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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 Code of Hammurabi gap §x and Amos 8:5

Ancient Near East, Babylonian · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Amos condemns the dishonest measures similarly punished in the Code of Hammurabi, exposing merchants whose observance of religious holidays does not stop them from cheating buyers and exploiting the poor when trade resumes.

Passages

Code of Hammurabi gap §x

Ancient Near East, Babylonian · Babylonian Legal Text
82 If a merchant lends grain or silver at interest, and when he makes the loan he pays out the silver by the small weight or the grain by the small measure, but when he is repaid he takes the silver by the large weight or the grain by the large measure, that merchant forfeits whatever he lent. 83 If a merchant lends ... at interest, ... he forfeits whatever he gave. 84 If a man borrows grain or silver from a merchant and has no grain or silver with which to repay, but does have other goods, he shall give his merchant whatever he has on hand, before witnesses, according to its value; the merchant shall not object, and he shall accept it.
1750 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Code of Hammurabi

Amos 8:5

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

References

“... 8:5. clash between economic and religious concerns. As Nehemiah discovered several centuries later in Persian-period Jerusalem, the desire of merchants to conduct business sometimes makes their compliance with religious law and Sabbath regulations a matter for complaint or even circumvention (see comment on Neh 10:31). There were religious festivals in surrounding cultures (see comment on Ex 20:8-11), but only Israel was commanded to obey the sabbath law and cease all work (see comment on Ex 31:12-17). This restriction on trade caused friction and apparently contributed to corrupt business practices as a way of “making up” the losses. ...”
John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 773.

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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Code of Hammurabi gap §x and Amos 8:5

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