Amos 8

Visions

This is what the Lord God showed me: I saw a basket of summer fruit.

2 And he said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit”. Then the LORD said to me, “The end has come on my people Israel. And I will not pass by them any longer.

8:2 When fruit is ripe men pluck it and take it away. So Assyria would do to Israel.⚜

3 And the songs of the temple will become wailing sounds in that day, says the Lord God. There will be many dead bodies everywhere. They will throw them out in silence”.

4 Hear this, you who swallow up

the needy, and do away

with the poor of the land,

5 Saying, “When will the new moon

be gone, that we may sell grain?

And the Sabbath, that we may

set out wheat for sale,

making the ephah small,

and the shekel great,

and falsifying the balances

by deceit,

8:4-5 Again we see God’s concern for the poor and needy – Amos 2:6-7; 4:1; 5:12. Merchants cared nothing for the sufferings they caused the poor. They were greedy for gain and practiced dishonesty to get it. Even their religious festivals and days of rest were a burden to them because they could not do business at those times.⚜

6 that we may buy the poor for silver,

and the needy for a pair

of shoes, yes,

and sell the refuse of the wheat?”

7 The LORD has sworn by the excellence of Jacob, “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.

8 Will the land not tremble for this,

and everyone mourn who lives in it?

And all of it will swell like the river

Nile;

and it will be tossed up and subside,

like the river of Egypt.

8:8 Egypt’s great river, the Nile, every year during the rainy season would rise by as much as 25 feet and flood all the surrounding land. God’s judgment would be like that.⚜

9 “And this will come about in that day, says the Lord God:

I will cause the sun to go down at noon,

and darken the earth in

broad daylight.

8:9 Compare Amos 5:18. The day God speaks of here is not the “day of the LORD”, but it is something like it, in some ways a little picture of it.⚜

10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning,

and all your songs into lamenting,

and bring sackcloth on every waist,

and baldness on every head,

and make it like the mourning

for an only son,

and its end like a bitter day.

8:10 Verse 3.⚜

11 “See, the days come”,

says the Lord God,

“when I will send a famine on the land;

not a famine of bread,

or a thirst for water, but of hearing

the words of the LORD.

12 And they will wander from sea to sea,

and from the north to the east,

running here and there to seek the word

of the LORD, and will not find it.

8:12 Compare Ezek 20:1-3, 31. When they had God’s Word they would not obey it. This was their punishment. They would understand something of its great value when it was taken away from them.⚜

13 “In that day the beautiful virgins

and young men will faint for thirst.

14 Those who swear by the sin of Samaria,

and say, ‘Your god, O Dan, lives!’

and, ‘The way of Beersheba lives!’ will fall,

and never rise up again”.