the work of Jonah, and may be due to a writer setting forth his story afterwards. How far the record is absolutely historical, and how far it has been idealised with a view to bringing out its lesson, we cannot here discuss; yet clearly, unless we are prepared to discard altogether the belief in miracles, the special wonder of the Book of Jonah should not be allowed to condemn it as unhistorical. Still, whatever view we hold as to the historical character of the book, its main purpose is plain. It is to teach that Jehovah is no mere tribal deity, not the God of Israel only, but of all nations, and that they too are embraced in the scheme of His mercy. It is worth noting that in the Book of Tobit (xiv. 4, 8) Jonah's prophecy as to Nineveh is twice referred to as fact, and not as parable. The date of Tobit is very uncertain, but Ewald and Bishop Westcott assign it to about 350 В.С.

Our Lord twice speaks of the Book of Jonah in terms which would seem to show that He viewed it as real history. The period of Jonah's entombment in the belly of the sea-monster foreshadowed the period during which our Lord was to remain in the grave: the repentance of the Ninevites was to be a condemnation of the men who heard unmoved the teaching of a greater than Jonah.

The only other mention of Jonah in the O.T. is one which tells of his prophecy of the extension of the limits of the kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam II. to nearly its old extent in the golden days of Solomon. It is worthy of note