Amos 7–8

Locusts, Fire, and a Plumb Line

⁷This is what the Lord God showed me: he was forming locusts at the time the latter growth began to sprout (it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings).^{* 2}When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,

“O Lord God, forgive, I beg you!

How can Jacob stand?

He is so small!”^*

³The Lord relented concerning this;

“It shall not be,” said the Lord.^*

⁴This is what the Lord God showed me: the Lord God was calling for judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. ⁵Then I said,

“O Lord God, cease, I beg you!

How can Jacob stand?

He is so small!”^*

⁶The Lord relented concerning this;

“This also shall not be,” said the Lord God.^*

⁷This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. ⁸And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said,

“See, I am setting a plumb line

in the midst of my people Israel;

I will spare them no longer;^*

⁹the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,

and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,

and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”^*

Amaziah Complains to the King

¹⁰Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words.^{* 11}For thus Amos has said,

‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword,

and Israel must go into exile

away from his land.’ ”^*

¹²And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there, ¹³but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”^*

¹⁴Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I am^c no prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I am^d a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees,^{* 15}and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’^*

¹⁶“Now therefore hear the word of the Lord.

You say, ‘Do not prophesy against Israel,

and do not preach against the house of Isaac.’^*

¹⁷Therefore thus says the Lord:

Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city,

and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,

and your land shall be parceled out by line;

you yourself shall die in an unclean land,

and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.”^*

The Basket of Fruit

⁸This is what the Lord God showed me: a basket of summer fruit. ²He said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me,

“The end^e has come upon my people Israel;

I will spare them no longer.^*

³The songs of the temple^f shall become wailings on that day,”

says the Lord God;

“the dead bodies shall be many,

cast out in every place. Be silent!”^*

⁴Hear this, you who trample on the needy,

and bring to ruin the poor of the land,^*

⁵saying, “When will the new moon be over

so that we may sell grain,

and the Sabbath,

so that we may offer wheat for sale?

We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier

and practice deceit with false balances,^*

⁶buying the poor for silver

and the needy for a pair of sandals

and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”^*

⁷The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:

Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.^*

⁸Shall not the land tremble on this account,

and everyone mourn who lives in it,

and all of it rise like the Nile,

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

⁹On that day, says the Lord God,

I will make the sun go down at noon

and darken the earth in broad daylight.^*

¹⁰I will turn your feasts into mourning

and all your songs into lamentation;

I will bring sackcloth on all loins

and baldness on every head;

I will make it like the mourning for an only son

and the end of it like a bitter day.^*

¹¹The time is surely coming, says the Lord God,

when I will send a famine on the land,

not a famine of bread or a thirst for water,

but of hearing the words of the Lord.^*

¹²They shall wander from sea to sea

and from north to east;

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

but they shall not find it.^*

¹³On that day the beautiful young women and the young men

shall faint for thirst.^*

¹⁴Those who swear by Ashimah of Samaria

and say, “As your god lives, O Dan,”

and, “As the way of Beer-sheba lives”—

they shall fall and never rise again.^*