Amoz

Amoz appears in scripture only as the father of Isaiah the prophet. He has no narrative of his own, no recorded words, and no independent acts. His name surfaces in the patronymic clause "Isaiah the son of Amoz," and that clause is where the entire Amoz-record lives — anchored at the head of the Isaianic book and recurring whenever the prophet is named in full at moments of weight.

The Patronymic at the Head of the Book

Amoz stands in the very first verse of Isaiah. The book opens with the superscription "The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah" (Isa 1:1). The same patronymic re-anchors the second chapter's heading: "The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem" (Isa 2:1). And it returns again at the head of the Babylon-oracle: "The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw" (Isa 13:1). At each editorial seam where the book authenticates the prophet's vision, Amoz is named as Isaiah's father — fixing the seer of Judah-and-Jerusalem and the burden-of-Babylon as one and the same Isaiah-ben-Amoz.

The Patronymic in the Hezekiah Narratives

When the Assyrian crisis comes, Hezekiah's sackcloth-covered delegation is sent specifically to "Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz" — once in the Kings account ("And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz," 2Ki 19:2) and again in the parallel narrative inside Isaiah itself (Isa 37:2). Isaiah's reply to the king's prayer is delivered under the same patronymic: "Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, Whereas you have prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard [you]" (2Ki 19:20).

The patronymic recurs in the Hezekiah sickbed narrative as well. The terminal Yahweh-word is brought by the named son of Amoz: "And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, Thus says Yahweh, Set your house in order: for you will die, and not live" (2Ki 20:1; the parallel in Isa 38:1 carries the same naming). At the height of Hezekiah's two great crises — Sennacherib's siege and the king's own deathbed — the prophet who speaks is identified not just by office but by paternal line.

The Patronymic and the Sign-Acts

The Egypt-and-Ethiopia sign is delivered through the same Amoz-named prophet. "At that time Yahweh spoke by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go, and loose the sackcloth from off your loins, and put your sandal from off your foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot" (Isa 20:2). The Yahweh-word goes out by Isaiah, and Isaiah is once again named son of Amoz — Amoz's name standing behind the prophet whose own body becomes the oracle.

Amoz as Source-Note for a King's Acts

The Chronicler closes Uzziah's reign by pointing to a prophetic record. "Now the rest of the acts of Uzziah, first and last, Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, wrote" (2CH 26:22). The named author of Uzziah's first-and-last record is, again, Isaiah the son of Amoz — the same Amoz-line prophet whose visions fill the book that bears his name and whose ministry began, by his own dating, "in the year that King Uzziah died" (Isa 6:1, the prophet's inaugural vision).

The Shape of the Amoz-Record

Across these passages Amoz himself never speaks, never acts, and is never described. What scripture preserves is the patronymic clause — and what the patronymic does is anchor the prophet. Wherever Isaiah's vision opens a section, wherever a king sends to him in crisis, wherever Yahweh speaks by him, wherever his written record is cited, the formula is the same: Isaiah the son of Amoz. Amoz's place in scripture is exactly that: the father whose name fixes Isaiah's identity at every seam where the prophet's authority is being underwritten.