This research will compare and contrast the Old Testament books of Amos and Hosea, with a view toward identifying their significance. What must be understood about both Amos and Hosea is that they belong to the prophetic tradition of the Hebrews, which tells the story of the decline of the Jewish empire.
Hosea and Amos are prophetic in the moral sense. They offer a cosmic, universal explanation for the decline of the Jewish people. The cause of this decline, argue Amos and Hosea, is loss of religious faith. After a lengthy recitation of the myriad crimes of Israel, which come down to idolatry and paganism, the Hosea text explains how Israel will be punished and, finally, how it can be saved by rejecting the false gods and the moral values that they imply and returning to God. Hosea appears to be addressed chiefly to the Jewish kingdom of Israel, the northern part of the region, while the focus of Amos is on the southern kingdom of Judah. However, each book makes both Judah and Israel (Hos. 5.8; Amos 2.4-6) culpable in constructing an environment of social injustice and idolatry.
The prophecy of each book is also symbolic and poetic, making liberal use of metaphor. For example, in Hosea, the faithless wife Gomer vis-a-vis her joyless husband is compared to faithless Israel vis-a-vis its disappointed God: "Go, take a harlot wife and harlot's children, for the land gives itself to harlotry, turning away from the Lord" (Hos. 1.3). The opening part of Amos is presented with military imagery, describing war atrocities and predictions of war and desolation among peoples under Jewish subjection and concluding with a promise of punishment for the crimes of Israel and Judah, both material and spiritual: "Because they spurned the law of the Lord, and did not keep his statutes . . . I will send fire upon Judah . . . I will crush you into the ground . . . and the most stouthearted of warriors shall flee naked (Amos 2.4-5, 16).
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