¶ … Amos is one of the Twelve Minor Prophets of the Tanakh, and was active in the 8th century before Christ -- he is roughly contemporary in that century with the other Hebrew prophets Isaiah, Hosea, and Micah. Although in the opening chapters, Amos prophesies divine vengeance for a number of foreign nations -- including Damascus, Tyre, Edom, and Moab -- perhaps the biggest single shock for the reader comes at Chapter 2 verses 6 through 8, when Amos prophesies divine vengeance upon Israel itself. The text of this passage reads: Thus says the Lord:

For three transgressions of Israel,

and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;

because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals

they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way;

father and son go in to the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned;

they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge;

and in the house of their God they drink wine bought with fines they imposed. (Amos 2:6-8, NRSV)

As occurs so frequently in the Old Testament, the behavior of the people of Israel has demonstrated a violation of their covenant with Yahweh. Reading this passage in light of recent Biblical commentaries on the Book of Amos will give us a sense of what Amos's true concern is in his prophesy, which is social justice.

As we begin...

Amos has pronounced seven consecutive oracles dealing with different nations, all of which are competitors or enemies of Israel. But as Douglas Stuart notes in his commentary on the book, these seven foregoing prophecies are all, to some extent, a preparation for the shock of Amos 2:6-8, where (in Stuart's words)
Yahweh's judgment will not be limited to nations whose destruction would be welome news to the people of Israel. The eighth and final oracle includes yet another foreign nation. Israel herself, guilty among the other Syro-Palestinian criminal nations, is placed at the climactic point in the compound of oracles and is excoriated in far more detail than any of them. (Stuart 316)

This is not to diminish the gravity of divine judgment upon other nations in the previous six oracles delivered by Amos. But it does help us to understand that there is something dramatic (for want of a better word) occurring in the opening two chapters of the book. The prophet begins by denouncing foreign nations, but then "the penultimate Judah oracle ... mentions covenant-breaking and idolatry," in Stuart's words, which seems to give a foreshadowing of the shock of verses 6-8, where "Israel has condemned itself to rejection by Yahweh as a foreign people" (Stuart 316). In other words, Israel has become so alienated from its core principles as defined…