Amos 8

This is what the Lord GOD showed me: a basket of ripe summer fruit.

1Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit.

Note"Summer fruit" is the late-season harvest (figs and similar fruit picked at the very end of the growing year, ripe and quick to spoil. The Hebrew word for it, *qayits*, sounds almost exactly like *qets*, "the end") the word God uses in the next verse. The vision works as a pun that cannot be carried over into English: a basket of end-of-season fruit means the end has come.

2He asked, "Amos, what do you see?" I answered, "A basket of summer fruit." Then the LORD said to me, "The end has come for my people Israel. I will not overlook their sins any longer."

2And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.

3"On that day," says the Lord GOD, "the songs sung in the temple will turn into cries of grief. Dead bodies will lie everywhere. People will throw them out without a word."

3And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord GOD: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence.

NoteThe Hebrew word here can mean either a temple or a royal palace; the songs are the music of organized worship or of the court. "Without a word" translates a phrase meaning silence, either the bodies are dumped without the customary mourning cries, or the survivors are too terrified to speak.

4Listen to this, you who crush people in need and wipe out the poor of the land.

4Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail,

5You say, "When will the New Moon festival be over, so we can sell grain? When will the Sabbath rest end, so we can put out wheat to sell?" You make the measure small and the price high, and you rig your scales to cheat.

5Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit?

NoteThe New Moon, the first day of each lunar month, and the Sabbath, the weekly rest day, were both days on which buying and selling stopped. The complaint is not about religion but about impatience for the holiday to end so trade can resume. An ephah was a dry measure of about 22 liters (roughly half a bushel), the amount handed over to the buyer. A shekel was a weight of silver, about 11.5 grams; there were no coins yet, so silver was weighed out on scales at the point of sale. Shrinking the ephah and enlarging the shekel-weight means giving less grain and taking more silver for it, and rigged scales cheat the customer a second time.

6You say, "We can buy poor people with silver, and buy a needy person for the price of a pair of sandals. We can even sell the sweepings of the wheat."

6That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?

NoteA person who could not pay a debt could be sold, or sell himself, into slavery to settle it. "For a pair of sandals" means the debt was trivial, the price of the cheapest thing a person owned. The "sweepings" are the husks, grit and floor-scrapings left after the grain was cleaned, sold off as if it were wheat.

7The LORD has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: "I will never forget anything they have done.

7The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.

Note"The Pride of Jacob" is an oath formula, and it is genuinely ambiguous. Elsewhere in Amos the phrase names Israel's own arrogance (6:8), which would make this a bitter joke, God swears by the one thing Israel truly reveres. It can also be read as a title for God himself, the thing Jacob's descendants should have been proud of. Jacob is the ancestor whose descendants make up Israel.

8Will not the land shake because of this, and everyone who lives in it mourn? The whole land will rise like the Nile River. It will be tossed up and then sink back, like the Nile in Egypt.

8Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.

NoteThe Nile flooded every year, rising over its banks and then falling back, the standard image in the ancient world for a whole landscape heaving up and settling. Combined with the land "shaking," the picture is of an earthquake felt as a swell running through the ground.

9On that day, says the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will make the earth dark in broad daylight.

9And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day:

NoteDarkness at midday describes a solar eclipse, and eclipses were read across the ancient Near East as omens of disaster. Two were visible in Israel within living memory of Amos's audience, in 784 and 763 BC.

10I will turn your festivals into mourning and all your songs into weeping. I will put rough sackcloth around every waist and shave every head. I will make it like the grief for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.

10And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.

NoteSackcloth was coarse, dark cloth woven from goat hair, worn tied around the waist as a public sign of grief. Shaving the head, sometimes with the beard, was part of the same mourning custom. For a family, the death of an only son was the sharpest grief there was: it meant the loss of the child and the end of the family line at once.

11Look, the days are coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a hunger through the land. Not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but a hunger to hear the words of the LORD.

11Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD:

NoteA "word of the LORD" meant a specific message delivered through a prophet, the way people expected to get an answer when they needed guidance. The famine described is the absence of any such message, prophets falling silent.

12People will stumble from sea to sea. They will wander from the north to the east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.

12And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.

Note"From sea to sea" and "from north to east" sweep in every direction, the phrasing names the boundaries of the known land rather than points of a compass, meaning people search everywhere and come up empty.

13On that day the lovely young women, and the young men too, will faint from thirst.

13In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.

NoteThe young women and young men are named because they are the strongest and healthiest people in the community. If they collapse, everyone else has already gone.

14Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria, and say, "As surely as your god lives, Dan," or, "As surely as the way of Beersheba lives": they will fall, and never get up again.

14They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.

NoteSamaria was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. "The guilt of Samaria" may refer to the shrine there, or may be a deliberate distortion of the name of a deity worshiped in it (Ashimah, a goddess known from Syria). Dan in the far north and Beersheba in the far south were the two ends of the land and both held old, popular sanctuaries; Dan housed a golden calf image set up by an earlier king. "As surely as your god lives" was the standard form of a binding oath, invoking the god as witness. "The way of Beersheba" is disputed: the Hebrew word can mean the pilgrimage road people traveled to get there, the religious practice carried on at the shrine, or possibly a divine title. The translation leaves the ambiguity open.