The Work
Gustave Doré's engraving for the book of Amos appeared in La Sainte Bible (1866) and depicts the prophet's vision of divine judgment as a scene of desolation: ruined sanctuaries, fallen pillars, and a people unable to escape the pursuing wrath. Amos stands at the margin as witness - the shepherd-turned-prophet from Tekoa confronting a prosperous Israel with the consequences of economic injustice and religious complacency.
Biblical Source
Amos 9:1-4 - "I saw the Lord standing by the altar, and he said: 'Strike the tops of the pillars so that the thresholds shake. Bring them down on the heads of all the people; those who are left I will kill with the sword'" - provides the vision of destruction that the engraving depicts. Amos 9:4 - "Though they be driven into exile by their enemies, there I will command the sword to slay them. I will keep my eye on them for harm and not for good" - supplies the inexorability of the judgment.
Amos was the first writing prophet (c. 760 BC), a shepherd and fig farmer from the Judean village of Tekoa who delivered his oracles in the Northern Kingdom of Israel during a period of prosperity. His message was radical: prosperity is not evidence of divine favor; economic exploitation of the poor is a direct violation of the covenant; religious practice without social justice is worse than useless.
Artist
See the main Doré entry. The Amos engraving is among the more dramatically abstract of Doré's biblical plates, reflecting the difficulty of visualizing prophetic oracle rather than narrative event.
Iconography
Doré renders the judgment vision as architectural collapse - fallen pillars, crumbling sanctuary, fleeing figures - rather than as a specific narrative scene. This approach to prophetic visualization became standard: divine judgment is shown through its material effects, the collapse of the structures in which human confidence was placed. The engraving was widely used in 19th-century social reform preaching that drew on Amos's denunciations of economic exploitation.