This commentary approaches the book of Amos as it is transmitted in the Hebrew Bible: as a collection of the words of a prophet who emerged in the eighth century BCE to proclaim the Kingdom of Israel=s end because of the social and cultic offences of its upper class, but which nonetheless ultimately pronounced a secure future in overwhelming wellness to the catastrophe=s survivors from Judah and Israel. The diachronic analysis retraces the path of the prophetic namesake=s message, which is only still recognizable in contours, through its reworkings at the hands of his first tradents after the end of the Northern Kingdom until its final form, probably from the Persian period.

Rainer Kessler war Professor für Evangelische Theologie mit dem Fachgebiet Altes Testament an der Universtät Marburg.