The prophet Amos is known for fiery messages directed at the elites of the northern kingdom of Israel in ancient times. Can this prophet also speak to us in America today? This book looks at the message that Amos proclaimed and applies it to parallel situations in modern America. Issues such as the worship of wealth (greed), privilege, and elites living off the labor of others are more similar in these two times and places than one might initially assume. How can we respond as people of faith to the evils of our own time? Are we responsible to notice and take action? Is taking such action part of our faith? If we listen to the prophet Amos, the answer is a resounding “yes.” God cares about the weak, the oppressed, and the downtrodden, and looks to those with the means to help implement change. We are truly asked to take responsibility for the well-being of our neighbor. Christians would be especially challenged by this book and the message of the prophet Amos, because so much of that message was also proclaimed by Jesus, who based judgment on how one treated the least, rather than those who are great. With study and thought questions with each chapter, and an abundance of suggestions for practical action, this book is a great tool to use in a church-wide study combined with a call to action.

In this volume, Jeremias suggests that the book of Amos was produced through various stages over time. While he does write from a critical perspective, his creativity offers a sensitivity to literary issues within the text that is often missing from critical work. The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

In this commentary on the book of Amos, Daniel Carroll combines a detailed reading of the Hebrew text with attention to its historical background and current relevance. What makes this volume unique is its special attention to Amos’s literary features and what they reveal about the book’s theology and composition. Instead of reconstructing a hypothetical redactional history, this commentary offers a close reading of the canonical form against the backdrop of the eighth century BCE.

Makes extensive use of ancient Near Eastern sources, and employs medieval Jewish exegesis along with modern Israeli biblical scholarship.

American Christians today, says Michael Barram, have a signifi­cant blind spot when it comes to economic matters in the Bible. In this book Barram reads biblical texts related to matters of money, wealth, and poverty through a missional lens, showing how they function to transform our economic reasoning. Barram searches for insight into God’s purposes for economic justice by exploring what it might look like to think and act in life-giving ways in the face of contemporary economic orthodoxies. The Bible repeatedly tells us how to treat the poor and marginalized, Barram says, and faithful Christians cannot but reflect carefully and concretely on such concerns. Written in an accessible style, this biblically rooted study reflects years of research and teaching on social and economic justice in the Bible and will prove useful for lay readers, preachers, teachers, students, and scholars.

Abraham Joshua Heschel was one of the most revered religious leaders of the 20th century, and God in Search of Man and its companion volume, Man Is Not Alone, two of his most important books, are classics of modern Jewish theology. God in Search of Man combines scholarship with lucidity, reverence, and compassion as Dr. Heschel discusses not man's search for God but God's for man--the notion of a Chosen People, an idea which, he writes, "signifies not a quality inherent in the people but a relationship between the people and God." It is an extraordinary description of the nature of Biblical thought, and how that thought becomes faith.

Bernhard Anderson has written a commentary that gives new perspective and clarity to the prophetic tradition and demonstrates the timely nature of the prophets' messages for today. 'The Eighth Century Prophets' treats the four Old Testament figures as a 'prophetic quartet' that produced a powerful and startling consensus about Israel's relationship to God and the world. The core of the prophetic message is shown to be both religious and political as Anderson describes and explains the great themes of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah: divine judgment, the present and the future, justice and mercy, the covenant, walking humbly with God, and waiting for God. Included is a bibliography and time chart of Eighth Century Israel.