Amos 8:1-7
Amos 8:1
Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a
basket of summer fruit.
Then this fourth vision begins by God showing Amos a
basket of summer fruit. This would
be the fruit which would have been gathered after summer.
Amos 8:2
And 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.
Then God asks Amos what do you see?
So Amos answers that he sees a basket of summer fruit.
These fruits would be the product of the harvest which would come at the
end of the season. Then God tells
Amos that just like the fruit was picked at the harvest, the end of the people
of Israel has come. He has
pronounced judgment upon them and now it will come in his timing.
God had previously stated that he had given Israel many chances to repent
of their devious ways but they kept rejecting him so no longer would there be
any more opportunities to repent, they would be sternly dealt with by means of
the Assyrians.
Amos 8:3
And 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.
The songs which used to be sung in the temple which meant
they were worshipping the LORD and in fellowship with him will no longer be
songs of joy but they will be turned into howling or wailing.
God also has in view that when the people who were worshipping at the
false temple in Beth-el, instead of them singing songs in joy, they will be
turned into howling. Then God pulls
no punches when he states that the coming judgment will result in the deaths of
many people and there will be dead bodies strewn all over the land.
Then the bodies of the slain will be removed out of the way without any
prayers over them or any type of service.
They will be removed in silence so no one will know how tragic the
situation will be in Samaria.
Amos 8:4
Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make
the poor of the land to fail,
Then Amos turns to all those whether they be merchants or
whether they be the leaders in Israel that have made war on the poor and needy
and have persecuted them till they had nothing left over to live on just so they
could lifestyles of luxury. James
had a similar warning to the people of his day that oppressed the poor.
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and
howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
(James 5:1) The day of
reckoning for the rich was now at hand in Israel and none will escape and that
includes the wealthy.
Amos 8:5
Saying, 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?
Here Amos deals directly with the merchants who were
crooked and greedy and took pride in cheating their customers.
The first day of every month was a day
set aside where no selling was permitted and here the merchants cannot wait for
it to end. It is like many
businesses today where they have blue laws where selling on Sunday is forbidden.
They cannot wait for Monday so they can open up shop.
Then they also could not wait for the Sabbath to end so they can get
business going again. It is not
that they were selling so much but in the course of their sales, they were
falsifying weights and measures to their advantage so they could pull in a
bigger profit margin. The ephah was
about one half of a bushel. They
increased the size of their shekel which means when the people weighed out the
money to pay for their purchase, they were being robbed because the shekel they
weighed against was heavier than normal and therefore they paid out more money
than they should have.
Amos 8:6
That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a
pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?
Then another method they used to cheat the poor was to
seek out people who had debt, even debt so small as the price of sandals, and
they would buy that debt from the lender and then the people would owe the rich
man who purchased their debt and they would make slaves out of them.
{39} And if thy brother that
dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him
to serve as a bondservant: {40} But
as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve
thee unto the year of jubile:
(Leviticus 5:39-40) Under the
law if an Israelite bought another person for debt, they were to treat that
person as a hired servant and not as a slave and then were to return them to
their families at the year of Jubilee.
The problem is that the rich cared nothing for the poor or for those
without influence. These rich
merchants when selling the poor wheat to make bread out of would not sell them
the good wheat but the refuse which was dropped and filled with dirt thus
diminishing the amount of wheat they sold.
Amos 8:7
The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I
will never forget any of their works.