Verse 1 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit.
Summer fruit generally was the last fruit to be harvested. It was in danger of being overripe and of being spoiled and therefore of no value. After it was picked, no more fruit would appear as it was too late in the season for more blossoms to come forth on the trees or the vines. The summer fruit is metaphor or a word picture representing the nation Israel who was at the end of their season as a nation. They were like the fruit in that they had become rotten spiritually and therefore needed to be thrown away. God was declaring to the prophet Amos that judgement was imminent and the end of the nation Israel was at hand.
Note: Refer to the prophetic book of Daniel which is about the end of the nation Israel, not the end of the world as taught in most organized, evangelical establishment churches today.
Verse 2 And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.
This verse makes it very clear that the nation Israel was to end. God was finished with them and He knew they would not repent and turn to him. God used the present tense verb “is come” because this judgement had not happened yet. He used the future tense verb “will not” indicating that His decision and announcement to alienate, do away with, and to cause the Israelites to perish was forever, never to be revoked.
Application: Christian believers today who have been deceived by the Scofield doctrine of end-time events believe that the nation Israel was to be restored, and they believe that this happened in 1948 starting with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the emigration of those people calling themselves “Jews” into Palestine. They conveniently ignore this verse and other verses in Scripture where God stated that the end is come and that He would not pass by them any more. The facts are that the nation Israel was destroyed once and for all when taken captive by the nation of Assyria. God has not changed His mind. “For I am the LORD, I change not;” Malachi 3:6 He did not restore the nation Israel. Man did under satanic direction. God does not lie. “In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;” Titus 1:2 The physical Israel of today is a fake. The verse above cannot be clearer in its meaning and it cannot be twisted to mean something else. God had run out of patience with the people who rejected Him and who chose to run with the pagan’s and their false gods and goddesses, and who engaged in human sacrifice.
Verse 3 And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord GOD: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence.
War is a terribly bloody and murderous thing. The invasion of Israel was to lead to so many dead bodies that the living could not dispose of them properly and would just have to throw them into piles or into holes in the ground.
Verses 4-6 Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, 5 Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? 6 That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?
Here God rebukes the merchants and business men who were ripping off the poor and who could not wait for holy day celebrations to be over so that they could get back to engaging in commerce. Money was one of their gods, and they used dishonest means to gain money any way they wanted: cheating, lying and falsifying the weights and measures. What was important was gathering riches.
Verses 7-8 The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works. 8 Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.
For the land to tremble is metaphor for a shaking up of the normal in the nation Israel. Things were going to change dramatically and devastation was going to occur. The Egyptian army was destroyed in the Red Sea and the Nile River regularly overflowed its banks and flooded the land. So the prophet Amos and the people hearing his prophecy would understand and relate to the metaphor or word picture that God was going to cleanse the land by destroying those who were polluting it with sin and bloodshed. Water washes and cleanses.
Application: God keeps a record of wrongs that can only be erased by repentance and turning to Him for salvation and forgiveness. God states in the verses above that He will never forget what the people of Israel did. Never means never. The Hebrew word translated as “never” is “netsach” and it means perpetually, always, constantly, continually, or unto the end. Again, how much clearer does the LORD God Almighty need to be for Christian believers today to understand that His word is true and forever settled in Heaven, and that political, religious, philosophical, economical, or world events cannot be forced into a box that contradicts what He has said in His Word?
Verses 9-10 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day: 10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.
The verses above have two applications. The first, dealing with the prophecy of judgement against the nation Israel, is metaphor comparing the loss of a child to the loss of a nation. Just as families mourn and have intense sorrow at the death of their loved ones, so the people of Israel will mourn and have intense sorrow at the death of their nation, of those killed in battle, and of their situation as captives of a foreign nation. The darkening of the environment is metaphor for the coming doom. The spiritual darkness in Israel will become physical and geographical darkness as the nation is taken captive.
The second application is prophetic of the crucifixion of the LORD Jesus Christ as the people of Judah killed their promised Messiah centuries later. At the time of the crucifixion there was an earthquake and darkness covered the Earth as the only begotten Son of God was murdered by the people He came to save, becoming the final blood sacrifice for the sins of mankind. “Now from the sixth hour (12 noon) there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour (3PM). And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.” Matthew 27:45, 51-52
Application: “That day” refers to a day of action by Almighty God, and in the verses above it refers to the crucifixion of Christ Jesus. No other day in history has been as important as “that day”. Darkness covered the Earth while Jesus was on the cross. This was a supernatural event. For just a short period of time, it appeared that Satan had won and that his powers of darkness were prevailing – the light of the world was extinguished. But Jesus rose again and His light shines in the spiritual darkness to this day and forevermore. Praise ye the LORD!
Verses 11-14 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: 12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it. 13 In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst. 14 They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again. (Amos 8)
A promise of a famine or scarcity of the Word of God is given to the prophet Amos and this came to pass in the 400 years of God’s silence between the prophet Malachi’s writings and the coming of Christ Jesus. However, as the surviving Israelites were scattered throughout the nation of Assyria, they no longer received prophetic Words as God kept His promise that He would no longer pass by them any more. They were no longer His people. They had abandoned and rejected Him, and He abandoned and rejected them.
Another famine for the Word of God happened when Jesus was murdered, and then rose again and ascended into Heaven. The people could no longer hear His audible words and had to wait for His spoken words to be recorded by the apostles.
Application: As stated elsewhere in this web site, a similitude of prophecy is where a prophecy comes to pass and then comes to pass again at a different time. This famine and hunger for the Word is apparent today as people who wish to know God struggle because they are inundated with false bibles, false preaching and teaching, false history, false prophecy, and so forth. China is a nation that has been hungry for the Word of God as long as this writer has been alive. Many Christian groups over the years have smuggled Bibles into China where they were torn into sections and shared in villages and cities alike. When one section was studied and read, it was exchanged with someone else for a different section. And the underground Church in China was/is so grateful to just have a portion of the Word of God. Other Christians in other countries experience the same famine as Bibles are hard to come by. Likewise there is a famine or scarcity of truth being presented by pastors in many congregations and denominations today as political correctness and contracts with wicked governments such as the tax exempt 501c3 status in the US limit what can be preached. Furthermore, many Christian believers have been lied to for so long that they cannot discern truth from error and so their understanding of the Word of God is inadequate and they are easily lead into spiritual error.