Amos 5:12-24

Living Bible

¹² For many and great are your sins. I know them all so well. You are the enemies of everything good; you take bribes; you refuse justice to the poor. ¹³ Therefore, those who are wise will not try to interfere with the Lord in the dread day of your punishment.

¹⁴ Be good, flee evil—and live! Then the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will truly be your Helper, as you have claimed he is. ¹⁵ Hate evil and love the good; remodel your courts into true halls of justice. Perhaps even yet the Lord God of Hosts will have mercy on his people who remain.

¹⁶ Therefore the Lord God says this: “There will be crying in all the streets and every road. Call for the farmers to weep with you too; call for professional mourners to wail and lament. ¹⁷ There will be sorrow and crying in every vineyard, for I will pass through and destroy. ¹⁸ You say, ‘If only the Day of the Lord were here, for then God would deliver us from all our foes.’ But you have no idea what you ask. For that day will not be light and prosperity, but darkness and doom! How terrible the darkness will be for you; not a ray of joy or hope will shine. ¹⁹ In that day you will be as a man who is chased by a lion and is met by a bear, or a man in a dark room who leans against a wall and puts his hand on a snake. ²⁰ Yes, that will be a dark and hopeless day for you.

²¹ “I hate your show and pretense—your hypocrisy of ‘honoring’ me with your religious feasts and solemn assemblies. ²² I will not accept your burnt offerings and thank offerings. I will not look at your offerings of peace. ²³ Away with your hymns of praise—they are mere noise to my ears. I will not listen to your music, no matter how lovely it is.

²⁴ “I want to see a mighty flood of justice—a torrent of doing good.