Effect of Amos-' Public Utterances. A historical episode is here interposed. Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, interrupts the work of Amos, charging him, by twisting his words, with conspiracy (Amos 7:10). So revolutionary is he that the earth (not the land) cannot bear all his words. Really he had spoken not of Jeroboam but of the house of Jeroboam. There is perhaps a note of scorn in the word seer (almost equivalent to visionary). Amos had better flee to Judah and earn his bread and prophesy there. Amos retorts that he was no professional prophet. He had earned his bread by tending sheep and cultivating fig-mulberries (rather than sycamore trees). In Syria these did not grow in such high and cold regions as Tekoa, but the pasture-grounds and gardens of its shepherds may well have extended on the E. down to the Dead Sea (cf. G. A. Smith). Amos refuses for the moment to be silenced (Amos 7:16), and does not leave Amaziah without a word of warning and denunciation (Amos 7:17 f.). His own wife will become a prey to the outrages of a powerful enemy; and the priest and his people will be led into captivity.
Amos 7:14. For herdman (bô kç r) Marti and others would read shepherd (nô kç d) as in Amos 1:1 *. The fig-mulberry was common in parts of Palestine. The fruit had to be nipped or punctured to release an insect and thus render it eatable.