Amos 7-9

Amos 7

¹Thus the Lord GOD showed me: behold, he formed locusts in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s harvest.

²When they finished eating the grass of the land, then I said, “Lord GOD, forgive, I beg you! How could Jacob stand? For he is small.”

³The LORD relented concerning this. “It shall not be,” says the LORD.

⁴Thus the Lord GOD showed me: behold, the Lord GOD called for judgment by fire; and it dried up the great deep, and would have devoured the land.

⁵Then I said, “Lord GOD, stop, I beg you! How could Jacob stand? For he is small.”

⁶The LORD relented concerning this. “This also shall not be,” says the Lord GOD.

⁷Thus he showed me: behold, the Lord stood beside a wall made by a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.

⁸The LORD said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “Behold, I will set a plumb line in the middle of my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more.

⁹The high places of Isaac will be desolate, the sanctuaries of Israel will 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 middle of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words.

¹¹For Amos says, ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.’”

¹²Amaziah also said to Amos, “You seer, go, flee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there,

¹³but don’t prophesy again any more at Bethel; for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a royal house!”

¹⁴Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman, and a farmer of sycamore figs;

¹⁵and the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’

¹⁶Now therefore listen to the LORD’s word: ‘You say, Don’t prophesy against Israel, and don’t preach against the house of Isaac.’

¹⁷Therefore the LORD says: ‘Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by line; and you yourself shall die in a land that is unclean, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.’”

Amos 8

¹Thus the Lord GOD showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit.

²He said, “Amos, what do you see?” I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the LORD said to me, “The end has come on my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more.

³The songs of the temple will be wailing in that day,” says the Lord GOD. “The dead bodies will be many. In every place they will throw them out with silence.

⁴Hear this, you who desire to swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to fail,

⁵saying, ‘When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may market wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel large, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit;

⁶that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals, and sell the sweepings with the wheat?’”

⁷The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob, “Surely I will never forget any of their works.

⁸Won’t the land tremble for this, and everyone mourn who dwells in it? Yes, it will rise up wholly like the River; and it will be stirred up and sink again, like the River of Egypt.

⁹It will happen in that day,” says the Lord GOD, “that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.

¹⁰I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will make you wear sackcloth on all your bodies, and baldness on every head. I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.

¹¹Behold, the days come,” says the Lord GOD, “that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the LORD’s words.

¹²They will wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they will run back and forth to seek the LORD’s word, and will not find it.

¹³In that day the beautiful virgins and the young men will faint for thirst.

¹⁴Those who swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, ‘As your god, Dan, lives,’ and, ‘As the way of Beersheba lives,’ they will fall, and never rise up again.”

Amos 9

¹I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said, “Strike the tops of the pillars, that the thresholds may shake. Break them in pieces on the head of all of them. I will kill the last of them with the sword. Not one of them will flee away. Not one of them will escape.

²Though they dig into Sheol, there my hand will take them; and though they climb up to heaven, there I will bring them down.

³Though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out from there; and though they be hidden from my sight in the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent, and it will bite them.

⁴Though they go into captivity before their enemies, there I will command the sword, and it will kill them. I will set my eyes on them for evil, and not for good.

⁵For the Lord, the GOD of Armies, is he who touches the land and it melts, and all who dwell in it will mourn; and it will rise up wholly like the River, and will sink again, like the River of Egypt.

⁶It is he who builds his rooms in the heavens, and has founded his vault on the earth; he who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth—the LORD is his name.

⁷Are you not like the children of the Ethiopians to me, children of Israel?” says the LORD. “Haven’t I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?

⁸Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are on the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the surface of the earth, except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” says the LORD.

⁹“For behold, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all the nations as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet not the least kernel will fall on the earth.

¹⁰All the sinners of my people will die by the sword, who say, ‘Evil won’t overtake nor meet us.’

¹¹In that day I will raise up the tent of David who is fallen and close up its breaches, and I will raise up its ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old,

¹²that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name,” says the LORD who does this.

¹³“Behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the one treading grapes him who sows seed; and sweet wine will drip from the mountains, and flow from the hills.

¹⁴I will bring my people Israel back from captivity, and they will rebuild the ruined cities, and inhabit them; and they will plant vineyards, and drink wine from them. They shall also make gardens, and eat their fruit.

¹⁵I will plant them on their land, and they will no more be plucked up out of their land which I have given them,” says the LORD your God.