Amos 9:1-10

The Voice

9 I looked and saw the Lord standing by the altar.

Eternal One: Strike the tops of the pillars so that the foundations shake,
        and cut them off so the building crashes down upon the heads of all the people!
    I will kill with the sword any who survive.
        Not one of them will get away.
        Not one of them will escape.

²    If they dig down to the land of the dead,
        My hand will find them and pull them back up.
    If they try to climb to heaven,
        I will bring them back down from there.
³    If they try to hide on the summit and in the dense forests of Mount Carmel,
        I will track them down and capture them.
    If they try to disappear from sight in the depths of the sea,
        I will send a sea monster to bite and devour them.
⁴    If they are taken captive by their enemies,
        I will command that they be killed by the sword in their exile,
    And I will fix My gaze upon them,
        not for their good, but for their harm.

⁵The Eternal Lord, Commander of heavenly armies—
    He touches the earth and it cracks and crumbles,
    and everyone upon it cries with grief.
He touches the land and it rises and falls,
    falls and rises like the Nile in Egypt.
⁶He builds His upper chambers in the heavens
    and founds His storeroom^[a] on the earth.
He calls up the waters of the sea
    and pours them out across the land—
Eternal One is His name.

⁷Eternal One: To Me, aren’t you like the people of Ethiopia,
        overwhelmed by the powers around you,
    You people of Israel?
        Didn’t I bring the people of Israel from the land of Egypt,
    And the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Arameans from Kir?
⁸    Look! The eyes of the Eternal Lord are fixed upon your sinful kingdom,
        and I will wipe it off the face of the earth.
    But I will not destroy Jacob’s descendants completely.

So says the Eternal.

⁹Eternal One: I will give the order,
        and I will shake the nation of Israel among all the nations
    The way grain is shaken in a sieve.
        All the good kernels will fall to the ground,
    But the rocks will stay trapped in the sieve, ready for disposal.
¹⁰    I will see all of My people who do wrong,
        who say, “Nothing bad will ever happen to us.”
    I will see them all fall to the sword.