Amos amongst the nōqdīm : Navigating agrarian class conflict in the book of Amos

Abstract

This paper proposes that Amos’s designation as a נקד‎ conveniently aligns the class position of the eponymous prophet with that of lower-ranking scribal elites. Given the likelihood that the reference to the נקדים‎ in Amos 1.1 is a redactional insertion, this appears to be a deliberate scribal attempt at indicating that Amos was, like themselves, a member of an administrative-bureaucratic class fraction. This observation invites a reappraisal of the excoriating critiques of social ills embedded in the book’s prophetic oracles. Rather than representing the interests of the peasantry per se, the oracles instead highlight intersections between petty-elite and peasant interests. This perhaps reflects a rhetorical attempt to imply a sense of agrarian solidarity between these social groups, whilst avoiding an institutional critique of the upper echelons of Judah, or Yehud’s, ruling classes.

I. Introduction

The enigmatic designation of the prophet Amos in Amos 1.1 as being ‘amongst the נֹקְדִים‎’ has been the source of some scholarly interest. A broad consensus has emerged that נֹקֵד‎ likely refers to a manager of a large flock, and not, in fact, a simple shepherd, in contrast with the depiction of Amos as a seasonal agricultural worker in Amos 7.14–15. Although this view is well founded, the implications of the use of נֹקֵד‎ are under-explored. This paper will posit that the scribal circle responsible for Amos 1.1 have deliberately signposted their equivalent class-position as petty administrators, who either were or shared class interests with נֹקְדִים‎. When reading the critique of social ills in the subsequent prophetic oracles, we might observe that the class interests underlying the attacks on the rich and powerful are not simply those of the peasantry, but rather speak to the intersections between petty-elite and peasant interests. More speculatively, this may represent a rhetorical attempt to forge an agrarian solidarity between these differing social groups against a common ‘class enemy’ in the form of landlords and estate owners, aligned with the political centre. ¹

Biblical scholarship is hardly bereft of analyses of social and economic inequality in Amos. Indeed, a strain of materialist approaches to the so-called eighth century prophets can be found in the work of scholars such as Gale A. Yee (2007, 2016), ² Marvin L. Chaney (2017b: 191–204), Davis Hankins (2023: 131–52), Matthew J. M. Coomber (2010: 1–32). These critics posit that the social critiques of these prophets can be directly correlated with certain economic trends in the eighth century, namely an expansion in estates and landlordism, and an attendant increase in social and economic inequality. The prophets themselves, Yee (2007: 23) argues, were ‘class traitors’, and, utilizing the conceptual framework of the late James C. Scott (Yee 2007: 13–15, 23–24; Scott 2018), reflected something of a ‘hidden transcript’, a counter-hegemonic Tendenz that at least on the rhetorical level challenged and subverted the ‘public transcript’ expressed through royal diktats, ‘official’ religion, and so on.

This analysis has much to commend it, though with the partial exception of Yee, George V. Pixley, and Norman K. Gottwald, insufficient attention has been paid to the class position of redactors, prophetic circles, and scribes more generally. ³ In a society with low levels of literacy, the very fact that these prophetic oracles exist as texts implies elite authorship. ⁴ Ironically, then, extant Marxist approaches have not focused enough upon the intersections between issues of social class and authorship. This paper will therefore adopt elements of this materialist hermeneutical approach, particularly its understanding of class, ⁵ whilst also offering a constructive critique of existing scholarship in this tradition.

Here, recent continental scholarship is useful. It has tended to correctly identify the elite character of literary production, ⁶ and in the case of the book of Amos specifically, that the נֹקֵד‎ was no humble shepherd. ⁷ Perhaps most importantly, a welcome shift has taken place from a focus on individual, named prophets to the scribal circles which transmitted and fashioned written prophetic material. Reinhard Kratz (2015: 34) in particular has been at the forefront of this development, emphasizing the distinction between the historical reality of prophecy on the one hand, and its literary instantiations on the other. As Kratz (2015: 33) notes,

Even the earliest material is not an exact transcription but rather a new interpretation of the original prophetic oracle. If the prophet is the author and thus his own interpreter, it is difficult to decide which interpretations can be ascribed to him and which have to be accredited to a later scribe.

For social historians and theorists, this shift is liberating. In leaving behind the totalising, individual ‘prophet’, we can move further from the shadow of so-called ‘Great Man’ historiography. Our analysis, instead, can focus not on the idiosyncrasies of individuals, but on corporate social groups; in this case Judah, or Yehud’s, administrative-bureaucratic classes. In this sense, the decentring of the prophet makes the issue of class still more pertinent.

However, studies in the continental historical-critical tradition have rarely if ever explored the significance of an apparent alignment in the class interests of peasants and prophetic circles. The concern of elites with social discord, and, apparently, the plight of the peasantry, is itself a point of interest. Thus focusing on the stated profession of the prophet in Amos 1.1 is not an attempt to discover the class position of some chimeric ‘historical Amos’. Rather, it is an exercise in deducing what the prophetic circles behind this secondary insertion are trying to signal about their own class position. From this, we can also deduce something about both the class character of the social critiques themselves, and the broader class politics of Judah’s countryside.

In the remainder of this study, in order to firmly establish the class-character of the נֹקֵד‎, the translation of the term as a manager of livestock will be justified. Then, the redaction of 1.1 will be discussed, and specifically the probability that נֹקְדִים‎ was actively inserted into a preexisting superscription. Finally, this paper will proffer a tentative reading of two examples of social critiques in Amos. Whilst it is difficult to establish priority between the edited superscription and the ‘social critique’ present in the prophetic oracles, these passages, in chs. 2 and 4, align well with the class interests of middle-managers, even in their support of the peasantry.

II. The meaning of נֹקֵד‎

The term נֹקֵד‎ ⁸ is a near hapax legomenon: it appears once in the singular, in 2 Kgs 3.4, and once in the plural, in Amos 1.1. However, a relatively common Ugaritic cognate, and a less common (though chronologically closer) Akkadian cognate may shine some light on the specific meaning of the Hebrew word. A near-consensus position understands both of these terms to refer to a functionary who managed flocks on behalf of a major landowner (a palace or temple), lower in status than the owner of the flocks, but higher than a shepherd.

The Ugaritic cognate nqd, a senior shepherd, ⁹ and its plural form nqdm, appear in ten administrative texts, as well as the Baal Cycle’s concluding colophon. ¹⁰ In the administrative texts, we have four lists of professions and four additional documents that deal with taxation and grants. In the profession lists, nqdm is consistently followed by khnm (priests). ¹¹ For Ivan Engnell (1967: 87) and other earlier commentators, this implied that the נֹקְדִם‎ of ancient Israel were specifically temple functionaries, ¹² perhaps even hepatoscopers. ¹³

This, however, infers rather too much from the evidence: it is not clear that we should associate nqdm with khnm. The word that consistently precedes it, ṯnnnm, likely means ‘archers’, as Peter C. Craigie (1982: 31) notes. Craigie further observes that the self-evidently cultic term qdšm invariably follows khnm in these lists. Given this, he posits that one might more naturally group nqdm with ṯnnnm—a pair of secular roles, followed by a pair of cultic roles.

The waters are muddied, though, by the Baal Cycle’s scribal colophon:

spr .ilmlk šbny

lmd . atn. prln . rb

khnm rb . nqdm

ṯʿy . nqmd . mlk ugrt

adn . yrgb . bʿl . ṯrmn

(KTU 1.6.vi.54–55)

The scribe is Ilimilku the Shebenite,

student of Attenu the diviner, chief

of the priests, chief of the nqdm,

ṯʿy of Niqmadū king of Ugarit,

lord of yrgb, master of ṯrmn. ¹⁴

Critically, Attenu (or perhaps the scribe Ilimilku himself—the syntax is somewhat ambiguous), ¹⁵ is both a ‘chief of the priests’ and ‘chief of the nqdm’. Engnell (1967: 87) and Erling Hammershaimb (1970: 17–18) have taken this to be a further indication that the Israelite נֹקֵד‎ was a temple functionary. Again, this is something of an over-extrapolation: the colophon does not indicate that the nqdm themselves had a specific role in the maintenance of the cult. At most, it implies that these particular nqdm managed flocks owned by, or perhaps merely overseen by, high-ranking cultic officials. This is more indicative of the fact that priests, and in this case, scribes, ¹⁶ had both ‘secular’ and ‘cultic’ responsibilities, than any notion that all roles carried out by priestly/scribal elites were primarily ‘cultic’ or ‘religious’ in character.

Ilimilku and Attenu, of course, were themselves closely affiliated with and directly under the command of the king of Ugarit, ¹⁷ so it remains possible that the flocks managed by their nqdm were in the final instance owned by the king. Indeed, Craigie (1982: 32) gives us good reason to think that for the most part, the nqdm of Ugarit were associated with the palace directly. First, the lists of professions themselves were discovered in the west archives of the royal palace and a house adjoining the palace. Second, texts documenting taxation and land grants to nqdm also record them as being bestowed with weaponry—an indication that they were called upon for military service, likely by the palace. In addition, Craigie notes that one of these documents places ‘a group of nqdm’ in the same tax-bracket as an entire village, presumably as a form of renumeration. Craigie (1982: 32) deduces, therefore, that the nqdm were, much like their superiors, ‘royal dependant[s]’: a category that could also include cultic and military personnel (the khnm and ṯnnnm respectively). A reasonable supposition, building on Craigie’s point, might be that the nqdm of Ugarit had a clientelistic relationship with the monarchy. That is to say, land grants and tax benefits were given in exchange for periodic military service, and then presumably a steady, regulated supply of sheep and their secondary products from the royal estates. Given the asymmetric nature of clientelism, a clear class distinction remained between the nqdm and the ruling elites: they were, in effect, middle-men.

Uses of the Akkadian cognate, nāqid, are also instructive. Though the nāqidū mentioned in Old Babylonian texts tend to be, more generically, herdsmen, they appear to have formed a middle stratum in the management of Uruk’s temple flocks in the neo-Babylonian period, with the rab būli, their superiors, and the rêʾû, the shepherds themselves. ¹⁸ From this evidence—which in the case of the neo-Babylonian texts is close in time to the composition of the book—we might infer that the נֹקֵד‎ outranked the רֹעֶה‎ in Judah.

It therefore seems likely that the Israelite נֹקֵד‎ managed flocks on the behalf of those in political centres. They likely did not own the flocks themselves, and worked within royal estates, or at least, estates that had an obligation to supply agricultural surpluses to political or cultic centres. In Marxist terms, the נֹקֵד‎ had a different relationship with the mode of production than either peasants on the one hand, or landlords on the other. ¹⁹

III. The insertion of נקדים‎ into the text of Amos 1.1

The redaction-history of Amos 1.1 gives us further reason to suspect that Amos’s profession is not incidental, but a pointed inclusion, added into a pre-existing superscription. The verse is as follows in the Masoretic Text —

דִּבְרֵי עָמוֹס אֲשֶׁר־הָיָה בַנֹּקְדִים מִתְּקוֹעַ אֲשֶׁר חָזָה עַל־יִשְׂרָאֵל בִּימֵי עֻזִיָּה מֶֽלֶךְ־יְהוּדָה וּבִימֵי יָרָבְעָם‎ בֶּן־יוֹאָשׁ מֶלֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל שְׁנָתַיִם לִפְנֵי הָרָעַשׁ‎

The words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of King Uzziah of Judah and in the days of King Jeroboam son of Joash of Israel, two years before the earthquake. ²⁰

As Hans Walter Wolff (1977: 117–18) and more recently Reinhard Kratz (2003: 57) have noted, the syntax of the verse is somewhat peculiar. The first relative clause, אֲשֶׁר הָיָה בַנֹּקְדִים‎ appears to disrupt the relationship between ‘Amos’ and ‘from Tekoa’, so looks to be a later insertion. There is further circumstantial evidence for this reading. Wolff (1977: 117) notes, for instance, that the second relative clause in the verse expands Amos’s career to roughly forty years; this sits in some tension with the temporally specific remark about the earthquake at the verse’s conclusion. ²¹ This may further indicate that the superscription has been tampered with by later redactors. ²²

For Wolff (1977: 117) and Kratz (2003: 57), inserting a reference to Amos’s profession and the time of his ministry was likely an attempt to expand on the biographical material on Amos in the prose narrative in 7.10–17, in which Amos confronts Amaziah, a priest at Bethel. The reference to the נֹקְדִים‎, then, is inserted as a consequence of the description of Amos as a בּוֹקֵר‎ or cattle herder in 7.14, and a ‘follower of the flock’ in 7.15. Wolff (1977: 117) rationalises the change from בּוֹקֵר‎ to נֹקֵד‎ on the basis of the relative commonality of the two phrases—בּוֹקֵר‎ is a hapax legomenon, whereas נֹקֵד‎ has one other use. This is unconvincing: one can hardly conclude that נֹקֵד‎ was more common on the basis of a single extra usage, and בּוֹקֵר‎, indeed, has a more obvious etymology (from בָּקָר‎, cattle), so would have been easily understood. ²³ Most importantly, whilst 1.1 presents Amos as a relatively prosperous manager of livestock, 7.14–15 positions him as socially marginalized: a seasonal worker, outside of any prophetic guild. Amos 1.1 and 7.14–15, then, actually imply different class positions for the prophet, so were likely composed separately. ²⁴

Though priority cannot be established with any degree of certainty, 7.10–17 likely postdates the updated superscription ²⁵ and is, in all likelihood, one of the later additions to the book. As numerous commentators have noted, the episode interrupts Amos’s visions, and is likely a redactional insertion. Indeed, as H. G. M. Williamson (1990: 104, 121), Kratz (2003: 47), Ludwig Schmidt (2007: 222) and more recently Davis (2022: 9–11) have contended, 7.10–17 appears to both presuppose and exposit elements of the preceding and following oracles. ²⁶ Kratz (2003: 58) further adds that the unit appears to be a retooling of the tale of the unnamed man of God from 1 Kgs 13. Both prophets hail from Judah, and come to Bethel to prophecy doom, the ‘man of God’ during the reign of Jeroboam I and Amos under Jeroboam II; thus a further line of literary dependence might be inferred.

Crucially, both the texts seemingly utilized by 7.10–17—Amos 7.7–9 and 1 Kgs 13—are themselves late. 1 Kgs 13, and more broadly the traditions surrounding Jeroboam I, are increasingly understood to be artificial literary constructs, and the ‘man of God’ narrative specifically secondary in this already late literary complex. ²⁷ Amos 7.1–9, meanwhile, introduces a theme of hope, with YHWH relenting from his judgement upon Israel in 7.3, 6; this appears to be a theological development relative to the core material in Amos 3–6. ²⁸ Given that 7.10–17 appears to lift from 7.1–9, a relatively late part of Amos, and 1 Kgs 13, a relatively late part of 1 Kgs, we can reasonably date the passage close to the end of Amos’s compositional history. ²⁹

The secondary insertion of אשר־היה בנקדים‎ could still postdate the prose narrative in 7.14–15, though if the redactors had presupposed 7.14–15, they presumably would have described Amos as hailing from the בוקרים‎* and not נקדים‎ of Tekoa; in not doing so a needless tension is introduced into the text. More likely, 7.14–15 is an expansion that sought to add further detail to the prophet’s biography—and perhaps downplay Amos’s middling social status.

IV. The class character of social critique in Amos

Given the social critiques embedded in the subsequent oracles, one may suppose that marking out Amos’s social class is not accidental. The class-position of a scribe would have been similar, if not the same, as a נֹקֵד‎. Settlements in Judah were never able to support significant populations of non-producers, that is, those with no physical role in agricultural production. ³⁰ It is highly likely, then, that scribes ‘doubled up’ in administrative roles, including estate management and the managing of supply to the political centre. ³¹ If they were not themselves נֹקְדִים‎, all but the highest ranking scribes, even in political and cultic centres, would likely have had similar economic and political interests.

In light of this, one can read the social critiques of the wealthy in Amos as a rhetorical and literary effort to align the class interests of lower-ranking non-producers with the peasantry. The figure of Amos, then, is positively identified with the נֹקְדִים‎ to try and construct an agrarian solidarity between managers of livestock and the shepherds themselves, building a sense of shared opposition against the owners of estates.

This careful balancing of the interests of the peasantry on the one hand, and the interests of the petty bureaucrats and administrators on the other, can be detected in the book’s prophetic oracles. Crucially, Amos rarely, if ever, criticises institutions per se. For instance, with regards to the cult, the promise to destroy the altars of Bethel in 3.14 stems not from a claim that this was an illegitimate ‘high place’. Rather, it is a punishment for the endemic social ills in Israel detailed in 2.6–16. Nor, indeed, do we find critiques of the monarchy or other governmental institutions. Instead, what we tend to find are critiques of the scale and extent of certain practices, undergirded by a moralistic condemnation of excess. This is unsurprising: scribes and administrators relied, to some extent, on the maintenance of these institutions and patronage from the true ruling classes. These denunciations, then, are not an unequivocal promotion of the material interests of peasants. Rather, intersections between the class interests of the peasantry and petty bureaucratic elites are being foregrounded.

One example of this political balancing act may be found in the treatment of debt slavery in 2.6. Here YHWH famously declares

I will not revoke the punishment,

because they sell the righteous for silver

and the needy for a pair of sandals

As Eidevall (2017: 114–15) notes, this functions as a critique of an abuse of the system, and not the system itself. His subsequent analysis of vv. 7–8 is also useful in this regard. The reference to ‘perverting ‘the way of the needy’ in v. 7 has a clear parallel with the references to perverting the course of justice in Exod. 23.6 and Prov. 17.23. Eidevall (2017: 115) thus suggests that ‘corruption’ is the key issue at play in this verse—something that then resurfaces in v. 8, which details another ‘abuse of the legal system’, this time the consumption of wine bought with money from fines (Eidevall 2017: 116).

We can also look to 2.7–8 to further develop Eidevall’s argument. Verse 7 condemns sexual immorality, v. 8 disrespect towards cultic installations, all uttered in the same breath as the critique of abuse of the needy in v. 6. The fundamental problem, then, is not necessarily oppression of the poor in itself, though this does appear to be a concern of the authors and might have been rhetorically useful to foreground. Rather, the core problem is excess, and by extension, its natural corollary: the breaking of ethical and legal norms.

Another example of this tendency to criticize excess might be found in Amos 4.1, where the author(s) condemn the wealthy women of Samaria as

you cows of Bashan

who are on Mount Samaria,

who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,

who say to their husbands, ‘Bring something to drink!’

The women of Samaria are critiqued in this verse for their over-indulgence and lack of social conscience. However, this moralistic condemnation should not be equated with an institutional critique of the class system of ancient Israel. Rather, on a close reading, it appears that the author(s) are simultaneously attacking the behaviour of elite women, and offering them deference. This can be observed in the use of the phrase ‘cows of Bashan’. It would be easy to assume that this curious moniker was derogatory, even misogynistic. However, as Eidevall (2017: 138) notes, the connotation was likely a positive one: there are references to Bashan’s bounteous livestock in Deut. 32.14, Jer. 50.19, Ezek. 39.18, and arguably Ps. 22.13. Brian Irwin (2012: 235–36) even goes as far as to argue that this metaphor specifically connotes beauty. Irwin points to the surfeit of animal imagery in the Song of Songs, and additionally, a broader association between beauty and the bovine in ancient southwest Asia, exemplified by, for instance, the Egyptian goddess Hathor. ³² The social critique in this verse thus exists in tandem with a respect for, and rhetorical maintenance of, the social order.

The interests of the peasantry, therefore, are only represented in so far as they intersect with the interests of the lower strata of petty elites: the bureaucratic classes tasked with the organisation and administration of land holdings. These individuals would not themselves have had significant land holdings, though their role in the physical production of agricultural products would have been largely indirect. Given their privileged position, they would have a stake in the maintenance of the existing social order. Over-consumption in the political centre may have, in fact, been a threat to this order, and ultimately, the class position of these petty elites. Over-consumption, after all, may have led to a number of destabilizing economic practices: the over-extraction of meagre agricultural surpluses, the unsustainable proliferation of debt slavery, encroachment by larger estates on smaller landholdings. Over-extraction in particular would have placed an additional administrative burden upon petty elites, and, as with all these practices, would have created the potential for social unrest. In this sense, peasant and petty-elite interests would have coincided. Furthermore, rhetorical alignment with the peasantry in the construction of counter-hegemonic discourses may have been politically efficacious. Even if the ultimate class interests of the petty administrators and peasants were distinct, temporary alliances forged in relation to specific material interests may have offered strength in numbers, or at least given the impression of this to elite audiences, if such alliances only existed rhetorically and in the literary imagination of scribes. Perhaps more importantly for local administrators, such rhetoric may have been a way of disassociating themselves from ‘state’ actors demanding tax, fines, and debt repayments from the broader populace.

In this sense, Yee’s (2007: 23) suggestion that ‘prophets were considered class traitors by the elite’ has some force, though we should nuance this statement in two regards. First, this was more likely an elite perception of those responsible for these particular written traditions, not necessarily any actual, historical prophets. Whether or not the social critique originated in an early, pre-exilic version of the text, ³³ or a post-exilic recension, ³⁴ its present form is a literary product that comes to us only through a complex process of Fortschreibung. ³⁵ We may not be able to infer much, or anything, about the ‘historical’ Amos, but one can say something of the class position of scribal circles. Second, these scribes were not, in fact, renouncing their petty-elite class interests. Indeed, the authors of these parts of Amos were arguing not for a dismantling of the status quo, but its maintenance through the limitation of specific abuses.

V. Conclusion

Placing the character of Amos amongst the נֹקְדִים‎, then, was a political and literary ‘tell’, aligning the class position of the authors with that of the eponymous prophet: that of bureaucrats and administrators. These functionaries were still of the elite, non-producer classes, and wealthy relative to the vast majority of the population. Nevertheless, they were comparatively poor compared to the highest-ranking priests, scribes, and governmental officials. When reading the prophetic oracles in conjunction with the superscription, then, one might observe that the social critique emphasises economic and social problems that afflicted both the peasantry and these petty elites. More speculatively, the social critique in Amos may represent a rhetorical attempt to forge, or at least imply, an agrarian solidarity between נֹקְדִים‎ and peasants. Amos 1.1, then, gives us something of an insight into scribal class consciousness, and specifically, the divergences and areas of alignment between peasant and petty-elite class interests.