Chapter Eight

1–3. A vision of a basket of ripe fruit. 4–6. Exposure of the greed of merchants. 7–14. Announcement of God’s judgment upon the transgressive people.

Amos 8:1. Thus the Lord God showed me a vision: behold, a basket of ripe fruit. Chapter VIII begins with a description of a new vision. «Behold, a basket of ripe fruit» (keluv kaiz): the word keluv can mean both a basket for fruit and a bird-catcher’s snare; in the latter meaning the word is used by the prophet Jeremiah (Jer 5:27). The LXX gave the word this latter meaning in the passage in question in the book of Amos; hence in Slavonic: “and behold, a vessel of a bird-catcher” (aggos ixeuto).

Amos 8:2. And he said: What do you see, Amos? I answered: a basket of ripe fruit. Then the Lord said to me: the time has come for my people Israel; I will no more spare them. The ripe fruit shown to the prophet is an image of the fact that Israel is ripe for judgment and punishment. Expressing this thought, the prophet employs a play on words using the sound similarity between kaiz (ripe fruit) and kez (end). If we accept along with the LXX keluv (basket) in the sense of “a bird-catcher’s vessel,” then the image shown to the prophet would designate, according to the interpretation of Church Fathers, the coming capture of the people of Israel by enemies (the blessed Theodoret, Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria).

Amos 8:3. The songs of the palace in that day shall become mourning, says the Lord God; many corpses will be on every place, cast forth silently. “Songs of the palace,” Heb. schiroth hejchal according to the LXX is rendered as ta phatnomata tou naou, Slavonic: “the rafters (beams) of the temple”; in the Vulgate: cardines templi, door hinges in the temple. According to the text of the LXX and Vulgate, the prophet in verse 3 foretells the destruction of a temple—surely not the Jerusalem temple (Theodore of Mopsuestia), about which nothing had been said, but the Bethel temple. The prophet employs a figurative expression, representing that on the day of the temple’s destruction the rafters of the temple or door hinges would as it were weep. The reading of the current Masoretic text schiroth (songs) presents certain difficulties; first, the plural of schir (song) should be schirim, not schiroth; second, the combination vehejlilu schiroth “and the songs wept” is not natural. In view of this, commentators typically read instead of schiroth either sharoth, female singers (Hoffman, Wellhausen, Nowack), or follow the reading of the Greek text (Hoonacker), whereby hejchal (in the LXX naou, temple) is understood in the collective sense of “palace.” The image introduced by the LXX into the prophet’s speech is found also in Isa 14:31; Zech 11:2, and others. “On every place they will be cast forth silently” (hischlich has): the word chas (silently) is considered both a noun (Slavonic: “I will cast down silence”) and an adverb (silently), and an exclamation (silence!) which bursts from the prophet as he contemplates (in spirit) the multitude of corpses (Hoonacker: on every place they cast them forth. Silence!). This last interpretation is preferable to the others. In any case, there is no need to discern (Nowack) in the word has corruption of the text and suppose that it arose instead of hasch, i.e., a shortening of the verb haschlich (Harper).

Amos 8:4. Hear this, you who pant to swallow the poor and bring ruin to the needy, In verses 4–6 the prophet again turns to the upper classes of Israeli society, namely to wealthy grain merchants, and exposes them for the oppression of the poor. Bring ruin to the needy: in Hebrew anivvej arez, the needy of the land, as in Slavonic.

Amos 8:5. you who say: “when will the new moon pass, so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so that we may open our storehouses, reduce the measure, increase the weight of the shekel, and cheat with false weights, In their desire for gain the wealthy denounced by the prophet were weary of even new moons and Sabbaths, for on these days, according to the law’s prescription and custom, commerce ceased. The wealthy wanted these days to pass quickly so they could engage in their fraudulent trading. “Reduce the measure” (ephah): an ephah is a measure for dry goods; reduce the measure—to give less than is due. “Increase the weight of the shekel”: in Hebrew lehohdil schekel—increase the shekel; the shekel is a weight measure and later a certain coin; sellers, increasing the weight of the shekel, received from purchasers more than was proper.

Amos 8:6. to buy the needy for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals, and sell the offal of the wheat. The wealthy wanted the Sabbath or festivals to pass quickly for other reasons besides those set out in verse 5. The prophet states these reasons in verse 6. “To buy the needy for silver”: the prophet wishes to show that the poor were for the wealthy a subject of commerce. “And the poor for a pair of sandals”: apparently reference is made to the enslavement of the poor because of insignificant debts. The wealthy could achieve their goals toward the indebted poor only through the courts. And since the courts did not sit on Sabbaths and festivals, the wealthy wanted these days to pass quickly.

Amos 8:7. The Lord has sworn by the glory of Jacob: surely I will never forget any of their deeds! From verse 7 begins the announcement of judgment. “The Lord has sworn by the glory of Jacob,” (bigeon jaakov): in Amos 6:8 the prophet uses the word geon (Russ. “glory”) in the sense of pride, which the Lord detests; in this same sense should the word geon be understood in the expression in question, as in Slavonic: “upon the haughtiness of Jacob.” The Lord swears by the pride of Jacob, that is, the Lord brings forth the pride as a witness or evidence against Israel as an especially grave sin. Some commentators, however, understanding geon jaakov in the sense of the glory of Jacob, think that the Lord swears by him who is the source of this glory, that is, by himself.

Amos 8:8. Will not the land tremble for this, and will not everyone living on it mourn? The whole land will surge like the Nile, and will heave and settle like the river of Egypt. The deeds of Israel are such that the land cannot bear them. “Will not the land tremble for this”: the prophet not only wishes to make the coming of an earthquake understandable (Wellhausen, Nowack), but directly foretells it; the prophet’s question presupposes an affirmative answer. The trembling of the land during the coming earthquake the prophet compares to the rising and falling of water in the Nile River. Some commentators (Nowack) think this comparison is not entirely felicitous, since water in the Nile falls and descends gradually. But it is possible that the prophet has in mind not the picture of the Nile flood, but the picture of the Nile cataracts (Hoonacker). According to the explanation of Church Fathers and ancient commentators, verse 7 can be understood as expressing in figurative form a prophecy of an invasion of the Israeli land by enemies—the Assyrians: just as the Egyptian river covers all the land, so a multitude of enemies will cover the land of Israel (the blessed Theodoret); “the Assyrians will come, like the Nile excessively overflowing, will drive out and force the Israelites to leave their land” (Ephrem the Syrian).

Amos 8:9. And it shall be in that day, says the Lord God: I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in the middle of the day. The trembling of the earth will be accompanied by other terrible phenomena in nature. “I will make the sun go down at noon”: the expression need not be understood (Yungerov) in the strictly literal sense that the sun will set at noon; the prophet wishes to say that the light of the sun at noon will be such as it is at sunset. It is unknown whether the prophet speaks of a solar eclipse or whether his words should be understood metaphorically. The picture of an eclipse the prophet could have observed on February 9, 784 BC and on June 15, 763 BC, when, according to astronomical calculations, solar eclipses were visible in Palestine.

Amos 8:10. And I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation, and I will bring sackcloth upon all loins and baldness upon every head; and I will bring upon the land lamentation as for an only son, and its end shall be as a bitter day. On the day of calamity all joy will disappear and everyone will as it were clothe themselves in mourning. “And baldness upon every head”: an indication of the custom of shaving the head as a sign of mourning (see Isa 3:23; Mic 1:16). At the end of the verse the coming lamentation upon the land is compared to lamentation for a deceased only son. In Slavonic the end of the verse reads: “and I will put him like the grief of a beloved, and those with him like a day of illness”; the words “those with him” correspond to the Hebrew aharithah, its end.

Amos 8:11. Behold, days are coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a hunger upon the land—not a hunger for bread, not a thirst for water, but a hunger for hearing the words of the Lord. The special severity of the coming judgment upon Israel, as depicted by the prophet, will be the deprivation of the words of the Lord or divine revelation. Possession of divine revelation was the privilege of Israel before pagan nations (Deut 18:13-22) and was proof of his election by God. The deprivation of divine word means, therefore, the coming rejection of the people by God.

Amos 8:12. And they shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east, seeking the word of the Lord, but they will not find it. “And they shall wander from sea to sea”: according to some commentators, the prophet refers to the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean (Hitzig, Miguel), or to the Eastern and Atlantic oceans (Keil); but it is better to understand the expression in an indefinite sense—throughout all the land. In this the Hebrew nua (Russ. “shall wander”) properly means to sway, to stagger, to walk with a swaying gait, that is, expresses the thought of longing for God’s word. Instead of the words given in Slavonic it reads: “and the waters will be shaken from sea to sea”; the word hydrata, waters arose in the LXX from mijam (from the sea), which was read twice and at first was read as maim (waters). Explaining the Greek text, the blessed Theodoret adds before the word waters the conjunction “as”; the waters will be shaken as, that is, “just as the undulating waters will the Israelites wander, turning hither and thither.”

Amos 8:13. In that day the fair young women and young men will faint from thirst, “In that day”—in the day of judgment, which the prophet understands in verse 13 as a long period. “From thirst”: both from physical and from spiritual thirst, the hunger for hearing God’s word. By naming maidens and young men, the prophet wishes to say that if they, the stronger ones, will faint from thirst, how great will be the sufferings of others!

Amos 8:14. those who swear by the sin of Samaria and say: “as your god lives, O Dan! and as the way to Beersheba lives!”—they shall fall and never rise again. The reason for the coming punishment is the service to false gods. “Those who swear by the sin of Samaria” (Slavonic: “by the purification of Samaria”): to swear is to express veneration (see Deut 6:13; Jer 12:16; Isa 48:1); the sin of Samaria is undoubtedly the Bethel idol, which in Hos 8:6 is called “the calf of Samaria.” “As your god lives, O Dan! and as the way to Beersheba lives!”: Dan and Beersheba are two points of unlawful worship and at the same time were the border points of the land of God’s people—Dan in the north and Beersheba in the south. The expression “from Dan to Beersheba” in the Bible denotes the entire territory of Israeli land. By naming Dan and Beersheba (rather than Bethel and Gilgal), the prophet also wishes to express the thought that just as lawlessness has embraced the entire land, so punishment will strike it from end to end. The expression “as the way to Beersheba lives” is unusual because the formula chej, may he live, in sacred writings is ordinarily applied to living beings (2 Sam 2:27; Job 27:2; Gen 42:15-16; 1 Sam 1:26). Some commentators suppose that they swore by the way to Beersheba, as the Arabs swear by pilgrimage to Mecca (Knabenbauer). Others, in view of the obscurity of the expression, propose emendations of its text. The LXX rendered the expression as: ze o theos sou Biersabee, Slavonic: “may your god Beersheba live.” In view of this, some suppose that in the original text instead of derech (way) khai (the lives) was read elcha, your god (Nowack). But a god Beersheba is not mentioned anywhere: according to 2 Sam 23:8 in Beersheba there was only a high place, not an idol. Winckler and Hoonacker read instead of derech the similar dodcha. About an altar of Dod mentioned in the inscription of Mesha. Dod of Beersheba is a deity considered the patron of the city. Prof. Yungerov, keeping the existing text of the expression, translates it: let the way to Beersheba prosper, let it not perish.