Amos 8

Meditating on the Word of God is not the transcendental endeavour which most people associate with the term ‘meditation’. Joshua 1:8 states, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” Meditation is something we ought to do moment by moment; connecting with heaven’s throne wherever we are, whenever we can. The Hebrew word for meditate is ‘Hagah’ which means ‘to utter, to muse, and to mutter’. Bible verses are to be mused over and repeated thoroughly and in prayer, to ourselves, over every situation, until they become a part of our lives.

Amos 8

A basket of ripe fruit

8 This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. ²“What do you see, Amos?” he asked. “A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered.

Then the Lord said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

³“In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!”

⁴Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, ⁵saying,

“When will the New Moon be over
    that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath be ended
    that we may market wheat?”—
skimping on the measure,
    boosting the price
    and cheating with dishonest scales,
⁶buying the poor with silver
    and the needy for a pair of sandals,
    selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

⁷The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget anything they have done.

⁸“Will not the land tremble for this,
    and all who live in it mourn?
The whole land will rise like the Nile;
    it will be stirred up and then sink
    like the river of Egypt.

⁹“In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord,

“I will make the sun go down at noon
    and darken the earth in broad daylight.
¹⁰I will turn your religious festivals into mourning
    and all your singing into weeping.
I will make all of you wear sackcloth
    and shave your heads.
I will make that time like mourning for an only son
    and the end of it like a bitter day.

¹¹“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord,
    “when I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
    but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
¹²People will stagger from sea to sea
    and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the Lord,
    but they will not find it.

¹³“In that day “the lovely young women and strong young men

    will faint because of thirst.
¹⁴Those who swear by the sin of Samaria—
    who say, ‘As surely as your god lives, Dan,’
    or, ‘As surely as the god of Beersheba lives’—
    they will fall, never to rise again.”