What does it mean that there will be a famine of hearing the words of the Lord (Amos 8:11)?

Response

We typically perceive a famine as a shortage of food or water, but Amos 8:11 cryptically mentions a scarcity of hearing the Word of God: “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign Lord, ‘when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.’”

To gain a better understanding of a challenging message, it is often beneficial to comprehend the messenger. Amos, along with Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, prophesied during the eighth century BC. The Jews had divided into two nations, the northern kingdom, Israel, and the southern kingdom, Judah. It is noteworthy that Amos had no formal theological training; he was a farmer who raised livestock and sycamore figs “Then Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I was neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit.’”, (Amos 7:14). Equally interesting is the fact that Amos, residing in Judah, was commissioned by God to preach in the northern kingdom. As is often the case with a rebellious people, Amos’s calls for national repentance were met with hostility “Then Amaziah said to Amos, ‘Go, you seer, flee away to the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there.’”, (Amos 7:12). Let us start by examining the eighth chapter of Amos in its entirety:

This is what the Lord God showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit. And he said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me,

“The end has come upon my people Israel;

   I will never again pass by them.

The songs of the temple shall

Become wailings in that day,”

declares the Lord God.

“So many dead bodies!”

“They are thrown everywhere!”

“Silence!”

Hear this, you who trample on the needy

   and bring the poor of the land to an end,

saying, “When will the new moon be over,

   so that we may sell grain?

And the Sabbath,

   so that we may offer wheat for sale,

so that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great

   and deal deceitfully with false balances,

so that we may buy the poor for silver

   and the needy for a pair of sandals

   and sell the chaff of the wheat?”

The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:

“Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.

Shall not the land tremble on this account,

   and everyone mourn who dwells in it,

and all of it rise like the Nile,

   and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?”

“And on that day,” declares the Lord God,

“I will make the sun go down at noon

   and darken the earth in broad daylight.

I will turn your feasts into mourning

   and all your songs into lamentation;

I will bring sackcloth on every waist

   and baldness on every head;

I will make it like the mourning for an only son

   and the end of it like a bitter day.

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God,

   “when I will send a famine on the land—

not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,

   but of hearing the words of the Lord.

They shall wander from sea to sea,

   and from north to east;

they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord,

   but they shall not find

It.

“In that day the beautiful maidens and the youths

   will become weak from thirst.

Those who pledge by the Guilt of Samaria,

   and declare, ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’

and, ‘As surely as the Way of Beersheba lives,’

   they will stumble, and never get up again” (ESV).