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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 Genesis 6:13 and Amos 8:2

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

At the flood in Genesis, God declares the end of all living things, then afterward promises never to bring such destruction again. In Amos he makes that same announcement against Israel, this time with no promise attached.

Passages

Genesis 6:13

Hebrew Bible
12 God saw the earth, and indeed it was ruined, for all living creatures on the earth were sinful. 13 So God said to Noah, “I have decided that all living creatures must die, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. Now I am about to destroy them and the earth. 14 Make for yourself an ark of cypress wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it with pitch inside and out.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

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!”
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Amos

References

"... This severe announcement of the “end,” that “has come,” is not only striking within the Priestly Document, but it is also dictated by a particular inner-biblical theological discussion. The Priestly Document enters into conversation with the prophecy of judgment that predated it, in which the following was already asserted: Amos 8:2: He said, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A basket of summer fruit.’ Then Yhwh said to me, ‘The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by.’ Ezekiel 7:2–3: You, O mortal, thus says the Lord Yhwh to the land of Israel: ‘An end is coming! The end has come upon the four corners of the land. Now the end is coming upon you, I will let loose my anger upon you; I will judge you according to your ways, I will punish you for all your abominations.’ The Priestly Document therefore recalls a prominent element of judgment prophecy, but collapses it into the Primeval History. While Amos 8 and Ezekiel 7 proclaim the “end,” the Priestly Document reports how this “end” was already determined. However, in the hoary Primeval period God himself modified it. The Priestly Document does not falsify the prophets with this modification, but it corrects them decisively. ..."
Konrad Schmid, Is There Theology in the Hebrew Bible?, CSHB 4 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 89.

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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Genesis 6:13 and Amos 8:2

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