Hosea/Amos/Micah (NIV Application Commentary)

Scratch beneath the surface of today's culture and you'll find we're not so different from ancient Israel. True, our sophistication, mobility, and technology eclipse anything the Israelites could have imagined. Our worship is far different, to say nothing of our language and customs. Yet if the prophets Hosea, Amos, and Micah were to visit us today, we might be shocked to see how little their messages would differ from the ones they delivered 2,800 years ago.

For human hearts are still the same--and so is God. Injustice, oppression, and political corruption anger him as much as ever. Apostasy still grieves him. His judgment of sin remains as fierce as his love is strong. And the hope God extends to those who turn toward him is as brilliant now as at any time in history.

Revealing the links between Israel eight centuries B.C. and our own times, Gary V. Smith shows how the prophetic writings of Hosea, Amos, and Micah speak to us today with relevance and conviction.

About the NIVAC Series

The NIV Application Commentary Series is unique. Most Bible commentaries help us make the journey from our world back to the world of the Bible. They enable us to cross the barriers of time, language, and geography that separate us from the biblical world. Yet they only offer a one–way ticket to the past and assume that we can somehow make the return journey on our own. Once they have explained the original menaing of a book or passage, these commentaries give us little or no help in exploring its contemporary significance.

Recently, a few commentaries have included some contemporary application as one of their goals. Yet that application is often sketchy or moralistic, and some volumes sound more like printed sermons than commentaries.

The primary goal of the NIV Application Commentary Series is to help you with the difficult but vital task of bringing an ancient message into a modern context. The series not only focuses on application as a finished product but also helps you think through the process of moving from the original meaning of a passage to its contemporary significance. These are commentaries, not popular expositions. They are works of reference, not devotional literature.

The format of the series is designed to achieve the goals of the series. Each passage is treated in three sections: Original Meaning, Bridging Contexts, and Contemporary Significance.