Then Amos answered Amaziah, "I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was a herdsman, and a farmer of sycamore trees;
"I was no prophet ..." The past tense is vital to this verse, for in no sense whatever was it Amos' purpose here to deny his divine commission and calling as a true prophet of the Almighty God. We may only deplore the fact that both the RSV and the New English Bible, by rendering the verb here in the present, "I am no prophet, etc.," put in Amos' mouth a denial of the very thing he so emphatically affirmed in  Amos 7:15 (next).  To be sure, the passage could be rendered in either fashion.  "The doubt about the tense arises because in Hebrew the verb is not expressed, but left to be understood."[38] Smith included this further explanation: