Amos 7:1 – 9:15 is the final section of the book. It contains a series of five vision reports (Amos 7:1–3, Amos 7:4–6, Amos 7:7–8; Amos 8:1–2; Amos 9:1) that chronicle the stages by which God reveals the terror, sweep, certainty, and inescapability of his judgment on the northern kingdom before finishing with the hope of restoration (Amos 9:11–15.)1 The message of the visions is complemented and interpreted by a series of brief oracles (Amos 7:9; Amos 8:3, Amos 8:4–14; Amos 9:7–10), a report of Amos’s dispute with Amaziah (Amos 7:10–17), and a final hymn celebrating the sovereignty of God (Amos 9:5–6), and this is followed by a dialogue between the Lord and Amos (Amos 9:7–15).2
The vision report is a common genre used by prophets to describe their eyewitness interactions with the Lord (e.g., Ezekiel 1:1 – 6:14). The visions are God’s revelation to the prophet, which are then put into words that are proclaimed to the people.3
1 This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, he was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout, and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings.