Fourth vision: the basket of ripe fruit
1 Yahweh showed me a basket of ripe fruit
2 and asked, “Amos, what do you see?” I replied, “A basket of ripe fruit.”
Then Yahweh said to me, “My people Israel is ripe for destruction; I will no longer forgive them.
3 The songs of the palace will become wailings on that day, says the Lord. Heaps of corpses everywhere, all cast out in silence.”
4 Hear this, you who trample on the needy to do away with the weak of the land.
5 You who say, “When will the new moon or the sabbath feast be over that we may open the store and sell our grain? Let us lower the measure and raise the price; let us cheat and tamper with the scales,
6 and even sell the refuse with the whole grain. We will buy up the poor for money and the needy for a pair of sandals.”
7 Yahweh, the pride of Jacob, has sworn by himself, “I shall never forget their deeds.”
8 Shall not the land tremble because of this, and all who dwell in it mourn, while it rises up and heaves like the Nile and settles back again like the river of Egypt?
9 Yahweh says, “On that day I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.
10 I will turn your festivals into mourning and all your singing into wailing. Everyone will mourn, covered with sackcloth and every head will be shaved. I will make them mourn as for an only son and bring their day to a bitter end.”
11 Yahweh says, “Days are coming when I will send famine upon the land, not hunger for bread or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of Yahweh.
12 Men will stagger from sea to sea, wander to and fro, from north to east, searching for the word of Yahweh, but they will not find it.
13 On that day, fair virgins and strong young men will faint from thirst,
14 all the young people who swore by the god of Samaria and said: Long life to the god of Dan, long life to the god of Bersheba! They shall fall, never to rise again.”
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Comments Amos, Chapter 8
• 8.1 This fourth vision continues the vision of chapter 7:1-9.
Amos describes the greed of the merchants and of the rich, the exploitation of the needy, the luxury of the wealthy, the bribing of judges, etc.
Not hunger for bread or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of Yahweh (v. 11), in a little while those who refuse to listen, because they lack nothing, will be so afflicted that they will long to hear a word of consolation from God, and that word will not come. The pro phet’s words were to be fulfilled in several ways. We can read into them the prediction of the hunger and thirst for God’s word, which in later times would be the hallmark of the believer.