Summer Fruit?


Amos 8:1-3
1 This is what the Lord God showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit.
2 And he said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me, “The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass by them.
3 The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,” declares the Lord God. “So many dead bodies!” “They are thrown everywhere!” “Silence!”

Here is one of the reasons people come to the Old Testament (and for some even the whole Bible) and say, “What in the world is that about? Summer fruit?” The pictures that the biblical writers use sometimes have no point of reference in our understanding. What this confusion leads some people to do is give up on the Bible and declare it too hard to understand. This would be a mistake. Just a little bit of digging will reveal answers and insight.

By this point in the prophecy of Amos, God is ready to act on the great wrath He experiences from the disobedience of His people. He compares them to a basket of summer fruit. In the Hebrew the words for “summer fruit” and “the end” sound very similar. Summer fruit is the stuff that is almost to the point of over-ripe. If is it not consumed quickly, it will begin to rot and become useless, or useful on as fertilizer. The end of summer and the harvest is near. He is in fact telling Amos that His time of waiting for them to return to Him has come to an end. His judgment upon them will be played out very soon. He is about to withdraw from their presence. This is a frightful prophecy. In fact, the judgment is so severe as to herald a time of mourning that eclipses anything that has come before it. There won’t be enough people left to bury all of the dead. They will be stunned into utter silence.

With just a small amount of digging, the text reveals its richness and we are rewarded with a deeper understanding of what God wants us to learn. The Old Testament is always accessible and can yield formation for our lives. Giving up on Bible study we do to our detriment. It is always worth the work.

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