Commenting
on Amos 1:1-4:13, especially the oracles in chs. 1-2 (e.g., 2:6-16) and how
they evidence the conditional nature of prophecy (as well as how prophets do
not always understand the revelations they receive), Francis I. Andersen and
David Noel Freedman wrote in their masterful commentary on Amos:
In speaking of prophecy and prediction we
want to emphasize its reality. It was not a bluff or an exercise in literary
adjustment. Prophets made predictions, and they could be tested against events.
It was a centrally important part off their ministry, their commission. There were always conditional elements, so
prophecies were rarely if ever absolute. Not only could the intercession of
prophets themselves make a difference, so could the repentance of people. And
finally there were the mind and will of the biblical God, who could and di
alter his own decisions on the basis of new data . . . and his own private
reasons, whatever they might be. Micah’s credentials as a prophet were not
negated by the fact that his flat prediction about the wreck and ruin of
Jerusalem failed to come about, at least during his lifetime and for a century
or more thereafter. It does not mean either that his status was held in
abeyance until his prophecy could be tested or fulfilled or found wanting in
history. That the prediction was fulfilled in 587/586 would hardly have
mattered, for what was important was that he was a real prophet who spoke the
word that he had received from God. The
test of a prophet was just that: was he chosen and commissioned by God?
Ultimately there were no objective tests by which such claims could be
confirmed or denied. So it was with Amos; he was called and commissioned, he
delivered the word he was given. It included dire predictions about the future,
but his role and status as prophet
depended finally not on whether his words came out—they would have their effect,
but the ultimate outcome lay in the hidden future, where the interaction
between God’s will and man’s response produces historical events—but on whether
he had responded to the summons and on how he carried out his commission .
. Even if we regarded as Sennacherib’s invasion and near conquest of Judah in
701 as a partial realization of Amos’ prediction, nevertheless the order of
events would still not conform to the sequence in Amos 1-2, for Israel was
conquered and dismembered long before the attack on Judah commenced. It is
thought by many scholars that Judah is a secondary insertion in the list, and
it would be difficult to disprove such an assertion, though there is no hard
evidence that the book of Amor or any precursor ever existed without it. It has
been argued many times that insertions of oracles against Tyre, Edom, and Judah
were made after the Fall of Jerusalem in the sixth century, to make it appear
that the prophet’s words were in act fulfilled. The insertion would
nevertheless run counter to the chronological implication of the oracles in
chaps. 1-2.
It cannot be proved that the prophet believed
that the nations would fall in the order in which they listed; but if any kind
of chronological scheme were in his mind, that seems the most natural way to
interpret the arrangements. Still, there can be little doubt that he had in
mind a single general campaign, directed from heaven, which would engulf the
entire region. And it is reading real history back into a visionary oracle to
attempt to match the oracles with what actually happened over the succeeding
centuries . . . In a somewhat better position to judge the matter, a later
contemporary of Amos, Micah, flatly predicted the end of Jerusalem and Judah—a prophecy
[Micah 3:12] well remembered more than a hundred years later in the days of
Jeremiah [Jer 26:18-19]. Micah was
honored for such forthrightness, and his failure to predict accurately was not
regarded as an instance of false prophecy, because it was in effect conditional.
The survival of the kingdom was attributed to adequate repentance on the part
of king and people (as in the case of Nineveh in the story of Jonah), so the
prophecy was considered to have worked an alternative effect. (Francis I.
Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Amos: A
New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 24A; New York:
Doubleday, 1989], 349-50, 358-59, square brackets added for clarification)