Amos shows his time, that he lived and preached in the time of Hosea and Isaiah, and preaches against the same vices and idolatry, or false saints, like Hosea does, and also proclaims the Assyrian prison.
(2) He is also vehement, and reproaches the people of Israel almost through the whole book, until the end of the last chapter, where he prophesies of Christ and his kingdom, and pollutes his book with it. That no prophet seems to me to have so little promise and so much reproach and gloom, that he may well be called Amos (that is), a burden, or one who is heavy and vexatious; especially because he is a shepherd, and not of the order of the prophets, as he himself says in the seventh chapter, v. 14, in addition to which he goes from the tribe of Judah of Thekoa into the kingdom of Israel and preaches there as a stranger. Therefore it is also said that the priest
Amaziah (whom he punishes in the seventh chapter, v. 17) had beaten him to death with a rod.
(3) In the first chapter he is difficult and obscure to see, since he speaks of three and four sins, about which many have committed various crimes and have searched far and wide. But the text (I think) should make it clear that these three and four sins are no more than one sin, for he mentions and accuses only one sin in all cases. For example, against Damascum he mentions only the sin of driving Gilead with iron chariots.
4 But he calls such sin three and four, because they neither repent nor acknowledge such sin, but also boast of it, and dwell on it, as if they had done well, as all false saints do. For sin cannot be more grievous, nor greater, nor more grievous.
2) This preface is found in Walch, in the Leipzig edition, vol. XII, p. 43 and in the Erlanger, vol. 63, p. 77.
for where it wants to be a holy, divine work, and makes the devil to God, and God to the devil. Just as three and four make seven, which is the end of the number in Scripture, when one turns back and begins to count again, both the days and the weeks.
5 It is mentioned twice in the New Testament: first, Apost. 7, 42, where St. Stephen refers to it from the cursed chapter against the Jews, and thus proves that they are God's
Law never have kept from the beginning of Egypt.
6) The other time, when St. James Apost. 15, 16. in the first Concilio of the Apostles leads him out of the last chapter to prove the Christian freedom, that the Gentiles in the New Testament are not obligated to keep Mosi's law, if the Jews themselves have never kept it, and also could not keep it, as St. Peter Apost. 15, 10. And these are the most distinguished two pieces in Amos, and two very good pieces.