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a revelation famine

Amos 8:1-14 (JDV)

Amos 8:1 The Lord Yahveh showed me this: I noticed a basket of summer fruit.
Amos 8:2 He asked me, “What do you see, Amos?” I replied, “A basket of summer fruit.” Yahveh said to me, “The end has come for my people Israel; I will no longer spare them.
Amos 8:3 On that day the temple songs will become yelling”1 – this is the Lord Yahveh’s declaration. “Many dead bodies, thrown everywhere! Silence!”
Amos 8:4 Listen to this, you who are trampling on the needy and doing away with the poor of the land,
Amos 8:5 asking, “When will the New Moon be over so we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so we may market wheat? We can reduce the measure while increasing the price and cheat with dishonest scales.
Amos 8:6 We can buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and even sell the chaff!”
Amos 8:7 Yahveh has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: I will never forget all their deeds.
Amos 8:8 Because of this, won’t the land quake and all who live in it mourn? All of it will rise like the Nile; it will surge and then subside like the Nile in Egypt.
Amos 8:9 And in that day — this is the declaration of the Lord Yahveh — I will make the sun go down at noon; I will darken the land in the daytime.
Amos 8:10 I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lament; I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make that grief like mourning for an only son and its outcome like a bitter day.
Amos 8:11 Notice, the days are coming– this is the declaration of The Lord Yahveh – when I will send a famine through the land: not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Yahveh.
Amos 8:12 People will stagger from sea to sea and roam from north to east seeking the word of Yahveh, but they will not find it.
Amos 8:13 In that day the beautiful young women, the young men also, will faint from thirst.
Amos 8:14 Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, “As your god lives, Dan,” or, “As the way of Beer-sheba lives” — they will fall, never to rise again.

a revelation famine

The people were fed up with Amos’ words of doom and Amaziah voiced their frustration. He told Amos to go back to Judah and prophesy there. They had had enough of his negative thoughts, and predictions of despair and disaster. Amos turned their request against them. He told them that since they were tired of God’s message – God was going to send them one more disaster in addition to all the others. They would have a revelation famine. They would search for a word from God but not find it.

LORD, give us wisdom to pay attention to your word, especially when it convicts us of wrong.