It is one of the easiest of the prophetic books to understand and one of the best preserved. Chapters 1 and 2 contain a series of brief oracles, on the same plan, against the neighbours of Israel, the Syrians of Damascus, the Philistines, Phoenicians, Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites, Judæans, leading up to a longer indictment of Israel and denunciation of God's judgment upon it. This is followed by prophecies against Israel (cc. 3-6), which seem to be formally divided into three parts by the introductory formula, "Hear this word" (iii. 1; iv. 1; v. 1), but by subject would naturally fall into a larger number of oracles. Chapter 7 begins with three visions, the delivery of which at Bethel may have provoked Amaziah's interference (vii. 10-17); c. 8 again opens with a vision, in which the basket of summer fruit _(kais)_ is to the prophet a symbol of the coming end _(k[=e]s)_ of Israel; in c. 9 Amos sees the Lord standing beside the altar and pronouncing the word of destruction and inescapable doom (ix. 1-8^a), from which an awkward transition (ix. 8^b-10) carries us to a prediction of the restoration of David's kingdom and the prosperity of the golden age. The doom which Amos sees impending over Israel is visited upon it in retribution for the wrongs which men inflict upon their fellows, the oppression of the poor by the rich, the small man by the great; the injustice, often in the forms of law, by which men are deprived of property and liberty; the luxury, aping foreign modes, which is not only corrupting in itself, but is the chief motive of injustice and oppression and fraud. The very prosperity of the nation was its ruin. With all this, Israel is very religious; it acknowledges the success in war and the profit of commerce as the gift of the national God and evidence of his favour, and does not grudge him his share even of ill-gotten gains. Amos's God has a conscience--that was a new idea about gods!--and abhors such religion; he hates their festivals, refuses their sacrifices, spurns their hymns of praise. "But let justice roll down like floods, and right like an unfailing stream." That is the only worship he owns.