The book of Amos is characterized by noting the sin of the people and the impending trial, especially when it comes to the house of Israel, which despite order to preserve some liturgical practices, they have to justice (under which tends to give to each what belongs to him) as his stronghold, remains very fact that importance and value before God for their action.
Protection, the protector of the weak, care for the needs of the community are essentially claims of the Lord toward authority figures in Israel and to this day.
On balance, it contains a concept developed from modernity, that although it has existed in history as the first, only until the nineteenth century was consolidated in terms of law, is "Social Justice", which deals, among situations of inequality to find balance and create mechanisms for protecting the disadvantaged.
This involves the participation of State, who from their constitutional and statutory powers, must work to eradicate the inequitable conditions present in our towns.
Alejandro Korn (Argentine philosopher) in turn, means the Social Justice as an "ideal definable only from the fact of social injustice, this aspect is outlined by Amos when he addresses the idolatrous nation of Israel that its practices reprehensible had "the oppression of the poor and undermine the needy" (Amos 4:1), a clear exercise in which states conduct diametrically opposed to God and imperatively must be modified.
So, we find in the Social Justice issues such as equal opportunities, the issue of poverty, income distribution, labor rights and so on. From history, these and other issues are part of the conflict topic of "Social Question", a long Labor unrest emerging from the "benefits" of capitalism and undermined in meeting even their most basic needs.
That issue is also present in the Holy Scriptures, which is applied to restore relations under equilibrium conditions and urging the men to live in righteousness and responding to the plight of the people and defending the weak with explicit examples are:
√ Psalm 82:2-4 Defend the poor and fatherless;
Do justice to the afflicted and needy.
Deliver the poor and needy
√ Jeremiah 22: 15-17 "queen, because you''re surrounded by cedar? Did not your father eat and drink, and did justice and righteousness, and then did well?
He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and then was fine. Is not this to know me? saith the Lord.
But your eyes and your heart are not but for your covetousness, and to shed innocent blood, and oppression and to do justice.
Revelation 19:11-21, Mt 6:33 as among others, associate justice and the Kingdom of God in other words, social justice characterized the Kingdom of Christ.
We also found the demands of God for a sinful nation in Isaiah 1: 10 to 17, which full of rituals and ceremonies did not cease to do evil and little or no dealing with the orphan and the widow.
Such demands for social justice are those that Amos calls on Israel to commit itself to run contrary to long meetings and discussions, songs, chants and instruments that paid no attention to the plight of the needy (Amos 5: 21-24).
Is the cry of John the Baptist, defender of the path of righteousness (Matt. 21:32), in fair fight against the corrupt system of its time when Herod in opulence spoiled the scarce resources of his people (in addition to his extramarital affair ) as the Israelites were suffering under the yoke of Rome. (Luke 3:19 - 20)
Moreover, the term was coined Social Justice (Giustizia sociale) by Luigi Taparelli, a Jesuit priest in 1483 and defines it as "equal right to all men in regard to the rights of mankind", around 1889 the term becomes to be used by the British Fabian socialists in his famous Fabian Essays in Socialism (Fabian Essays on Socialism), where social justice is recognized as the ultimate ethical purpose, a guide to social development up to the terms of social democracy.
With the rise of social constitutionalism in the early decades of the twentieth century, the rise of the welfare state and labor law, new elements were incorporated into legislation that serve all of a repetition of the components in biblical, anti-exploitation the poor, protection of rights of land use and abandonment of large states, protection of food security of the citizens among other things, that more than ever highlighted the relevance of writing in the contemporary world for the rescue of interest who seems not having a voice, that is the real Social Justice (Christ).