Amos 7-8

Common English Bible

A vision of locusts

7 This is what the Lord God showed me: The Lord God was forming locusts at the time the late grass began to sprout. (It was the late grass after the king’s harvest.) ²When they had finished eating the green plants of the land, I said,

        “Lord God, please forgive!
        How can Jacob survive?
        He is so small!”
³    The Lord relented concerning this:
        “It won’t take place,”
says the Lord.

A vision of fire

⁴This is what the Lord God showed me: The Lord God was calling for judgment with fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up part of the land. ⁵Then I said,

        “Lord God, I beg you, stop!
        How can Jacob survive?
        He is so small!”
⁶    The Lord relented concerning this:
        “This also won’t take place,”
says the Lord God.

A vision of a plumb line

⁷This is what the Lord showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall, with a plumb line in his hand. ⁸The Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?”

“A plumb line,” I said.
Then the Lord said,
“See, I am setting a plumb line
    in the middle of my people Israel.
        I will never again forgive them.
⁹The shrines of Isaac will be made desolate,
            and the holy places of Israel will be laid waste,
            and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”

Exchange between Amaziah, Jeroboam, and Amos

¹⁰Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, reported to Israel’s King Jeroboam, “Amos has plotted against you within the house of Israel. The land isn’t able to cope with everything that he is saying. ¹¹Amos has said, ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will be forced out of its land.’”

¹²Amaziah said to Amos, “You who see things, go, run away to the land of Judah, eat your bread there, and prophesy there; ¹³but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s holy place and his royal house.”

¹⁴Amos answered Amaziah, “I am^[a] not a prophet, nor am I a prophet’s son; but I am a shepherd, and a trimmer of sycamore trees. ¹⁵But the Lord took me from shepherding the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’

¹⁶“Now then hear the Lord’s word.
    You say, ‘Don’t prophesy against Israel,
        and don’t preach
        against the house of Isaac.’
¹⁷“Therefore, the Lord proclaims:
    ‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city,
        and your sons and your daughters will fall by the sword,
        and your land will be measured and divided up;
    you yourself will die in an unclean land,
        and Israel will surely be taken away from its land.’”

A vision of summer fruit

8 This is what the Lord God showed me: 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 upon my people Israel;
        I will never again forgive them.
³    On that day, the people will wail the temple songs,”
        says the Lord God;
    “there will be many corpses,
    thrown about everywhere.^[b]
        Silence.”

Judgment on oppressors and hypocrites

⁴    Hear this, you who trample on the needy and destroy
        the poor of the land, ⁵saying,
    “When will the new moon
        be over so that we may sell grain,
        and the Sabbath
        so that we may offer wheat for sale,
        make the ephah smaller, enlarge the shekel,
        and deceive with false balances,
⁶        in order to buy the needy for silver
        and the helpless for sandals,
        and sell garbage as grain?”

⁷    The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
        Surely I will never forget what they have done.
⁸    Will not the land tremble on this account,
        and all who live in it mourn,
    as it rises and overflows like the Nile,
        and then falls again, like the River of Egypt?^[c]

⁹    On that day, says the Lord God,
        I will make the sun go down at noon,
        and I will darken the earth in broad daylight.
¹⁰I will turn your feasts into sad affairs
        and all your singing into a funeral song;
    I will make people wear mourning clothes
        and shave their heads;
    I will make it like the loss of an only child,
        and the end of it like a bitter day.
¹¹The days are surely coming, says the Lord God,
        when I will send hunger and thirst on the land;
    neither a hunger for bread, nor a thirst for water,
        but of hearing the Lord ’s words.
¹²They will wander from sea to sea,
        and from north to east;
    they will roam all around, seeking the Lord’s word,
        but they won’t find it.
¹³On that day the beautiful young women and the young men
        will faint with thirst.
¹⁴Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria,
        and say, “As your god lives, Dan,”
    and, “As the way of Beer-sheba lives”—
        even they will fall and never rise again.