Amos 8

The Basket of Summer Fruit

¹This is what the Lord Yahweh showed me: I saw a basket of summer fruit.

• AMOS 8:1[NOTE]SUMMER FRUIT. A pun in Hebrew: summer fruit is qayits and the end is qets.

²“Amos, what do you see?” He asked.

“A basket of summer fruit,” I replied.

So Yahweh said to me, “The end has come for My people Israel; I will no longer spare them.”

³“In that day,” declares the Lord Yahweh, “the songs of the temple will turn to wailing. Many will be the corpses, strewn in silence everywhere!”

⁴Hear this, you who trample the needy,

who do away with the poor of the land,

⁵asking, “When will the New Moon be over,

that we may sell grain?

When will the Sabbath end,

that we may market wheat?

Let us shrink the measure and boost the price;

let us cheat with dishonest scales.

• AMOS 8:5[TEXT]THE MEASURE AND THE PRICE. In the Hebrew: make the dry measure small and the weight great. They sold less grain and weighed the buyer's silver on a heavy weight.

⁶Let us buy the poor with silver

and the needy for a pair of sandals,

selling even the chaff with the wheat!”

⁷Yahweh has sworn by the Pride of Jacob:

“I will never forget any of their deeds.

⁸Will not the land quake for this,

and all its dwellers mourn?

All of it will swell like the Nile;

it will surge and then subside

like the Nile in Egypt.

⁹And in that day,

declares the Lord Yahweh,

I will make the sun go down at noon,

and I will darken the earth in the daytime.

• AMOS 8:9[FORESHADOW]God would make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in the daytime → MT 27:45; LK 23:44-45MEDIUM
• AMOS 8:9[ARCHAEOLOGY]An Assyrian list of years records an eclipse of the sun, which astronomers date to June 15, 763 BC, in the reign of Jeroboam II, see The Eclipse of 763 BC Field Notes box
• AMOS 8:9[NOTE]THE SUN AT NOON. See The Sun at Noon and The Eclipse of 763 BC.

¹⁰I will turn your feasts into mourning

and all your songs into lamentation.

I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth

and every head to be shaved.

I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son,

and its outcome like a bitter day.

¹¹Behold, the days are coming,

declares the Lord Yahweh,

when I will send a famine on the land—

not a famine of bread or a thirst for water,

but a famine of hearing the words of Yahweh.

• AMOS 8:11[NOTABLE]The worst hunger is when God's word goes silent.
• AMOS 8:11[NOTE]A FAMINE OF HEARING. The worst hunger is when God stops speaking.

¹²People will stagger from sea to sea

and roam from north to east,

seeking the word of Yahweh,

but they will not find it.

¹³In that day the lovely young women—

the young men as well—

will faint from thirst.

¹⁴Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria

and say, ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’

or, ‘As surely as the way of Beersheba lives’—

they will fall, never to rise again.”

• AMOS 8:14[DEMONIC]People swear by the guilt of Samaria and the god of Dan
• AMOS 8:14[NOTE]DAN AND BEERSHEBA. The north and south ends of the land. Dan had a golden calf. See The High Place at Dan, 1 Kings.