A Gross Contrast: Amos 8:1-3
The worst human atrocities usually have the effect of silence. Minor injustices get people gossiping. Significant injustices fan flames to get people planning. True atrocities are so horrible people don’t want to talk; they want to forget.
Conversely, there is nothing better than a basket of summer fruit! I bet you can’t wait to see how I pull those thoughts together. My wife and I love going to the grocery store at the beginning of the summer to see and smell the different fruit. In addition to apples, grapes, oranges, pears, lemons, and limes the stores add raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, mangoes, watermelon, peaches, and nectarines. We love the explosion of available fruit.
God sets a similar vision before Amos. However, there is an inherent problem with summer fruit. Summer fruit spoils quickly. Once the summer fruit is gone, we return to fall and winter with sparser options. Summer fruit is the pinnacle of the growing season, and the problem with the pinnacle is there is no way to go but down.
This is why God’s vision makes sense to Amos. There is excitement about the summer fruit and sadness in what is coming. The elite in Israel are living in their heyday, enjoying the pinnacle of life. There is nowhere to go but down.
God tells Amos an end has come. A time is coming when He will no longer come beside – or pass by – the people of Israel. Assyria will come and drag them away. They will be scattered to the wind. They will be scattered for so long that many of them will lose their heritage by the time Judah goes into exile. Few will remain true to God by the time Cyrus allows the Hebrew people to return to their land and rebuild. God knows their hearts desire the world, and they will pursue the world even after the exile has begun.
The Assyrians weren’t particularly nice about how they controlled an area. From Biblical accounts as well as cuneiform tablets and relief paintings found in Nineveh, we know the Assyrians humiliated their captives to subdue them. They readily beat infants to death in front of their parents. They dismembered loved ones before their family to engrave the pain in communal memory. The elite were frequently flayed alive, placing the skin on display for the remaining people to remember. Young adults who tried to rebel were typically bound and thrown into fire for people to witness. Soldiers repressing rebellions were often paid by the head, so they would make pyramids of the skulls in receipt of payment.
Amos knows the end of the summer fruit will be a gory time. There will be so many dead bodies everywhere. Then, there will be silence. The Assyrian conquest will be so brutal what few remain will not want to speak of it lest their memory of it be evoked. The worst human atrocities usually have the effect of silence.
