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“The Lord God has shown me... the last end” (Am. 8:1–2), that is, the dispersion and destruction that the Israelites suffered from the Assyrians in the days of Hezekiah. “Hear this, you who despise...the poor of the earth” (Amos 8:4). Woe to those who despise the poor and say: “When the month has passed, and we will sell... wheat and create unjust wealth, for we will attract the poor with silver.” They were guilty of both the fact that, when selling good wheat, they reduced the amount, and that they gave out ashes from the threshing floor for good wheat, and in both cases they offended the poor. “Let us attract the poor with silver...”, that is, they either took money from the poor in vain when, sweeping the dust from the threshing floor and mixing it with wheat, they sold it; or, having taken the poor into slavery for a piece of bread, they did not give them either bread or money. “...and the poor for boots” (Amos 8:6), that is, for the cheapest price, in the same sense in which, according to what was said earlier, the Tyrians gave youths as a reward to harlots (Joel 3:5). Or the prophet here means that the poor from hunger sold themselves into slavery. “And the end of (her) river will rise up, and ... like the river of Egypt” (Am.8:8); however, not like the Egyptian river, when it arrives for fruitful irrigation in order to save the inhabitants of the earth from starvation; on the contrary, the Assyrians will come like the Nile overflowing, expel them and force them to leave their land. And I will make sure that “the sun goes down at noon,” that is, on the day when the Assyrians come against you and take you captive. “And I will darken the earth on a bright day” ( Am. 8:9 ) during your migration. In a mysterious sense, this can be understood about the darkness that reigned on the day of the Lord’s suffering, for on that day the sun set “at noon,” and the light of grace left Israel because they set out and dared to extinguish the great Sun on the Cross. And since they did not want to be illuminated by His teaching “on the day of light "in which through John and through the other apostles the Gospel of life shone to them, then the darkness of ignorance reigned over them. “And there is a bald spot on every head of them,” during their time of distress. “And I will lay him down as the pity of a loved one” on the day of their captivity (Amos 8:10). “And I will send a famine on the earth, not a famine of bread... but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). The prophet predicts to the Jews that they will not have a prophet who, as happened before, would proclaim to them the words and verbs of the Lord. You might be interested in: