A Famine of Hearing Yahweh’s Words
1Thus the Lord Yahweh showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit. 2He said, “Amos, what do you see?” I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then Yahweh said to me, “The end has come on my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more. 3The songs of the temple will be wailings in that day,” says the Lord Yahweh. “The dead bodies will be many. In every place they will throw them out with silence. 4Hear this, you who desire to swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to fail, 5Saying, ‘When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may market wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel large, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit; 6that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and sell the sweepings with the wheat?’” 7Yahweh has sworn by the pride of Jacob, “Surely I will never forget any of their works. 8Won’t the land tremble for this, and everyone mourn who dwells in it? Yes, it will rise up wholly like the River; and it will be stirred up and sink again, like the River of Egypt. 9It will happen in that day,” says the Lord Yahweh, “that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day. 10I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will make you wear sackcloth on all your bodies, and baldness on every head. I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day. 11Behold, the days come,” says the Lord Yahweh, “that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing Yahweh’s words. 12They will wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they will run back and forth to seek Yahweh’s word, and will not find it. 13In that day the beautiful virgins and the young men will faint for thirst. 14Those 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.”
People harvest fruit when it is just ripe. If they miss that moment, the fruit falls to the ground and is spoiled, so they take care not to let the time slip by. When the harvest is missed, it is because the owner was lazy or too occupied with other things to pay attention. In a vision God showed Amos a basket of summer fruit just like this: overripe, left unpicked because its time had gone by.
He showed it to make known that Israel, like overripe summer fruit, had let the time for repentance pass. The vision declares God’s firm resolve to cast off a people full of sin. God had given them chance after chance. He made Amos proclaim judgment, he made Amaziah hear that judgment was coming, and through Amaziah he caused King Jeroboam to hear what Amos had said. Because Israel still refused to the end, God showed them the last of the summer fruit and declared that the time had come.
Israel had lost every one of its many chances to turn back, and because of that God said he would never again forgive them. With every chance squandered, judgment was now their lot. Had the priest Amaziah listened to Amos and called the people to repentance, Israel might yet have seized its last chance. But although Amaziah heard Amos’s urgent words, he went to King Jeroboam and sowed discord, accusing Amos of conspiring against the king.
Like a lazy owner who sees the fruit ripen and does nothing, Israel lost its chance to turn back because it would not heed God’s warning. Fruit left too long drops quickly and shatters on the ground until nothing of its shape remains. In the same way, the moment God resolves to carry out his judgment, Israel will become a nation that can hardly be restored. Amaziah, who challenged Amos’s authority, failed the test of the plumb line and came to a wretched end. Both Israel and Amaziah had been given ample time to repent, but in their pride they made no preparation for the judgment.
When the judgment begins, the songs of the palace will turn to wailing, and though they try to bury the bodies heaped up everywhere, there will not be enough ground or enough hands to bury them. The songs they sang so merrily in the palace, drunk, playing every kind of instrument, will become a howling dirge. God, who had said that whoever sought the name of Yahweh would live, hoping to save even one more person, now declares that it is all over and that they will see corpses beyond number.
Why do people not turn back when they are given the chance? Even when they receive mercy, people do not repent of their sin, and it grieves me to see how patiently God waits in order to forgive. I hope you will pay attention to your own faith. If you do not take heed of the faith you are living by right now, you can be parted from God in an instant, like summer fruit dropped from the branch.
God warns of the final judgment, longing for Israel to return to him. His declaration that he will never forgive Israel does not signal that he will abandon them; it is the earnest cry of a God who truly wants to forgive. When he told them in advance that the songs of the palace would become wailing and that corpses would fill every street, he was pleading with them: if you fear the judgment, turn back quickly. But people sunk in pleasure would not listen to God’s counsel. Though they would die the moment judgment fell, they would not let go of their own righteousness and their own ideas. They had made instruments for their own sake and sung for the sake of pleasure, and now they could not even hear the word of judgment. So, grievous as it is, the judgment was fulfilled just as it was spoken, and the people of Israel who had reveled in idolatry and pleasure perished.
When those who had sung and made merry together began to die, they finally faced reality, but even if they wanted to turn, there was no way back now. For Amos, who had cried out to them so loudly to repent, had fallen silent, and so had God, who had spoken to them in a voice of wrath. People writhed in fear and grief and ran about in confusion, not knowing what to do, but God no longer had any intention of forgiving their sin, and he gave them no further chance.
I hope you will look at these people, unable to believe what is happening and with nothing left to do but be silent, and look too at God, who is silent because he has nothing more to say to those who stand dazed among countless corpses. I ask this because the silence of God and the silence of these people are never the same. He had cried out with all his heart for them to repent, he had shown his anger, and he had warned them of judgment. Rebuking and growing angry are things one can do when there is love in the heart. These people had been told of the judgment and still would not turn back; now, seeing them call on the name of Yahweh and weep, God closed his mouth.
Amos 8:5
5Saying, ‘When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may market wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel large, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit;
Israel kept the new moons, the Sabbaths, and the feasts as the law required, but they hated to see those days come. They needed money for drinking and for their pleasures, and because they could earn nothing on the Sabbath and the feast days, they resented them. On the first day of each month burnt offerings, grain offerings, and drink offerings had to be brought to God, so buying, selling, and labor were forbidden by law on that day. But Israel had no interest in the deep spiritual meaning of these feasts; driven by greed for material things, they found the monthly new moon and the weekly Sabbath a burden, as though keeping them meant a loss.
Unable to trade, they made up their loss by cheating with their scales and taking unjust profit. Resentful at not being able to do business on the new moon, they were set on turning a profit even if it meant using false balances. To give less than the fixed price was worth, they made the ephah small, and they made the shekel, the weight they measured by, heavier. This was a grievous sin against the law of God.
Leviticus 19:35-36
35“‘You shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in measures of length, of weight, or of quantity. 36You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin. I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
God gave the law so that the people he had brought out of Egypt could live rightly, and that law tells them to deal honestly, using just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin. Yet in their trade they sold shoddy goods; we are told they even swept up the sweepings that had fallen on the ground, packed them, and sold them. Sins like these come from a wicked conscience with no regard at all for the suffering of the poor, and they draw a severe rebuke.
And while they took this unjust profit for themselves, when the poor could not repay their debts they sold them as slaves and added to their own wealth. Ink can only ever write in black, whenever it is used; in the same way, everything the wicked do is evil. So the harder the wicked work, the more their sin piles up, and the harder they think, the more evil schemes they devise.
If a person’s very thinking is not turned to center on God, then all their plans, efforts, and deeds are evil, and because of that they are only heaping up more sin than they can bear. It would be better for them not to strive at all.
Revelation 18:13
13and cinnamon, incense, perfume, frankincense, wine, olive oil, fine flour, wheat, sheep, horses, chariots, and people’s bodies and souls.
The world is a place where anything can be bought and sold, so long as there is profit in it. Among the goods these traders dealt in were articles for worship, but, astonishingly, there were also the souls of people God loves. A wicked person is one who will buy and sell even human souls without a twinge of conscience, for the sake of their own success and gain. Those who push human souls, precious in God’s sight, into darkness will never be forgiven by God. Even now, churches straining after worldly success sell the name of God to win the world’s approval rather than caring about the saving of souls. It is a deeply sad thing that pastors and believers are committing this sin.
Israel is a people chosen by God, and yet they are committing these sins. To use false balances that God’s law forbade, and to sell the poor for a pair of shoes, is to defy God, who from the beginning has been the Lord of life. To show his resolve to judge this wicked Israel, God swore by the pride of Jacob.
The pride of Jacob refers to God himself, the God of the living. We swear by the name of someone greater than ourselves, but because there is no one greater than God, he swore by his own name.
Amos 8:9
9It will happen in that day,” says the Lord Yahweh, “that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.
Amos describes an earthquake in these terms: the land trembles, everyone who dwells in it mourns, and the whole land rises up like the River, is stirred up, and sinks again like the River of Egypt. We have seen earthquakes shake and split the ground and take countless lives, and so we know well how terrifying such a thing is. Just so, if God resolves to act, a single light touch is enough to bring on everyone who lives on the earth suffering they can in no way escape.
Living as we do in this present age, we know that the words of verse 9, the sun going down at noon and the earth darkened in the clear day, describe an eclipse. We know it because at noon the sun vanished and broad daylight turned completely dark.
When Amos said this, people would have asked how such a thing could ever happen, but God’s word was fulfilled in the eclipses of BC 784 and BC 763. Today science has explained it and we know it as an eclipse, but at the time, as the sun was blotted out and the whole world was wrapped in darkness, we can imagine people’s terror reaching its height.
Those who escaped the earthquake were attacked by the nations and fell by the sword. People who saw their loved ones die had no time even to weep before they met their own deaths; that is how terrible the judgment on Israel was. Had they listened to Amos as he called on them to repent, they would have had a chance to turn back, but Israel, unable to give up its pleasures and its greed, was judged in the end. Perhaps it was only after the judgment fell that they realized Amos’s prophecy had been true.
We need to look at ourselves now and ask whether our faith is really any different from theirs. God has told us again and again to hold fast to our faith, and he calls us to pray for our nation and our people, yet we must repent deeply and ask whether we are living as Israel did. If judgment came upon this land, could anyone hide from God’s eyes? If the press of daily life makes us shrug off God’s warnings, we too may suffer what Israel is suffering now.
Friends, however busy and hard life in this world may be, you must have faith. Because faith alone can bring about salvation in Christ, I hope you will never forget what must come first.
Amos 8:11
11Behold, the days come,” says the Lord Yahweh, “that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing Yahweh’s words.
Just as people can die in a famine when there is no water to drink, so we will dry up spiritually if we cannot hear the word of God. That is how great a misfortune it is not to hear the word of truth. Satan will stop at nothing to keep us from hearing the word; he fills us with greed for the world, with grumbling, with the love of pleasure, and with pride. So we must keep examining whether the word of truth dwells in us, for only then will we stand unshaken on the rock of faith.
In John 6:63 Jesus said that it is the spirit who gives life and the flesh profits nothing, and that the words he spoke to them are spirit and are life. To be born again spiritually, we must hear the word and come to understand it. This matters because the human heart is always empty, and when a famine of hearing God’s word comes, as it came on Israel, we can easily surrender to Satan.
Israel will wander in search of the word, never knowing that it can no longer be heard. However desperately they call on God, it is too late, and he will not answer; they will never hear the Lord’s word. In the past, whenever Israel needed the word, they could go to a prophet, hear it, and come to understand God’s will. But once the judgment began, there was no prophet to bring them the word, and God too was silent, so their souls withered.
Friends, I hope you will give your whole attention to the word of God before it is too late. What God desires is that we know and believe in Jesus Christ. Jesus said that whoever finds no occasion for stumbling in him is blessed, and that if they know these things and do them, they will have eternal life. To know the word of God and to believe in Christ is this great a blessing.
But Israel, having missed every chance, will stagger from sea to sea and from the north even to the east, running back and forth to seek Yahweh’s word, and will not find it. The word of truth is not something you obtain simply by going in search of it. Just as no water can be found in the desert, the word of truth is not something one easily hears in the world. Only by going to Jesus Christ, as a traveler comes upon an oasis, can our thirst be quenched and the heavy burdens of life be laid down.
If we know the truth, our actions and our words must change. We must turn from the way we were going, change our minds, and with all our hearts recover our thanksgiving; only then can we escape judgment.
Israel pretended to serve God zealously, but the fact that they cheated people with false balances shows that their faith was not whole. God, who looks closely even at false balances, is deeply involved in our lives, and he sees, hears, and judges everything. Israel offered empty, formal sacrifices, yet they counted themselves people of faith. When faith is counterfeit like this, no amount of hearing the word engraves it on the tablet of the heart, and in the end the conscience is seared as with a hot iron.
Both Israel and believers today can discern the spirits only when they acknowledge that the word is holy and of absolute worth.
Isaiah 40:8
8The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God stands forever.”
Just as even the loveliest flower fades, our bodies too will wither like grass and fade like flowers, but the word of our God stands forever. That is because, though the body dies, the word of God is eternal. That so lowly a life should be touched by the grace of God and given eternal life is something like a marvelous miracle. As for those who cannot be content, who make false balances and sell the poor as slaves, God will throw them into the pit of destruction and make them suffer a torment from which they can never escape.
If God is the Lord of the whole universe and of every human life, we must obey him. Those who have never met God, and those who have met him but do not live by his word, have chosen their own path, so they will have no excuse when judgment comes. God’s people sinned by swearing by the idol in Samaria and by worshiping the golden calf at Dan. And those who set out on the longest of journeys to swear by the god that Beersheba honored will all fall and never rise up again.
For God’s people to worship idols fully deserves rebuke. God commanded them to have no other gods before him, and not to make any idol or image for themselves or bow down to it. Israel received the command not to worship idols and still betrayed God; too late they sought Yahweh with regret, but the time had already passed. However desperately they called on God’s name, he was silent. It may be that, never stopping to consider that they had refused to hear the word the prophets brought, they blamed God for not answering. They would have wailed that if he would only give them one more chance, they would do better. But the chance had already gone, and God had lifted his hand in judgment.
Friends, the wise saints God is looking for are those who make their hearts good soil while the word can still be heard so easily. Today we can hear the word whenever we wish.
In fact, there is so much preaching that we pick and choose what to hear, and we even commit the sin of sitting in judgment on the word. Now, while God is giving us this chance to hear his word, we must grow in faith with all our heart and mind.
We must be believers who are sanctified in the word until the day we enter the Kingdom of God. If we keep firmly in mind that apart from God we have no worth at all, we can become people who obey him more fully and live more humbly. You are God’s children, so I hope that, taking the lowly place, you will restore your relationship with God and live by the overflowing grace the Holy Spirit gives.