Amoschapter 8
14 verses · Amos · about 760 BC · The Twelve
Key verse
Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit.
It stands in A basket of summer fruit: the end has come, verses 1 to 3.
The chapter
Chapter summary
A basket of summer fruit, ripe to the point of rot, and the pun that carries it: the end is come upon my people Israel. The merchants can hardly wait for worship to finish ('When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?'), shrinking the ephah, inflating the shekel, falsifying the balances, selling the sweepings of the wheat and buying the poor for silver. So the land will heave like the Nile, the sun go down at noon, and feasts turn into mourning as for an only son. Then the strangest judgment: 'a famine… of hearing the words of Jehovah' (8:11).
Context
Prophecy · Amos · Amos overview
The world behind this chapter
Amos 8The history
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.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
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.
What it meant to them
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.
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.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
Where the chapter sits
Amos 8 falls in Five visions and restoration promise (chapters 7–9). Locusts, fire, plumb line, summer fruit, the LORD at the altar. Amaziah the priest expels Amos from Bethel; the book ends with the tabernacle of David raised up (9:11, cited in Acts 15:16).
Before it: Sermons against Israel, chapters 3–6.
The whole shape of Amos→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. A basket of summer fruit: the end has comevv. 1-3
a basket of summer fruit: The fourth vision is a basket of summer fruit, and the Lord names its meaning with a play the bench carries in the Hebrew, qayits, summer fruit, sounding against qets, the end, so the ripe basket itself becomes the pronouncement: the end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more, the same refusal the plumbline vision reached but now with no plea from Amos and no reprieve given. The songs of the temple turned to howling and the dead cast forth with silence complete the picture the earlier visions were spared, worship silenced and the dead too many for the customary mourning rites.
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.”
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
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.”
B. Selling the refuse of the wheat with false balancesvv. 4-6
swallow up the needy: The charge names merchants who resent even the new moon and the sabbath because trading stops on those days, counting the hours until they may sell corn and set forth wheat again, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit, a triple fraud of measure, price and instrument at once. The bench reads buying the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes as debt slavery entered over a debt too small to matter, echoing 2:6, and selling the refuse of the wheat as cheating even the beggar who takes what the market rejects.
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.”
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.”
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
C. Feasts turned to mourning, the sun set at noon
1. (vv. 7-8)
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
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
the excellency of Jacob: The Lord swears by the excellency of Jacob, the same phrase read at 6:8 of the pride he abhors, here used as the oath's own guarantee, surely I will never forget any of their works, the nation's pride turned into the witness against it. The land trembling and rising up wholly as a flood, cast out and drowned as by the flood of Egypt, reaches for the Nile's yearly rise as the nearest image of a whole land heaving, the bench reading the comparison as deliberate irony, the flood that fed Egypt's fields now pictures Israel's ruin.
2. (vv. 9-10)
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
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
2 more voices on this verse
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.”
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
cause the sun to go down at noon: The sun going down at noon and the earth darkened in the clear day is read by the bench chiefly as figurative language for a nation's sudden ruin at the height of its confidence, the same vocabulary the day of the Lord carries elsewhere in the Twelve, though some of the older writers also note a possible reference to the total solar eclipse over Israel in 763 BC, a date near Amos's own ministry. Feasts turned to mourning and songs to lamentation, sackcloth on every loin and baldness on every head, are named as the mourning of an only son, grief with no other child to comfort the parents, the sharpest grief the culture knew.
D. A famine of hearing the words of the LORD
1. (vv. 11-12)
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.”
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
a famine in the land: Verified in the Twelve patterns brief as one of the chapter's keep-hard verses: a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord, the worst deprivation the book names because it removes the very means of repentance the earlier visions still offered. The bench reads the wandering from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east seeking the word and not finding it as prophecy itself withdrawn, the door Amaziah tried to shut in chapter 7 now shut by the Lord's own hand and for a reason no petition can reverse.
2. (vv. 13-14)
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.”
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
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
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
faint for thirst: The fair virgins and young men, the strongest of the people, faint for thirst, the famine of the word reaching even those with every natural advantage. Those who swear by the sin of Samaria and by the god of Dan and the manner of Beer-sheba are named by the false worship centers themselves, the calf shrine at Dan and the corrupted rites at Beer-sheba standing in for the true altar at Jerusalem, and the sentence they shall fall, and never rise up again closes the chapter on the same finality the basket of summer fruit announced, no further reprieve on offer.
This page carries no textual note on Amos 8. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
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 exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
Keep studying
On this page
Studies2
On this verse
On this book