Amos 8
Darby Translation
8 Thus did Jehovah shew unto me; and behold, a basket of summer-fruit.
2 And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer-fruit. And Jehovah said unto me, The end is come upon my people Israel: I will not again pass by them any more.
3 And the songs of the palace shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah. The dead bodies shall be many; in every place they shall be cast forth. Silence!
4 Hear this, ye that pant after the needy, even to cause to fail the poor of the land,
5 saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat? making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances for deceit:
6 that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; and that we may sell the refuse of the wheat.
7 Jehovah hath sworn by the glory of Jacob, Certainly I will never forget any of their works.
8 Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? And it shall wholly rise up like the Nile; and it shall surge and sink down, as the river of Egypt.
9 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the land in the clear day.
10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning for an only [son], and the end thereof as a bitter day.
11 Behold, days come, saith the Lord Jehovah, when I will send a famine in the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah.
12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north to the east; they shall run to and fro to seek the word of Jehovah, and shall not find it.
13 In that day shall the fair virgins and the young men faint for thirst;
14 they that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, [As] thy god, O Dan, liveth! and, [As] the way of Beer-sheba liveth! even they shall fall, and never rise up again.
Amos 8
Evangelical Heritage Version
The Fourth Vision: The Basket of Summer Fruit
8 This is what the Lord God showed me: I saw a basket of ripe summer fruit. 2 Then he asked, “What do you see, Amos?”
I said, “A basket of ripe summer fruit.”
Then the Lord said to me, “The end is coming upon my people Israel.[a] I will no longer overlook their sin. 3 The singing women of the palace[b] will wail on that day, declares the Lord God. Many corpses—all over! Silence!”
Fraud and Hypocrisy on Holy Days
4 Listen to this, you who trample on the needy
to wipe out the oppressed from the land,
5 who say, “When will the New Moon be over so that we can sell grain?
When will the Sabbath end so that we can open the grain bins?
Then we will make the bushel[c] smaller and make the shekel weight heavier.[d]
We will cheat with dishonest scales.
6 We will buy the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals.
We will sell the chaff with the grain.”
A Famine of the Lord’s Word
7 The Lord swears by the Pride of Jacob,
“I will never forget any of their deeds!”
8 Because of this, the land will shake,
and everyone living in it will mourn.
The whole land will rise up like the Nile.
It will surge and sink down again like the Nile of Egypt.
9 Here is what will happen on that day, declares the Lord God:
I will make the sun set at noon,
and I will bring darkness on the earth when it should be light.
10 I will turn your festivals into mourning
and all of your songs into a lamentation.
I will put sackcloth on all your waists
and baldness on every head.
I will make that day like the mourning for an only son,
and it will end like a bitter day.
11 Look, the days are coming, declares the Lord God,
when I will send a famine into the land—
not a famine of bread
nor a thirst for water,
but rather a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
12 People will stumble from sea to sea
and from north to east.
They will roam back and forth seeking the word of the Lord,
but they will not find it.
13 On that day the beautiful virgins will faint,
and the young men will grow weak from thirst.
14 Those who swear by the shameful guilt[e] of Samaria,
those who say, “As your god lives, Dan,”
or, “The way of Beersheba lives”—
they will fall, and they will never rise again.
Footnotes
- Amos 8:2 The Hebrew words for summer fruit and end sound alike. Just as the summer fruit is ripe, Israel is ripe for judgment.
- Amos 8:3 Or the songs of the temple
- Amos 8:5 Literally the ephah
- Amos 8:5 Merchants cheated by measuring out the grain they were selling with an undersized bushel and weighing the silver they received with an overweight shekel.
- Amos 8:14 Possibly a distortion of the name of the goddess Ashima/Asherah
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The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.