OT 16.4 | How Amos Trapped His Audience: Literary Forms in Prophetic Writing скачать в хорошем качестве

OT 16.4 | How Amos Trapped His Audience: Literary Forms in Prophetic Writing

The prophet Amos condemned six foreign nations one by one — then turned the same judgment on Israel. By the time his audience realized what was happening, they had already accepted the moral framework that convicted them. This video examines the four major literary forms the Hebrew prophets deployed as rhetorical weapons: oracles against nations, covenant lawsuits, laments, and inverted proverbs. Using Amos chapters 1-2 as a case study, we break down how the six-plus-one oracle structure functions as a rhetorical trap, how the ancient "three plus one" numerical formula creates intensification, and why the oracle against Judah (Amos 2:4-5) is widely regarded as a later editorial addition. We then explore the covenant lawsuit (Hebrew: riv), in which God hauls Israel into a divine courtroom with heaven and earth as witnesses — a form that also appears in Micah 6 and, surprisingly, the Book of Job. Key concepts covered: • Oracles against nations — prophetic pronouncements of divine judgment structured as rhetorical entrapment (Amos 1-2) • The "three plus one" numerical pattern — an ancient intensifying formula operating at both micro (within each oracle) and macro (six nations plus Israel) levels • The covenant lawsuit (riv) — a legal proceeding form where God serves as both judge and plaintiff, Israel as defendant, and heaven and earth as witnesses • Prophetic laments — mourning future destruction in past tense to make the threat feel irreversible (Amos 5:2) • Inverted proverbs — citing familiar wisdom sayings and flipping their meaning so the audience's own traditions condemn them (Amos 3-8) • The deliberate ambiguity of "Israel" — referring to either the northern kingdom or both kingdoms together, ensuring no listener can escape the accusation • How these rhetorical techniques — structural entrapment, legal metaphor, inverted expectations — persist in modern political rhetoric, courtroom arguments, and persuasive writing ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCE MATERIALS The source materials for this video are from    • Lecture 16. Literary Prophecy: Amos