Amos 8:10

"And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning for an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day."

There is not a figurative or symbolical word in this verse, strongly suggesting that the previous verse (Amos 8:9) is also to be understood literally. We may therefore reject the interpretation that explains it thus:

"To any man, the sun sets at noon, when he is suddenly snatched away by death in the very midst of life. And this also applies to a nation when it is suddenly destroyed in the midst of its earthly prosperity."[33]

Of course, this figurative application of the passage is indeed true; but we cannot receive this as the primary meaning of it. Israel was not being destroyed at the "high noon" of their prosperity, but at its sunset, when their sin had about finished its course and at a time when they were fully ripe for destruction.

"Baldness upon every head ..." This is not the prophecy of some kind of scalp disease; the reference is to the Jewish custom of shaving the head as a sign of mourning; and the universality of it indicated that there would be mourning everywhere.