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8. A Basket of Ripe Fruit

¹ This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. ² “What do you see, Amos?” he asked.

“A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered.

Then the LORD said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

³ “In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Or “the temple singers will wail Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!”

⁴ Hear this, you who trample the needy
and do away with the poor of the land,

⁵ saying,

   “When will the New Moon be over
   that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath be ended
   that we may market wheat?”—
skimping on the measure,
   boosting the price
   and cheating with dishonest scales,
⁶ buying the poor with silver
   and the needy for a pair of sandals,
   selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

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

    ⁸ “Will not the land tremble for this,
   and all who live in it mourn?
The whole land will rise like the Nile;
   it will be stirred up and then sink
   like the river of Egypt.

⁹ “In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD,

   “I will make the sun go down at noon
   and darken the earth in broad daylight.
¹⁰ I will turn your religious festivals into mourning
   and all your singing into weeping.
I will make all of you wear sackcloth
   and shave your heads.
I will make that time like mourning for an only son
   and the end of it like a bitter day.

    ¹¹ “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD,
   “when I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
   but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.
¹² People will stagger from sea to sea
   and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the LORD,
   but they will not find it.

¹³ “In that day

   “the lovely young women and strong young men
   will faint because of thirst.
¹⁴ Those who swear by the sin of Samaria—
   who say, ‘As surely as your god lives, Dan,’
   or, ‘As surely as the god Hebrew the way of Beersheba lives’—
   they will fall, never to rise again.”

By these words or by this vision the Prophet confirms what we have already observed — that paternal chastisements would no longer be exercised towards the people of Israel. God indeed, as it is well known, had so treated that people, that he ever spared them even in their greatest calamities. It was with a suspended hand that God ever struck that people, until after many trials they at length seemed so refractory, as not to be benefited by such remedies. This subject then Amos now pursues: but a vision was shown to him to confirm more fully God’s judgment, or at least to produce a greater impression on the minds of the people.

God showed to him a Basket full of summer-fruit. By summer-fruit, I doubt not, he means a ripe punishment, as though he said, that the vices of the people had ripened, that vengeance could no longer be deferred: for an exposition of the vision immediately follows, when he says, that the end of the people had come, etc.; and this we have already explained in the third vision. But there is a similarity in the Hebrew words, which cannot be expressed either in Greek or Latin. קיץ, kits means a summer-fruit, קץ, 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 קץ, kots, the end had come. But as to the main point, we see that there is nothing ambiguous. We will now return to the first thing.

Thus God showed to me. There is no need of repeating what I have already discussed. The Prophet here prefaces, that he adduced nothing without authority, but only faithfully related what had been commanded him from above. And this ought to be carefully observed; for God ever so employed his Prophets, that he yet reserved for himself entire the right of teaching, and never transferred his own office to men, that is, as to the authority. Then he says, The Lord Jehovah showed to me, and, lo, a basket of summer-fruit. We may understand cherries by summer-fruit, and those fruits which have no solid vigor to continue long; but this is too refined. I take the simple meaning, that punishment had now become ripe; for the people had not repented, though they had been so often warned; it was then as it were summer. He showed to me a basket of summer-fruit. But as to God asking his Prophet what he saw, we have already explained the reason why it was done: it behaved the Prophet to be at first filled with astonishment, that the people might be made more attentive; for when we hear of a conference between God and the Prophet, our minds are awakened; inasmuch as it must immediately occur to us, that there is something worthy of being remembered. God then rouses in this manner the minds of his people. So we see there is nothing superfluous in this repetition.