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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.”

Now follows the exposition of the vision, Jehovah said to me, Come has the end on my people Israel We perceive, then, the meaning of the Prophet to be, — that the people had hitherto been warned by moderate punishments; but that as they had become hardened, extreme vengeance was nigh at hand, when God would no longer perform the part of a father or of a physician, but would utterly destroy those whom he had long borne with. We indeed know that most grievous calamities had happened to the people of Israel, even before this time; but whenever God showed forbearance, he ever allured them to true penitence. Lest, then, they should promise such a treatment to themselves hereafter, and by self flatteries protract time, as hypocrites are wont to do, the Prophet declares here expressly, that the end had come; as though he said, “Your iniquity is ripe: now then gather the fruit; for ye cannot proceed farther, no, not even for one day. Fruit will indeed come to you of itself.” The end then is come, and I will no more add to pass by them. To pass by, as we have already explained, is to be referred to punishment. For why does God chastise his people, except that he is solicitous for their salvation? He says, then, that he would make an end, that he would not spend labor hereafter in correcting the people, for he saw that nothing availed. Hence, I will not pass by them, that is, I will execute my extreme vengeance: Il n’y faudra plus retourner, as we commonly say. It follows —