Walk through Amos, verse by verse, with the great Bible Commentaries of Matthew Henry (1662 - 1714) & Adam Clarke (1760 - 1832)
8:1
Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. KJV
{The Lord God showed to me these things; and lo! an hook of apples.} Wycliffe's Bible
The great reason why sinners defer their repentance de die in diem-from day to day, is because they think God thus defers his judgments, and there is no song wherewith they so effectually sing themselves asleep as that, My Lord delays his coming; The approach of the threatened ruin is represented by a basket of summer-fruit which Amos saw in vision;
A basket of summer fruit - As summer fruit was not proper for preserving, but must be eaten as soon as gathered, so the Lord intimates by this symbol that the kingdom of Israel was now ripe for destruction, and that punishment must descend upon it without delay. Some think the prophet means the fruits at the end of autumn. And as after the autumn no fruit could be expected, so Israel's summer is gone by, her autumn is ended, and she shall yield no more fruit.
