The predictions of judgment in Amos are so sweeping and ultimate that later readers found the message incomplete. Especially the last oracle (ix. 1 ff.) was an ill-omened close. Consequently, a messianic pendant was attached to it (ix. 11-15) by a Judæan editor, and an imperfect juncture made by the introduction of vs. 8^b (which flatly contradicts the first half verse) and 9^b (no grain shall fall to the ground) perhaps displacing some words of the original.
It seems that some imitative pieces have been inserted also in c. 1; the prophecy against Judah in ii. 4 f. with its deuteronomic sins, falls out of the scheme and is generally recognized as editorial. Slight retouches elsewhere (e.g. iv. 13; v. 8 f.; ix. 6) need not detain us. In general the book has suffered little from the improvers, and the text is in relatively good preservation.
OBADIAH.--The single chapter of Obadiah, the shortest of the Old Testament books, is a prophecy against the Edomites, toward whom, as we have repeatedly seen, the Jews cherished an implacable animosity from the time of the fall of Jerusalem. Obadiah vss. 1-9 has close parallels in Jer. xlix. 7-22 (cf. Obad. vss. 1-4 with Jer. xlix. 14-16; Obad. vs. 5 f., Jer. xlix. 9 f.; Obad. vs. 8, Jer. xlix. 7). The question which is the borrower has been differently answered. Obadiah vss. 15-21, in which Edom gets its judgment in the Day of the Lord on the nations, is probably later than vss. 1-14, but the whole is post-exilic.
JONAH.--The Book of Jonah has already been discussed along with the stories of Esther and Ruth.
MICAH.--The prediction of Micah, the Morashtite, that Zion should be plowed as a field and Jerusalem be a heap of ruins and the temple hill become like forest shrines (Mic. iii. 2), is quoted under his name in Jer. xxvi. 18--the only example of such a prophetic quotation in the Old Testament. The author, a resident of Moresheth-Gath in the Judæan Lowland, is said in the title to have prophesied in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, which is the editor's way of saying that he was a younger contemporary of Isaiah. The reign of Hezekiah is attested by the tradition in Jeremiah. It is probable that only cc. 1-3 (with perhaps some dubious possibilities in the following chapters) can be attributed to Micah.