Reading Amos as a book

All too often the message of Amos is broken up and read in pieces—either devotionally, so that we know only the ‘purple passages,’ or academically, separating Amos’s original message from its later editing. But reading it as a whole opens up powerful new understandings. We see Amos’s passion as he tries to persuade a complacent people to wake up to God’s judgment and grace—a message we desperately need to hear in our own day.