Amos 7–8

A Vision of Locusts

7I had a vision from the Sovereign Lord. In it I saw him create a swarm of locusts just after the king’s share of the hay had been cut and the grass was starting to grow again. ²In my vision I saw the locusts eat up every green thing in the land, and then I said, “Sovereign Lord, forgive your people! How can they survive? They are so small and weak!”

³The Lord changed his mind and said, “What you saw will not take place.”

A Vision of Fire

⁴I had another vision from the Sovereign Lord. In it I saw him preparing to punish his people with fire. The fire burnt up the great ocean under the earth, and started to burn up the land. ⁵Then I said, “Stop, Sovereign Lord! How can your people survive? They are so small and weak!”

⁶The Lord changed his mind again and said, “This will not take place either.”

A Vision of a Plumb-Line

⁷I had another vision from the Lord. In it I saw him standing beside a wall that had been built with the help of a plumb line, and there was a plumb line in his hand. ⁸He asked me, “Amos, what do you see?”

“A plumb line,” I answered.

Then he said, “I am using it to show that my people are like a wall that is out of line. I will not change my mind again about punishing them. ⁹The places where Isaac’s descendants worship will be destroyed. The holy places of Israel will be left in ruins. I will bring the dynasty of King Jeroboam to an end.”

Amos and Amaziah

¹⁰Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, then sent a report to King Jeroboam of Israel: “Amos is plotting against you among the people. His speeches will destroy the country. ¹¹This is what he says: ‘Jeroboam will die in battle, and the people of Israel will be taken away from their land into exile.’ ”

¹²Amaziah then said to Amos, “That’s enough, prophet! Go on back to Judah and do your preaching there. Let them pay you for it. ¹³Don’t prophesy here at Bethel any more. This is the king’s place of worship, the national temple.”

¹⁴Amos answered, “I am not the kind of prophet who prophesies for pay. I am a herdsman, and I take care of fig trees. ¹⁵But the Lord took me from my work as a shepherd and ordered me to come and prophesy to his people Israel. ¹⁶So now listen to what the Lord says. You tell me to stop prophesying, to stop raving against the people of Israel. ¹⁷And so, Amaziah, the Lord says to you, ‘Your wife will become a prostitute on the streets, and your children will be killed in war. Your land will be divided up and given to others, and you yourself will die in a heathen country. And the people of Israel will certainly be taken away from their own land into exile.’ ”

A Vision of a Basket of Fruit

8I had another vision from the Sovereign Lord. In it I saw a basket of fruit. ²The Lord asked, “Amos, what do you see?”

“A basket of fruit,” I answered.

The Lord said to me, “The endⁱ has come for my people Israel. I will not change my mind again about punishing them. ³On that day the songs in the palace will become cries of mourning. There will be dead bodies everywhere. They will be thrown out in silence.”^j

Israel’s Doom

⁴Listen to this, you that trample on the needy and try to destroy the poor of the country. ⁵You say to yourselves, “We can hardly wait for the holy days to be over so that we can sell our corn. When will the Sabbath end, so that we can start selling again? Then we can overcharge, use false measures, and tamper with the scales to cheat our customers. ⁶We can sell worthless wheat at a high price. We’ll find a poor person who can’t pay his debts, not even the price of a pair of sandals, and we’ll buy him as a slave.”

⁷The Lord, the God of Israel, has sworn, “I will never forget their evil deeds. ⁸And so the earth will quake, and everyone in the land will be in distress. The whole country will be shaken; it will rise and fall like the River Nile. ⁹The time is coming when I will make the sun go down at noon and the earth grow dark in daytime. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. ¹⁰I will turn your festivals into funerals and change your glad songs into cries of grief. I will make you shave your heads and wear sackcloth, and you will be like parents mourning for their only child. That day will be bitter to the end.

¹¹“The time is coming when I will send famine on the land. People will be hungry, but not for bread; they will be thirsty, but not for water. They will hunger and thirst for a message from the Lord. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. ¹²People will wander from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean and then on from the north to the east. They will look everywhere for a message from the Lord, but they will not find it. ¹³On that day even healthy young men and women will collapse from thirst. ¹⁴Those who swear by the idols of Samaria, who say, ‘By the god of Dan,’ or, ‘By the god of Beersheba’—those people will fall and not rise again.”