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.”

And he assails by name the princes of the people, Hear this, he says, ye who tread upon or swallow up the poor The Prophets, as we have already stated, did not without reason direct their discourses to the chief men, though the common people were nearly as much involved in the same guilt. It is certain that the state of the people of Israel was then so corrupt, that all, from the highest to the lowest, were become degenerated and none were free from blame. But as more guilt belongs always to leaders, this is the reason why the Prophets treated them with more sharpness and severity: for many of the common people go astray through thoughtlessness or ignorances or are led on by others, but they who govern, pervert what is just and right, and then become the originators of all kinds of licentiousness. It is no wonder then that the Lord by his Prophets inveighed so sharply against them; and this is now the object of the Prophet in saying, Hear this: for there is an emphasis in the expression, when he bids them to hear; it was either because they did not sufficiently observe their sins, and were wholly deaf, or because they in vain contended with God; for hypocrites think that by evasion they can escape judgment. Hear, he says, ye who devour the miserable, and destroy the poor of the land. We see here some difference marked, and that the Prophet does not generally and indiscriminately summon the common people and the princes to God’s tribunal; but turns his discourse to the princes only. It now follows —