Amos: call, visions and the nature of God

Overview

Third vision, vision of the basket of summer fruit and fifth vision of Amos.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Where did Amos come from, and what was his trade?

   Model answer

   Amos came from Tekoa in Judah. Amos describes himself as a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees.

2. 2

   When did Amos prophesy?

   Model answer

   Amos prophesied in the middle of the eighth century BCE, in the reigns of Jeroboam II of Israel and Uzziah of Judah. The book dates his words to two years before an earthquake.

3. 3

   How does Amos describe the compulsion to prophesy?

   Model answer

   Amos asks who will not fear when the lion has roared, and who can do anything but prophesy when the Lord GOD has spoken.

4. 4

   Describe the first two visions of Amos 7.

   Model answer

   Amos sees locusts devouring the late growth after the king's mowings, and then a shower of fire consuming the great deep and the land. On each occasion Amos pleads that Jacob is too small to stand, and God relents.

5. 5

   What is the third vision, and how does it differ from the first two?

   Model answer

   Amos sees the Lord standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, setting a plumb line in the midst of his people Israel. Amos offers no intercession this time, and the sentence stands.

6. 6

   Explain the vision of the basket of summer fruit.

   Model answer

   Amos is shown a basket of summer fruit. The Hebrew word for summer fruit sounds like the word for the end, so the vision announces that the end has come upon the people of Israel.

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