The Prophets and Their Message

What you need to know

• Amos was a herdsman of Tekoa in Judah and a dresser of sycamore trees, with no prophetic training, who was sent north to Israel in the prosperous reign of Jeroboam II. His outsider status is part of his message: God can call anyone.
• Amos attacked the social sins of a wealthy society: selling the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, trampling the poor, taking bribes in the gate, dishonest scales, and luxury built on oppression.
• He rejected the worship of Bethel and Gilgal outright, saying God hated their feasts and would not accept their offerings, and called instead for justice to roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24).
• Amos received a series of visions, including locusts, fire, the plumb line and the basket of summer fruit, each showing that Israel had been measured and found wanting. He also warned that the Day of the LORD the people longed for would be darkness and not light.
• Amaziah the priest of Bethel reported Amos to the king and ordered him to go back to Judah and earn his bread there. Amos replied that he was no prophet nor a prophet's son but a herdsman whom the LORD took from following the flock, and pronounced judgement on Amaziah's household.
• Hosea prophesied in the north around the same period, and his own marriage to Gomer became his sermon: her unfaithfulness pictured Israel's unfaithfulness to God and her redemption pictured God's refusal to abandon His people. The names of his children carried the same message, since Jezreel recalled a bloody dynasty and coming judgement, Lo-Ruhamah meant not pitied and Lo-Ammi meant not my people, and those names are later reversed as a promise of restoration.
• Hosea's central charge was that Israel had gone after the Baals, treating the fertility gods as the source of grain, wine and oil. His remedy was knowledge of God and steadfast love rather than sacrifice (Hosea 6:6).
• Isaiah son of Amoz prophesied in Judah and received his call in the year that King Uzziah died, seeing the LORD high and lifted up in the temple, with seraphim calling out that He is holy, holy, holy. Overwhelmed by his own uncleanness, he was touched on the lips with a live coal from the altar and answered the divine question with the words, here am I, send me.
• Isaiah's recurring themes are the holiness of God, the folly of trusting Egypt or Assyria instead of God, the survival of a faithful remnant, and the coming of a righteous ruler. The sign of Immanuel in Isaiah 7:14 and the child described in Isaiah 9:6 are read by Christians as pointing to Christ, as is the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.
• Isaiah 1 is the clearest Old Testament statement that ritual without repentance disgusts God: He is tired of their sacrifices and new moons, and tells them to wash themselves, stop doing evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless and plead for the widow.
• Jeremiah of Anathoth, from a priestly family, was called while still young and objected that he could not speak; God touched his mouth and appointed him over nations, to pluck up and to break down, to build and to plant. He prophesied from the reign of Josiah until after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 or 586 BC.
• In the temple sermon of Jeremiah 7 he stood at the gate and told worshippers not to trust in the repeated slogan that this was the temple of the LORD, since a building cannot shelter people who steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely and burn incense to Baal. He pointed to the ruin of Shiloh as a warning.
• Jeremiah taught by symbolic action: the spoiled linen waistcloth, the potter reworking the marred clay, the broken earthen flask at the Valley of Hinnom, the wooden and iron yokes, and the purchase of the field at Anathoth as a sign that houses and fields would again be bought in the land. He was beaten and put in the stocks by Pashhur, saw King Jehoiakim cut up and burn his scroll, which Baruch rewrote, and was lowered into a muddy cistern before being rescued.
• Jeremiah's greatest contribution is the promise of a new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34, written on the heart rather than on stone, under which each person would know the LORD directly and sin would be forgiven and remembered no more.