The End Has Come: Economic Oppression and Spiritual Famine
Amos 8:1-14
1Thus the Lord GOD showed me, and behold, a basket of summer fruit.2He said, "What do you see, Amos?" I answered, "A basket of summer fruit." The LORD said to me, "The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass by them."3The songs of the temple will wail in that day, declares the Lord GOD. Many corpses will lie in every place; they will be cast out in silence.4Hear this, you who trample the needy and bring the poor of the afflicted land to an end.5They say, "When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, making the ephah small and the shekel large and dealing deceitfully with false balances?"6They buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and they sell the refuse of the wheat.7The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.8Shall not the land tremble because of this, and everyone who dwells in it mourn, when all of it rises like the Nile and is driven out and subsides again like the Nile of Egypt?9On that day, declares the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.10I 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 the mourning for an only child and its end like a bitter day.11Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.12They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east; they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.13In that day the beautiful virgins and the young men shall faint with thirst.14Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, "As your god lives, O Dan, and as the way to Beersheba lives," they shall fall and never rise again.