1Thus the Lord Yahweh showed me: behold, he formed locusts in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s harvest. 2When they finished eating the grass of the land, then I said, “Lord Yahweh, forgive, I beg you! How could Jacob stand? For he is small.”
3Yahweh relented concerning this. “It shall not be,” says Yahweh.
4Thus the Lord Yahweh showed me: behold, the Lord Yahweh called for judgment by fire; and it dried up the great deep, and would have devoured the land. 5Then I said, “Lord Yahweh, stop, I beg you! How could Jacob stand? For he is small.”
6Yahweh relented concerning this. “This also shall not be,” says the Lord Yahweh.
7Thus he showed me: behold, the Lord stood beside a wall made by a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. 8Yahweh said to me, “Amos, what do you see?”
I said, “A plumb line.”
Then the Lord said, “Behold, I will set a plumb line in the middle of my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more. 9The high places of Isaac will be desolate, the sanctuaries of Israel will be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”
10Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the middle of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. 11For Amos says, ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.’”
12Amaziah also said to Amos, “You seer, go, flee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there, 13but don’t prophesy again any more at Bethel; for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a royal house!”
14Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman, and a farmer of sycamore figs; 15and Yahweh took me from following the flock, and Yahweh said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ 16Now therefore listen to Yahweh’s word: ‘You say, Don’t prophesy against Israel, and don’t preach against the house of Isaac.’ 17Therefore Yahweh says: ‘Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by line; and you yourself shall die in a land that is unclean, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.’”
1:1 Tekoa, five miles southeast of Bethlehem, has a commanding view of the region and was the home to: "Ira the son of Ikkesh" one of David's mighty men (2 Sam 23:26; 1 Chr 11:28; 27:9); the "wise woman of Tekoa" who tried to bring reconciliation between David and Absalom (2 Sam 14:2); certain Tekoites who repaired part of the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 3:5); and most famously, Amos the eighth century prophet, herdsman (Amos 1:1) and dresser of sycamore-fig trees (Amos 7:14). Jerome says that Amos was buried in Tekoa as well (Commentary on Jeremiah, VI, 1). In the Greek version of Joshua 15:59, Tekoa is mentioned as part of Judah. Tekoa had been fortified by Rehoboam (2 Chr 11:6; Josephus, Antiquities, 8, ix, 1), and in the wilderness of Tekoa (2 Chr 20:20) Jehoshaphat took counsel there before advancing into the wilderness of Judea to confront the Ammonites and Moabites. Jeremiah warned Judah to flee south, away from the enemy advancing from the north (Jer 6:1), which played upon the sound tikehu Tekoa, "blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and raise a signal in Beth-haccherim." The name Tekoa may allude to taaqa' "to strike" – stakes that were pounded into the ground for shepherd’s tents. Jonathan Maccabeus and his brother Simon fled from the vengeance of the Greek Bacchides "into the wilderness of Tekoe and encamped by the water of the pool Asphar" (1 Macc 9:33), possibly a connection with Tekoa's father named Ashhur (1 Chr 2:24, 4:5). In the sixth century, a monastery called Laura Nova was founded at Tekoa by Saba, probably because Amos was believed to be buried there. Today the site called Khirbet Tequ'a is in ruins, having been built over in part by the modern town and is vandalized thoroughly.