“A tender of sycamore-fig trees”
I was not a prophet, Amos replied, nor was I the son of a prophet; rather, I was a herdsman and a tender of sycamore-fig trees. (Amos 7:14 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A vague job title, sounding like a gardener or orchard-keeper.
The cultural key
Amos is insisting he has no professional standing, and the detail proves it. The sycamore fig was a poor man's food, and its fruit will not ripen properly on its own; each fig had to be individually 'dressed', pierced, scratched, or nipped by hand a few days before harvest, to make it sweeten and ripen. It was tedious, lowly, seasonal labor, the work of a hired farmhand, not a landowner. So when Amos says he was 'a herdsman and a tender of sycamore-fig trees,' he is rejecting the charge that he is a professional, paid prophet stirring up trouble: I am not a prophet by trade or training, he says, just a shepherd and fruit-pincher whom the LORD took 'from following the flock' and sent to prophesy. The obscure job title is the whole point, it marks him as an ordinary laborer with no credentials but God's call.
Recovered meaning
Tending sycamore figs was menial hand-labor, piercing each fruit so it would ripen. Amos names it to say he is no professional prophet but a common farmhand God called from ordinary work, a prophet by divine summons, not by trade.