Then the Lord said, “Like this fruit, Israel is ripe for punishment! I will not delay their punishment again. ³In that day the singing in the temple will turn to wailing. Dead bodies will be scattered everywhere. They will be carried out of the city in silence. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!”

⁴Listen to this, you who rob the poor

and trample down the needy!

⁵You can’t wait for the Sabbath day to be over

and the religious festivals to end

so you can get back to cheating the helpless.

You measure out grain with dishonest measures

and cheat the buyer with dishonest scales.

⁶And you mix the grain you sell

with chaff swept from the floor.

Then you enslave poor people

for one piece of silver or a pair of sandals.

⁷Now the Lord has sworn this oath

by his own name, the Pride of Israel:

“I will never forget

the wicked things you have done!

⁸The earth will tremble for your deeds,

and everyone will mourn.

The ground will rise like the Nile River at floodtime;

it will heave up, then sink again.

⁹“In that day,” says the Sovereign Lord,

“I will make the sun go down at noon

and darken the earth while it is still day.

¹⁰I will turn your celebrations into times of mourning

and your singing into weeping.

You will wear funeral clothes

and shave your heads to show your sorrow—

as if your only son had died.

How very bitter that day will be!

¹¹“The time is surely coming,” says the Sovereign Lord,

“when I will send a famine on the land—

not a famine of bread or water

but of hearing the words of the Lord.

¹²People will stagger from sea to sea

and wander from border to border

searching for the word of the Lord,

but they will not find it.

¹³Beautiful girls and strong young men

will grow faint in that day,

thirsting for the Lord’s word.

¹⁴And those who swear by the shameful idols of Samaria—

who take oaths in the name of the god of Dan

and make vows in the name of the god of Beersheba—

they will all fall down,

never to rise again.”

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