Amos 8:9

"And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in a clear day."

This is Amos' answer to the question propounded by the dishonest traders in Amos 8:5, "When will the new moon... and the sabbath ... be gone?" Very well, the answer was: "At that time when the sun goes down at noon, and the earth is darkened in a clear day," an undeniable reference to the crucifixion of the Son of God, that being the only occasion in the history of the world when the sun set at noon, and the earth (not just a portion of it, but all of it) was darkened in a clear day! We may only marvel at the blindness of Biblical interpreters who fail to see this.

Some have tried to refer this to an eclipse, even attempting to discover which eclipse was meant; but, even as McKeating admitted, "It is pointless to decide that Amos 8:9 refers to an eclipse and then try to identify the eclipse!"[25] No eclipse ever recorded could be an example of the sun's "going down"; and, besides that, no eclipse ever involved more than the tiniest fraction of "the earth." "The language as Amos used it referred to more than just an eclipse of the sun,"[26] and it should be added, "something far different from any such natural phenomenon." It is also impossible to restrict the meaning of this passage to something that was to come to pass in the near future. As Mays pointed out:

"In general usage, the temporal phrase `in that day' would point to a time identified in the context (as in 1 Samuel 3:2). Here the context offers only the coming deeds of Yahweh as a specification of the time in question.[27]

It is clearly a supernatural event at some undetermined future time that Amos here prophesied; and, as already noted, the only event ever known that answers to it is that of the supernatural darkening of the sun for three hours, involving the entire earth, when our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. Such an ordinary event as an eclipse could not possibly be intended; and, there is the additional fact that, "Nowhere in the Old Testament is there direct mention of an eclipse."[28] Hammershaimb referred this prophecy to "the day of Judgment";[29] and Barnes spiritualized it and denied the reality of it: "Not that the sun was hidden, or the day disappeared, but that the mourners could see no light even at midday, for the darkness of their grief!"[30] All such interpretations appear to be blind to the circumstantial and specific fulfillment at the crucifixion. Perhaps part of the trouble (or, indeed, all of it) derives from the fact that men are unwilling to allow that we are dealing here with the Word of God. Dummelow said, "The eclipse of June 15,763 B.C. may have impressed his imagination powerfully."[31] This writer would not spend five minutes on the prophecy of Amos, if he saw nothing in it except the imagination of an ancient shepherd. This verse is an outstanding example of that heavenly phenomenon mentioned by Peter, to the effect that the ancient prophets uttered words which they themselves did not understand, and which they diligently studied in order to try to ascertain the meaning of what they had spoken (1 Peter 1:10-12). We believe that Amos, in this prophecy, is not likely to have had the slightest idea regarding how such a thing as he had prophesied could ever happen, and indeed might have thought such a thing to be absolutely impossible; but he was delivering the words of God! His own interpretation of them was probably to the effect that "there never would be a time when the sabbath would be gone"; but, of course, it was summarily abolished in the cross of Christ, a fact clearly stated by Paul in Colossians 2:14-17, a passage which entails some of the exact language of this very passage in Amos.

There are some things which must be discerned as literal in the Sacred Scriptures, and this prophecy is surely one of them. The ancients unanimously understood this passage as we have interpreted it: Irenaeus (i:510), Tertullian (iii:167), Cyprian (v:525) and Lactantius (vii:122) all unhesitatingly reading Amos' prophecy as a foretelling of our Lord's Passion.[32] (See more under Amos 8:10. below.)