Amos 8 KJV
The Basket of Ripe Fruit
Amos Chapter 8: The Basket of Ripe Fruit
The chapter's core vision hinges on an untranslatable Hebrew pun where 'qayits' (summer fruit) sounds identical to 'qets' (end), so the basket visually enacts that Israel's ripeness has triggered its termination rather than mere harvest.
1hus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit.
2 And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.
3 And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord GOD: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence.
4 Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail,
5 Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit?
6 That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?
7 The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.
8 Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.
9 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day:
10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.
11 Behold, the days come, saith 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 words of the LORD:
12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.
13 In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.
14 They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.
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Did You Know?
The chapter's core vision hinges on an untranslatable Hebrew pun where 'qayits' (summer fruit) sounds identical to 'qets' (end), so the basket visually enacts that Israel's ripeness has triggered its termination rather than mere harvest.
Merchants are depicted as chafing for the Sabbath and new moon to end not from secularism but from a warped piety that treats ritual observance as an inconvenient pause before resuming grain sales with rigged ephahs and shekels.
The announced 'famine of hearing the words of the LORD' is framed as active divine withdrawal, not mere silence, leaving seekers wandering from sea to sea only to encounter the permanent absence of oracular guidance.
Oaths sworn by 'the sin of Samaria' and the living gods of Dan and Beersheba expose a pan-Israelite network of calf shrines and pilgrimage routes that Amos treats as a single coherent system of apostasy spanning both kingdoms.
The sudden darkening of the sun at noon and the earth mourning like a river are presented as covenant curses that invert creation order, turning festival joy into funeral dirges where survivors must silence their songs.