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Amos

About this book
Chapter 8

1 The Sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw a basket of summer fruit. 2 He said, “What do you see, Amos?” I replied, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me, “The end has come for my people Israel! I will no longer overlook their sins.⁠ 3 The women singing in the temple will wail in that day.” The Sovereign Lord is speaking. “There will be many corpses littered everywhere! Be quiet!” 4 Listen to this, you who trample the needy and do away with the destitute in the land. 5 You say, “When will the new moon festival be over, so we can sell grain? When will the Sabbath end, so we can open up the grain bins?⁠ We’re eager to sell less for a higher price, and to cheat the buyer with rigged scales!⁠ 6 We’re eager to trade silver for the poor, a pair of sandals for the needy. We want to mix in some chaff with the grain!” 7 The Lord confirms this oath by the arrogance of Jacob: “I swear I will never forget all you have done! 8 Because of this the earth will quake, and all who live in it will mourn. The whole earth will rise like the Nile River; it will surge upward and then grow calm, like the Nile in Egypt. 9 In that day,” says the Sovereign Lord, “I will make the sun set at noon and make the earth dark in the middle of the day. 10 I will turn your festivals into funerals and all your songs into funeral dirges. I will make everyone wear funeral clothes and cause every head to be shaved bald. I will make you mourn as if you had lost your only son; when it ends it will indeed have been a bitter day. 11 Be certain of this, the time is coming,” says the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land—not a shortage of food or water but an end to divine revelation. 12 People will stagger from sea to sea, and from the north around to the east. They will wander about looking for a message from the Lord, but they will not find any.⁠ 13 In that day your beautiful young women and your young men will faint from thirst. 14 These are the ones who now take oaths in the name of the sinful idol goddess of Samaria. They vow, ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’ or, ‘As surely as your beloved one lives, O Beer Sheba!’ But they will fall down and not get up again.”

Texts in conversation

Compare Amos 8:12 and Daniel 12:4

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Daniel 12 echoes Amos 8 through the idea of “roving,” which shows a search for something lost. In Amos people roam the land seeking a message that is gone, and Daniel uses the same image for those searching for the meaning of a sealed vision.

Passages

Amos 8:12

Hebrew Bible
10 I will turn your festivals into funerals and all your songs into funeral dirges. I will make everyone wear funeral clothes and cause every head to be shaved bald. I will make you mourn as if you had lost your only son; when it ends it will indeed have been a bitter day. 11 Be certain of this, the time is coming,” says the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land—not a shortage of food or water but an end to divine revelation. 12 People will stagger from sea to sea, and from the north around to the east. They will wander about looking for a message from the Lord, but they will not find any. 13 In that day your beautiful young women and your young men will faint from thirst.
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Amos

Daniel 12:4

Hebrew Bible
2 Many of those who sleep in the dusty ground will awake—some to everlasting life, and others to shame and everlasting abhorrence. 3 But the wise will shine like the brightness of the heavenly expanse. And those bringing many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever. 4 “But you, Daniel, close up these words and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will dash about, and knowledge will increase.” 5 I, Daniel, watched as two others stood there, one on each side of the river.
200–101 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Daniel

References

"... In the Polel stem, shwt generally means “go eagerly, quickly, to and fro” in search of something. In some passages, this search may involve physical movement (Numbers 11:8; Job 1:17; 2:2; 2 Samuel 24:2,8; Jeremiah 5:1; 49:3; Amos 8:12). For example, in Numbers 11:8 people “rove around” in search of manna and in Amos 8:12 people will go in search of the word of God which cannot be found. Yet, in other passages (2 Chronicles 16:9; Zechariah 4:10), it denotes “searching,” which scarcely involves physical movement. In 2 Chronicles 16:9, God’s eyes are said to “rove around” throughout the whole world (also Zechariah 4:10). Rather than a physical movement, the meaning here is that God observes the activities of men. In sum, shwt implies searching, involving either bodily movement in search of something or a mental activity of searching into something. The context of Daniel 12:4 suggests that “rove around” be understood as “searching” into the meaning of something. The increase of “knowledge” directly sequels the activity of ‘roving around.’ ..."
Daniel K. Bediako, “‘Knowlege Shall Increase’ An Interpretation of Daniel 12:4,” Valley View University Journal of Theology 2 (2012): 93–103.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Amos 8:12 and Daniel 12:4

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