Amos 8
Basket of Fruit and Israel's Captivity
The Five Visions of Amos And the Promise of Blessing1
Thus the Lord the LORD showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit.
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He said, "Amos, what do you see?"I said, "A basket of summer fruit."Then the LORD said to me,"The end has come on my people Israel.I will not again pass by them any more.
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Hear this, you who desire to swallow up the needy,and cause the poor of the land to fail,
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that we may buy the poor for silver,and the needy for a pair of shoes,and sell the sweepings with the wheat?'"
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The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob,"Surely I will never forget any of their works.
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It will happen in that day," says the Lord God,"that I will cause the sun to go down at noon,and I will darken the earth in the clear day.
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Behold, the days come," says the Lord God,"that I will send a famine in the land,not a famine of bread,nor a thirst for water,but of hearing The LORD's words.
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They will wander from sea to sea,and from the north even to the east;they will run back and forth to seek The LORD's word,and will not find it.
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In that day the beautiful virginsand the young men will faint for thirst.
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Those who swear by the sin of Samaria,and say, 'As your god, Dan, lives;'and, 'As the way of Beersheba lives;'they will fall, and never rise up again."
Am 8:1-14. VISION OF A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT SYMBOLICAL, OF ISRAEL'S END. RESUMING THE SERIES OF SYMBOLS INTERRUPTED BY AMAZIAH, AMOS ADDS A FOURTH. THE AVARICE OF THE OPPRESSORS OF THE POOR: THE OVERTHROW OF THE NATION: THE WISH FOR THE MEANS OF RELIGIOUS COUNSEL, WHEN THERE SHALL BE A FAMINE OF THE WORD.
1. summer fruit--Hebrew, kitz. In Am 8:2 "end" is in Hebrew, keetz. The similarity of sounds implies that, as the summer is the end of the year and the time of the ripeness of fruits, so Israel is ripe for her last punishment, ending her national existence. As the fruit is plucked when ripe from the tree, so Israel from her land.