Amoschapter 8
14 verses · Amos · about 760 BC · The Twelve
This is what the Lord GOD showed me: I saw a basket of summer fruit.
Introduction
Amos, The Twelve, Amos Overview.
This chapter carries the fourth of the five visions Amos saw, and the vision turns on a play of sound. In Hebrew the word for summer fruit sounds very close to the word for end. Its hearers included traders who kept the holy days and could not wait for them to be over. Silver was weighed on the seller's own scales, and a buyer could not easily check them. Listen for the sound play in the vision. Notice how the famine the chapter threatens matches the way the people had treated God's word.
Context
- Who
- Israelite traders and the customers they were cheating
- What
- A vision of a basket of summer fruit, a charge against dishonest traders, and a coming famine of hearing the words of the LORD.
- Where
- The markets of the northern kingdom, with the shrines of Samaria, Dan and Beersheba named.
- When
- About 760 BC, in the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel; the book gives no exact year.
- Why
- To announce that Israel's end had come, and to tie that end to the cheating of the poor.
Historical context
The vision is a basket of summer fruit, and the point is a sound. The Hebrew word for the ripe end-of-season fruit sounds almost exactly like the word for the end. The fruit is at its best and about to spoil, which is the whole message in one image.
Show the rest of the historical context, 3 more paragraphs
The merchants' complaint dates the scene precisely. Trading stopped on the new moon and on the Sabbath, and these men are waiting impatiently for the holy day to be over so they can reopen. They kept the calendar perfectly and hated every hour of it.
The cheating is technical and checkable. Making the ephah small means using an undersized dry measure when selling grain; making the shekel great means using a heavy stone weight when taking payment in silver, since coins did not yet circulate and silver was weighed out. Sets of inscribed Israelite stone weights have been excavated, and dishonest traders carrying two sets is exactly the abuse the Law legislates against. Selling the sweepings of the wheat means passing off the chaff and dirt swept from the threshing floor as grain.
The mourning imagery at the end is a household in grief: sackcloth on every waist, every head shaved, and the sound of a family that has lost its only son, which in that society meant the end of the family line, the land, and the name.
Significance
Notice who is being defrauded: the poor and the needy, sold for silver and for a pair of sandals. Amos treats a rigged scale in a village market as the same category of crime as the atrocities in chapter one.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
The judgment announced fits the crime with terrible precision. A famine is coming, not of bread or water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. People who had told the prophet to shut up would go from sea to sea looking for a word and not find one.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
No part of this chapter is read in the synagogue. Probed for this lane, the site's table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts printed parashot 0 and no Haftarah use for Amos 8, and no festival reading for the book. The same probe printed 54 weekly portions and 6 festival readings in the table as a whole. Amos is heard in the synagogue twice in the year, and neither reading reaches this chapter. The table records Amos 2:6 to 3:8 as the Haftarah of Vayeshev and Amos 9:7 to 9:15 as the Ashkenazi Haftarah of Kedoshim.
The chapter is met in the weeks of Joseph. Under the fourth verse, those who trample the needy, the corpus carries Midrash Tanchuma, Miketz 2:1 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Miketz 4:3. Miketz is the portion of Joseph's rule over the grain of Egypt, Genesis 41:1 to 44:17 in the table. Under the tenth verse, feasts turned into mourning, it carries Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 50:26:14 and 50:26:18. Genesis 50:26 is the last verse of Genesis and of the portion Vayechi.
How it is read
Rashi is the one commentator on this chapter whose English the corpus carries, quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. The translation is modern, so every quotation from it is fifty words or fewer.
The basket of summer fruit Rashi takes as late figs, "A basket full of late figs, which are not good" (Rashi on Amos 8:1:1). The songs of the temple in the third verse are the songs of their banquets (Rashi on Amos 8:3:1).
The traders of the fifth verse Rashi reads through the Jewish calendar. They wait for the dearest market. "They anticipate the time that the grain will be expensive and will be sold to the poor with interest, and they will take their fields" (Rashi on Amos 8:5:1). The Berean Standard Bible prints "When will the New Moon be over". Rashi, with Targum Jonathan, reads the month as the added month of a leap year. The Omer is then offered later, "and the year is extended, and the old grain becomes expensive" (Rashi on Amos 8:5:1). The Sabbath of the same verse he reads as the Sabbatical Year, when no field is sown. "When will the Sabbatical Year come, and the grain will become expensive, and we will open our storehouses of grain" (Rashi on Amos 8:5:2).
At the eighth verse Rashi sets his own reading against Targum Jonathan. Jonathan renders this verse and Amos 9:5 alike, as a king rising with a camp as many as the waters of the river. Rashi writes, "To me, it seems difficult to define" the word that way, and he reads it as a rain cloud, after Job 36:32 and 37:11 (Rashi on Amos 8:8:2).
The sun going down at noon he reads two ways. He reports the Rabbis reading it of the day Josiah died, struck by Pharaoh Neco, of whom they said, "There was no more peaceful sword than Pharaoh-Neco" (Rashi on Amos 8:9:1). He names Moed Katan and Taanit 22a for it, and the corpus carries Moed Katan 25b:10 on the verse. He also reads the sun as the throne. "The kingdom of the house of David is compared to the sun", after Psalms 89:37 (Rashi on Amos 8:9:2). The feasts turned into mourning are then the mourning for Josiah in 2 Chronicles 35:24 and 35:25 (Rashi on Amos 8:10:1 and 8:10:2).
The famine of hearing the word of the Lord is the end of prophecy, "for the holy spirit shall terminate from them" (Rashi on Amos 8:11:1). The oath by the god of Dan in the last verse is an oath by "One of the calves that Jeroboam erected in Dan" (Rashi on Amos 8:14:1).
The corpus carries six further notes on this chapter without an English text, each marked linked because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref. They stand cited and unquoted at Ibn Ezra on Amos 8:1:1, 8:2:1, 8:7:1 and 8:12:1 and at Radak on Amos 8:2:1 and 8:7:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty rabbinic locators on this chapter, nine it files under Talmud and thirty-one under Midrash, and the text of none, so each is cited by ref here rather than quoted. On the third verse it holds Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:1:11. On the fourth verse it holds Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Miketz 4:3 and Midrash Tanchuma, Miketz 2:1. On the fifth verse it holds Bava Batra 90b:4, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Bava Batra 5:37 and Ein Yaakov, Bava Batra 5:33. It also holds Introductions to Tanaitic Literature, Introductions to Tractates of the Mishnah, Shabbat 9 and Tractate Derekh Eretz Rabbah 2:5.
On the seventh verse it holds Avot DeRabbi Natan, Recension B 35:16 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 119:5. On the eighth verse it holds Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 17:14. On the ninth verse it holds Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Moed Katan 3:10, Ein Yaakov, Moed Katan 3:26, Moed Katan 25b:10 and Otzar Midrashim, Baraita of Samuel HaKatan 1:6. It also holds Otzar Midrashim, Midrashim of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Prayer of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai 9. On the tenth verse it holds Berakhot 16b:8, Bereshit Rabbah 100:7, Devarim Rabbah 9:1, Jerusalem Talmud Moed Katan 3:5:14, Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 50:26:14, Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 50:26:18 and Moed Katan 15b:2.
On the eleventh verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 3:6, Bereshit Rabbah 25:3, Bereshit Rabbah 40:3, Bereshit Rabbah 64:2, Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Lech Lecha 20 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Shabbat 20:1. It also holds Ein Yaakov, Shabbat 20:1. On the twelfth verse it holds Aggadat Bereshit 74:3, Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 11:22:20, Sifrei Devarim 48:9 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 873:2. On the fourteenth verse it holds Aggadat Bereshit 71:2, Bereshit Rabbah 70:4, Ein Yaakov, Shabbat 6:19, Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 6:9:4, Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 30:13:35 and Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 32:1:1. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and it is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Amos 8:1:1 to 8:14:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Amos 8:1:1, 8:2:1, 8:7:1 and 8:12:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Radak, Radak on Amos 8:2:1 and 8:7:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/amos/8.json, the 40 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for this chapter and printing parashot 0 and no Haftarah use, with festivalReadingForBook(amos) null.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A basket of summer fruit: the end has come
Amos 8:1-3
a basket of summer fruit: The fourth vision is "a basket of summer fruit," and its meaning rests on a play: qayits, summer fruit, sounds like qets, the end. The basket pronounces "The end has come for My people Israel; I will no longer spare them," the plumb line's refusal, now with no plea.
Amos 8:1
“Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me,.... Another vision, which is the fourth, and after the following manner: and, behold, a basket of summer fruit; not of the first ripe fruit, but of such as were gathered at the close of the summer, when autumn began.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Amos 8:1
“Thus hath the Lord God showed me - The sentence of Amaziah pronounced, Amos resumes just where he left off, before Amaziah broke in upon him. His vehement interruption is like a stone cast into the deep waters. They close over it, and it leaves no trace. Amos had authenticated the third vision; “Thus hath the Lord God shewed me.” He resumes in the self-same calm words. The last vision declared that the end was certain; this, that it was at hand. A basket of summer fruit - The fruit was the latest harvest in Palestine.”
The vision turns on a play of sound. John Calvin and Adam Clarke explain that the Hebrew for summer fruit, kayits, and the end, kets, differ by a single letter. Matthew Henry comments that if sinners do not make an end of sin, God will make an end of them.
Amos 8:2
“A basket of summer fruit - כלוב קיץ kelub kayits, the end is come - בא הקץ ba hakkets: here is a paronomasia or play upon the words kayits, summer fruit, and kets, the end, both coming from similar roots. See the note on Eze 7:2 (note), where there is a similar play on the same word. I will not again pass by them any more - I will be no longer their Guardian.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Amos 8:2
“But there is a similarity in the Hebrew words, which cannot be expressed either in Greek or Latin. qyts, kits means a summer-fruit, qts, kots, signifies an end: one letter only is inserted in the word, summer-fruit, which God showed in a basket; and then he adds that qts, kots, the end had come.”
John Calvin · Commentaries (1554)reformed
Amos 8:2
“Note, If sinners do not make an end of sin, God will make an end of them, yea though they be his people Israel. 8 is here repeated as God's determined resolution, I will not again pass by them any more; they shall not be connived at as they have been, nor the judgment coming turned away.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The songs of worship become cries of grief. Albert Barnes pictures music broken off by the singer's sudden agony and turned into its opposite. John Gill takes the temple to be the shrine at Bethel and the other idol temples, since the prophecy concerns the ten tribes.
Amos 8:3
“And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God,.... Not the songs sung by the Levites in the temple of Jerusalem, this prophecy respects the ten tribes only; but those in imitation of them, sung in the temple at Bethel, and other idol temples; or profane songs in the palaces of princes and nobles; that is, instead of these, there should be howlings for the calamities come upon them.”
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 8:3
“The songs of the temple shall be howlings - Literally, “shall howl.” It shall be, as when mirthful music is suddenly broken in upon, and, through the sudden agony of the singer, ends in a shriek or yell of misery. When sounds of joy are turned into wailing, all must be complete sorrow. They are not hushed only, but are turned into their opposite.”
Selling the refuse of the wheat with false balances
Amos 8:4-6
you who trample the needy: The merchants resent holy days and wait for the New Moon and the Sabbath to end. They "reduce the ephah and increase the shekel" and "cheat with dishonest scales." To "buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals" repeats the charge of 2:6.
Amos 8:4
“Here ye this, ye that swallow - Or, better in the same sense, “that pant for the needy;” as Job says, “the hireling panteth for the evening” Job 7:2. They “panted for the poor,” as the wild beast for its prey; and “that to make the poor” or (better, as the Hebrew text,) “the meek” , those not poor only, but who, through poverty and affliction, are “poor in spirit” also, “to fail.” The land being divided among all the inhabitants, they, in order “to lay field to field” Isa 5:8, had to rid themselves of the poor.”
When will the Sabbath end: The traders keep the New Moon and the Sabbath while they count the hours. John Gill notes that selling was forbidden on the first day of each month. Albert Barnes says they kept the holy days with their bodies and loathed the rest because it halted their frauds.
Amos 8:5
“Saying, when will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn?.... The first day of every month, on which it was forbid to sell any thing, or do any worldly business, being appointed and used for religious service; see 2Ki 4:23; and which these carnal earthly minded men were weary of, and wanted to have over, that they might be selling their grain, and getting money, which they preferred to the worship of God.”
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 8:5
“When will the new moon be gone? - They kept their festivals, though weary and impatient for their close. They kept sabbath and festival with their bodies, not with their minds. The Psalmist said, “When shall I come to appear before the presencc of God?” Psa 42:2. These said, perhaps in their hearts only which God reads to them, “when will this service be over, that we may be our own masters again?” They loathed the rest of the sabbath, because they had, thereon, to rest from their frauds.”
the needy for a pair of sandals: The merchants treat the poor as goods. Adam Clarke reads the purchase as buying a poor man's service for just enough silver to clear his other debts. The chaff sold with the wheat he takes as bad grain sold as good to people too poor to go to law.
Amos 8:6
“That we may buy the poor for silver - Buying their services for such a time, with just money enough to clear them from other creditors. And the needy for a pair of shoes - See Amo 2:6. And sell the refuse of the wheat! - Selling bad wheat and damaged flour to poor people as good, knowing that such cannot afford to prosecute them.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Feasts turned to mourning, the sun set at noon
Amos 8:7-8
sworn by the Pride of Jacob: "The LORD has sworn by the Pride of Jacob," the pride He abhors at 6:8. So the nation's pride guarantees He will never forget their deeds. The land will "swell like the Nile" and "subside like the Nile in Egypt," the river's rise the nearest picture of a land heaving.
Amos 8:7
“By the excellency of Jacob - that is, by Himself who was its Glory, as Samuel calls Him “the Strength” 1Sa 15:29 or the Glory of Israel. Amos had before said, “God sware by His Holiness” and “by Himself” or “His soul.” Now, in like way, He pledges that Glory wherewith He was become the Glory of His people.”
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 8:7
“I will never forget them is as much as to say, I will never forgive them; and then it proclaims the case of these unjust unmerciful men to be miserable indeed, eternally miserable; woe, and a thousand woes, to that man that is cut off by an oath of God from all benefit by pardoning mercy; and those have reason to fear judgment without mercy that have shown no mercy.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
All of it will swell like the Nile: The land heaves. Adam Clarke takes the rising and sinking as the motion of an earthquake, and allows that it may picture commotion among the people. Matthew Henry reads the image as judgment breaking in like water, the land laid under it as Egypt is each year.
Amos 8:8
“That with which they thought to check the progress of God's judgments shall but make them rise the higher. Judgments shall force their way as the breaking forth of waters. The whole land shall be cast out, and drowned, and laid under water, as the land of Egypt is every year by the overflowing of its river Nile.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 8:8
“Shall not the land tremble for this - It is supposed that an earthquake is here intended, and that the rising up and subsiding as a flood refers to that heaving motion that takes place in an earthquake, and which the prophet here compares to the overflowing and subsiding of the waters of the Nile. But it may refer to commotions among the people.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Amos 8:9-10
the sun go down at noon: The words "I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the daytime" picture a nation's sudden ruin. It is the language of the Day of the LORD in the Twelve. Some older writers point to the total solar eclipse of 763 BC.
Amos 8:9
“And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God,.... When this deluge and desolation of the land shall be, now spoken of: that I will cause the sun to go down at noon: or to he so dark as if it was set; as at the time of our Lord's crucifixion, to which many of the ancient fathers refer this prophecy, though it has respect to other times and things. Jarchi interprets it of the kingdom of the house of David.”
2 more voices on this verse
Amos 8:9
“I will cause the sun to go down - Darkness is heaviest and blackest in contrast with the brightest light; sorrow is saddest, when it comes upon fearless joy. God commonly, in His mercy, sends heralds of coming sorrow; very few burst suddenly on man. Now, in the meridian brightness of the day of Israel, the blackness of night should fall at once upon him. Not only was light to be displaced by darkness, but “then,” when it was most opposite to the course of nature. Not by gradual decay, but by a sudden unlooked-for crash, was Israel to perish.”
Amos 8:9
“At noon - So Israel's sun did as at noon set under the dark cloud of conspiracies and civil wars by Shallum, Menahem, Pekah, and Hosea, 'till the midnight darkness drew on by Pul, Tiglath- Pilneser, and Salmaneser. Darken - Bring a thick cloud of troubles and afflictions. In the clear day - When they think all is safe, sure, and well settled.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
like a time of mourning for an only son: John Wesley notes that shaving the head was a sign of the greatest sadness, and that a bitter day would follow the dark night. Lactantius read the darkness of this passage as fulfilled at the cross, when the sun was withdrawn from the sixth hour to the ninth.
Amos 8:10
“I will turn your feasts into mourning - He recurs to the sentence which he had pronounced Amo 8:3, before he described the avarice and oppression which brought it down. Hosea too had foretold, “I will cause all her mirth to cease, her feast-days, etc” Hos 2:11. So Jeremiah describes, “the joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning” Lam 5:15. The Book of Tobit bears witness how these sayings of Amos lived in the hearts of the captive Israelites.”
2 more voices on this verse
Amos 8:10
“Upon all loins - All sorts of persons shall put on mourning. Baldness - Shaving the head and beard was a sign of the greatest sadness. A bitter day - A bitter day, which you shall wish you had never seen, shall succeed your dark night.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Amos 8:10
“Suspended, then, and fastened to his cross Christ cried out to God the Father in a loud voice and willingly laid down his life. In that same hour there was an earthquake, and the veil of the temple that separated the two tabernacles was cut in two, and the sun was suddenly withdrawn, and from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness. The prophet Amos bears witness to this. "And it shall come to pass in that day, says the Lord, that the sun shall go down at midday, and the day shall be darkened of light.”
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius · written before 325 · Epitome of the Divine Institutes 4:19patristic
A famine of hearing the words of the LORD
Amos 8:11-12
The worst want the book names is "a famine of hearing the words of the LORD," because it removes the means of repentance. People "stagger from sea to sea and roam from north to east, seeking the word of the LORD," yet find none.
Amos 8:11
“Not a famine for bread - He does not deny that there should be bodily famine too; but this, grievous as it is, would be less grievous than the famine of which he speaks, “the famine of the word of the Lord.” In distress we all go to God. Rib.: “They who now cast out and despise the prophets, when they shall see themselves besieged by the enemy, shall be tormented with a great hunger of hearing the word of the Lord from the mouths of the prophets, and shall find no one to lighten their distresses.”
seeking the word of the LORD: The hungry roam the land from north to east and find no word. Adam Clarke says they seek a prophet to show them the end of their calamities. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that the south is left out of the circuit, and read the search as driven by punishment.
Amos 8:12
“They shall wander front sea to sea - From the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea or from west to east, and from north to south, to seek the word of the Lord; to find a prophet, or any person authorized by God to show them the end of their calamities. In this state they shall continue, because they have rejected Him who is the bread of life.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 8:12
“The circuit is traced as in Nu 34:3, &c., except that the south is omitted. Their "seeking the word of the Lord" would not be from a sincere desire to obey God, but under the pressure of punishment.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Amos 8:13-14
The "lovely young women" and the young men "will faint from thirst," the famine of the word reaching those with every natural advantage. The sentence "they will fall, never to rise again" closes the chapter on the finality the basket of summer fruit announced.
Amos 8:13
“In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst. After the word, for want of that grain and wine, which make young men and maids cheerful, Zec 9:17; but, being destitute of them, should be covered with sorrow, overwhelmed with grief, and ready to sink and die away.”
1 more voice on this verse
Amos 8:13
“In this hopelessness as to all relief, those too shall fail and sink under their sufferings, in whom life is freshest and strongest and hope most buoyant. Hope mitigates any sufferings. When hope is gone, the powers of life, which it sustains, give way. “They shall faint for thirst,” literally, “shall be mantled over, covered” , as, in fact, one fainting seems to feel as if a veil came over his brow and eyes. “Thirst,” as it is an intenser suffering than bodily hunger, includes sufferings of body and mind.”
Adam Clarke names the guilt of Samaria as Baal and the god of Dan as the golden calf there. Matthew Henry takes the first as the idol at Bethel. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the way of Beersheba as its mode of worship, as way is used at Acts 9:2.
Amos 8:14
The manner--that is, as "the way" is used (Ps 139:24; Ac 9:2), the mode of worship. Thy god, O Dan--the other golden calf at Dan (1Ki 22:26-30). liveth . . . liveth--rather, "May thy god . . . live . . . may the manner . . . live." Or, "As (surely as) thy god, O Dan, liveth." This is their formula when they swear; not "May Jehovah live!" or, "As Jehovah liveth!"
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 more voices on this verse
Amos 8:14
“The sin they are charged with: They swear by the sin of Samaria, that is, by the god of Samaria, the idol that was worshipped at Bethel, not far off from Samaria.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Amos 8:14
“By the sin of Samaria - Baal, who was worshipped here. Thy god, O Dan - The golden calf, or ox, the representative of the Egyptian god Apis, or Osiris. The manner of Beer-sheba - The worship, or object of worship. Another of the golden calves which Jeroboam had set up there. The word דרך derech, way, is here taken for the object and mode of worship; see Act 19:9, where way is taken for the creed and form of Divine worship as practiced by the followers of Christ, and by which they were distinguished from the Jews.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
How this psalm is built
The form: The fourth of five visions, followed by a charge against the traders and oracles of the day of mourning and the famine of the word, as guide classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| Five visions in one pattern | The visions open at 7:1, 7:4, 7:7, 8:1 and 9:1. Amos pleads after the first two and the LORD relents both times. After the third and fourth no plea is recorded and the Lord says He will no longer spare them. The fifth has no question and no answer, only a decree.the site's Amos guide, src/components/book/guides/amos/AmosGuide.tsx, the Five Visions block. | Amos 7:1, Amos 7:4, Amos 7:7, Amos 8:1, Amos 9:1 |
| Summer fruit and the end | The vision turns on two Hebrew words that sound alike. Amos names what he sees as qayits, summer fruit, and the LORD answers that the qets, the end, has come. The sound carries the message and is lost in translation.the site's Amos guide, src/components/book/guides/amos/AmosGuide.tsx, the Five Visions block, vision four. | Amos 8:1, Amos 8:2 |
The structure
3 more paragraphs on the patterns
Verses 1 to 3 are the fourth vision. Verses 4 to 6 quote the traders in their own words. Verses 7 to 10 give the LORD's oath and a day of darkness and mourning. Verses 11 to 14 announce the famine of the word and the fall of those who swear by the shrines.
Where the chapter reaches
The charge of buying the needy for a pair of sandals repeats 2:6. The quaking land at verse 8 returns in the hymn at 9:5.
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
the site's Amos guide, src/components/book/guides/amos/AmosGuide.tsx, the Five Visions block.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, EPITOME OF THE DIVINE INSTITUTES 4:19 and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.