Amos 8:6

The final issue of the rapacious conduct described in Amos 8:5 is that the poor are more and more impoverished, and, falling into debt, have in the end to sell themselves or their children as slaves (Leviticus 25:39) to their rich oppressors, who were only too ready to buy the poor for the silverwhich they owed them, and the needy for the sake of a pair of sandals, i.e. for a trifle (cf. Amos 2:6), the price of which they were unable to pay.

and sell the refuse of wheat The final proof of their avarice: they sold what would ordinarily be thrown away, viz. the refuselit. the fallingsof the wheat, i.e. "what fell through the sieve, either the bran or the thin, unfilled, grains, which had no meal in them. This they mixed up largely with the meal, making a gain of that which they had once sifted out as worthless; or else, in a time of dearth, they sold to men what was the food of animals, and made a profit on it" (Pusey).