1 By a basket of summer fruit is showed the proximity, nearness of Israel’s end. 4 Oppression is reproved. 11 A famine of the word threatened.
The Coming Day of Bitter Mourning
Amo 8:1 This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: a basket of ripe fruit.
Heb. qayiṣ, early maturing fruit, used especially of “figs.” The purpose of this vision was to show that the people were ripe for judgment, that God’s forbearance was at an end.
The divine long-suffering had resulted only in the continuance of Israel’s sin. This figure fittingly represents Israel’s final doom. Instead of “a basket of summer fruit,” the LXX reads “a fowler’s basket.” This conveys the thought that Israel would be brought into captivity as a bird is caught in a bird catcher’s cage or basket.
Amo 8:2 “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.
Nothing more can be done for a crop at the time of harvest. Then the crop will be dealt with according to the kind of fruit that has been produced.
Amo 8:3 “In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!”
Songs were to be changed into a lamentation for the dead (see ch. 8:10). Silence.
The mournful conditions of the land pictured here in primary reference to the land of Israel after the Assyrian captivity was an exhibit on a small scale of the effects of the fourth of the seven last plagues
Amo 8:4 Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land,
Those who oppress the poor are charged to realize that their sinful course has prepared the way for the divine judgment upon them. The prosperity of the upper classes will not be able to help these wicked oppressors in the day of Israel’s punishment.
Amo 8:5 saying, “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?”— skimping on the measure,
Amo 8:5 saying, “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?”— skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, By giving short weight the seller received more money than he should for the quantity of grain sold.
Amo 8:6 buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.
Buying the poor. The refuse. In times of scarcity this “sweepings,” ordinarily fed to animals, could be sold for human consumption.
Amo 8:7 The LORD has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget anything they have done.
Pride of Jacob. The LXX renders the first half of this verse, “The Lord swears against the pride of Jacob,” here the deeds of their pride rather than the objects of their pride (see on ch. 6:8).
Amo 8:8 “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.
Rise like the Nile. That is, “the land” will “tremble” like the troubled sea. Because of the divine judgment upon it, the land shall heave and swell like the river Nile, “the flood of Egypt,” at the time of its annual rising.
Amo 8:9 “In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.
The day of the Lord is frequently presented as accompanied by upheavals in the natural world (see Isa. 13:10; Joel 3:15; etc.; cf. Amos 5:20).
Amo 8:10 I will turn your religious festivals 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.
Turn your religious festivals into mourning. See Lam. 5:15; Hosea 2:11; Amos 5:16, 17; 8:3.
Wear Sackcloth. This was a sign of mourning (1 Kings 20:31; Isa. 15:3; Joel 1:8, 13), as was also this “baldness,” that is, the shaving of the head (Job 1:20; Isa. 3:24; 15:2).
For an only son.
Which represents an especially severe sorrow (see Jer. 6:26; Zech. 12:10).
Amo 8:11 “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.
The prophet plainly points to a time when, because of continued disobedience, it would be too late for the Israelites to turn to God’s Word in an attempt to avoid the divine judgments.
Deep sorrow sometimes stimulates men to heed the Holy Scriptures. Unfortunately, such sorrow often comes too late to produce any beneficial result. This is so, not because God’s love is withdrawn from the sinner, but because the sinner has become so hardened in his iniquities that he wishes only to escape the consequence of his transgressions, and not to forsake his evil ways.
He has grieved the Holy Spirit beyond all hope of true repentance and reformation of character (see Gen. 6:3, 5, 6; see on 1 Sam. 28:6). In the final “day of the Lord,” just before the second advent of Christ, this experience of ancient Israel will be repeated, when the impenitent of the whole earth, suffering under the seven last plagues, will seek relief from calamity by any means possible, even turning to the Word of God, which they had formerly neglected to study and obey (see GC 629).
Amo 8:12 People 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 conditions mentioned in vs. 11, 12 are so severe that they will affect even those possessing the full bloom and energy of youth.
Amo 8:13 “In that day “the lovely young women and strong young men will faint because of thirst.
Faint. In the Hebrew this verb refers to a literal, physical fainting, not merely to “weakness” or “faintness.”
Amo 8:14 Those who swear by the sin of Samaria— who say, ‘As surely as your god lives, Dan,’ or, ‘As surely as the god of Beersheba lives’— they will fall, never to rise again.”
Sin. Heb. ‘ashmah, “offense,” or “guiltiness.” Probably a reference to the idol worship of the golden calf at Bethel (see on Hosea 8:5, 6).
Your god lives, Dan.
Alludes to the other calf set up at Dan, in the extreme north of the kingdom (see 1 Kings 12:26–33). Some believe that here ‘ashmah should be taken as a proper name, Ashima being the deity of the Hamathites who introduced its worship into the land of Samaria when they were put there by Sargon to replace the captive Israelites (2 Kings 17:29, 30).
God of Beersheba lives. Literally, “way,” here meaning a mode of worship or a system of religion (see Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23).
Instead of “The manner of Beer-sheba live,” the LXX reads, “Thy god, O Beer sheba, lives.”