Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 147:586 (Apr 1990)
Article: “For Three Sins…Even for Four”: The Numerical Sayings in Amos
Author: Robert B. Chisholm, Jr.

BSac 147:586 (Apr 90) p. 188

“For Three Sins…Even for Four”: The Numerical Sayings in Amos

Robert B. Chisholm Jr.

Associate Professor of Old Testament Studies
Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas

The Old Testament prophets were adept at luring hostile audiences into listening to their judgment speeches. First Kings 20:35–43 records how a prophet resorted to bizarre tactics just to trick Ahab into unwittingly decreeing his own guilt and punishment. Recalling Nathan’s artful use of a parable in his accusation against David (2 Sam 12:1–14), Robert Alter observes that “prophetic poetry is thus very often constructed as a rhetoric of entrapment.”1

Amos 1–2 contains one of the clearest examples of this “entrapment” technique in the writing prophets. In a series of seven judgment speeches against Israel’s neighbors, Amos moved from foreigners (Aram, Philistia, Tyre) to blood relatives (Edom, Ammon, Moab) to Judah, Israel’s sister kingdom to the south (1:3–2:5).2 The prophet’s

BSac 147:586 (Apr 90) p. 189

Israelite audience, anticipating a day of divine deliverance from their enemies (5:18), must have listened with delight to this series of messages, especially when their longtime rival Judah appeared, like a capstone, as the seventh nation in the list. As Shalom Paul notes, Amos’ “captive northern audience, who must have been enjoying every minute of it, would psychologically be in a state of mind which would lead them to believe that he had reached his climax with his fulmination against Judah.”3 The sevenfold list would have suggested completeness and finality. However, to the shock of his listeners, Amos was far from finished. Expanding his list from seven members to eight, he delivered a scathing accusation and announcement of judgment against Israel (2:6–16).4

At this point the preceding seven oracles come into focus. Rather than being self-contained pronouncements of judgment, the earlier messages set up the climactic denunciation of the prophet’s primary target group, the sinful Northern Kingdom. Paul explains, “The minute he continued his eighth and unexpected oracle, for him the sole purpose of his extended prolegomenon, they would have been taken completely unawares, and Amos, who d...