Amos 3

¹ Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up out of the land of Egypt, saying:

² “I have chosen only you of all the families of the earth. Therefore I will punish you for all of your sins.”

³ Do two walk together, unless they have agreed?

⁴ Will a lion roar in the thicket, when he has no prey? Does a young lion cry out of his den, if he has caught nothing?

⁵ Can a bird fall in a trap on the earth, where no snare is set for him? Does a snare spring up from the ground, when there is nothing to catch?

⁶ Does the trumpet alarm sound in a city, without the people being afraid? Does evil happen to a city, and the LORD hasn’t done it?

⁷ Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, unless he reveals his secret to his servants the prophets.

⁸ The lion has roared. Who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken. Who can but prophesy?

⁹ Proclaim in the palaces at Ashdod, and in the palaces in the land of Egypt, and say, “Assemble yourselves on the mountains of Samaria, and see what unrest is in her, and what oppression is among them.”

¹⁰ “Indeed they don’t know to do right,” says the LORD, “Who hoard plunder and loot in their palaces.”

¹¹ Therefore the Lord GOD says: “An adversary will overrun the land; and he will pull down your strongholds, and your fortresses will be plundered.”

¹² The LORD says: “As the shepherd rescues out of the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be rescued who sit in Samaria on the corner of a couch, and on the silken cushions of a bed.”

¹³ “Listen, and testify against the house of Jacob,” says the Lord GOD, the God of Armies.

¹⁴ “For in the day that I visit the transgressions of Israel on him, I will also visit the altars of Bethel; and the horns of the altar will be cut off, and fall to the ground.

¹⁵ I will strike the winter house with the summer house; and the houses of ivory will perish, and the great houses will have an end,” says the LORD.

Around Amos 3

Context

Context for this book is being written. A note appears here only once it names its sources.

AI explanation

About Amos as a whole · Written by an AI model · Not reviewed by a theological reader

This explanation was written by an AI model to help you get started. It names no sources and can contain mistakes. Scripture comes first, and context with sources is shown separately on this page.

What this book is about

He says plainly who he is: “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son”. Amos is a herdsman and tender of fig trees, sent from Judah to the northern kingdom at the height of its wealth. He announces judgment on the surrounding nations, and the hearers nod along. Then, to their shock, he turns on Israel itself. The rich crush the poor, the courts are corrupt, and worship goes on as if nothing were wrong.

A series of visions shows that the end is near. The book’s last verses promise that the fallen house of David will be raised again. Between the warning and the promise sits one of the most famous lines in the prophets: “let justice roll on like rivers, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Background

Amos was a herdsman and tender of fig trees from Tekoa, south of Jerusalem. He spoke around 760 before Christ, a generation before Assyria ended the northern kingdom. He was an outsider from the south, and what he said was not welcome in the north.

How Christians read it

Amos is the prophet most often quoted on justice; his call for justice to roll on like a river (5:24) was made famous again in the twentieth century. He insists that worship without justice is unacceptable to God. In Acts 15 James quotes the closing promise to show that God always meant to include the nations.

About this explanation

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, on 20 October 2026. It draws on the WEB text and general knowledge and was not checked against sources by a person. Every quotation from Scripture is checked automatically against the WEB text.

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