Lives of Scripture

Amaziah served as priest of the royal sanctuary at Bethel, a worship site King Jeroboam II maintained as a rival to the Jerusalem temple. When the prophet Amos arrived from Judah and delivered God's warnings of judgment against Israel's idolatry and oppression of the poor, Amaziah reported him to the king as a conspirator: "Amos has conspired against you... the land is unable to endure all his words" (Amos 7:10). Amaziah then confronted Amos directly: "Go, you seer, flee away to the land of Judah, and there eat bread and there do your prophesying! But no longer prophesy at Bethel, for it is a sanctuary of the king and a royal residence" (7:12-13) -- dismissing Amos's calling as a paid trade and treating Bethel as royal property rather than the LORD's. Amos answered that he was no professional prophet but a herdsman whom the LORD Himself had called and sent (7:14-15), and pronounced a specific, severe judgment on Amaziah personally: his wife would become a prostitute in the city, his sons and daughters would fall by the sword, his land would be divided up, and Amaziah himself would die in a foreign, unclean land, while Israel would surely go into exile (7:16-17). Amaziah's attempt to silence God's word did not stop it -- it became the occasion for it.