Commentary on Amos 8:4-7

The pericope before this week’s lectionary text offers a key for interpreting the indictment against the gross violation of human rights on display in Amos 8:4–7. In a striking image, Amos is presented with a basket of summer fruit past its peak, utilizing a clever wordplay, qayits for “summer fruit” to symbolize that the end (qets) is nearer than the oblivious audience suspects. In terms of the classic Doomsday Clock, one could say it is minutes before midnight. 

One would not say this is the case if one looks at the unsuspecting behavior of the people of the northern kingdom, which Amos addresses. Elsewhere in Amos, the callous behavior of the people living opulent lives filled with luxury is well documented (see, especially, next week’s lectionary reading in Amos 6:1–7). In Amos 8:4–7, the prophet specifically addresses business owners obsessed with making profits, stepping on those in need and bringing ruin upon the poorest of the land.

In a profound expression of unfair labor practices, these business owners do not rest even during festivals, much less for the weekly Sabbath. And they most certainly will not let their employees rest. In a classic case of shrinkonomics, these business owners vow to make “the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier.” Further examples of their obsession with making a quick buck are highlighted in verse 6, when it is said they are selling second-grade wheat (“the sweepings of the wheat”) to bolster their profits. In contemporary terms, the subpar quality of their food offerings could be likened to selling low-quality meat with plenty of fillers that ultimately compromise its nutritional value to the detriment of the poor.

But probably most shocking is how these business owners prey on people who have fallen on difficult times as they participate in debt slavery. In Amos 8:6, we hear how they buy the poor and the needy for a couple of silver coins or, one can say, the price of a pair of sandals. This ancient text offers a shocking indictment of the value of a human being: next to nothing. One could ask similar questions in today’s world of fast fashion and deplorable work conditions for those who feed our fetish with fashion: whether there is a similar disregard today for human worth. 

In a powerful rhetorical strategy, Amos uses the business owners’ own words in verses 5–6 against them as they implicate themselves. Their words confirm just how little regard they hold for those in their service. For them, unethical business practices are just how things are: run-of-the-mill, business-as-usual. 

However, the pericope that started with judgment, with the basket filled with rotten summer fruit signaling an ominous end, also ends with judgment. The indictment against the unfair labor practices and the callous disregard for human life on display in Amos 8:4–7 is framed in terms of God’s declaration that God will never forget their deeds (verse 7). In a damning indictment, those who are deemed responsible for stepping on the needy and for bringing ruin upon the poorest of the poor are held accountable by Godself. 

Rooted in the understanding that acts have consequences, this text echoes the sentiment of proverbs from around the world that capture the notion of cause and effect associated with injustice: The chickens have come home to roost; You reap what you sow; Harm set, harm get; As you give, you receive; Boontjie kry sy loontjie (an Afrikaans proverb that literally translates: “Little Bean gets his paycheck”).

The indictment against the business owners’ unethical behavior in Amos 8:4–7 is framed in terms of lamentations and bitter weeping when “the songs of the temple shall become wailings on that day” (verse 3) and “everyone mourns who lives in it” (verse 8). And in verse 10, God states: 

I will turn your feasts into mourning
and all your songs into lamentation;
I will bring sackcloth on all loins
and baldness on every head;
I will make it like the mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.

The unfair labor practices and the callous disregard for human life in this week’s lectionary text thus are characterized as a disaster in the making. The only realistic response to this desperate situation is to join in the songs of wailing and the lamentations about the ensuing death, destruction, and expulsion that are already resounding throughout the land. 

In the pericope to follow, one finds a foreboding vision of the detrimental effects of human greed on the entire land, which is said to “tremble on this account” (verse 8). The ecological impact of greed is likened to the widespread upheaval wrought by the rising and waning of the Nile, and to the sun going down in the middle of the day, covering the earth in darkness (verse 9).  

Amos 8’s unsettling account of a fatally flawed economic system that benefits a few but that, the prophet warns, will inevitably collapse sounds all too familiar. In today’s world, we increasingly hear prophetic voices channeling Amos when they warn that corporate greed and humans’ insatiable drive to produce and consume more, more, more—the neo-liberal capitalism regime—comprise a fatally flawed and fundamentally unjust system with devastating consequences for the entire creation. 

Contemporary prophets who see what others cannot or do not want to see consistently warn us of the negative impact of unfair labor practices on the environment. For instance, global warming has been shown to have devastating consequences, as more and more erratic natural disasters and rising sea levels cause great harm to the most vulnerable.

One might easily despair, looking at the world around us, where it seems injustice and unrighteousness are out of control. The good news of the gospel is that there are voices like Amos who see and hear and dare to speak about what is not right, not normal in the world today. The concluding words that God has sworn an oath to never, ever forget what they (we) have done, thus, serve as an urgent appeal not only to the initial audience but also to every one of us who are recipients of Amos’s vision to align the world as it currently is with the way the world is supposed to be.