Amos has chastised the leaders of Israel for their love of luxury and blindness to justice.
Amos 8:1-2, A basket of fruit
This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. "What do you see, Amos?" he asked.
"A basket of ripe fruit," I answered.
Then the LORD said to me, "The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.
This vision of the basket of fruit is the fourth of four visions; the previous ones were in 7:1-9. There are similarities with several visions of Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:11-19 and Jeremiah 24:1-10.
There is wordplay in verses 1 and 2. The ripe summer fruit (qayits) represents the end (qets) of Israel.
Amos 8:3-6, When will the New Moon be over?
"In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD, "the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies--flung everywhere! Silence!"
Hear this, you who trample the needy
and do away with the poor of the land,
saying,
"When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?"--
skimping the measure, boosting the price
and cheating with dishonest scales,
buying the poor with silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
selling even the sweepings with the wheat.
The leaders of Israel, in their greed oppress the poor and needy. The merchants hurry past their religious observations so that they can return to their shops and commerce. In their trade, they use dishonest scales, cheating in the price of their wares. All of this is detrimental to the poor, some of whom are sold into slavery. (In the ANE, unscrupulous traders could carry two sets of weights, one lighter than the other, to quickly switch when working with a naive customer. This was specifically prohibited in the Mosaic covenant, Leviticus 19:35-36, Deuteronomy 25:13-16.)
Amos 8:7-9, Earthquake and darkness
The LORD has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: "I will never forget anything they have done.
"Will not the land tremble for this,
and all who live in it mourn?
The whole land will rise like the Nile;
it will be stirred up
and then sink like the river of Egypt.
"In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD,
"I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
YHWH promises, by the name of Israel, to not forget these evils. In this future judgment, cataclysmic events will occur. In a future earthquake, the land will ripple in waves. The sun will disappear at noon and the earth will become dark. (The plague of darkness was the penultimate plague in the confrontation with Pharaoh in Exodus 10. It followed the plague of locusts.)
Amos 8:9-10, Darkness at noon
I will turn your religious feasts into mourning
and all your singing into weeping.
I will make all of you wear sackcloth
and shave your heads.
I will make that time like mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.
In the future judgment, religious feasts, which should include joyous singing, will become times of mourning, with people crying in sackcloths, as if they had lost their only son.
Amos 8:11-12, Staggering for water
"The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD,
"when I will send a famine through the land--
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.
Men will stagger from sea to sea
and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the LORD,
but they will not find it.
The future judgment will include famine -- not just the absence of food and water, but the absence of knowledge of God.
Amos 8:13-14, Shame of Samaria
"In that day
"the lovely young women and strong young men
will faint because of thirst.
They who swear by the shame of Samaria,
or say, `As surely as your god lives, O Dan,'
or, `As surely as the god of Beersheba lives'--
they will fall, never to rise again."
In that future judgment, the young men and women will pass out from thirst. Those who make pledges using the names of the gods of Samaria will fall.
First published July 4, 2025; updated July 4, 2025
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