Amos 8

Summer fruit and the end

1This is what the Lord GOD showed me: a basket of summer fruit. 2He asked, “What do you see, Amos?” I answered, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the LORD said to me, “The end has come for my people Israel. I will no longer pass them by. 3The temple songs will turn to wailing on that day,” declares the Lord GOD. “So many bodies, thrown everywhere! Hush!”

Crooked measures

4Hear this, you who pant after the needy
to make the poor of the land cease to exist, 5saying, “When will the new moon be over so we can sell grain,
and the Sabbath, so we can open the grain bins?
We will shrink the ephah, increase the shekel,
and cheat with crooked scales. 6We will buy the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
and even sell the grain sweepings.” 7The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
“I will never forget any of their deeds. 8Will not the land shake for this,
and everyone living in it mourn?
The whole land will rise like the Nile,
toss and sink like Egypt’s Nile. 9On that day,” declares the Lord GOD,
“I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight. 10I will turn your festivals into mourning
and all your songs into funeral laments.
I will put sackcloth on every waist
and baldness on every head.
I will make it like mourning for an only child,
and its end like a bitter day.

A famine of hearing

11Days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD,
“when I will send a famine through the land—
not hunger for bread or thirst for water,
but for hearing the words of the LORD. 12They will stagger from sea to sea,
from north to east.
They will roam in search of the word of the LORD
but will not find it. 13On that day beautiful young women
and young men will faint from thirst. 14Those who swear by Samaria’s Guilt,
who say, ‘As your god lives, Dan!’
and ‘As the way of Beer-sheba lives!’—
they will fall and never rise again.”