Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Amos · About this commentary
Making the Ephah Small
Amos 8:4-8
4 Hear this, you who desire to swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to fail, · WEB
The merchants are quoted resenting the holy days, and the fraud is described down to the mechanics of the scales.
Verse 5 is the most damaging thing in the book, and it works by quotation. The traders are given their own words: when will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may market wheat?
The complaint is about the calendar. These are men who keep the holy days — the question assumes they are not trading during them — and who spend the days themselves waiting for the close of business hours. Amos does not accuse them of breaking the Sabbath. He accuses them of resenting it, which requires observing it.
Then the mechanics, itemized with a trader's exactness. The ephah made small — shrinking the measure grain is sold by. The shekel made large — weighting the price paid for it. The balances falsified. Three frauds that compound: short measure, heavy price, and a rigged scale to settle any argument.
Verse 6 states what the profits buy, and repeats the charge from the book's eighth oracle word for word: the poor bought for silver, the needy for a pair of sandals Amos 2:6. Six chapters later, nothing has changed. And a final detail — the sweepings sold with the wheat, the floor swept into the sack.
The oath in verse 7 swears by the pride of Jacob, which God had said he abhorred Amos 6:8 — an oath sworn by the very thing under judgment. And verse 8 answers with the land itself heaving like the Nile in flood, rising and sinking back.
settled What this mark means