Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 8

Thus has the Lord God shown me - After the sentence against Amaziah was pronounced, Amos resumed just where he had left off before Amaziah interrupted him. His vehement interruption is like a stone cast into deep waters; they close over it, and it leaves no trace. Amos had authenticated the third vision, saying, Thus has the Lord God shown me. He resumed in the very same calm words. The last vision declared that the end was certain; this one, that it was near.

A basket of summer fruit - The fruit was the latest harvest in Palestine. When it was gathered, the cycle of farming had come to its close. The sight gives an idea of completeness.

The symbol and the word expressing it coincide. The fruit-gathering, קיץ (qayits)—like our “crop”—was named from “cutting.” So too, the word for “end,” or “cutting off,” was found in (קץ (qêts)).

At harvest-time, there is no more to be done for that crop. Good or bad, it has reached its end and is cut down. In the same way, the harvest of Israel had come.

The whole course of God’s providences, mercies, chastenings, visitations, instructions, warnings, and inspirations was completed. God asks, What could have been done more to My vineyard, that I have not done in it? (Isaiah 5:4).

For to the works of sin, just as to those of holiness, there is a beginning, progress, and completion: a “sowing of wild oats,” as people say, and a ripening in wickedness; a maturity of people’s plans, as they deem it; and finally, a maturity for destruction in the sight of God.

There was no more to be done. Heavenly influences can only injure the ripened sinner, just as dew, rain, and sun injure ripened fruit. Israel was ripe, but for destruction.

The songs of the temple shall be howlings - Literally, “shall howl.” This means it will be as when mirthful music is suddenly broken in upon and, through the sudden agony of the singer, ends in a shriek or yell of misery. When sounds of joy are turned into wailing, all must be complete sorrow. They are not only hushed but are turned into their opposite.

Since Amos is speaking to and of Israel, “the temple” here is undoubtedly the great idol-temple at Bethel. “The songs” were the choral music with which they counterfeited the temple music arranged by David, praising—they could not make up their minds which—Nature or “the God of nature,” but in truth, worshiping the creature. The temple was often strongly built and on a height. Whether from a vague hope of help from God (as in the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans), from some human trust that the temple might be respected, from confidence in its strength, or from all these reasons together, it was the last refuge of the nearly captive people.

Their last retreat was often the scene of the final, reeling strife: the battle-cry of the assailants, the shrieks of the defenseless, the groans of the wounded, the agonized cry of unyielding despair. The prophet probably had some such scene before his mind’s eye, for he adds:

There shall be many dead bodies—literally, “Many the corpse in every place.” He sees it not as future, but as present before him.

The whole city, now so thronged with life, “the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s scorn,” lies before him as one scene of death. Every place is thronged with corpses; none are exempt—at home, abroad, or in the temple he had just mentioned. There is no time or place for honorable burial.

They—literally, “he casts forth, hush!” Each person casts out those dear to him, like dung on the face of the earth (Jeremiah 8:2, and other passages).

Grief is too strong for words. The living and the dead are hushed as the grave. “Large cities are large solitudes,” for lack of mutual love; in God’s retribution, all their din and hum becomes a solitude once more.

Hear this, you who swallow— Or, better in the same sense, that pant for the needy; as Job says, the hireling pants for the evening (Job 7:2). They “panted for the poor,” as the wild beast for its prey; and that to make the poor, or (better, as the Hebrew text) the meek (those not only poor, but who, through poverty and affliction, are also “poor in spirit”), to fail. The land being divided among all the inhabitants, they, in order to lay field to field (Isaiah 5:8), had to rid themselves of the poor. They did rid themselves of them by oppression of all sorts.

When will the new moon be gone? They observed their festivals, though weary and impatient for them to end. They kept the Sabbath and festival with their bodies, not with their minds. The Psalmist said, When shall I come to appear before the presence of God? (Psalms 42:2). These people said, perhaps only in their hearts, which God reads, “When will this service be over, so that we may be our own masters again?” They loathed the rest of the Sabbath because on it they had to rest from their frauds. He cites as examples “the new moons” and “Sabbaths” because these, recurring weekly or monthly, were a regular hindrance to their covetousness.

The “ephah” was a measure containing 72 Roman pints, or nearly one and one-tenth of an English bushel. The shekel was a fixed weight by which money was still weighed up to the time of the captivity (2 Samuel 18:12; 1 Kings 20:39; Jeremiah 32:9), including for determining the price of bread (Isaiah 55:2).

They increased the price in two ways, dishonestly and hypocritically: by reducing the quantity they sold, and by obtaining more silver through fictitious weights and weighing with uneven balances.

All such dealings had been expressly forbidden by God, and this honesty was a condition for their remaining in the land God had given them: You shall not have in your bag different weights, a great and a small. You shall not have in your house different measures, a great and a small. But you shall have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure you shall have, that your days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord your God gives you (Deuteronomy 25:13–15).

Sin involving wrong measures, once begun, is continuous. All sin perpetuates itself. It is done again because it has been done before. But sins related to a person’s daily occupation are necessarily continued, beyond the simple force of habit and the ever-increasing disease of covetousness. To interrupt such sin is to risk detection.

But then how countless are the sins which their poor slaves were forced to commit hourly, whenever the opportunity arose! And yet, although among us human law recognizes the divine law and prescribes punishment for its violation, covetousness disregards both. When human law was enforced in a city after a time of negligence, scarcely a weight was found to be honest. Prayer went up to God on “the Sabbath,” and fraud against the poor went up to God in every transaction on the other six days.

We admire the denunciations of Amos and condemn the make-believe service of God. Amos denounces us, and we condemn ourselves. Righteous dealing in weights and measures was one of the conditions for the existence of God’s former people. What then must be our national condition before God, when, from this one sin, so many thousands upon thousands of sins go up daily to plead against us to God?

That we may buy - Or, indignantly, “To buy the poor!” literally, “the afflicted,” those in “low” estate. First, by dishonesty and oppression they gained their lands and goods. Then the poor were obliged to sell themselves. The slight price, for which a man was sold, showed the more contempt for “the image of God.” Before, he said, the needy were sold for a pair of sandals (Amos 2:6); here, that they were bought for them. It seems then the more likely that such was a real price for man.

And sell the refuse - Literally, the “falling of wheat,” that is, what fell through the sieve: either the bran, or the thin, unfilled grains which had no meal in them. This they mixed up largely with the meal, making a gain from that which they had once sifted out as worthless; or else, in a time of dearth, they sold to people what was the food of animals and made a profit on it. What an infancy and inexperience of cupidity, which adulterated its bread only with bran, or sold to the poor only what, although unnourishing, was wholesome! But then, with the multiplied hard-dealing, how manifold the woe!