The Book of the Prophet Amos 8 The Vision of a Basket of Fruit, Threats Against Israel

 The Book of the Prophet Amos 8

The Vision of a Basket of Fruit, Threats Against Israel

1 The Lord God showed me this: behold, a basket of summer fruit.

2 And he said, “What do you see, Amos?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me, “The end has come upon my people Israel; from now on I will never again pass by them.”

3 But the songs of the temple will be heard on that day, says the Lord God: “The corpses will multiply; in every place they will be thrown out in silence.”

4 Hear this, you who long for the downfall of the needy and destroy the poor of the land,

5 saying, “When will the new moon be over, so that we may sell the frail? And the Sabbath, so that we may open the granaries of wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel large, and dealing deceitfully with false balances.”

6 To buy the poor with money, and the needy for a pair of shoes? And afterward we will sell the chaff of the wheat.

7 The Lord has sworn by the glory of Jacob: “I will never forget all their deeds!”

8 Will not the earth tremble because of this? Will not everyone who dwells in it mourn? It will certainly rise up like the great river, and be swept away, and submerged like the river of Egypt.

9 “In that day,” declares the Lord, “I will make the sun go down at noon, and the earth darken like a bright day.

10 I will turn your festivals into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. Sackcloth will be on every loins, and baldness on every head. I will make it like the mourning of an only son, and its end like a day of bitterness.”

11 “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.

12 They will wander from sea to sea and from north to east; they will roam about, seeking the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.

13 In that day the lovely virgins and the young men will faint from thirst.

14 Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria, saying, ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’ and ‘As surely as the way of Beersheba lives,’ they will fall and not rise again.