Amos 4

¹ Listen to this word, you cows of Bashan living in the mountain of Samaria, oppressing the needy, crushing the poor, saying to your husbands, ‘Bring us something to drink!’

² The Lord Yahweh swears this by his holiness: The days are coming to you now when you will be dragged out with hooks, the very last of you with prongs.

³ Out you will go, each by the nearest breach in the wall, to be driven all the way to Hermon.[*a] It is Yahweh who speaks.

⁴ Go to Bethel, and sin, to Gilgal, and sin your hardest! Offer your sacrifices each morning and your tithes on the third day,

⁵ burn leavened dough as a sacrifice with praise, announce your voluntary offerings, make them public, for this is what makes you happy, sons of Israel. It is the Lord Yahweh who speaks.

⁶ And that is why I left your teeth clean in all your towns, left you without bread in all your villages; and yet you never came back to me. It is Yahweh who speaks.

⁷ I kept your rain back with harvest still three months away; I let rain fall on one town and none on another, one field was rained on and the next dried up because I sent it no rain;

⁸ two towns, three towns, went tottering to the next for drinking-water, but their thirst had to stay unquenched; and yet you never came back to me. It is Yahweh who speaks.

⁹ I struck you with burning and scorching, and withered your gardens and vineyards; the locusts devoured your fig trees and olives; and yet you never came back to me. It is Yahweh who speaks.

¹⁰ I sent you a plague like Egypt’s plague; I slaughtered your young men with the sword, while your horses were captured for plunder; I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camps; and yet you never came back to me, It is Yahweh who speaks.

¹¹ I overthrew you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,[*b] and you were like a brand snatched from the blaze; and yet you never came back to me. It is Yahweh who speaks.

¹² This therefore, Israel, is what I plan to do to you, and because I am going to do this to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God!

¹³ For he it was who formed the mountains, created the wind, reveals his mind to man, makes both dawn and dark, and walks on the top of the heights of the world; Yahweh, God of Sabaoth, is his name.