Who would have imagined it? A shepherd, an uneducated man, a fringe member of society, declaring the word of the Lord to all of Israel. He wasn’t a king. He wasn’t a teacher of the law or a priest of the temple. Amos was a shepherd, yet God used him to declare His message to His people. God often uses people that the world would see as unlikely candidates.
Moreover, this was an unexpected prophet bringing an unexpected message, the impending death of Israel. Things seemed to be going so well for Israel. They were not being controlled by other nations as in the past. They had regained some of the territory that they had lost. And economically, the elite were very well off. Yet Amos, a shepherd, declares that destruction is coming.
It is coming in part because God’s own chosen people have not lived up to the standards that God expected of them (3:1-2). The people of Israel were enjoying their wealth, but they were not sharing it with the poor in their midst. While Israel had come to believe that their chosen state afforded them divine protection from harm (and to some degree it did), in reality it meant that they were to be God’s ambassadors to the world, that they had additional responsibility. They of all people knew better.
As Donald E. Gowan puts it, “This was election for privilege, yes; they had been saved from slavery and they had been given a land that once belonged to others. But privilege involves responsibility as well. They were to become a priestly kingdom, a holy nation, and their special character as a nation among others was defined by the law given on Mount Sinai. Amos asserts that they have enthusiastically claimed the privilege, but have forgotten responsibility.”[1]
What’s more is that they had lost sight of a key component of God’s character, advocate for the oppressed and helpless. The Israelites had once been the oppressed in Egypt and as we know, God heard their cries and rescued them in mighty ways. Now Israel is the oppressor of its own, ignoring their cries for help; but God still hears them. “Wherever human beings are mistreated, Yahweh is offended[2],” and Amos, a shepherd, declares that God is preparing to act, even against their own nation of Israel.
As Amos said in 3:8, “The lion has roared— who will not fear? The Sovereign LORD has spoken— who can but prophesy?” God called a shepherd and what could he do but to prophesy the word of the Lord?
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