Amos 8:1-14. This chapter contains a second vision that Amos shared with the Northern Israelites.  The vision is kind of odd though; he saw a basket of fruit.  God asked him what he was and he said a basket of fruit, summer fruit.  And then God said that the time had come for Israel (the Northern Kingdom) to cease to exist.  Like I said, odd

The key is in the description of the fruit and also in the word “end”.  The Hebrew word for “summer fruit” is “qayits”, the Hebrew word for “end” is “qets”.  So God is sort of rhyming the words here to make a point.  So how do the words relate besides their sounds.  I like to garden and I love tomatoes.  I think I like to garden because I love tomatoes.  In fact right now for breakfast I am having some marinated cucumber and tomato salad that made a few days ago.  The tomatoes that I put in the salad were some nice red ones that came with a stem on them, you know tomatoes on the vine.  They are supposed to be better that way, but they weren’t very good.  Tomatoes need the warmth of summer to ripen properly and they have to stay on the plant not just the vine to get good.  Most growers for the stores pick the tomatoes early so they are hard enough to ship, but that leaves them flavorless.  If they pick them when they are ripe they are hard to ship because they are soft and can easily spoil.  They have to be shipped fast, in safe containers and used soon.  There is one grower here in California who grows in nice warm green houses, waits till the tomatoes are much riper, does leave them on the vine, and ships them in hard plastic cases to protect them.  His tomates are much better.  In fact I had some of them and added them to the salad this morning, yummy.  So what does this all have to do with Amos?  Well although I have only had the tomatoes a few days, and even kept them refrigerated (which the grower says never to do because it diminishes the taste) there was still a bad tomato in the box this morning.  Once fruit is cut from the vine it will not last forever.

I’m sure that the Northern Israelites thought of themselves as pretty awesome; remember they had just beaten the Syrians and had peace and lots of stuff.  The problem is they were cut off from their source of life and were starting to rot, like beautiful summer fruit.  The interesting thing is often you don’t know the tomato is bad until you put some pressure on it, touch it.  The skin looks great but you touch it and bam, it turns into tomato goo.  It rots from the inside out.  That is where these Israelites were at spiritually.  There end had come and God was about to toss them out.  Their parties would turn into a time of mourning and even that would be silent, perhaps because it would be so bad they couldn’t even speak.

Verses 4-6 repeat what we have already hear in the book, the evidence of their rotten spiritual lives is the way they treat each other. They also have a bad attitude about their times of honoring God, “Can’t wait till Sundays over so I can get back to important stuff; like taking advantage of everyone I can to get rich.”

Verses 7-11 describe the coming disaster for the people.  This description probably has a double fulfillment.  Some of the description probably applied to the actual conquest in 722 BC by the Assyrians, which was certainly the closer more immediate fulfillment of the prediction.  If we take the word literally though it certainly sounds like there will be an earthquake (which is interesting since there was evidently an earthquake two years after Amos spoke to the people (Amos 1:1), and there will also be a time of darkness in the middle of the day.  That could have been a solar eclipse around this time too.  But the language also fits descriptions of events during “the Day of the LORD” found in the book of Revelation.  So I think this prediction might have at least two fulfillments.

Some Bible scholars like to talk about “days of the LORD” meaning more than one.  They realize there is a final “day of the LORD” that will involve the whole world but they also see smaller more limited times of punishment or discipline, especially in the history of Israel (the nation and each of the kingdoms).  Those  “days of the LORD” where like small warning earthquakes before the big one.  I think they are right, God gives plenty of warning, he disciplines us a lot.  Even in the book of Revelation he is looking for people to come back to him (Revelation 9:20-21; 16:9,11).  God is very loving and giving.  But he also pure and holy.  The final verse of today’s reading tells us that the Israelites who kept turning to their false gods would fall and not rise up again.  We need to be careful to listen when God talks to us and be sure we are really honoring Him with our lives and not some god we have invented no matter how much that god looks like him.

God I know you are very forgiving and for that I am glad because I have often failed you.  I have had false gods in my life, things that were more important to me than you; more important than the things you care about.  Let me be a good ripe fruit well connected to you.  Let me do the things that please you and keep me alive and fresh.  Thank you for your patience.  Let me love the things you love, especially people.  Let me love as a response to your great love for me.  Thank yo for Jesus, let me reflect him to the world around me.