Reflections on Amos 8

Amos 08 (Contemporary English Version)


1. The LORD God showed me a basket of ripe fruit
   
2. and asked, "Amos, what do you see?" "A basket of ripe fruit," I replied. Then he said, "This is the end for my people Israel. I won't forgive them again.
   
3. Instead of singing in the temple, they will cry and weep. Dead bodies will be everywhere. So keep silent! I, the LORD, have spoken!"
   
4. You people crush those in need and wipe out the poor.
   
5. You say to yourselves, "How much longer before the end of the New Moon Festival? When will the Sabbath be over? Our wheat is ready, and we want to sell it now. We can't wait to cheat and charge high prices for the grain we sell. We will use dishonest scales
   
6. and mix dust in the grain. Those who are needy and poor don't have any money. We will make them our slaves for the price of a pair of sandals."
   
7. I, the LORD, won't forget any of this, though you take great pride in your ancestor Jacob.
   
8. Your country will tremble, and you will mourn. It will be like the Nile River that rises and overflows, then sinks back down.
   
9. On that day, I, the LORD God, will make the sun go down at noon, and I will turn daylight into darkness.
   
10. Your festivals and joyful singing will turn into sorrow. You will wear sackcloth and shave your heads, as you would at the death of your only son. It will be a horrible day.
    
11. I, the LORD, also promise you a terrible shortage, but not of food and water. You will hunger and thirst to hear my message.
    
12. You will search everywhere-- from north to south, from east to west. You will go all over the earth, seeking a message from me, the LORD. But you won't find one.
    
13. Your beautiful young women and your young men will faint from thirst.
    
14. You made promises in the name of Ashimah, the goddess of Samaria. And you made vows in my name at the shrines of Dan and Beersheba. But you will fall and never get up.
    

---

With chapter 8, we are in the midst of five visions Amos had depicting the judgment that was coming on Israel. The first vision was of locusts swarming so thickly they blotted out the sun and devastated everything in their path. Amos asked God not to send them and He relented. Second, Amos had a vision of fire that devoured the land. This, too, was so devastating that Amos asked God not to send it, and again, God relented. Amos' third vision was of a plumb line checking whether Israel was true or 'plumb', and she was not. As with a wall that is no longer straight up and down, they must be demolished. Israel as a nation would be destroyed and never rebuilt.

Chapter 8 describes the fourth vision. In it, Amos sees a basked of summer fruit. Summer fruit in a basket was fruit that was ripe and had been cut. So it was with Israel. The time for harvest had come. But this harvest would be like one in which the fruit is over ripe and of no use. With Israel's harvest there will be many dead bodies thrown everywhere. The temple songs will turn into wailing. They will cry out to God, but from God, there will be silence. They had turned away from God to idols and had rejected His repeated efforts to bring them back. Now, even when they wanted to return to Him, He was not to be found.

Beginning with verse four, the remainder of the chapter goes into more detail about the human grief and the divine silence. Details of the human grief are in verses 4-10. When this 'harvest' of Israel takes place, the force unleashed on them will be so great that the land will quake like the ebb and flow of the Nile. Everyone in the land will mourn. Making the day of these events even more fearsome will be the darkening of the land during daytime. Evidently God timed an eclipse to happen at this time. Even on a normal day, an eclipse is eerie. But on a day of devastation, it must seem as if the world were coming to an end. And why will this happen? In part because of Israel's injustice. Businessmen trampled on the needy, pursuing profit over any concern for the poor. They skimped on the measure, selling less for more, and sold an inferior product, mixing wheat husks with the good grain. They grew impatient with the weekly and monthly religious observances and feasts which they saw as interruptions to their opportunity to do business and make profit. The Lord had let these injustices go on for a long time, but He had not forgotten about any of it. It was His remembrance of these injustices that brought about the devastating 'harvest' of Israel.

Verses 11 and following give detail of God's silence. Through Amos and other prophets God had been calling Israel to repentance and to return to Him. But once the harvest began He would go silent. The time was past for any call to repentance or for any response to their call for help. This silence is described as a famine - a famine of words. We often do not realize the value of those things that are of greatest value until we no longer have them. So it was for Israel when God went silent. People would search desperately for "the word of the LORD, but they will not find it." Those most capable of persisting in the search for God's word, the young men and women, would eventually faint due to a thirst for His word. Others, who had perverted the worship of God, would go to Samaria to appeal to God at the place of worship, but God would remain silent and they would fall, never to rise again.