Amos 5–6

Chapter 5

A Call to Repentance

Listen, you people of Israel! Listen to this funeral song I am singing:

²“The virgin Israel has fallen,

never to rise again!

She lies abandoned on the ground,

with no one to help her up.”

³The Sovereign Lord says:

“When a city sends a thousand men to battle,

only a hundred will return.

When a town sends a hundred,

only ten will come back alive.”

⁴Now this is what the Lord says to the family of Israel:

“Come back to me and live!

⁵Don’t worship at the pagan altars at Bethel;

don’t go to the shrines at Gilgal or Beersheba.

For the people of Gilgal will be dragged off into exile,

and the people of Bethel will be reduced to nothing.”

⁶Come back to the Lord and live!

Otherwise, he will roar through Israel like a fire,

devouring you completely.

Your gods in Bethel

won’t be able to quench the flames.

⁷You twist justice, making it a bitter pill for the oppressed.

You treat the righteous like dirt.

⁸It is the Lord who created the stars,

the Pleiades and Orion.

He turns darkness into morning

and day into night.

He draws up water from the oceans

and pours it down as rain on the land.

The Lord is his name!

⁹With blinding speed and power he destroys the strong,

crushing all their defenses.

¹⁰How you hate honest judges!

How you despise people who tell the truth!

¹¹You trample the poor,

stealing their grain through taxes and unfair rent.

Therefore, though you build beautiful stone houses,

you will never live in them.

Though you plant lush vineyards,

you will never drink wine from them.

¹²For I know the vast number of your sins

and the depth of your rebellions.

You oppress good people by taking bribes

and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.

¹³So those who are smart keep their mouths shut,

for it is an evil time.

¹⁴Do what is good and run from evil

so that you may live!

Then the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies will be your helper,

just as you have claimed.

¹⁵Hate evil and love what is good;

turn your courts into true halls of justice.

Perhaps even yet the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies

will have mercy on the remnant of his people.

¹⁶Therefore, this is what the Lord, the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies, says:

“There will be crying in all the public squares

and mourning in every street.

Call for the farmers to weep with you,

and summon professional mourners to wail.

¹⁷There will be wailing in every vineyard,

for I will destroy them all,”

says the Lord.

Warning of Coming Judgment

¹⁸What sorrow awaits you who say,

“If only the day of the Lord were here!”

You have no idea what you are wishing for.

That day will bring darkness, not light.

¹⁹In that day you will be like a man who runs from a lion—

only to meet a bear.

Escaping from the bear, he leans his hand against a wall in his house—

and he’s bitten by a snake.

²⁰Yes, the day of the Lord will be dark and hopeless,

without a ray of joy or hope.

²¹“I hate all your show and pretense—

the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.

²²I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings.

I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings.

²³Away with your noisy hymns of praise!

I will not listen to the music of your harps.

²⁴Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice,

an endless river of righteous living.

²⁵“Was it to me you were bringing sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, Israel? ²⁶No, you served your pagan gods—Sakkuth your king god and Kaiwan your star god—the images you made for yourselves. ²⁷So I will send you into exile, to a land east of Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is the God of Heaven’s Armies.

Chapter 6

¹What sorrow awaits you who lounge in luxury in Jerusalem,

and you who feel secure in Samaria!

You are famous and popular in Israel,

and people go to you for help.

²But go over to Calneh

and see what happened there.

Then go to the great city of Hamath

and down to the Philistine city of Gath.

You are no better than they were,

and look at how they were destroyed.

³You push away every thought of coming disaster,

but your actions only bring the day of judgment closer.

⁴How terrible for you who sprawl on ivory beds

and lounge on your couches,

eating the meat of tender lambs from the flock

and of choice calves fattened in the stall.

⁵You sing trivial songs to the sound of the harp

and fancy yourselves to be great musicians like David.

⁶You drink wine by the bowlful

and perfume yourselves with fragrant lotions.

You care nothing about the ruin of your nation.

⁷Therefore, you will be the first to be led away as captives.

Suddenly, all your parties will end.

⁸The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his own name, and this is what he, the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies, says:

“I despise the arrogance of Israel,

and I hate their fortresses.

I will give this city

and everything in it to their enemies.”

⁹(If there are ten men left in one house, they will all die. ¹⁰And when a relative who is responsible to dispose of the dead goes into the house to carry out the bodies, he will ask the last survivor, “Is anyone else with you?” When the person begins to swear, “No, by …,” he will interrupt and say, “Stop! Don’t even mention the name of the Lord.”)

¹¹When the Lord gives the command,

homes both great and small will be smashed to pieces.

¹²Can horses gallop over boulders?

Can oxen be used to plow them?

But that’s how foolish you are when you turn justice into poison

and the sweet fruit of righteousness into bitterness.

¹³And you brag about your conquest of Lo-debar.

You boast, “Didn’t we take Karnaim by our own strength?”

¹⁴“O people of Israel, I am about to bring an enemy nation against you,”

says the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies.

“They will oppress you throughout your land—

from Lebo-hamath in the north

to the Arabah Valley in the south.”