Seek Me, and Live

Amos preached in the northern kingdom during the long, prosperous reign of Jeroboam II (Amos 1:1). He begins with a clever sequence: judgment on Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon and Moab, one neighbor after another, while his listeners presumably nod along. Then he turns on Judah, and finally on Israel itself (2:6). The charges are not about idols first. They are about people: selling the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes, pushing the meek aside. In chapter 3 Amos asks a string of cause-and-effect questions, including “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (3:3), and then states a principle Latter-day Saints treasure: the Lord reveals His secret to His servants the prophets (3:7). He does not leave His people to guess.

🔗 Cross-references

• Amos 7:14–15 ↗Amos explains he was no professional prophet, just a herdsman the Lord called from the flock.
• Doctrine and Covenants 1:38 ↗Whether by the Lord’s own voice or the voice of His servants, it is the same.
• 2 Kings 14:23–25 ↗The reign of Jeroboam II, the setting for Amos, where Jonah the son of Amittai also appears.

Chapter 4 has a haunting refrain. The Lord lists the hardships He allowed (hunger, drought, blight, plague) and after each one comes the same line: “yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD” (4:6, 8, 9, 10, 11). The hardships were meant to turn them homeward, and they didn’t. Chapter 5 answers with the invitation of the week: “Seek ye me, and ye shall live” (5:4), repeated in 5:6 and 5:14. Then comes one of the sharpest passages in the prophets. The Lord says He despises their feast days and will not listen to their songs (5:21–23). What He wants instead is “let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream” (5:24). Worship that never touches how we treat people is not what He is asking for.

🔗 Cross-references

• Helaman 12:3 ↗Mormon observes that people often forget the Lord until He chastens them.
• Isaiah 1:11–17 ↗Isaiah, a near contemporary, makes the same point: stop the empty offerings, learn to do well, relieve the oppressed.
• Matthew 23:23 ↗Jesus calls judgment, mercy and faith “the weightier matters of the law.”

Amos warns those “at ease in Zion” (6:1), lounging on ivory beds (6:4). He sees the Lord holding a plumb line against a wall (7:7–8): the standard does not bend. When the priest of Bethel tells Amos to go home and prophesy somewhere else, Amos answers that the Lord took him from following the flock (7:12–15). Then he warns of a famine “not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD” (8:11). People would run “to and fro” seeking the word and not find it (8:12). Latter-day Saints see that famine in the centuries of apostasy after the Apostles died. Yet Amos ends with hope: the Lord will sift Israel among the nations without losing the least grain (9:9), and raise up the fallen tabernacle of David (9:11).

🔗 Cross-references

• 2 Nephi 28:24 ↗Nephi echoes Amos, warning those who are at ease in Zion in the last days.
• Acts 15:16–17 ↗James quotes Amos 9:11–12 at the Jerusalem council as the gospel opens to the Gentiles.
• Joseph Smith—History 1:17 ↗The First Vision, when the heavens opened again and the long famine of hearing began to end.

Obadiah is the shortest book in the Old Testament, twenty-one verses aimed at Edom, the nation descended from Esau (Genesis 25:30). Edom lived in rugged high country and felt untouchable: “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock” (Obadiah 1:3). Their sin was not only pride but indifference. When strangers carried Jerusalem away, Edom “stood on the other side” (1:11) and even rejoiced. Then the book ends with a surprising promise: “saviours shall come up on mount Zion” (1:21). Joseph Smith taught that Latter-day Saints fulfill this as they do temple work for their ancestors. The opposite of Edom’s standing aloof is stepping in for someone who cannot help themselves.

🔗 Cross-references

• Genesis 25:30 ↗Esau is called Edom, the name his descendants carried.
• Doctrine and Covenants 128:15 ↗Joseph Smith teaches that the salvation of our dead is necessary to our own.
• Luke 10:31–33 ↗In the parable of the good Samaritan, two men pass by on the other side and one stops.

Notice how often Jonah goes down. He goes down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into its sides to sleep (1:3, 5), and finally down to “the bottoms of the mountains” (2:6). Running from the Lord is a steady descent. Three times the text says he was fleeing “from the presence of the LORD” (1:3, 10), yet the Lord is present in the storm, in the lots, in the fish and in the sea. Meanwhile the pagan sailors pray, try to save Jonah’s life, and end up offering sacrifices to the Lord (1:13–16). Jonah’s prayer from the fish sounds like a psalm: “When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD” (2:7). He promises thanks before any rescue (2:9). Jesus later used Jonah’s three days as the sign of His own burial and Resurrection (Matthew 12:40).

🔗 Cross-references

• Psalm 139:7–10 ↗David asks where he could flee from the Lord’s presence and concludes that there is nowhere.
• Matthew 12:40 ↗Jesus names Jonah’s three days and nights as the sign of His own death and Resurrection.

“The word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time” (3:1). This time he goes, and Nineveh repents from the king down to the livestock (3:5–8). God sees their works and spares them (3:10). Then Jonah is angry, and admits why he ran: “I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness” (4:2), almost word for word what the Lord proclaimed about Himself to Moses (Exodus 34:6). Jonah wanted that mercy for himself, not for Assyria. The Lord answers with questions, not rebukes: “Doest thou well to be angry?” (4:4, 9). He grows a plant and takes it away to show Jonah his heart. The book ends on His question about a city of more than 120,000 people (4:11), with no answer from Jonah. That answer is ours to give.

🔗 Cross-references

• Exodus 34:6 ↗The Lord’s own description of Himself to Moses, which Jonah quotes back to Him.
• Luke 15:28–32 ↗The older brother refuses to join the feast for the prodigal; the father pleads with him, as the Lord pleads with Jonah.
• Matthew 12:41 ↗Jesus holds up the repentance of Nineveh as an example to His own generation.

Come back to the key passage and let it frame the whole week. Three times the Lord says some form of “seek … and live” (Amos 5:4, 6, 14). Seeking, in Amos, is not a feeling. It means hating evil, loving good and establishing justice “in the gate,” where the town settled its disputes (5:15). Verse 8 reminds us whom we are seeking: the One who made “the seven stars and Orion” and turns “the shadow of death into the morning.” Then verse 15 ends with a gentle possibility: “it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious.” Jonah proved that He is. As you take the sacrament today, you are renewing a promise to seek Him, and He renews His promise to be found.

🔗 Cross-references

• Jeremiah 29:13 ↗“Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”
• Doctrine and Covenants 88:63 ↗“Seek me diligently and ye shall find me.”
• Moroni 4:3 ↗The sacrament prayer, a weekly promise to always remember Him and keep His commandments.