Text -- Amos 8:1-4 (NET)

More Visions and Messages of Judgment

8:1 The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw a basket of summer fruit. 8:2 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. 8:3 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!” 8:4 Listen to this, you who trample the needy, and do away with the destitute in the land.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Amo 8:1

¹ tn Heb “behold” or “look.”

² sn The basket of summer fruit (also in the following verse) probably refers to figs from the summer crop, which ripens in August-September. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 115.

NET Notes: Amo 8:2

¹ tn There is a wordplay here. The Hebrew word קֵץ (qets, “end”) sounds like קָיִץ (qayits, “summer fruit”). The summer fruit arrived toward the end of Israel’s agricultural year; Israel’s national existence was similarly at an end.

² tn Heb “I will no longer pass over him.”

NET Notes: Amo 8:3

¹ tn Or “palace” (NASB, NCV, TEV).

² tn Heb “Many corpses in every place he will throw out.” The subject of the verb is probably impersonal, though many emend the active (Hiphil) form to a passive (Hophal): “Many corpses in every place will be thrown out.”

NET Notes: Amo 8:4

¹ tn See the note on the word “trample” in 2:7.

² tn Or “put an end to”; or “exterminate.”