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.
“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 on 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 Lord has sworn by himself, 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.
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.
“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.
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.
“In that day
“the lovely young women and strong young men
will faint because of thirst.
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.”
- Amos 8:1-14
Noted Biblical Scholars, Teachers, and Preachers Comments
Amos 7:10-9:15 ‘Confrontation with Amaziah’: “The account in Amos 7:10–17 of Amos’s encounter with Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, includes the message that Amaziah sent to Jeroboam II (7:10, 11). The message reports a prophecy in which Amos predicts that Jeroboam will die violently and that Israel will go into exile. This prophecy thus dates Amos’s ministry sometime before the end of Jeroboam’s reign in 753 B.C.
“Attempts have been made to date Amos’s ministry by an earthquake which occurred during the reign of Judah’s King Azariah (or Uzziah), but which was still remembered hundreds of years later (see Zech. 14:5). Amos received his vision two years before the earthquake (Amos 1:1).
“Unfortunately, an exact date for this earthquake is uncertain. Archaeological work at the city of Hazor shows evidence that it happened sometime in the mid-8th century B.C. The Jewish historian Josephus connects the earthquake with the violation of the priest’s office by Azariah (2 Chr. 26:16–20). When Azariah’s violation resulted in leprosy, his son Jotham governed with him as coregent (2 Kin. 15:5). Jotham’s 10-year coregency with Azariah began in 750 B.C., so following Josephus would place Amos’s ministry a few years before 750.”
- Timothy B. Cargal, et al., The Chronological Study Bible
Amos 8 ‘Summary’: “Judgment was an accomplished fact in this vision. Amos used a play on words to convey his message: ‘ripe fruit’ (Heb. qayits, v. 1) and ‘the time is ripe’ (Heb. qets, v. 2) sound similar in Hebrew. Like the ‘ripe fruit,’ the end had come for Israel. The vision was followed by the indictment of Israel (vv. 4–14). The charges included insincere worship, mistreatment of the poor, and unethical business practices. ‘That day’ refers to the day of the Lord (v. 9; see Am 5:16–27, note). Egypt had once known such desperate ‘mourning’ when the Lord struck down the firstborn in every family (Ex 12:30); now Israel would also know this ‘bitter day’ of God’s judgment (Am 8:10). Because the people rejected the Word of God, God would make his Word scarce (v. 11). ‘Lovely young women and strong young men’ indicates that the vigor and attraction of youth alone cannot provide strength to meet moral and spiritual crises (v. 13). Only God’s Word can do this (v. 11).”
- Dorothy Kelley Patterson, General Editor, NIV Woman’s Study Bible (Karen H. Jobes, Minor Prophets contributor)
Amos 8:1-2 ‘God’s timing’: “Just as a specific time arrives when fruit ripens, there also comes a time when God’s patience runs out. Amos described the misdeeds bringing them to this fruition. These words particularly identified Israel’s faults through deceptive selling.”
- Jay McCluskey, A Long Walk with the Minor Prophets
Amos 8:1-2 ‘herdsman’s language’: “There are no hard words in the herdsman’s language and no great mysteries in the herdsman’s vision. There is a basket of fruit so ripe it has been gathered, and it is a sort of fruit-summer fruit-that will not keep until the winter but must be eaten at once. Amos sees at once that God’s purposes were now ripe with regard to his people, Israel, and the nation itself had become ripe in its sin-so ripe that it must be destroyed. It teaches us, in these modern times, that there is a ripeness of men as well as of summer fruit; there is a ripening in holiness till we are gathered by the hand of Jesus for heaven and a ripening in sin till we are swept away with the rough hand of death and are cast away into the rottenness of destruction!”
- Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon illustrations
Amos 8:1 ‘summer fruit’: “In this fourth vision, as fruit was fully ripened by the summer’s sun, so Israel was ripe for judgment.”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Amos 8:3 ‘praising changed to wailing’: ”The place for praising God will be changed into a place of wailing. The place of rejoicing before God will be changed into a place of weeping. The slain bodies will be everywhere. This is a terrifying prophecy.”
- J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi
Amos 8:4 ‘exploitation of the poor’: “Again God is speaking of the exploitation of the poor. Although I have commented on this before, I feel it is important for us to realize how God feels about the poor of this world. I have experienced being poor. My dad was a workman. I remember him wearing his overalls and drawing his paycheck on Saturday. After he would pay the grocery bill and the doctor bill and the rent, he always gave my sister and me a nickel each, but I remember one Saturday night when he had only one nickel left. He told me to go to the store and buy a sack of candy. I got gumdrops, because I could get a big sack of them for a nickel in those days, and my sister and I divided the gumdrops.
“My dad died when I was fourteen, and it was up to me to support my mother and sister. At fourteen I had to secure a special permit to get a job. Then, after I was converted and felt called to the ministry, some folk took an interest in me and helped me get through school. Believe me, I am for the poverty program—but not the one we have had in our society that puts money in the pockets of those who already have it. I want to see a poverty program that will really help the poor get on their feet and enable them to work.
“In the days of Amos, God accuses them of even making ‘the poor of the land to fail.’ That is, the poor were brought down to such a low poverty level that they never could escape from it. The poor always suffer more acutely in a godless nation—I don’t think that statement can be successfully contradicted.”
- J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi
Amos 8:5-6 ‘reversal of the status quo’: “The law demanded they use accurate weights and measures. But the sellers cared only for their own profitability. Toward this end they utilized outlandish prices, dishonest weights, and swept chaff off the floor to mix in as ‘filler’ within the useful grain.
“By contrast, God’s judgment was like a great reversal of the status quo.”
- Jay McCluskey, A Long Walk with the Minor Prophets
Amos 8:5 ‘calendar’: “Most nations kept track of their years following an agricultural agenda with spring serving as the beginning of the year. The problem was that one year (12 months) of 29- or 30-day months quickly leads to a New Year’s day out-of-sync with spring (12 months x 29 and 1/2 days = 354 days in a year). Thus, in Babylon, on an irregular basis a king would add a 13th month to the year to adjust the New Year’s day to the beginning of the spring season. By about 500 B.C. the Babylonians had worked out a regular 19-year cycle to regulate this correspondence.
“How the problem was handled in Israel is not known. What is known is that very early in Israel’s history, the New Moon day had become a monthly religious festival (1 Sam. 20:5, 18, 24). The importance of this day is suggested by its description as a ‘solemn feast day’ (Ps. 81:3), and the claim that the New Moon festival was a ‘statute for Israel’ (81:4). No wonder the prophet Amos complained about those who waited anxiously for the New Moon day to pass, so they could return to their regular business (Amos 8:5).”
- Timothy B. Cargal, et al., The Chronological Study Bible
Amos 8:6 ‘bad wheat’: “This denotes the chaff, which was mixed into the good wheat to cheat the buyer.”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Amos 8:7 ‘pride wheat’: “As surely as the nation was filled with pride, so the Lord would not forget her works (cf. 6:8).”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Amos 8:8 ‘Heave and Subside like the River of Egypt’: “Like the Nile, which annually provided water and rich soil deposits for farmers by greatly overflowing its banks, so judgment would overflow the land.”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Amos 8:9 ‘the sun go down at noon’: “Probably referring to the total eclipse of the sun ca. 763 B.C. as a picture of God’s coming judgment.”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
Amos 8:10 ‘feasts to mourning’: “’And I will turn your feasts into mourning.’ God gave to the nation Israel seven feasts. The males of Israel were required to come before Him for three of those great feasts. They were to come with rejoicing. It was to be a time of praise and thanksgiving and glorifying God. Now God says that, since they have been celebrating the feasts but not giving praise to Him, He will turn their feasts into mourning. They will become the very opposite of what He intended them to be. ‘And all your songs into lamentation.’ When God’s judgment falls upon them, there will be no more singing—no more joy—only lamentation.
“Although I am certainly no music critic, I have been interested to observe the trend of modern music. When I was a young fellow, the popular music was the blues. That was followed by jazz and then rock and roll. Today it is hard rock. Do you detect any joy in that music? Oh, the songs have a beat to them so that you hop up and down like a yo-yo, but it is almost a mindless kind of motion which requires no thinking. That kind of music stimulates the flesh but certainly gives no real joy. This is the type of music that the world produces. It is mournful and it is tragic. When I had the privilege of being in Vienna, I attended an opera there. It was the first opera I had ever heard, and I have to confess that I enjoyed it. However, it was a tragedy. The boy didn’t get the girl. It was a tragic story, and the songs were lamentations and wailings. Now that is the type of music which the world produces. I am struck with the fact that God has said, ‘I will turn … all your songs into lamentation.’
“’And I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.’ Sackcloth on all loins and baldness on every head are indications of deepest mourning. This was literally fulfilled in the judgment that was to come unto them presently.”
- J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi
Amos 8:11 ‘famine’: “Here is a most unusual famine. God had given them His Word, and they had rejected it. They had despised it and turned aside from it. Now God tells them that the day is coming when they will no longer have the privilege of hearing His Word.
“God tells any church or any nation that, if they will not hear His Word after He has given it to them, He will withdraw it from them. I think we can see this happening in America. There has been a rejection of the Word of God. The churches have turned to liberalism, and the Word of God is no longer preached. There has come a famine of the Word of God. So many of the formerly great churches of this country, the great downtown churches, have turned from the Word of God. As a consequence, many of them have had to close shop. Others are just barely operating, and many of them are operating in the red. Even those which have stayed open have lost their influence and have lost their drawing power.
“Actually, very little of the Word of God is getting out in this land today. There is a Gideon Bible in every room in every hotel and motel in this country. Nearly everyone owns a Bible. But who is studying it? Who is reading it? Who is believing it? I think we are beginning to see the famine of the Word of God in this country.”
- J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi
Amos 8:12 ‘wander’: “The distraught people will wander from sea to sea seeking the Word of God but will not find it. God in His great love for His chosen people had sent His Word by prophet after prophet, but they had rejected His Word, persecuted and even slain His prophets. Now one of God’s judgments will be His silence.
“We see something of this same situation in our own land. I receive numerous letters from folk all over the country who tell me that they have no Bible teaching in their town or community and haven’t had any for many years. The famine has already set in for this land of ours. My friend, the most important thing in the world that we can do is to give out God’s Word by every means at our disposal.”
- J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi
Amos 8:13 ‘even the young’: “Even the young people, the most hopeful and vigorous members of society, will faint for thirst after the Word of God.”
- J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible, Vol III, Proverbs to Malachi
Amos 8:14 ‘Samaria … Dan’: “Jeroboam I built altars at both locations in an effort to keep Israel from going to Jerusalem to worship (1 Kin. 12:26–29).”
- John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)
My Thoughts
The Lord showed Amos a basket of ripe fruit. It was time. Israel was ripe for the picking. Israel would not get more warnings.
Songs would turn to wailing and then silence. Bodies flung everywhere. As it is often said in such times, there were not enough people left to bury the dead.
This is what happens to people who ignore the poor and trample the needy.
My mind plays tricks with me, but Amos 8:4 reminded me of a documentary on Kristallnacht. The documentary may have been on the fiftieth anniversary of Kristallnacht. They interviewed some college students in Austria. They asked them if they had any problems with Jews. One of the boys on the couch said, “No, because there aren’t any.” And then the students laughed.
Amos 8:4 speaks of getting rid of the poor. If you abuse them, ignore them, and push them aside, they either leave or die. You no longer have the problem because there aren’t any.
I think Israel who mastered the skill of putting their thumb on the scale had ridded themselves of the poor by letting them die and then laughing because they were making themselves rich by deceit.
They kept up with the festivals, like the New Moon, but they went through the motions. Like children, they asked, “Is it going to last much longer?”
God wants a cheerful giver, but He also wants a cheerful worshipper.
Rev. MacArthur speaks of the darkness at noon being a total eclipse that occurred about that time, but in the J. Vernon McGee commentary, he speaks of the Great Tribulation starting with the sun going out in the middle of the day. But the Day of the Lord is often split between the day Jesus died on the cross and the Great Tribulation and it went dark during the crucifixion.
The famine is interesting. There will become a thirst for the Scriptures, but there will be nothing for them. Is this a prophet to preach to them or the written Word? P.R. China is already rewriting the Bible to place the Communist Party above Jesus in the text. What more could be done to keep the people thirsty for God’s Word?
Some Serendipitous Reflections
Amos 8 1. Comparing your church to a tree, what do you see: (a) Baby seedling? (b) Full blossoms? (c) Green fruit? (d) Good fruit? (e) Overripe fruit? Explain.
“2. When it comes to hearing the Word of God in your church, are you in a time of feast or famine? Why?
“3. Where there is a strange silence of the Bible in the churches, how would you account for that? What makes us deaf to God? If we were-closer to the poor and oppressed, might that help us Christians better hear God?
“4. From this passage, how do you view the temptations affecting church and state leaders? How can you support those in leadership who fall, that they might thirst again for God and find him?”
- Lyman Coleman, et al, The NIV Serendipity Bible for Study Groups
Amos 8 has one set of questions.
Substitute whatever group for any reference to a small group or ask who could come to your aid.
If you like these Thursday morning Bible studies, but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Thursday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
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