Amos 3

World English Bible 86 include this book

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 only chosen 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.

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3 places named in this chapter.

Where this was written

Tekoa attested Amos is introduced as a herdsman of Tekoa, sent to preach at Bethel.

When this was written

The traditions broadly agree on this one.

Broad agreement: 760 BC–750 BC Amos
Dated to the reigns of Uzziah and Jeroboam II, two years before an earthquake.

Elsewhere in the world

Events overlapping the period this book is dated to (760 BC–750 BC).

1200 BC–400 BC Olmec civilisation Mesoamerica
The earliest major Mesoamerican civilisation, known for colossal stone heads and an early calendar.
1200 BC–600 BC Zoroaster teaches in Persia Persia
Founder of Zoroastrianism, whose dating is disputed by as much as six centuries. His teaching on a cosmic struggle between good and evil later touched Jewish and Christian thought.
1070 BC–350 AD The kingdom of Kush Africa
A Nubian power on the upper Nile that ruled Egypt itself as its twenty-fifth dynasty.
753 BC Traditional founding of Rome Rome
The legendary date of Rome's founding, later used as the anchor of the Roman calendar.
750 BC–650 BC Homeric epics take written form Greece
The Iliad and Odyssey were fixed in writing after generations of oral transmission.

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