Summer's End

What do a sixteenth century painter and a herdsman who lived eight centuries before Christ have to do with a basket of summer fruit?



Caravaggio lived in the late 1500s. He painted people. He painted fruit. He even painted people with fruit. He painted fruit with wormholes, rotten spots, and scab lesions. His paintings were so realistic that modern horticulturalists can diagnose fungal pathogens, nutrient deficiencies, and the presence of specific bacterium with long Latin names. He wasn't above painting a fly on the fruit either. He painted fruit at the end of its season, fully ripe and ready for the taste test.



Amos was a herdsman and fig farmer around the year 785 B.C. He was not one of the guild prophets, but was called by God to prophesy. He had four major visions, and one of them was about fruit.

1 Here is what Adonai ELOHIM showed me: there in front of me was a basket of summer fruit. 2 He asked, "'Amos, what do you see?" I answered, "A basket of summer fruit." Then ADONAI said to me, "The end has come for my people, I will never again overlook their offenses.

No great stretch of the imagination is needed to bring the term "ripe for destruction" to mind while reading Amos's vision. Likening the imminent judgment to a quickly decaying basket of summer fruit is a strong visual metaphor. Although Amos was sent specifically to the Northern Kingdom and the most literal meaning of his message applied to those ten tribes of Israel, summer fruit is seasonal and a new crop grows up each year.

The injustices committed by oppressors, the selfishness of the powerful, and an emphasis on materialism—the very things that brought judgment then, are still found in abundance in our society today. But that is not really news, and this blog will not become a political or religious harangue.

Rather, in my life along the rabbit trail, I have come to understand that when people achieve their goal by perverting justice, when people can achieve their end by making false accusations, and when people see only the material and exclude the spiritual, the result is a devaluation of righteousness.

Righteousness makes a nation great. We have God's word on that: Righteousness exalts a nation, Proverbs 14:34. Conversely, the devaluation of righteousness debases a nation.

This last day of summer (in the northern hemisphere) is a good day to inspect fruit before God decides it is time to add to his compost pile.






~ Scripture from Amos 8:1, 2; Complete Jewish Bible online
Footnotes in many translations point out the play on words with Hebrew words for end [Hebrew: ketz קֵץ ] and summer [Hebrew: kayitz קַיִץ ] fruit sound similar