omprehends everything which Judah and Israel, along with the
neighbouring people, had to suffer from the rising heathen powers;
compare vi. 14, v. 24, according to which, judgment shall roll down as
waters, and righteousness as a _continual_ stream.[3]

In the case of Amos, also, interpreters have been at considerable pains
in fixing the time and the occasion of the single portions, but with as
little success as in the cases of Hosea and Micah. The very inscription
proves that we have before us a whole, composed at one time, and
containing the substance of [Pg 357] what the prophet had uttered
previously, and in a detached form. According to this inscription, the
book was composed only two years after the prophet's personal ministry
in the kingdom of Israel. But if there were such an interval betwixt
the oral preaching of the prophet and its having been committed to
writing, it is, _a priori_, not likely that the latter should have
followed the former, step by step.

The words, "Two years before the earthquake," cannot be regarded as a
chronological date, intended to fix more definitely the exact time
within the more extended period previously stated, viz., "the days of
Uzziah and Jeroboam." For such a purpose they are ill suited, inasmuch
as the time of the earthquake is not fixed; and, moreover, any such
more definite determination would have been without either significance
or interest. This only was of importance, that the word of the Lord
should have been uttered in the days of Jeroboam, and that the prophecy
of the destruction should have been delivered at a time when the
Israelites enjoyed an amount of prosperity, such as they had not known
for a long time. It can scarcely be doubted that the earthquake under
Uzziah, the fearfulness of which is testified by Zech. xiv. 5, comes
under consideration only as the reason for the composition of the
book,--for committing to writing what had formerly been delivered
orally. The earthquake denotes, in the symbolical language of
Scripture, great revolutions, by which the form of the earth is
changed, and that which is uppermost, overturned; compare my remarks on
Rev. vi. 12. To point to such an earthquake had been the fundamental
thought of Amos' oral predictions. By the natural earthquake, he was
induced to commit them to writing, that they might go side by side with
the symbol, and serve as its interpreter.

There is a plan in the arrangement of the book, which indicates