Amos 8:4 - Meaning and Application

God is here dealing with proud oppressors and showing how serious their sin was. In short, they had the same character as the unjust judge in (Luke 18:2), who neither feared God nor respected people.

First, look at their worship, and you can see that they had no reverence for God. Bad as they were, they still kept up the outward form of religion. They observed the Sabbath and the new moon, and they made a difference between those days and ordinary days. But they soon grew tired of them, because their hearts were fixed on the world and its profits.

It is a sad thing that they said, “When will the Sabbath be over, so we can sell grain?” Yet this is still the mark of many who call themselves Christians. They were tired of Sabbath days and said, “When will they be gone?” They were tired of the restraints of Sabbath and new moon days, because those days kept them from ordinary work. They were also tired of the worship and service of those days, and treated them like a burden, as in (Malachi 1:13). They would rather have been anywhere else than at God’s altar. Sabbath days and Sabbath duties are a burden to worldly hearts, which are always afraid of doing too much for God and for eternity.

Can we spend our time better than in fellowship with God? And how much time do we spend gladly with the world? The Sabbath will be over before we have finished its work and received its blessing. Why, then, should we hurry to be rid of it?

They were eager for market days. They longed to sell grain and bring out wheat. While they were doing religious duties, they were thinking about their business. Their hearts followed their greed, as in (Ezekiel 33:31). In that way, they turned God’s house into a house of trade, and even into a den of thieves. They were tired of holy duties because their worldly work stopped for a while. That was where they felt at home, but in God’s sanctuary they were like a fish out of water. Those are strangers to God, and enemies to themselves, who love market days more than Sabbath days and would rather sell grain than worship God.

Look also at their dealings with other people, and you will see that they had no regard for man. This usually follows after the loss of true reverence for God. Those who lose the love of godliness do not keep the sense of honest dealing for long. They neither do what is right nor love mercy.

They cheated the people they traded with. When they sold grain, they deceived the buyer both in the amount given and in the money received. They measured out grain with their own measure and claimed to give what had been agreed on, but they made the ephah small. Their measure was short and not the proper standard, so they wronged the buyer that way. When they received payment, they used their own scales and weights, and the shekel they used was too large. So the buyer’s money, once weighed, came out too light, and more had to be added. They cheated in that way too, while pretending to be careful about justice.

By such wicked practices, they showed how strongly they loved money, how much they loved themselves, and how little they cared for other people. They also showed contempt for God’s clear law, since he has plainly said that false weights and scales are an abomination to him. Another sign of their fraud was that they sold the refuse of the wheat, but charged the same price as for the finest wheat. They took advantage of their neighbor’s ignorance or need.

They were harsh and merciless to the poor. They swallowed up the needy and made the poor of the land come to nothing. They valued their wealth so highly that they despised everyone who was poor. They hated them, could not bear them, and pushed them aside. So they did all they could to make them disappear, not by helping them cease to be poor, but by driving them out or destroying them. But whoever insults the poor despises his Maker, since rich and poor meet together in God’s hand.

They were also so eager to increase their wealth that they robbed the poor to enrich themselves. They preyed on the poor because the poor had no power to fight back or get justice from their oppressors. Wealth gained by ruining the poor will bring ruin on the ones who gained it. They swallowed up the poor by forcing hard bargains and cheating in those bargains. They falsified the scales not only to enrich themselves, but also to bring others so low that they could make them slaves. After draining them of everything else, they wanted their labor for nothing, or almost nothing.

So they bought the poor for silver and brought them and their children into bondage, because they had no money to pay for the grain they had bought, as in (Nehemiah 5:2-5). There were so many in this condition that the price was very low. The oppressors had pushed it down so much that a poor man could be bought as a slave for a pair of shoes. First they took away property, and then they took away liberty. That is how oppressors work: they first make people beggars, then make them slaves. In this way, both the dignity of human nature and the tenderness due to it are destroyed, one by the suffering of those trampled on and the other by the sin of those who trample on them.

Now consider the severity of the punishment God will send for this sin. When the poor are wronged, they cry out to God, and he hears them. He will deal with those who injure them, because the poor are his charge. He takes wrongs done to them as wrongs done to himself, as in (Exodus 22:23-24).

God will remember their sin against them. He has sworn by the pride of Jacob, in (Amos 8:7), that is, by himself, since he can swear by no one greater. Who else is the glory and majesty of Jacob? He swears by those signs of his presence and favor among them, signs they had profaned and abused, and made hateful by their behavior. He had already said, in (Amos 6:8), that he hates the pride of Jacob. Now he swears in his anger, by his own name, the name once so well known and honored in Israel. He says, “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.” More is meant than is said: their sins will stay before him, and he will call them to account.

“I will never forget them” means the same as, “I will never forgive them.” This shows how miserable the case of these cruel, unjust men really is. Woe, and many woes, to the person whom God has bound by his oath so that pardoning mercy brings no benefit. Those who have shown no mercy have every reason to fear judgment without mercy.

He will also bring complete ruin and confusion on them. The prophet describes it in many forceful ways, hoping that, if possible, it will frighten them into true repentance and a changed life. There will be a widespread fear and shaking in the land (Amos 8:8), the very land from which they thought to push the poor out. Everyone who lives there will mourn. People who do not tremble and mourn as they should over national sins will be made to tremble and mourn under national judgments. Those who watch the sins of oppressors without concern, and the misery of the oppressed without grief, will find that God can make them tremble under the violence of the oppressors and mourn over their own losses and suffering.

There will also be a sweeping flood of ruin. When God rises against them, the waters of trouble and disaster will rise like a flood. A blocked flood keeps building up until it bursts out even stronger, and so every attempt to hold back God’s judgment will only make it greater. Judgment will break through like rushing water. The whole land will be overwhelmed and laid waste, as the land of Egypt is each year when the Nile overflows. The words may also point to earlier acts of God’s judgment, like Noah’s flood, which covered the whole world, or the Red Sea, where Pharaoh and his Egyptians were buried. Both of those judgments, like the one here, came because of violence and oppression, which the Lord always judges.

This judgment will also catch them by surprise, when they least expect it (Amos 8:9). God says, “I will make the sun go down at noon,” when it is at its brightest, at their very noon, when they expect a long afternoon ahead and think they still have plenty of time. “The earth will be darkened in broad daylight,” when everything seems pleasant and hopeful. This shows how uncertain all earthly comforts are, even life itself. A person may be healthy and prospering, and then quickly fall into sickness and trouble. Job’s sun went down at noon. Many are taken away in the middle of life, and so death comes in the middle of their days. We are in the midst of death even while we are in life. God’s judgments are especially terrifying to people who sleep in false security. They are like the sun going down at noon, because the less they are expected, the more shocking they are. When people cry, “Peace and safety,” sudden destruction comes on them like a trap (Luke 21:35).

It will also turn their celebrations into grief and ruin all their joy (Amos 8:10). God says, “I will turn your feasts into mourning,” just as he said before that the songs of the temple would become cries of grief. The end of a sinner’s laughter is sorrow. For the upright, light rises in the darkness, and they receive joy in place of mourning. But for the wicked, darkness falls in the middle of light, and their laughter turns into mourning and their joy into sorrow. The destruction will be so great and so wide that everyone will wear sackcloth, and every head will be shaved, instead of the fine clothes and styled hair they once wore. The mourning on that day will be like mourning for an only son, which is the deepest and longest sorrow. Is there any hope that, when things are at their worst, they will improve, and that evening light may still come? No. Even the end will be a bitter day, a day of bitter mourning. The condition of unrepentant sinners keeps getting worse, and the last state is the worst. “This you shall have at my hand,” God says, “you shall lie down in sorrow.”