Amos
Chapter 8
1 God showed me this: Look, a basket of summer fruit.
2 He asked, “Amos, what do you see?” I answered, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then God told me, “The end has come for my people Israel; I will not spare them anymore.”
3 On that day, the temple songs will turn to wails, says God. Dead bodies will be everywhere; they will be thrown out quietly.
4 Listen, you who trample on the needy and try to destroy the poor of the land.
5 Asking, “When will the new moon pass so we can sell grain? And the Sabbath, so we can offer wheat? Reducing the measure, increasing the price, and cheating with dishonest scales?”
6 So we can buy the poor with money, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and even sell the bad part of the wheat.
7 God has promised because of Jacob’s greatness, I will surely remember their deeds always.
8 Won’t the earth shake because of this, and all who live in it be sad? It will surge like a river; it will be thrown out and sink like the river of Egypt.
9 On that day, God says, I will make the sun set at noon and darken the earth on a bright day.
10 I will change your celebrations into sadness, and all your music into cries of sorrow; I will make everyone wear rough cloth around their waist, and shave every head; I will make the sadness as deep as for an only child, and the end as bitter as a terrible day.
11 Look, days will come, says God, when I will cause a famine in the land. It won’t be for lack of bread or thirst for water, but a famine of hearing God’s words.
12 They will wander from sea to sea, and from north to east, they will rush around trying to find God’s message, but they will not find it.
13 On that day, the beautiful young women and young men will become weak from thirst.
14 Those who swear by Samaria’s sin and say, “Your god, O Dan, is alive,” and “The way of Beersheba lives,” will fall and never get up again.