The life of St Amos
His mission took him north, away from his own land, to confront the Kingdom of Israel under King Jeroboam the Second, whose idolatry and whose people's injustice toward the poor Amos denounced without softening his words. That plain speech cost him dearly: the priest Amaziah, who oversaw the royal shrine at Bethel, had him beaten for what he preached there. Church memory holds that some time later Amaziah's own son struck the prophet with a club and wounded him severely; carried home to Tekoah, Amos died there two days afterward, around the year 787 before Christ. What he had foretold against the kingdom he had confronted came to pass in full, and he is remembered as one who would not trade the truth he had been given for his own safety.
