Amos and Hosea

In context

Uzziah, also called Azariah, becomes king of Judah at sixteen and reigns fifty-two years; “as long as he sought Yahweh, God made him prosper” (2 Chronicles 26:1–5; 2 Kings 15:1–2). He builds towers and cisterns, “for he loved farming” (26:10). But he goes into the temple to burn incense, which the law kept for Aaron’s descendants, and leprosy breaks out on his forehead (26:16–21; Numbers 16:40).

In Israel, Zechariah’s death ends Jehu’s line at the fourth generation, as the Lord had said, and kings are killed one after another while Assyria takes silver, then land and people (2 Kings 15:8–29). Amos, a herdsman from Tekoa, near Bethlehem, says, “let justice roll on like rivers” (Amos 1:1; 5:24).

The Lord tells Hosea to marry “a wife of prostitution,” a picture of a land that has forsaken him, and his children’s names carry the message: Lo-Ruhamah, “not loved,” and Lo-Ammi, “not my people” (Hosea 1:2–9). Later he is told to love “a woman loved by another, and an adulteress, even as Yahweh loves the children of Israel” (3:1). “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt” (11:1), words Matthew sets beside the boy Jesus (Matthew 2:15).