Amos 8:1-10

Wake up Christians…God is against those who do not take care of the poor and oppressed people of the world. He will not tolerate injustice carried out in His name! 

Only by the grace of God, in Christ Jesus, is there any hope for mankind.

The father shows no partiality.

So greedy are they of unjust gain that they cannot spare a single day, however sacred, from pursuing it. They are strangers to God and enemies to themselves, who love market days better than sabbath days; and they who have lost piety will not long keep honesty. Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., & Brown, D. (1997). 

The merchants have no respect for the sacred day. They only want it to end so they can return to their unjust business practices. God reveals how the merchants’ thoughts revolve around greed and fraud. They cheated the people into giving more money for less grain by using weights skewed in the merchants’ favor. Faithlife Bible.

Amos could not have discerned the meaning of this vision until God’s pronouncement. Israel’s wickedness was about to result in a harvest of judgment. Most good harvests are times of rejoicing. But in this one, the songs of the temple—the songs of thanksgiving—would be turned to wailing because the harvest would be death.

The New Moon, the first day of the month on the Hebrew calendar, was a day of special sacrifices, a feast day, and a Sabbath day. Rather than observing the New Moon and the weekly Sabbath with worship, thanksgiving, and rest, these people were impatient to resume their cheating and oppression of the poor.

The rich and powerful of Amos’s day were making slaves of Israel’s poor, the people they had dispossessed of their lands. NKJ Bible.

Amos 8:1–10 (NKJV)

8 Thus the Lord God showed me: Behold, a basket of summer fruit. ² And He said, “Amos, what do you see?”

So I said, “A basket of summer fruit.”

Then the Lord said to me:

“The end has come upon My people Israel;

I will not pass by them anymore.

³ And the songs of the temple

Shall be wailing in that day,”

Says the Lord God—

“Many dead bodies everywhere,

They shall be thrown out in silence.”

⁴ Hear this, you who swallow up the needy,

And make the poor of the land fail,

⁵ Saying:

“When will the New Moon be past,

That we may sell grain?

And the Sabbath,

That we may trade wheat?

Making the ephah small and the shekel large,

Falsifying the scales by deceit,

⁶ That we may buy the poor for silver,

And the needy for a pair of sandals—

Even sell the bad wheat?”

⁷ The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:

“Surely I will never forget any of their works.

⁸ Shall the land not tremble for this,

And everyone mourn who dwells in it?

All of it shall swell like the River,

Heave and subside

Like the River of Egypt.

⁹ “And it shall come to pass in that day,” says the Lord God,

“That I will make the sun go down at noon,

And I will darken the earth in broad daylight;

¹⁰ I will turn your feasts into mourning,

And all your songs into lamentation;

I will bring sackcloth on every waist,

And baldness on every head;

I will make it like mourning for an only son,

And its end like a bitter day.