Amos 8

¹ This is what the Lord Yahweh showed me: a basket of ripe fruit:

² ‘What do you see, Amos?’ he asked. ‘A basket of ripe fruit’ I said. Then Yahweh said, ‘My people Israel is ripe for destruction; I will no longer overlook its offences.

³ The palace singing girls will wail that day-it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks-so many will be dead, all thrown down anywhere. Hush!’

⁴ Listen to this, you who trample on the needy and try to suppress the poor people of the country,

⁵ you who say, ‘When will New Moon be over so that we can sell our corn, and sabbath, so that we can market our wheat? Then by lowering the bushel, raising the shekel, by swindling and tampering with the scales,

⁶ we can buy up the poor for money, and the needy for a pair of sandals, and get a price even for the sweepings of the wheat.’

⁷ Yahweh swears it by the pride of Jacob, ‘Never will I forget a single thing you have done’.

⁸ Is this not the reason for the earthquakes, for its inhabitants all mourning, and all of it heaving, like the Nile, then subsiding, like the river of Egypt?

⁹ ‘That day-it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks-I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight.

¹⁰ I am going to turn your feasts into funerals, all your singing into lamentation; I will have your loins all in sackcloth, your heads all shaved. I will make it a mourning like the mourning for an only son, as long as it lasts it will be like a day of bitterness.

¹¹ ‘See what days are coming-it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks-days when I will bring famine on the country, a famine not of bread, a drought not of water, but of hearing the word of Yahweh.

¹² They will stagger from sea to sea, wander from north to east, seeking the word of Yahweh and failing to find it.

¹³ That day, delicate girl and stalwart youth shall faint from thirst.

¹⁴ All who swear by Samaria’s Ashimah, those who swear, “By your god’s life, Dan !”[*a] and, “By your Beloved’s life, Beersheba !” these shall all fall, never to rise again.’