I enjoy puns. So does God, apparently. In our text from Amos 7 and 8 today, Amos is given four visions which foretell the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel. The fourth of these, at the beginning of chapter 8, is a basket of “ripe fruit,” possibly “summer” fruit. The Hebrew word for these fruit is something like kitz (I’m following an old more pronounceable transliteration scheme). Then God goes on to say, “The end [Hebrew something like keetz] has come for my people.”
Whether to translate kitz as “summer fruit” or “ripe fruit” is a toss up. Referring to the season is probably more literal, but the slight paraphrase “ripe” allows modern English translations like the New Living Translation from which we are reading the prophets to capture the pun a bit by having God say, “Israel is ripe for punishment!” The problem is that particular paraphrase doesn’t quite convey the idea that this is the actual keetz, the end for the northern kingdom. They are facing the Assyrian invasion which will obliterate their country, scatter the people, and leave them without any national identity. They are about to become the so-called “lost tribes” of Israel.
Keeping the more literal “summer fruit” in the first half of the pun would also help convey the idea that this is the end of the season for Israel. It’s that time right now in the northern hemisphere. Here in western Oregon, overabundant zucchini sometimes rotting in gardens or fallen overripe pears swarmed by yellow jackets are “fruits” which signal the end of summer. Temperatures will soon be cooling, daylight will grow shorter, and the rains will begin. In the Midwest, the shorter days may soon be marked by clouds and cold winds. In the same way, the summer fruits of ancient times would have signaled the end of that season.
It’s the opposite, then, of the beginning of Shakespeare’s Richard III, when Richard says,
Now is the winter of our discontent,
Made glorious summer. . .
Instead, here in Amos, the prophet foretells that glorious summer (see throughout the book the prophet’s description of the luxury enjoyed by the elite of Israel) will turn into the terrible winter of a nation overrun by foreign powers and devastated to the point of extinction.
As we will see throughout the prophets in the next weeks, the cause for God’s bringing an end to summer for Israel is two-fold. The first is highlighted more by other prophets: the pursuit of false gods and neglect of authentic worship, though often with the outward form of genuine sacrifice and worship. In Amos, that failure of true faith shows up tangentially here in chapter 8 verse 5, in the declaration that the people of Israel ignore the spirit of the Sabbath and other holy days, all the while thinking only of getting back to their businesses.
The second cause of God’s judgment is what really stands out throughout this book and here surrounds that mention of Sabbath and holy day defamation: those with wealth and power are ignoring and exploiting the poor. Those waiting for the Sabbath to hurry up and be over wish to get back to dishonest business, selling basic food (and that the worst of the lot, “you mix the grain you sell with chaff swept from the floor”) to the poor by dishonest measures and inflated prices. It’s all done so that the powerful can wear nice shoes and keep the poor enslaved to generate more wealth.
Our modern American economy lets us enjoy many of the sorts of luxuries against which Amos rails. We may fail to take his message very much to heart, though, because we are far removed in the chain of commerce from poor people who may be exploited in the production of the food we eat or the clothes, household goods, or electronic devices we enjoy. We might do well to make the effort to become better informed about how our own abundant lifestyle is sustained. Amos said the Israelites enslaved the poor for silver or for a pair of sandals. Do we enslave the poor for a better return on our investments or for a pair of Nikes?
It may be that coronavirus and protests against racial injustice are a signal to us that summer is over for a world order that has grown complacent about faith and steadily more corrupt in its business dealings. Instead of foolishly hoping to extend the summer and hold onto fruit that will go from ripe to rotten, it may be well to listen to the prophet and seek God for a faith and hope that can weather a winter of discontent.