A Famine of Hearing

A basket of summer fruit on a table. Ripe, at its best, one warm day from turning. God shows Amos the basket and asks what he sees, and when Amos answers, the play is made for him: the Hebrew for summer fruit and the Hebrew for the end sound almost the same. The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.

Who he says it to matters. This is a prosperous country with a full religious calendar, and Amos has quoted them muttering through it: when will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? They kept the holy days and resented the interruption to trading.

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. The verb is send. This is God's own act, and he announces it. The next line shows the famine from inside: they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it. Everybody in it is looking hard.

The usual application is that we own Bibles and neglect them, which is worth saying and is a different thing from this. Nobody in Amos is neglecting anything by then. Israel had a stretch like it once before, in one flat line: the word of the LORD was precious in those days; there was no open vision. Our trouble is appetite. Theirs was supply, withdrawn on purpose.

The basket was full when God held it up, and full is the stage immediately before it goes. What is on your table this morning is a Bible you can open, in your own language, on a day when nobody is preventing you. Amos was shown ripe fruit and told what time it was.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 259 is Everlasting Arms (Deuteronomy 33:27).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two