Amos is what the scholars call a peripheral prophet, meaning he was an outsider, sent to preach to the Kingdom of Israel, even though he wasn’t an Israelite. God famously sent him in with a vision of a plumb line, a weight suspended from a string to tell if a line is straight, because the people were so morally malformed that they could no longer tell the difference between crooked and straight.

Because, over time, the Israelite prophets had stopped speaking for God and started working for the King. They used God’s name to push the government’s agenda. The book of Amos includes the threats made by the head prophet Amaziah, who demands that Amos quit preaching “against” Israel and go back to where he came from because “this is the King’s sanctuary and the temple of the Kingdom.”

Amos was political. God anointed him to call the people back to covenant values of justice, mercy and protection of the weak.

 Amaziah was partisan. He was the King’s man. He taught the people that obeying the King was the same as obeying God. He did not teach the people the difference between power and righteousness. That’s why God had to send in an outsider, because the local prophets would no longer say anything that offended the King. And the King’s treatment of the poor and powerless offended God.