Amos 8

The Coming Day of Bitter Mourning

8^aThis is what the Lord God showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit. ²And he said, ^b“Amos, what do you see?” And I said, ^c“A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me,

^d“The end¹ has come upon my people Israel;

I will never again pass by them.

^3eThe songs of the temple^{2 f}shall become wailings³ in that day,”

declares the Lord God.

^g“So many dead bodies!”

“They are thrown everywhere!”

^h“Silence!”

⁴Hear this, ⁱyou who trample on the needy

and bring the poor of the land to an end,

⁵saying, “When will ^jthe new moon be over,

that we may sell grain?

And ^kthe Sabbath,

that we may offer wheat for sale,

that we may make ^lthe ephah small and the shekel⁴ great

and deal deceitfully with false balances,

⁶that we may buy the poor for ^msilver

and the needy for a pair of sandals

and sell the chaff of the wheat?”

⁷The Lord has sworn by ⁿthe pride of Jacob:

“Surely ^oI will never forget any of their deeds.

^8pShall not the land tremble on this account,

and everyone mourn who dwells in it,

^qand all of it rise like the Nile,

and be tossed about ^rand sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?”

⁹“And on that day,” declares the Lord God,

^s“I will make the sun go down at noon

and darken the earth in broad daylight.

^10tI will turn your feasts into mourning

and all your songs into lamentation;

^uI will bring sackcloth on every waist

^uand baldness on every head;

^vI will make it like the mourning for an only son

and the end of it like a bitter day.

¹¹“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God,

“when ^wI will send a famine on the land—

not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,

^xbut of hearing the words of the Lord.

^12xThey shall wander from sea to sea,

and from north to east;

they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord,

^ybut they shall not find it.

^13z“In that day the lovely virgins and the young men

shall ^afaint for thirst.

¹⁴Those who swear by ^bthe Guilt of Samaria,

and say, ‘As your god lives, O Dan,’

and, ‘As ^cthe Way of ^dBeersheba lives,’

they shall fall, and never rise again.”