Oracles against the Foreign Nations: In the prophetic corpora, oracles of judgment against the foreign nations usually follow a prophet’s oracles to his own people (Jer. 46–51; Ezek. 25–32). Here in Amos, however, the prophet begins with the announcement of judgment on the foreign peoples immediately surrounding Israel, and his purpose in doing so is entirely theological. These foreign nations posed no serious threat to Israel’s life in the time of Jeroboam II, although that king may have carried on sporadic border warfare with the Arameans on the northern border of Gilead (1:3) and with the Ammonites on the southern border of that tribe (1:13). Amos’s theological purpose in beginning with the foreign nations, however, is to show that Israel, the covenant people of Yahweh, has joined with …