BIG IDEA:
THE ROTTEN NATION OF ISRAEL CONDEMNED TO ITS DESERVED JUDGMENT WITH NO MORE OPPORTUNITY FOR RECOVERY
INTRODUCTION:
John Goldingay: Chapter 8 begins with another report by Amos of a revelation concerning Yahweh’s intention to bring disaster on Ephraim; this report, too, goes on to material that elaborates on the nature of the disaster and the reasons for it. Here the material comprises a series of sayings that once more takes up themes and also phrases from earlier messages in the scroll. It thus both suggests that those earlier messages are finding fulfillment and also that the inevitability of the disaster can be understood in light of the earlier messages. The disaster will involve widespread death and grief; total gloom will settle on the country. People will then long to discover what Yahweh is saying to them, but they will not be able to find it. Even young people will faint and fall. And the necessity of the disaster derives from people’s focus on making money at the expense of ordinary people, and from their basing their commitments on a willfully false understanding of who Yahweh is and how he may be approached.
Warren Wiersbe:
- The end is coming (Amos 8:1-3)
God often used common objects to teach important spiritual truths, objects like pottery (Jer. 18-19), seed (Luke 8:11), yeast (Matt. 16:6, 11), and in this text, a basket of summer (ripe) fruit. Just as this fruit was ripe for eating, the nation of Israel was ripe for judgment. The Hebrew word translated “summer” or “ripe” in verse 1 (qayis) is similar to the word translated “end” in verse 2 (qes). It was the end of the harvest for the farmers, and it would be the end for Israel when the harvest of judgment came (see Jer. 1:11-12 for a similar lesson). “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” (Amos 8:2).
2. Why the end is coming (Amos 8:4-6)
The reason was simple: Israel had broken God’s Law and failed to live by His covenant.
They trampled on the poor and needy and robbed them of the little they possessed (Amos 8:4), an indictment that Amos had often brought against the people (2:6-7; 4:1; 5:11-12). When they did business, the merchants used inaccurate measurements so they could rob their customers. The Law demanded that they use accurate weights and measures (Lev. 19:35-36; Deut 25:13- 16), but they cared only for making as much money as possible. Added to their deception was their desecration of the Sabbath and the religious holy days. The worship of God interrupted their business, and they didn’t like it! These evil vendors would not only alter their weights and measures and inflate their prices, but they would also cheapen their products by mixing the sweepings of the threshing floor with the grain. You didn’t get pure grain; you got the chaff as well.
3. How the end is coming (Amos 8:7-14)
The prophet used four pictures to describe the terror of the coming judgment.
- The first was that of an earthquake ( 8) with the land heaving like the rising waters of the Nile River. (The Nile rose about twenty-five feet during its annual flooding stage.) Even the land would shudder because of the people’s sins. Earlier Amos referred to an earthquake (1:1), but we aren’t sure whether it was the fulfillment of this prophecy.
- God would also visit them with darkness (Amos 8:9), perhaps an eclipse. (There was one in 763 B.C.) The Day of the Lord will be a day of darkness ( 13:9-10; Joel 2:30-31).
- The third picture is that of a funeral (Amos 8:10), with all their joyful feasts turned into mourning and wailing.
- Finally, the judgment would be like a famine ( 11-14), not only of literal food but also of spiritual nourishment.
Allen Guenther: This vision and its explanation are characterized by play on words and metaphors of contrast and reversal. The writer gathers together strands of thought from chapters 5-7. The air of death and sounds of mourning carry over from the funeral scene. Here is the last appeal to those still able to hear the word of the Lord. The temple songs of praise have become wailings for the dead.
Tchavdar Hadjiev: This passage serves as a preliminary conclusion to the book, summing up, and perhaps even reapplying to a new situation, some of its previous main themes. The end of Israel is announced in the fourth vision. The following oracles describe it in detail and explain again the reasons for its arrival. They are framed by two complementary glimpses into Israel’s depravity: unjust commercial practices at the start and worship of foreign gods at the end. They build on the prophet’s earlier social and cultic criticism, but the focus is different. Idolatry and oppression combine to strike at the very heart of the just order of creation established by God. Therefore, the people will experience the Lord’s withdrawal, followed by a reversal of creation and the onslaught of the forces of chaos. These forces will bring darkness, undermine security, and sap all strength until even the young men and women fall into the bitter embrace of death. A frantic and pointless search for God’s word, loud wailing and stunned silence at the descending horrors is in store. The silence is the most salient detail of the picture. As Israel tried to silence the prophet (7:10–17), so God now withdraws in silence as a response.
Lloyd Ogilvie: We run the danger of becoming ripened fruit through the long process of persistent hypocrisy. Israel’s religious hypocrisy ripened and now would be cut off. The image of the ripened fruit is hypocrisy at its final stage. Spoilage and putrefaction began. Decomposition was not far off. The vision of the basket of ripened fruit suddenly hits home with contemporary force. We all suffer from the danger of duality, of pretending to be pious while our actions contradict our words.
I. (:1-3) VISION OF A BASKET OF PERISHING SUMMER FRUIT =
ARRIVAL OF GOD’S JUDGMENT
A. (:1-2a) Presentation of the Vision
“Thus the Lord God showed me, and behold, there was a basket of summer fruit.
2 And He said, ‘What do you see, Amos?’ And I said, ‘A basket of summer fruit.’”
M. Daniel Carroll R.: The summer fruit (qayiṣ; 2 Sam 16:1–2; Isa 16:9; Jer 40:10, 12; 48:32; Mic 7:1) most likely includes figs, grapes, and pomegranates. This vision could be quite ironic in light of Amos’s work with sycomore fig trees, but this is a reference to different kinds of fruit. The summer fruit was harvested in August and September. The Gezer Calendar (tenth century BC) calls the eighth and final month of the agricultural season “the month of summer fruit” (yrḥ qṣ). This phase of the agricultural cycle contrasts with the late spring planting of the first vision (7:1), when the destruction by the locusts threatened starvation. This harvest, after the hot summer months with the autumn rains in the offing, was a time of celebration of divine provision and of hope for good things in the coming months.
Tchavdar Hadjiev: The connection between summer fruit (qayis) and end (qes) is achieved via wordplay, which the NIV tries to convey with its translation “basket of ripe fruit / The time is ripe”. The two words are derived from different roots but sound similar, and in the dialect of Northern Israel may even have been pronounced the same. A similar technique is employed in Jeremiah’s vision of the almond tree (Jer. 1:11-12).
B. (:2b) Purpose of the Vision = Judgment Has Come for Rotten Israel
“Then the LORD said to me, ‘The end has come for My people Israel.
I will spare them no longer.’”
Trent Butler: A people who do not obey God are ripe for his harvest of judgment. . . A disobedient nation whose political and religious leadership was more interested in personal power and in political position than in obeying God finds they are not as secure as they thought. God can declare “time’s up” for any people, even a world power.
M. Daniel Carroll R.: Yahweh announces, “The end has come” (cf. Gen 6:13; Lam 4:18; Ezek 7:2–6). The intercession is over (7:1–6), and Israel’s leaders have proven themselves incapable and unwilling to accept God’s prophet (7:10–17). That all the nation is implicated, not just the royal court and high priest, is clear in the declaration that the judgment is for my people Israel.
Allen Guenther: “I will never again pass them by.” This reminds readers of the first Passover and the escape from Egypt. The angel of death did “pass over” the homes of those who applied the blood of the Passover lamb to the doorjambs of their houses (Exod. 12). God has again come to visit his people, but this time the oppressors are the Israelites themselves. Will the sovereign Lord distinguish between those who are the oppressors and oppressed as he did in Egypt? Or will all suffer alike? The answer rushes forward on the heels of the question: The end has come for my people, Israel. The nation has passed the point of no return. The prophecy carries a strong note of finality.
James Mays: The decree which interprets the symbolic word announces a decision of Yahweh concerning his covenant people that is severe and unrelieved in its finality. Bā’ haqqēṣ: ‘the end has come!’ The key-word ‘end’ includes a temporal and a qualitative dimension. The time of punishing to correct and of passing over sin is at an end. The next event of Yahweh’s dealing with Israel will bring them to an end of death and destruction.
C. (:3) Picture of the Aftermath of Judgment – Mourning and Death
“’The songs of the palace will turn to wailing in that day,’ declares the Lord God. ‘Many will be the corpses; in every place they will cast them forth in silence.’”
M. Daniel Carroll R.:What causes this wailing (cf. v. 8)? It is the overwhelming number of dead bodies. The multitude of corpses is so painful and repugnant because they are left publicly exposed, rotting (cf. Isa 34:3), and as potential food for wild animals (cf. 1 Sam 17:46; 2 Sam 21:10; 1 Kgs 14:11; 2 Kgs 9:36; Ps 79:2; Jer 8:2; 9:22 [MT 9:21]; 16:4). This devastating grief (cf. Jer 4:8; 25:34; Lam 2:10; Mic 1:8; Zeph 1:10-11) is exacerbated by the ignominy of not being able to properly bury the dead. These bodies have been thrown out into the open (cf. 4:3), although by whom the text does not say. Perhaps they lay where they fell (cf. Nah 3:3). This scene may be linked to the judgment on the Bethel sanctuary in 9:1. Otherwise, contextually, the deaths would be due to the armed conflict mentioned in 7:7-17.
Tchavdar Hadjiev: The interjection Be silent (hās; cf. 6:10) creates a harsh contrast with the beginning of the verse as it brings the loud wailing to a sudden stop. The magnitude of the disaster is conveyed through both noise and silence.
Jorg Jeremias: [Verse 3] strikes up two themes for what follows. First, all gaiety disappears and is transformed into lament, even within the sphere of the royal palace, the paradigmatic locus of the celebration of festivals; this constitutes a prelude to the thematic material of v. 10a. Second, it picks up ideas from 6:10, with its reference (1) to the accumulation of corpses for which funeral personnel is no longer available—the catchword “cast” may be clarifying the fate of Samaria’s women (4:3)—and then (2) to the powerless attempt to defend oneself against God’s deadly nearness through silence, as is required in worship services in the presence of the holy (cf. the discussion of 6:10); this constitutes a prelude to v. 10b and vv. 13f.
Thomas McComiskey: Just as the apparent promise of the summer fruit was turned into the assurance of Israel’s destruction, so the joyous temple hymns (cf. 6:5) will give way to the wailing of the populace of Israel when the wrath of Yahweh falls on them.
II. (:4-6) CATALOG OF SINS REQUIRING JUDGMENT
A. (:4) Selfish Mindset of the Prosperous Proud Elite
“Hear this, you who trample the needy,
to do away with the humble of the land,”
Gary Cohen: The previous three verses showed that the Northern Kingdom was reaching the point at which it would be fully ripe for judgment. Now, in the next three verses the sins of moral decay in Israel are described.
Israel was conducting harmful and dishonest business practices. She trampled the needy. Here the word sha’af means “to pant after, to breathe hard in racing after the prey,” God saw Israel racing at full speed to catch up with the needy so she could pounce upon them as a wolf pounces upon a lamb. (See Isa. 59:7.) She was doing away with the humble, literally “causing them to cease” (from the Hebrew word sabbath, or shabat as the modern Israelis pronounce it).
James Mays: This saying is essentially another of Amos’ indictments of those who oppress the poor (see 2.6ff.; 4.1; 5.12). The normative presupposition of the indictment is not so much any single instance or list of commandments in Israel’s legal tradition, as the total tendency and intention of the covenant law to protect and maintain the disadvantaged members of society. The weak and unfortunate were not to be exploited; they should be treated with the respect and concern due to kinsmen and neighbours.
Gary Smith: The acts of oppression (Amos 8:4) include “trampling on the needy” and “doing away with the poor of the land.” Those who need help and cannot make it on their own receive no compassion or assistance but are taken advantage of. In their weak and defenseless position, they cannot protect themselves from those more economically powerful. There were manageable ways outlined in God’s law for the poor to regain their self-respect and begin to stand on their own two feet. Israel’s tradition encouraged people to help and share freely with the needy (Ex. 22:21–23; Deut. 16:11, 14; 24:17–21). In the present situation, however, those with the economic ability to help refuse to assist them; in fact, they purposely exacerbate the problems by manipulating things to their own advantage. In this way they “do away with” the poor. Such deeds, in other words, result in their annihilation, probably through starvation, poor health, or slavery.
B. (:5a) Greedy Materialistic Drive that Prioritizes Money over Worship
“Saying, When will the new moon be over, So that we may sell grain,
And the sabbath, that we may open the wheat market,”
Tchavdar Hadjiev: The greed of the merchants is so great that even a day of rest and celebration is seen as a tragic loss of opportunity to cheat and make profit.
James Mays: The quotation paints them as respectful of religion. They observed the holy days but underneath their piety was a restless impatience. ‘Ah, we can hardly bear the interruption of holy days, so impatient we are to get on with our business, our wheeling and dealing that brings the property and person of every man into our hands!’ New Moon, the first day of the lunar month, was observed in ancient Israel as a festival occasion and is often paired with Sabbath in lists of holy times (e.g. II Kings 4.23; Isa. 1.13f.; Hos. 2.11). It seems to have been of wide provenance in the ancient Near East, was adopted as a family festival by Israel, and later regularized in the temple cult. The observance of the Sabbath was required in the earliest strata of Israel’s law (Ex. 23.12; 34.21; 20.8). Both days were times for cessation from normal work. Those whom Amos quotes observe the days and show how devout they are in matters of public religion. But what matters this keeping of holy days, this proper piety in the sight of God and man, if all the while they are straining toward the ‘unholy days’ when their true dedication to greed fills the time? Once again the prophet shows the failure of faith which accompanies the success of religion, for the business they were so eager to continue was the enterprise of betraying their Lord.
J. Vernon McGee: God is saying that even when the rich went to the temple to praise God, they were so greedy and covetous that they were thinking about business the next day and how they could make more money by cheating their customers. They not only practiced their sin during the week, but they carried it into the temple. What a picture this gives us of Israel in that day—and of modern man as well.
West Palm Beach Church of Christ: God does not judge without cause. God is not acting out of emotional anger but out of justice because the sins of the nation have become so great. Verses 4-6 describe the condition of the people’s hearts. Listen to what they are doing. They have become so worldly and so materially minded that they do not want to keep the feast and holy days to the Lord. In verse 5 they are asking when the new moon will be over so they can get back to selling grain. They want to get back to their schedules. They want the Sabbath to hurry up and end so they can get back to making money. In the process they are acting unjustly, destroying the poor and oppressing the needy as they try to acquire more for themselves. “When will worship be over? We want to get back to our schedules.” Can you see these people as clock watchers, hoping for the Sabbath to end so they can get back to making money? There is no joy in worship.
https://westpalmbeachchurchofchrist.com/old-testament/amos/dark-days.html
C. (:5b) Unethical Business Practices
“To make the bushel smaller and the shekel bigger,
And to cheat with dishonest scales,”
Trent Butler: A people more devoted to commerce and coins than to the poor and to praise invite God’s judgment. . . At the trade booths, they oppressed the poor who had to come to them to buy food. The rich shopkeepers reduced the amount of grain they measured out, used scales they knew to be inaccurate, and charged the poor higher prices (Deut. 25:13–16; Mic. 6:9–12.)
Lloyd Ogilvie: Weights and measures, so crucial to the economic order of the nation, were being falsified in the sale of grain, wheat, and produce. The ephah, a dry measure of 36.92 liters, or 65 pints, or about the size of our bushel today, was distorted by placing an object in it other than the commodity being weighed. If grain was being measured, the ephah would therefore contain less grain. The shekel (not to be confused with the coin by the same name) was a weight used on a scale. It was a limestone ball flattened at the bottom that weighed about 11.46 grams. If these weights were enlarged or made heavier, the purchase price would be fraudulently raised. The shekels were no longer “just weights” (Lev. 19:36) but had become “deceitful weights” (Deut. 25:13, 15). “Falsifying the balances by deceit” (Amos 8:6) meant to bend out of shape the cross beam of the scale, thus tampering with the scales themselves. All this was done to take advantage of the buyer, especially the poor and needy. The merchants sold contaminated wheat from the bins mixed in with the good wheat. Furthermore, profiting at the expense of the poor, the rich merchants used the money they had earned dishonestly in dealings with the poor to buy them for slavery.
Billy Smith: “Skimping the measure” is literally “to make small the ephah.” The ephah was a standard unit of dry measure, a half bushel. Using a container that would hold less than half a bushel in measuring bulk commodities allowed the merchants to cheat the customers.
“Boosting the price” is literally “to make large the shekel.” Before the use of minted coins, a shekel served as a standard weight by which to measure the silver used to purchase commodities. An enlarged shekel on the scale weighed against the customer’s silver meant that he was paying more than he ought to pay for his purchase.
“Cheating with dishonest scales” was another method the merchants used to deceive their customers. They fixed the balance beam on the scales and made them into “dishonest scales.”
D. (:6) Goal of Exploitation and Oppression
“So as to buy the helpless for money
And the needy for a pair of sandals,
And that we may sell the refuse of the wheat?”
Billy Smith: The merchants took over property belonging to the needy as payment of debts. This greedy practice often resulted in slavery of the needy.
Tchavdar Hadjiev: They are even selling the sweepings of the wheat, that is, corn which had fallen to the ground, been trampled upon and mixed with straw and dirt.
Trent Butler: Such oppression soon emptied the pockets of the poor, who had to sell themselves into slavery to the rich or remain so deep in debt to them that they had to do whatever the rich commanded.
John Goldingay: The accusation closes (v. 6) by resuming the two kinds of critique.
- First there is the more serious wrong involved in the treatment of the needy and the lowly to which v. 4 refers.
- Then there is a further aspect of the cheating, or a reference to selling for human consumption the sweepings that would usually be fed to animals.
Allen Guenther: At root, all the sins mentioned grow out of greed and materialism. Instead of addressing the outrage of poverty, the well-to-do focus on ridding themselves of the poor (Amos 8:4), probably by enslaving them or forcing them into exile and out of their sight. Out of sight, out of mind, they reason.
Jorg Jeremias: Though one might perceive the contempt for human beings to be stronger in Amos 2:6–8, the intensification in 8:4–6 consists in the fact that the numerous infinitives disclose a methodical, multilayered strategy through which human beings become disposable goods for other human beings as a means of increasing wealth.
III. (:7-14) METAPHORS OF JUDGMENT
(:7) Transition from Accusation to Announcement of Judgment
“The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob,
‘Indeed, I will never forget any of their deeds.’”
M. Daniel Carroll R.: This oath is God’s answer to the injustice in the marketplace of 8:4–6. In the second clause of the verse, Yahweh asserts, “Surely, I will never forget any of their deeds.” Emphasis is communicated by never and any. There will be no escaping the wrath of God for their actions and the misery they have caused the defenseless. This is a dramatic change from the first two visions, in which Yahweh relented from what he said he would do (7:3, 6). The end has come for those who have brought an end to the poor (v. 4). This is no “colorless threat”!
“pride of Jacob” — correlate the phrase with 6:8, its only other occurrence in the book. In this case, Yahweh sarcastically swears by Israel’s confident self-importance. In 6:8, Israel’s haughtiness was grounded in military self-sufficiency. This was quickly disabused by the announcement of the destruction of the city that the fortresses were designed to protect (6:9–11), a play on words regarding the insignificance of their military victories (6:13), the prediction of foreign occupation (6:14), and the plea for mercy because Israel is so small (7:2, 5). In 8:4–6, the arrogance is not rooted in an aura of invincibility but in attitudes of unaccountability. This conceit now is turned against the unjust; their greedy insolence prompts the judgment of God.
Thomas McComiskey: In the oath formula, the “Pride of Jacob” (v.7) is best understood as an appellation for God (cf. 4:2; 6:8; cf. also Hos 5:5; 7:10). “Glory” is used as a surrogate for God in Jeremiah 2:11. It is the pride of Jacob—that is, the Lord, Jacob’s glory—that guarantees this oath. The judgment that follows (v.8) will surely come because God does not allow his glory to be sullied.
Lloyd Ogilvie: The phrase can mean one of two things. It could refer to the land of Israel (Ps. 47:4), the Promised Land. Or, it could mean the arrogance of Israel, in which case Yahweh’s oath was more unchangeable than Israel’s persistent, unchanging refusal to reform. In either case, Yahweh’s oath is definite: He will not forget what His people had done to distort the privilege of being chosen and called to be His people.
Robert Martin-Achard: We note that the prophet blames the guilty one for coveting (shaaph) or for trampling on (shuph, with the Versions) the poor (2:7), for seeking to ruin the poverty stricken (lit. put an end to them, annihilate them), or by manipulating them for their own ends, or again by buying them for money, for a derisory amount, probably by forcing them to pay their debts with the complicity of the judges. The land of Israel had become the place of ‘trafficking in human beings’, more precisely in peasants so deeply in debt that they were incapable of escaping from the clutches of pitiless moneylenders (v. 6).
A. (:8) Judgment of Earthquake Turmoil
- Earthquake
“Because of this will not the land quake
And everyone who dwells in it mourn?”
Robert Martin-Achard: The land falls and rises like the swelling of the Nile. Amos is once again in all probability referring to an earthquake. He is indicating particularly that it is just at that point where iniquity has its seat that world order is turned upside down. Injustice has cosmic consequences. Through their own fault people can imperil the harmony and even the existence of the earth. The consequences of scorning the ‘poor’, that is to say, of scorning the will of Yahweh go even as far as that, a fact that no one must ever forget!
2. Cosmic Disturbance
“Indeed, all of it will rise up like the Nile,
And it will be tossed about,
And subside like the Nile of Egypt.”
M. Daniel Carroll R.: The first thing to notice is that sin negatively impacts creation, a reality stated in other prophetic books (Isa 24:4–6; Jer 12:4; 23:10; Hos 4:3) and a fundamental theological principle since the transgression in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:17–19). The series of natural calamities in 4:6–9 had been sent to drive Israel to repentance. That time has passed; this natural disaster will surpass anything that they have experienced heretofore.
Gary Cohen: The Nile River flows north from the Sudan, where the White and Blue Niles meet at Khartoum. In June the water turns green from the microorganisms; in July the color becomes red as the organisms die. Then from August through October the waters rise twenty-one to twenty-five feet in good years. If the river rises less than twenty-one feet, the lateral water flooding is insufficient. If it rises more than twenty-eight feet, the towns along it become flooded. This “life of Egypt” river, “El Nil,” leaves not only its irrigating waters but also a thin red-brown layer of natural fertilizer that annually renews the land.
By using earthquake and river metaphors God has pictured the initial, violent shaking of the Assyrian attack, which would be followed by the rising floods of invading Assyrians. The tossing of the waters pictures the havoc that would be raised by the Assyrians once they had conquered Samaria and had begun to deport the population and replace it with foreigners. Finally, after thoroughly subjugating the land, the Assyrians would subside like the Nile and would withdraw the major portion of their armies back into Assyria.
B. (:9) Judgment of Darkness Descending — Gloom
“‘And it will come about in that day,’ declares the Lord God, “
‘I shall make the sun go down at noon
And make the earth dark in broad daylight.’”
Gary Cohen: Darkness is often used in Scripture to signify calamity and God’s displeasure (cf. Jer. 15:9; Ezek. 32:7-10; Mark 15:33).
Tchavdar Hadjiev: Fraud in trade and exploitation of the poor undermine the just order of creation. The outcome is the undoing of creation harmony and the disintegration of the world into an abyss of darkness and grief. The point is similar to that of 5:7–9; note the repetition of turn in both places.
C. (:10) Judgment of Funeral Mourning — Grief
- Verbal Expressions of Grief
“Then I shall turn your festivals into mourning
And all your songs into lamentation;”
Billy Smith: Festivals usually characterized by joyous celebrations of the Lord’s blessings would become rituals of mourning (cf. 5:21). The Lord’s intervention would turn all of Israel’s songs into lamentation (qînâ). Israel’s songs of praise and exultation celebrating life would become dirges for the dead (cf. 8:3).
- Physical Expressions of Grief
“And I will bring sackcloth on everyone’s loins
And baldness on every head.”
Billy Smith: “Sackcloth” was a rough garment (usually made of hair) worn at the hips as a symbol of mourning (cf. Joel 1:8, 13). So widespread would be the calamity and grief that all Israel would don these garments. Shaving the head was another symbol of mourning (cf. Ezra 9:3; Isa 22:12; Jer 48:37). Baldness on every head suggests that every person in Israel would be touched by the grief-causing calamity.
- Emotional Bitterness of Grief
“And I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son,
And the end of it will be like a bitter day.”
James Mays: The bitterness of the experience could be compared only to the extreme grief felt at the death of an only child whose funeral dashed every hope for the future (Jer. 6.26; Zech. 12.10). But dread of darkness and intensity of grief is not what determines the experience so much as the repeated first-personal verbs which beat through the whole passage in throbbing announcement that Yahweh is the author of it all. The only worship that will be left to Israel will be lament, the only life one of mourning, the only feeling hopelessness.
Billy Smith: This verse is marked by careful and concise poetic parallelism and is an “ironic litany of reversals.” The Hebrew verse consists of three lines with two parts to each line. The first part of each line has a verb that functions for both parts of the line. This style is difficult to translate into English and retain its uniqueness. Literally, the verse reads:
I will turn your religious festivals to mourning,
and all your praises to dirges.
I will place upon all of you sackcloth
and upon (your) head baldness.
I will make it like mourning an only child
the end of it like a bitter day.
Consequently, all three verses convey a similar message: mourning comes because judgment has come. Because Israel had turned God’s justice and righteousness into bitterness and poison (cf. 5:7; 6:12), he would turn their joy into grief.
D. (:11-14) Judgment of Famine for the Word of God
Anthony Petterson: The most devastating punishment is a famine of the word of God. Since his people have rejected his word, God will give them what they have chosen; the lifegiving word of God will be gone. People will stagger everywhere in search of it but will not find it. Young women and men, the strongest in the community, will faint. Those who have aligned themselves with false worship and idolatry will fall, never to rise again.
- (:11) Famine of Hunger for the Word of God
“‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord God,
‘When I will send a famine on the land,
Not a famine for bread or a thirst for water,
But rather for hearing the words of the LORD.’”
Robert Martin-Achard: This oracle, which opens in almost the same way as the preceding one, announces still another catastrophe; an extraordinary famine is to strike the whole land, not one brought about by an invasion of locusts or by a prolonged absence of rain (4:6 ff), but one that Yahweh himself brings about by remaining silent. When they had had the chance, his people had not wanted to listen to the prophet. They had chased him from their territory. So now they find themselves facing the silence of their God. All communication between God and his own people is broken (v. 11). Now, Israel cannot live without the Word of Yahweh (Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:3 f). She is thus condemned to wander from one corner of the land to the other—the expression ‘from sea to sea’ describes symbolically the two extremes of the region (Ps. 72:8; Zech. 9:10)—but in vain. Yahweh has shut himself up in his silence and in this way manifests his condemnation of a guilty nation. The Israelites are running foul of the ‘No’ that their God utters in the absence of all dialogue with them, in fact, they are excommunicated. For God too there exists ‘a time to keep silence, and a time to speak’ (Eccles. 3:7). It is a question of being prepared to listen when the God of the Bible addresses his Word to us.
James Mays: The failure of prophetic vision and word would mean that Yahweh had turned away from them and abandoned them to their troubles (Ps. 74.9; Lam. 2.9; Jer. 37.17; Ezek. 7.26). Amos called upon Israel to seek Yahweh and his will that they might live (5.4–6, 14), but the time when Yahweh’s help was available was almost gone (cf. the same notion and imagery in Isa. 55.1–7). The time of the famine of Yahweh’s word approached, and it meant the absence of God for Israel (cf. Hos. 5.15).
- (:12) Futile Search for the Word of God
“And people will stagger from sea to sea,
And from the north even to the east;
They will go to and fro to seek the word of the LORD,
But they will not find it.”
Allen Guenther: The inevitable deluge of questions will follow: Why? Why? Why, O Lord? In desperation the nation will search its world for answers and hope (8:11-12). They will find none. God will be silent. Israel refused to heed the lord’s words when he spoke in warning (cf. Amos 4). Now even the warnings have ended, and God will not listen to their prayers, no matter how shrill the pleading. Israel has been depending on her own resources, reveling in luxury and gluttony. The people’s sumptuous fare, elegant robes, and vaulted hairdos are replaced by fasting, sackcloth, and shaven heads. The land will mourn its dead.
James Mays: God’s wrath has two expressions, his absence and his action; both are equally terrible manifestations of his judgment.
- (:13) Fainting from Thirst
“In that day the beautiful virgins
And the young men will faint from thirst.”
James Mays: Virgins and young men are the element of the population just coming to maturity, the ones with the greatest physical vigour and endurance; when they swoon from exhaustion, the rigours of the time will have overcome all (cf. Isa. 40.30). The thirst by which they will be overcome is the need and lack of any response from Yahweh in their plight (v. 11).
Lloyd Ogilvie: We can identify the famine of hearing in our own time. Mark the similarity to the famine of food. When people substitute hypocrisy for a dynamic relationship with God, there is an unsatisfied spiritual hunger. They go through the same process as in physical starvation. First agitation, then acrimony, followed by criticism and negativism. They run to and fro in search of meaning. Every religious movement, cult, cause, or activity is sought after as a source of feeding the terrible emptiness inside. Then there is the hollow look of discouragement and despair. And, long before the pulse stops, there is spiritual death.
- (:14) Fatality of Religious Errors
a. Error of Religious Syncretism
“As for those who swear by the guilt of Samaria,”
b. Error of Religious Corruption
“Who say, ‘As your god lives, O Dan,’”
c. Error of Religious Superstition
“And, ‘As the way of Beersheba lives,’”
d. Fatality of Religious Errors Summarized
“They will fall and not rise again.”
Robert Martin-Achard: The blame lies upon those young people who reveal a dubious, syncretistic attitude, in the way in which they associate the worship of Yahweh with idolatrous practices that are probably of Canaanite origin.
Alec Motyer: In Samaria, therefore, there was either syncretism or an acceptance of a multi-faith situation, and neither of these would accord with Amos’ theology or with truth. Syncretism takes the characteristic features of many religions and attempts to fuse them into one ‘great religion’ which will presumably attract and hold the adherents of the previously separated systems. The multi-faith approach is less sophisticated, simply tolerating side by side the worship of different gods—though it may, of course, be more sophisticated in saying that these are simply different names for the same God and that Yahweh was worshipped ‘incognito’ in all that was true in the worship of Ashimah. . .
Secondly, we have to guard the truth and worship of God against corruption. Dan (14b) was one of the schismatic and corrupt sanctuaries set up by Jeroboam I (1 Ki. 12:29). It was depraved much more in its tendencies and influence than in anything Jeroboam actually did. For example, the golden calves were a pedestal for the invisible throne of Yahweh just as were the cherubim in the Jerusalem shrine. In their idea therefore they could hardly be called heretical, but inevitably, as we have seen, their visibility wrought a popular identification between the invisible God and the sort of symbol with which He was identified. In effect therefore Yahweh became a fertility deity. This sort of defect ran through the cult Jeroboam set up. His central feast was ‘like’ the feast in Judah (1 Ki. 12:32), but its motivation was erroneous: Jeroboam stands in the Bible as the man who sought to make religion serve the ends of politics. The cult was a technique for establishing his own monarchy (1 Ki. 12:26-30): even God became a means to an end. This has good claim to being considered as ‘the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin’. The truth and worship of God must be safeguarded from that (however small) which detracts from the God who is revealed in Scripture, and responsibility rests with each worshipper to purify the thoughts and motives of his own heart so that God is worshipped for what He is and not for what we want from Him.
The third matter on which Amos focuses is by no means easy or certain in interpretation. RSV expresses what the Hebrew says: As the way of Beer-sheba lives (14c), an odd and elsewhere unexemplified expression. NEB ‘By the sacred way to Beersheba’ offers what can surely be the only possible interpretation: some religious merit or benefit was thought to accrue from the journey itself and people began to ‘swear by it’. Let us accept this as a good and likely understanding. It tells us that true religion must be safeguarded from superstition. It is very understandable that a thing as laborious as the journey from Israel through Judah to Beer-sheba would be looked upon as no small duty accomplished for the sake of religion and God. From this it is a small step to superstitious veneration for the doing of the thing. Superstition is a non-moral technique for securing God’s blessing: walking the road to Beer-sheba brought its own, automatic rewards. And in this sense there is very little which cannot become a superstition whereby we say ‘God must bless me because I have done…’. But slot-machine religion finds no place in the Bible.
Man lives by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God. If this food is withdrawn or corrupted there is no other way of satisfaction or security. In this regard verse 14 must be taken as defining the people of verse 13, as indeed the Hebrew requires. Why are these folk suffering from thirst? Because they have only the cults to satisfy them and they remain unsatisfied. But more, at the end, they fall, and never rise again. Nothing but the Word of God can sustain and keep secure for all eternity. It is in keeping with what we have seen of the over-all pattern of these chapters that the notion of eternal security—that preoccupation of Amos—should find its way back into his teaching here. Religion as such (14) can only lead to the eternal loss of falling and never rising. But by contrast those who live by the Word live for ever.
Gary Cohen: The “guilt of Samaria” is the calf altars at Dan and Bethel. Those of Samaria swore their oaths with the formula “As your god lives, O Dan,” rather than “As Jehovah lives,” or “As the LORD lives.” They were guilty of an idolatrous worship of Jehovah. Their fate would be worse than that of the new young generation who would thirst and faint—namely, those idolaters were earmarked for absolute judgment, to “fall and not rise again” (Compare Isaiah 40:30-31.)
Tchavdar Hadjiev: Oaths played an important role in the social life of Ancient Near Eastern peoples. They were used to seal contracts, undertake obligations and confirm the veracity of statements. Swearing by the name of a particular god meant invoking that god’s power to oversee the established relationships and enforce required norms of behaviour. People swore by the gods they worshipped, and the expression ‘by the life of X’ (or ‘as X lives’) was a common oath formula (Jer. 38:16). Israel was expected to swear only by the Lord (Deut. 6:13; 10:20), so swearing by the name of Baal (Jer. 12:16) or Milcom (Zeph. 1:5) was tantamount to idolatry. The indictment is the worship of other gods.