Amos and Hosea
Great Prophets of the Eighth Century

From: Boadt, L., Reading the Old Testament, ch.16

n.b. This book is among the best and clearest introductions to the whole of Old Testament literature

The Assyrian Rise to Power

The petty border wars between Israel and Judah, and between both of them and their neighbors Damascus, Edom, Moab and the Philistine cities, all pale before the threat posed by the one great superpower in the world between 900 and 600 B.C., Assyria. Located in northern Mesopotamia with its major cities on the Tigris River, Assyria shared the general Babylonian culture but had a fierce tradition of independence from its more cultured and dominant neighbor to the south.

Under a series of strong kings in the ninth century B.C., Assyria began a program of systematic conquest and empire-buildng that spread in all four directions, but especially toward the south to control Babylon, and toward the west to gain access to the forests of Syria and Lebanon which would insure a steady supply of wood for the largely treeless homeland. By the end of the ninth century, Assyrian armies had taken over several small states in Syria and southern Turkey, and placed enough pressure on all the others to force an end to the fighting between northern Israel and Damascus. Those Syrian states that had escaped being totally absorbed as provinces of the Assyrian empire were made vassals who had to pledge loyalty to the Assyrian king as their overlord and pay heavy tribute in money and goods each year. Naturally, subject nations took every opportunity they could to break free, and the strength of the Assyrian empire went up and down with the quality of the king on the throne. Every time an Assyrian king died, nations rebelled; every time a weak king ruled, the small states managed to win back most of their freedom.

But the threat of further Assyrian attacks always remained the major worry in the west. Already in the reigns of Assurnasirpal 2 883-859) and Shalmaneser III 859-824), two of the strongest Assyrian monarchs, the small western nations formed defenses together against the dreaded Assyrian armies. The artwork on the palace walls of Nimrud, the Assyrian capital, shows a bloody enthusiasm for conquest and the humiliation of enemies which made Assyria infamous in the ancient world. Their reputation for barbaric cruelty was well deserved if the excellent wall-carvings of beheaded victims, impaled enemies and trampled corpses can be believed. In a less sickening way, there exists a famous carved pillar from the palace of Shalmaneser, popularly named the "Black Obelisk," which portrays King Jehu of Israel kneeling in humble pleading before the king while offering his annual tribute. This stele can be dated to 841 B.C. and indicates that by that time the northern kingdom was already a vassal of Assyria.

Israel's Age of Prosperity

By the year 800 B.C., Assyrian power weakened and the western states of the Near East enjoyed about fifty years of relief. During this time, both Israel and Judah reached their greatest prosperity since the time of Solomon under two remarkable kings, Jeroboam 2 of Israel and Uzziah of Judah. There was a revival of trade and commerce, towns were rebuilt, Jeroboam was able to extend his control over parts of the kingdom of Damascus, and the number of wealthy citizens increased dramatically, at least if we can believe the archaeological evidence showing that much larger private houses began to appear at this time. A tiny glimpse into the busy and prosperous economic life of Samaria, the capital of Israel, has been provided by the discovery of a number of potsherds in its ruins which list the dates and amounts of shipments containing oil and wine. These "Samaria ostraca" are among the few records of Israel that we have apart from the Bible.

Jeroboam 2 reigned from 786 to sometime about 750 (experts differ anywhere from 753 down to 746 B.C.). Although he brought economic success to the north, a large number of people had names with Baal as part of them. This reveals that the revolt of his greatgrandfather Jehu had not wiped out the Canaanite cults among the people. It is significant that no names with Baal can be found in Judah at this time, where Uzziah (also known as Azariah) came to the throne about the same time 783-742) and also brought about a renewed vigor to the southern kingdom. He rebuilt Solomon's port city on the Red Sea at Eilat and regained control over the Edomites to his East. Near the end of his long reign, he even headed a shortlived coalition of western states who opposed Assyrian armies, but failed to stop their advance into Syria.

It was into this world that our first writing prophets enter, Amos and Hosea in the northern kingdom, Isaiah and Micah in Judah. Of all these, only Amos seems to have begun his prophetic mission before the deaths of the great kings Jeroboam and Uzziah, although it is possible that Hosea began prophesying about 750 also. Each of these four had his own specific message to bring, but each also faced the difficult problems of an age that had known great prosperity, but was now under a renewed pressure from Assyrian power which robbed Israel of independent movement. Beyond this, the prophets to the north also faced a chaotic failure of government in the wake of Jeroboam IFs death. Civil war, assassinations and internal fighting between groups which supported Assyrian policies or opposed any capitulation to them racked the northern state. Both Amos and Hosea could see that the end was not far ahead for a people bent on their own ruin.

The deaths of Jeroboam and Uzziah in the 740's came at the very moment when Assyria regained her power and renewed her push to the west. Angered by the weakness of his country, an Assyrian general revolted and overthrew the current king in 745, and took the throne himself under the name Tiglath-pileser III. It was a name to be remembered. In yearly military campaigns conducted until he was killed in battle against Urartu in 728, Tiglath-pileser conquered one nation after another. He introduced a new terror tactic into Assyrian policy. Instead of attacking a vassal kingdom that rebelled against him and executing only the unfaithful king and replacing him with a new and more friendly king, Tiglath-pileser began holding entire cities responsible if they did not surrender the rebelling king to him. He would often wipe out a whole population or deport them to far-off lands and replace them with peoples conquered in still other parts of his empire.

Under this pressure, Israel experienced six kings in only twenty years after the death of Jeroboam. Four of these were assassinated by opponents, depending on whether those who favored rebellion against Assyria gained or lost the upper hand to those who wanted peaceful submission. At one point, King Menahem rebelled against Assyria in 738, but surrendered and paid a huge ransom to be allowed to retain his throne. In a second revolt in 734, Pekah the new king joined with Damascus to try to stop Assyrian armies in the west but lost badly. As a result, the Assyrians took away three-quarters of Israel's lands and made them into Assyrian provinces directly governed by the king's aides.

Collecting and Editing the Prophet's Words

With the appearance of Amos, we enter the period of Israel's history that is usually called "Classical Prophecy." It gets this name because the writings left by individual prophets became the standard for interpreting Israel's faith by both later Jews and Christians. When trying to capture the spirit of the prophet's thought, readers often assume that every word comes from the prophet himself. Yet the titles of books under individual names such as Amos or Hosea do not imply that they contain just the words of Amos and Hosea, but also words about, and in the tradition of, the prophet. Nor are the oracles and sayings necessarily in the logical or chronological order that we would like. Ancient editors have collected and arranged words spoken by these prophets in an order that seemed important to them but often escapes us. Editors frequently added words taken from disciples of the prophet, or even unknown prophetic words that are similar in theme and which add to the thought of the prophet in whose book they are included. Even more dramatically, later generations who cherished the words of an Amos or Micah occasionally added new applications and comments from their own centuries to the collected words of the long-dead prophet. This was a natural development. Each prophet had faced a specific need in his day, whether it was a certain king's greed or the attack of an Assyrian army or whatever. When kings were no more and Assyrians had long ago become notes in history books, Israel still read the words of the prophets as inspired guides for a new age, but they needed to show that those words now applied to life in exile or without a temple and royal family. It is much the same as when Christians apply the meaning of Jesus' Gospel to problems that never existed in his own time: nuclear war, abortion, test tube babies and others.

The most notable example of this process of editing and expanding the thought of a prophet can be seen in the Book of Isaiah. Careful scholarship has identified three separate collections of oracles, and perhaps more, joined together as one book. Each collection has its own special style and references to dates and events that makes its historical setting in life different from the other two parts. The first and most important grouping is from the great prophet Isaiah himself, found in chapters 1 through 39, and includes oracles and words that he spoke plus several later oracles, such as chapters 24 through 27.

A second major section is found in chapters 40-55. These chapters speak of Babylon rather than Assyria, and hope for a Persian liberator, Cyrus, to come and free Israel from exile. The author uses a distinctive style which mixes hymns of praise with courtroom lawsuits. Whoever this great genius was, he lived some two hundred years after the original Isaiah, and carried the earlier message of trust in a holy God who loved Zion to a terrible new age of exile and total loss of Zion which Israel suffered under the Babylonians in 586 B.C.

The last major division, Is 56-66, makes still a third collection, spoken and kept in the years after Israel was freed from exile by the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, in 539 and had returned to the ruined and desperately poor homeland of Judah. It has a much more somber and penitential mood than Second Isaiah had in chapters 40-55, but at times it also moves to moments of great hope and a vision of the restored glory at Zion that will someday come about, more typical of First Isaiah's message.

We can learn much by paying attention to the different levels in a prophetic book. It helps us understand how God's people heard the oracles of a prophet, kept them, saw new meanings in them as the years went by, and constantly reminded themselves that God's word did not die but lived anew for each generation just as powerfully as when the prophet had first spoken it. Because of this living force of the divine speech, different levels are never seen as different and separated messages, but form a single book where each part helps the reader understand the other parts in a larger vision of history. It creates a dynamic forward motion of the word through time. Proof of the importance of this union of different parts into one whole can easily be seen in the fact that both Jews and Christians have traditionally understood the prophets as messengers of God's promise and hope, predicters of future restoration, even though most of the words are judgment and damnation and warnings of destruction. Why is this? Because a combination of words from several periods of time reveals not a single final judgment, but a record of God's mercy which returns again and again to speak to Israel in new ways.

Amos: Prophet of God's Justice

The first thing we discover about prophets is that they tell us almost nothing about themselves. Generally the books reveal little beyond when a prophet spoke and to whom. The message was everything, the messenger very little. Amos was no exception. The book notes that he came from a small village named Tekoa in Judah to preach in the northern kingdom at the shrine of Bethel, and that he was not a professional prophet attached to some temple but a farmer and herdsman by trade. Chapter 7 gives a single biographical incident from his life when he is challenged by the royal priest of Bethel about his right to prophesy. Amos protests that he had not chosen to come so far from home to preach; on the contrary, God had forced this mission upon him: "I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet! I am a herdsman and a tender of sycamore figs, and the Lord brought me from behind the flock and said to me: Go! Prophesy to my people in Israel" (Am 7:14-15). Amos then delivers strong words of judgment against both the king and the people of northern Israel: you shall lose your land and be sent into exile and your leaders shall be killed. Amaziah the priest is naturally unhappy with these words and warns Amos to leave and make his living prophesying in his own country, but he never challenges Amos' claim that God was speaking through him. Clearly the political division between north and south did not mean that the two kingdoms rejected the idea that they were still one people of Yahweh.

Since Amos makes little reference to the terror of Assyrian attack, he probably lived just before the rise of Tiglath-pileser III, perhaps in the period from 760 to 745. If we can learn little about the personality of the prophet himself, we can at least find out what he thought by the examination of his oracles. The book contains numerous individual messages delivered on different occasions. It has an order, but it is not one that attracts modern readers. It does not follow the oracles in order of time from earliest to latest, nor does it collect all the words on one subject or theme together in one chapter and then move on to new topics. It rather moves in dramatic fashion from a large scale condemnation of the evil in other nations (chapter 1), to the terrible injustice and evil found in Israel (chapters 2-6), to visions of the divine punishment coming upon the people (chapters 7-9).

The basic message of Amos stresses God's moral rule over the entire world and the divine demands for justice and concern for the outcast or oppressed. Amos has a surprising universalism in his outlook. God cares for every nation: "Are you not like the people of Ethiopia to me, O Israel, says the Lord. Did I not lead Israel out from the land of Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?" (Am 9:7).

And yet, since God has specially chosen Israel and entered into a relationship of knowing and loving them, he holds the nation particularly responsible for a just and upright way of life. "You only have I known among all the families of the earth; therefore I am going to punish you for all your wickedness" (3:2). Amos connects

the injustice he sees around him to a society bent on wealth and prosperity and forgetful of the true worship of God. No more powerful condemnation has been spoken than Amos' first words against Israel: "... they sell the just person for money and the poor for a pair of shoes, and trample the heads of the impoverished into the dust of the ground and shove the afflicted aside on the road; a man and his father sleep with the same slave girl so that my holy name is profaned... and drink wine in God's house taken from those who are in their debt" (Am 2:6-8). He condemns the selfish luxury of the women of the nobility: "You cows of Bashan, who live on the mount of Samaria, who oppress the poor, crush the needy, and demand of their husbands, 'Bring more drink!'" (Am 4:1). He lashes out at the merchants who can hardly wait until the sabbath ends so that they can make "the ephah small and the shekel great and use false weights to cheat people; that we may buy the poor for money and the impoverished for a pair of sandals and sell worthless wheat" (Am 8:5-6).

Amos and the Tradition of Prophetic Language

Although Amos never mentions the ten commandments by name, his charges reflect them in every chapter. The people violate all the demands that God has made upon them in the great covenant on Mount Sinai. His words touch moral failure in every level of society: the law, the leadership, the economic life, and even worship. Northern Israel is a people confident that God will protect them no matter what they do because of the covenant bonds between them and God. But Amos understands it differently. He speaks again and again of the times that they have suffered attacks from their enemies and natural disasters in punishment for their evil ways and yet remain unmoved (Am 3:3-8; Am 4:6-13), he sings a mock funeral song over the people to warn them of their coming death (Am 5:1-5), and he attacks their most cherished liturgical celebrations. In a moving passage (Am 5:18-20), he flatly contradicts the hope proclaimed on their feast days that Yahweh will be a warrior God who will fight for Israel against all of its enemies on a great day of victory and light. Instead, the "Day of the Lord" they celebrate and hope for will be a day when God will turn on them and destroy them for their sins. And he has no use for worship and sacrifices that are empty and meaningless: "Take away from me the noise of your festal songs, I will not listen to the melody of your harps; rather let justice flow down like a stream of water, and uprightness like an ever-flowing river" (Am 5:23-24).

Because the picture of faithlessness to the covenant seemed so bleak to him, Amos was forced to use strong language to shock people out of their pride and complacent attitudes. He borrows the language of battle and cursing from ancient traditions, and warns of cities engulfed in flames, houses smashed, women and children led away with hooks in their noses, corpses left unburied and rotting, the land devastated and abandoned. Amos realizes that God does not stand idly by and watch evil go on. The political moves of Assyria and its fearful military victories are not accidents of history but permitted and directed by God to punish Israel. His is not a message full of hope. Amos once or twice raises the possibility that Israel could turn back to God and find forgiveness (see Am 3:9-11, 5:4-5, and especially 7:2-6). But mostly he holds out little hope, and sees a time when God will save only a tiny remnant without much promise as the sign of his loyalty to this people, "as the shepherd rescues two legs or a piece of an ear from the mouth of the lion" (Am 3:12).

There is a tremendous amount of drama and imagery in Amos' use of prophetic language. Chapter 1 is an excellent example. One can almost feel the people of Bethel swelling with pride as the prophet denounces one foreign power after another. Six times Amos thunders out Yahweh's judgment against an enemy people- Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, etc.; then he turns on a seventh- Judah. That seemed close to home, but, after all, the southerners deserved punishment since they did oppose most of what the north did. Suddenly, the prophet continues: "For three sins of Israel and for four, I will not revoke punishment against them" (Am 2:6). Such was not supposed to be. Prophets were to condemn and give judgment against others, but not to turn on one's own. Amos knows how to make his point vividly.

Amos and the Radical New Direction of Prophecy

Since the Book of Amos breaks new ground in Israelite history, scholars have long puzzled over what led him to preach in this new way. One important reason for Amos' new directions came from his background in the rural lands of Judah. He may have learned his faith from the teaching of the elders and heads of the villages in his native area around Tekoa. It was "clan wisdom," passed on by the father or village elder according to traditional ways and using ancient proverbs and sayings. The Book of Amos shares with the wisdom writings of the Old Testament a love for rhetorical questions, illustrations from nature, and the conviction that God deals with other nations in the same way as he does with Israel. It is a broader perspective than local loyalty alone; it draws on older reflections that have been passed down for centuries. By looking through the Book of Proverbs, a person can easily detect the similarity of themes and outlook found there to the words of Amos. Pr 16:11 and Pr 20:23 condemn injustice; Pr 14:31, Pr 22:22 and Pr 30:14 condemn oppression of the poor and needy; Pr 15:8 opposes empty cultic worship; Pr 21:17 and Pr 31:4-5 warn against luxury. Amos addresses the people of the north with a wisdom that they have forgotten, namely that the covenant with Yahweh was a way of life that involved the ethical behavior of individual to individual, and that it was based on a covenant law that had to be learned at home if it was to have effect in the market or palace or temple.

Scholars have also wondered what caused people to begin to preserve the actual words of the prophet for future generations just at this time when they had never bothered to do so for earlier men such as Elijah. Apparently, the major reason for keeping his words lies in the fact that they were addressed not to the king or to an individual priest but to the whole people. Amos strikes out in a new direction. No longer will God punish only the king or leader for a nation's evil, but he will hold the people as a whole responsible. Perhaps Amos imitated the new policies set up by Tiglath-pileser III when he held entire cities guilty of rebellion if their king rebelled. God's covenant wasn't just with the leaders representing the people, but was with all the people of Israel equally, and all must bear the task of keeping that covenant alive.

Those who collected the words of Amos and their harsh warnings of divine judgment added on a small oracle in Am 9:11-15 which ends the book on a note of hope and promise. This short message picks up many of the themes found earlier about the depopulated and devastated land of Israel and looks ahead to a day when they shall be restored. It may not be from Amos himself, but it reflects later belief that Amos' message held out the hope that after punishment God's mercy and forgiveness will again bring blessing to Israel.

Hosea and the Knowledge of God

We know as little about Hosea as we do about Amos. He was born and raised and preached in the northern kingdom all his life, unlike Amos, and so he is unique among the prophets whose words have come down to us since he alone represents the thinking of a purely northern prophet. The opening label in Ho 1:1 tells us that he worked from about 745 down to at least the fall of the north in 722 B.C. and perhaps longer. This makes him a younger contemporary of Amos, and they do share a common passion for the commandments of the covenant. From the personal details in chapters 1-3, it seems that he experienced a very painful marriage in which his wife proved unfaithful on more than one occasion. If the story reflects his real-life situation, then it may help us to understand the special emphasis that this prophet gives to the tender bond of love between God and Israel and how seriously sin affects the covenant relationship. But Hosea, like all the prophets, uses a colorful language that shares images and words with the psalms and treaty curses and the law courts, and it is just possible, though unlikely, that he used a parable of married love to get across the revelation he had received from Yahweh without ever having been through the great trial himself.

The book is divided into three sections:

(A) Ho 1-3 describe in different ways the broken marriage between God and his people and serve as a kind of preface to the rest of the book.

(B) Ho 4-13 gather the actual oracles delivered by Hosea throughout his ministry.

When considered as a whole, Hosea preaches the same message of judgment that Amos uttered, listing the violations of justice and the oppression of the poor, pointing to the broken commandments and calling for a return to covenant fidelity and obedience to God. But there are many differences as well. Hosea brings out the compassion of Yahweh and his sorrow at having to punish Israel for its sins much more than does Amos. He really hopes that Israel will return to the Sinai covenant, and he uses many images taken from the desert wanderings to recall people's memory to Yahweh. He also borrows freely from the language of the law case and the courtroom to demand that Israel live up to its legal duty in the covenant.

All of this is summarized beautifully in the opening oracle of the collection that comprises chapters 4-13:

Hear the word of the Lord, people of Israel.

The Lord has a lawsuit against the inhabitants of this land.

There is neither fidelity nor loving compassion,
and no knowledge of God in the land.

There is instead swearing oaths, lying, killing, stealing and adultery;
there is violence and murder upon murder.

Therefore the land fails and all its inhabitants perish;
even wild beasts, birds of the air, and the fish in the sea die (Ho 4:1-3).

Not only does the prophet recite most of the ten commandments here, but he also singles out three special covenant qualities that cannot be found anywhere: fidelity, loving compassion and the knowledge of God. Of these, the most important for Hosea is knowing God. This does not refer to book learning or memorizing the laws and the history of the exodus, but to personal relationship. We really understand those who are close to us - I know my friend well, or my wife, my husband, my child, my parent. This realization leads Hosea to utter very strong words against the kings, nobles, priests and other prophets who are in special positions and should know God and God's will more deeply than most. It also leads him to some of the strongest oracles in the Bible against an empty and vain church-going in which a person continues to sin and do evil while never missing a sabbath or a feast day. He pleads in Yahweh's name: "I desire loving compassion and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God and not burnt offerings" (Ho 6:6).

Such infidelity to the real meaning of the covenant is like sexual perversion or the breaking of marriage vows: "I will not punish your daughters when they play the prostitute, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go in to prostitutes and make sacrifices with cult harlots; and a people who lack understanding shall come to ruin" (Ho 4:14). "The spirit of a harlot is in them and they do not know the Lord" (Ho 5:4). "In the house of Israel I have seen a terrible thing: Ephraim the harlot, Israel defiling herself (Ho 6:10).

Hosea blames this rebellion against the very heart of God's covenant on Israel's selfishness and its forgetting. The nation is so tied up in what it can get for itself right now that it throws aside all that God has done and abandons him for the pleasures and profits offered by pagan gods and peoples. Their behavior is stupid and senseless and will only bring them to ruin. "Ephraim is like a dove, silly and senseless" (Ho 7:11), says the prophet as he calls tenderly to the people of Israel by their old tribal name of Ephraim (the place where the capital city of Samaria was located). He laments: "They sow the wind and shall reap the whirlwind" (Ho 8:7). "Ephraim herds the wind and pursues the east wind all day long" (Ho 12:1). "Your love is like the cloud at dawn, like the dew that disappears early in the day" (Ho 6:4). The emptiness in what they do seems so clear to Hosea.

The Prophet of Divine Compassion

Yet God does not forget Israel nor lose the hope of recovering its love again! "What shall I do with you, Ephraim? What shall I do with you, Judah? I would restore the fortunes of my people" (Ho 6:4, 11).

How can I give you up, Ephraim,
or hand you over, Israel?
How can I make you like Admah
or treat you like Zeboiim?
My heart retreats within me,
my compassion burns with tenderness.
I will not punish you in anger
or destroy Ephraim again.
For I am God and not a human person,
the Holy One among you;

I will not come to destroy (Ho 11:8-9).

Such deep feeling for God's love of Israel leads the prophet to picture Yahweh watching over his people like a father over his young son in Ho 11, and like a husband in love with a flighty and unfaithful wife in Ho 1-3, This latter image becomes the key to Hosea's message and has been placed at the beginning of the book to emphasize how important an idea it is. It is presented in three different ways in each of the three chapters. Ho 1 tells a story of Hosea taking a prostitute for a wife and raising three children by her whose symbolic names tell the parallel story of Israel's infidelity: "Jezreel," to recall King Jehu's battle in the Jezreel Valley against the cult of the god Baal; "Not-pitied," to show that God has withdrawn his forgiveness; and "Not my people," to reveal the final breakdown of the covenant itself. Ho 2 contains an oracle which describes Israel as a prostitute in vivid words of judgment, and Ho 3 gives a first-person account of Hosea's return to his wife as a promise that God will once more return and forgive Israel.

Hosea's theology grew out of a firm belief that God had chosen Israel and blessed her with his love and saving acts of kindness at the exodus and that this love had continued unbroken right up to the prophet's own time. But this covenant in love was not merely a legal arrangement with duties on both sides; it was a truly personal relationship that carried far deeper obligations of love and concern for one another. It endures freely and despite setbacks. It requires trust and "knowing" on the part of Israel. Yet Hosea paints a bleak picture of the distrust, instability, idolatry and evil practices seen everywhere in the last days of the northern kingdom. To try to reverse this direction in Israel's life, Hosea pointed out the many acts of love done by God in the past, and the equally large number of rebellions on the part of Israel over the years. He points out that even a God who is a loving husband or father can also discipline a child to bring it back to its senses. At the same time, the punishment that surely lay ahead for this stubborn people was always balanced by God's willingness to turn around and forgive them. Where Amos had seen little chance for Israel, Hosea almost begged the people to give God a try.

Hosea boldly proposed his marriage imagery. Probably he was fighting directly against the religious practices of the followers of the Canaanite god Baal who regularly slept with temple priestesses hoping to win over the god's favor and gain fertile or healthy new children for the year ahead by means of the sexual rites. He could see the effects of this apostasy on the morals of society as injustice and dishonesty increased. On top of this, his own personal pain and anguish made the rejection of God seem all the more searing to him. Hosea lived in a time of crisis and no doubt saw one king after another change loyalties for and against Assyria, saw the violence of assassination destroy the inner spirit of the country, and watched as little by little the Assyrians conquered and deported parts of the kingdom until the capital itself went down in flames in 722. To his eye, trained to see the hand of God at work, all this disaster stemmed from the loss of their religious loyalty and faith. A healthy covenant people, living up to the commandments of the Lord, would never have fallen into such heedless and self-destructive ways.

Hosea failed to change the fate of Israel, but his words captured so powerfully the enduring meaning of the covenant and the tension between human sin and the search for God's love that they have become a treasured source of reflection for both the Jewish and Christian communities ever since.

Isaiah of Jerusalem

While Amos and Hosea prophesied in the north, Isaiah, son of Amoz, was active in the kingdom of Judah. Isaiah began his ministry sometime after 740 and continued down to at least the year 700. The book under his name is the largest work of prophecy in the Bible, and naturally also the richest in prophetic thought. As noted earlier, its sixty-six chapters grew over several centuries, and we must search for the life and work of the original Isaiah of Jerusalem only in the first thirty-nine chapters of the present book. Even in these chapters, scholars believe that many passages come from much later times.