Amos 7–8

Chapter 7

¹Thus the Lord GOD showed me: behold, he was forming locusts in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and lo, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings. ²When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,

“O Lord GOD, forgive, I beseech thee!

How can Jacob stand?

He is so small!”

³The Lord repented concerning this;

“It shall not be,” said the Lord.

⁴Thus the Lord GOD showed me: behold, the Lord GOD was calling for a judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. ⁵Then I said,

“O Lord GOD, cease, I beseech thee!

How can Jacob stand?

He is so small!”

⁶The Lord repented concerning this;

“This also shall not be,” said the Lord GOD.

⁷He showed me: behold, 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,

“Behold, I am setting a plumb line

in the midst of my people Israel;

I will never again pass by them;

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.”

¹⁰Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. ¹¹For 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, and eat 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 no prophet, nor a prophet’s son;^p but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, ¹⁵and 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 be a harlot 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.’ ”

Chapter 8

¹Thus the Lord GOD showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit.^{q 2}And he said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.”^q Then the Lord said to me,

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

I will never again pass by them.

³The songs of the temple^s shall become wailings in that day,”

says the Lord GOD;

“the dead bodies shall be many;

in every place they shall be cast out in silence.”^t

⁴Hear this, you who trample upon the needy,

and bring the poor of the land to an end,

⁵saying, “When will the new moon be over,

that we may sell grain?

And the sabbath,

that we may offer wheat for sale,

that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great,

and deal deceitfully with false balances,

⁶that we may buy the poor for silver

and the needy for a pair of sandals,

and sell the refuse 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 every one mourn who dwells in it,

and all of it rise like the Nile,

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

⁹“And on 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 upon 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.

¹¹“Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord GOD,

“when I will send a famine on the land;

not a famine of bread, nor 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, to seek the word of the Lord,

but they shall not find it.

¹³“In that day the fair virgins and the young men

shall faint for thirst.

¹⁴Those who swear by Ashimah of Samaria,

and say, ‘As thy god lives, O Dan,’

and, ‘As the way of Beer-sheba lives,’

they shall fall, and never rise again.”