Study

a Bible passage

Click a verse to see commentary

Select a resource above

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.”

Here still he speaks of the avarice of the rich, who in time of scarcity held the poor subject to themselves and reduced them to slavery. He had spoken before of the Sabbaths, and he had spoken of deceitful balances; he now adds another kind of fraud, — that by selling the refuse of wheat, they bought for themselves the poor. We indeed know what is the influence of poverty and pressing want, when men are oppressed with famine; they would rather a hundred times sell their life, than not to rescue themselves even by an invaluable price: for what else is food but the support of life? Men therefore will ever value their life more than all other things. Hence the Prophet condemns this iniquity — that the rich gaped for such an opportunity. They saw that corn was high in price; “Now is the time for the poor to come into our possession, for we hold them as though they were ensnared; so then we can buy them for a pair of shoes.” But the other circumstance increases this iniquity, — that they sold the refuse of the wheat; and when they reduced to bondage the poor, they did not feed them; they mingled filth and offscourings with the wheat, as it is wont to be done; for we know that such robbers usually do this, when want presses upon the common people; they sell barley for wheat, and for barley they sell chaff and refuse. This kind of wrong is not new or unusual, as we learn from this passage. Now follows a denunciation of punishment —