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Hear this, you who desire to swallow up the needy,
    and cause the poor of the land to fail,
    Saying, ‘When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain?
    And the Sabbath, that we may market wheat,
    making the ephah[a] small, and the shekel[b] large,
    and dealing falsely with balances of deceit;
that we may buy the poor for silver,
    and the needy for a pair of sandals,
    and sell the sweepings with the wheat?’”

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Footnotes

  1. 8:5 1 ephah is about 22 liters or about 2/3 of a bushel
  2. 8:5 a normal shekel is about 10 grams or about 0.35 ounces.

Hear this, those who trample on the poor and who annihilate the afflicted of the land, saying, “When will the new moon be over, so that we can sell grain? And the Sabbath, so that we can open the grain bins, that we can make the ephah small and make the shekel large, and can practice deceit with a set of scales of deceit? That we can[a] buy the powerless with silver and the poor for the sake of a pair of sandals, and we can sell the waste of the grain?”

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Footnotes

  1. Amos 8:6 Literally “to buy”