Commentary on Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah and Nahum John Calvin (continued)
Amos 8
Amos 8:1-2
1. Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit.
1. Sic ostendit mihi Dominus Jehova; et ecce corbis fructus aestivi (vel, canistrum.) Et dixit, Quid tu vides, Amos?
2. And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit.
Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.
2. Et dixit, Corbem (vel, canistrum) fructus aestivi: et dixit Jehova mihi, Venit finis super populum meum Israel; non adjiciam amplius transire in eo.
By these words or by this vision the Prophet confirms what we have already observed --- that paternal chastisements would no longer be exercised towards the people of Israel. God indeed, as it is well known, had so treated that people, that he ever spared them even in their greatest calamities. It was with a suspended hand that God ever struck that people, until after many trials they at length seemed so refractory, as not to be benefited by such remedies. This subject then Amos now pursues: but a vision was shown to him to confirm more fully God's judgment, or at least to produce a greater impression on the minds of the people.
God showed to him a Basket full of summer-fruit. By summer-fruit, I doubt not, he means a ripe punishment, as though he said, that the vices of the people had ripened, that vengeance could no longer be deferred: for an exposition of the vision immediately follows, when he says, that the end of the people had come, etc.; and this we have already explained in the third vision. But there is a similarity in the Hebrew words, which cannot be expressed either in Greek or Latin. {,}קיץkits means a summer-fruit, {,}קץkots, signifies an end: one letter only is inserted in the word, summer-fruit, which God showed in a basket; and then he adds that {,}קץkots, the end had come. But as to the main point, we see that there is nothing ambiguous.
We will now return to the first thing.