THE VIOLENCE OF PROPHETIC LANGUAGE: POETRY, RUPTURE, AND DENUNCIATION IN THE ORACLES OF AMOS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66104/nqmwra34Keywords:
Amos; prophetic language; speech acts; symbolic violence; Hebrew poetry; performativity.Abstract
This article examines the prophetic language of Amos based on the hypothesis that certain oracles present judgment as a reality already established through the very act of utterance. Drawing on the speech act theory of J. L. Austin and John Searle, as well as the concept of symbolic violence developed by Pierre Bourdieu, the study analyzes how the oracles shape collective expectations, claims to authority, and ways of understanding reality. The corpus comprises four texts—Amos 3:8; 5:18–20; 7:10–17; and 9:1–4—selected because they display different manifestations of this process. The analysis demonstrates that characteristic features of Hebrew poetry, such as parallelism, imagistic progression, and lexical inversion, directly contribute to the construction of the effects produced by the oracles. By bringing together insights from the philosophy of language, sociology, and studies of Hebrew poetics, the article offers a reading of the texts of Amos that highlights the relationship between poetic form, discursive authority, and prophetic judgment.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Fabiano Pedroso, Dr. Charles Klemz
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