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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 Ezekiel 7:2 and Amos 8:2

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Amos uses the word “end” to warn that Israel’s social order has collapsed because corruption passed the point of return. Ezekiel uses the same word for a bigger description of ruin that brings total devastation to the land and everything in it.

Passages

Ezekiel 7:2

Hebrew Bible
1 The Lord’s message came to me: 2 “You, son of man—this is what the Sovereign Lord says to the land of Israel: An end! The end is coming on the four corners of the land! 3 The end is now upon you, and I will release my anger against you. I will judge you according to your behavior; I will hold you accountable for all your abominable practices. 4 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare you. For I will hold you responsible for your behavior, and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. Then you will know that I am the Lord!
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Ezekiel

Amos 8:2

Hebrew Bible
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.
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Amos

References

"... Recent treatments of Genesis 6–9 P have revealed numerous intertextual contacts with other biblical texts, in particular with other Priestly texts. Most scholars, due to their commitment to the theory of a unified Priestly document, see in these commonalities a confirmation of the theory of a coherent, homogeneous PG (PC) Since the present approach reckons with both literary pre-states and redactional reworking of the Priestly texts, the diachronic relationship between Genesis 6–9 P and the Priestly texts in question should be reassessed. Regarding the story’s climactic finale, the passage about the covenant with Noah, scholars see in the Priestly flood account an answer to both the prophetic theology of judgment and the Deuteronomistic theology of covenant. The author of Genesis 6–9 P maintains that prophecy about the “end” (קץ, see Amos 8:2; Ezekiel 7:2–6) addressed to Israel by its prophets was already formulated in the primeval history ... Yet here, in the Priestly flood story, the logic of God’s retribution is broken by God himself: God solemnly vows never again to destroy the world (Genesis 9:8–17). Furthermore, unlike the breakable covenant of the Deuteronomists, the covenant given to Noah and to postdiluvian humanity is eternal. Moreover, this covenant is universal rather than limited to only one nation (Israel) ..."
Jürg Hutzli, The Origins of P: Literary Profiles and Strata of the Priestly Texts in Genesis 1-Exodus 40 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023), 124–125.

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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Ezekiel 7:2 and Amos 8:2

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