Amos 8
December 28
Reading: Amos 8
1 This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, 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 upon my people Israel; I will never again pass by them. 3 The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day," declares the Lord GOD. "So many dead bodies! They are thrown everywhere! Silence!"
4 Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end, 5 saying,
"When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain?
And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale,
that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great
and deal deceitfully with false balances,
6 that we may buy the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals
and sell the chaff of the wheat?"
7 The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
"Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
8 Shall not the land tremble on this account,
and everyone mourn who dwells in it,
and all of it rise like the Nile,
and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?"
9 "And on that day," declares the Lord GOD,
"I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
10 I will turn your feasts into mourning
and all your songs into lamentation;
I will bring sackcloth on every waist
and baldness on every head;
I will make it like the mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.
11 "Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord GOD,
"when I will send a famine on the land—
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the LORD.
12 They shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD,
but they shall not find it.
13 "In that day the lovely virgins
and the young men shall faint for thirst.
14 Those who swear by the Guilt of Samaria,
and say, 'As your god lives, O Dan,'
and, 'As the Way of Beersheba lives,'
they shall fall, and never rise again."
Commonplace in the Old Testament prophets are visions that involve creative, memorable, and sometimes humorous lessons. Amos 8 begins with one of these visions. God shows Amos something in a vision and asks him what it is. We saw a similar interaction with a vision in Amos 7:7-9 when the Lord showed Amos a plumb line.
Now, the Lord shows Amos a basket of summer fruit. The Hebrew word here for “summer fruit” is pronounced “qayitz.” Then the Lord says to Amos, “The end has come upon My people Israel.” The Hebrew word “end” here is pronounced “qetz.” In Hebrew it is spelled almost the same, only the tiny “yod” is missing in the middle, and it sounds just like a shortened version of “qayitz.” This is a Hebrew play on words. Summer fruit sounds like the end. The end is coming, death everywhere.
We are then reminded again by the Lord of the fake worship and the neglect of the poor and needy. (vss. 3-6) Have you noticed that this is thematic in Amos? In nearly every chapter we are reminded of these twin trespasses.
The rest of the chapter is devoted to warning and describing the end that is coming. (vss. 7-14) Though the people continue in their pride, feasting, singing, greed, and corrupt worship the day is coming when all of this will end. Their world will come crashing down.
We are in a similar situation. We live amid prosperity, fake worship, and the neglect of the poor. In our day barely a soul believes that they are accountable to the Lord. People think all of this will go on forever, that there will be no end. In fact, if a person says that the end is coming, people call him a nut. Our society has no patience for such talk. And yet, the Bible tells us that the Lord is coming in judgment and all of what we have will come crashing down. Even now the fragility of our world is beginning to show.
Amos was speaking of the Day of the Lord when Assyria would come and lay waste to Israel. We know that this old sick world will continue to get worse until the Lord Himself finally comes in judgment. How should this affect our worship? How should this affect how we treat the poor and downcast?