Chronological

6 Woe to those who are at ease in Zion and to those on the mountain of Samaria who are careless and feel secure, the notable men of the chief [because chosen by God] of the nations, to whom the house of Israel comes!^(A)

² Pass over to Calneh and see, and from there go to Hamath the great [city, north of Damascus]; then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are they better than these [your] kingdoms? Or are their boundaries greater than your boundaries,

³ O you who put far away the evil day [of punishment], yet cause the sitting of violence [upon you] to come near?

⁴ Woe to those who lie upon beds of ivory and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock and the calves out of the midst of the stall,

⁵ Who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and invent for themselves instruments of music like David’s,^(B)

⁶ Who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved and sick at heart over the affliction and ruin of Joseph (Israel)!^(C)

⁷ Therefore now shall they go captive with the first who go into exile, and the revelry and banqueting of those who stretch themselves shall be ended.

⁸ The Lord God has sworn by Himself—the Lord, the God of hosts, says: I abhor, reject, and despise the pride and false, futile glory of Jacob (Israel), and I hate his palaces and strongholds; and I will deliver up the city [idol-worshiping Samaria] with all that is in it.

⁹ And it shall come to pass that if there remain ten men in one house, they shall die [by the pestilence that comes with war].

¹⁰ And then a man’s uncle or kinsman, he who is to make a burning to cremate and dispose [of his pestilence-infected body], comes in to bring the bones out of the house, and he shall say to another still alive in the farthest parts of the house, Is there anyone else with you? and he shall say, No. Then shall the newcomer say, Hush! Hold your [cursing] tongue! We dare not so mention the name of the Lord [lest we invoke more punishment].^(D)

¹¹ For behold, the Lord commands and He will smite the great house into ruins and the little house into fragments.

¹² Do horses run upon rocks? Do men plow the ocean with oxen? But you have turned justice into [the poison of] gall and the fruit of righteousness into [the bitterness of] wormwood—

¹³ You who rejoice in Lo-debar [a thing of nought], who say, Have we not by our own strength taken Karnaim or horns [of resistance] for ourselves?

¹⁴ For behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel, says the Lord, the God of hosts; and they shall afflict and oppress you [to the entire limits of Israel] from the entrance of Hamath to the brook of the Arabah.

7 Thus the Lord God showed me [Amos], and behold, He formed locusts in the beginning of the shooting up of the second crop, and behold, it was the second crop after the king’s mowings.

² And when [the locusts] had finished eating the plants of the land, then I said, O Lord God, forgive, I pray You. How can Jacob stand? For he is so small!

³ The Lord relented and revoked this sentence: It shall not take place, said the Lord [and He was eased and comforted concerning it].

⁴ Thus the Lord God showed me, and behold, the Lord God called for punishment with fire, and it devoured the great deep and would have eaten up the land.

⁵ Then said I, O Lord God, cease, I pray You! How can Jacob stand? He is so little!

⁶ The Lord relented and revoked this sentence: This also shall not be, said the Lord [and He was eased and comforted concerning it].

⁷ Thus He showed me, and behold, the Lord stood upon a wall with a plumb line, with a plumb line in His hand.^(E)

⁸ And the Lord said to me, Amos, what do you see? And I said, A plumb line. Then said the Lord, Behold, I am setting a plumb line as a standard in the midst of My people Israel. I will not pass by and spare them any more [the door of mercy is shut].

⁹ And the [idolatrous] high places of Isaac (Israel) shall be desolate and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise with the sword against the house of King Jeroboam [who set up the golden calf shrines].

¹⁰ Then Amaziah the priest of [the golden calf shrine at] Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words.^(F)

¹¹ For thus Amos has said, Jeroboam shall die by the sword and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.

¹² Also Amaziah said to Amos, O you seer, go! Flee back to the land of Judah [your own country], and eat your bread and live out your profession as a prophet there [as I perform my duties here].

¹³ But do not prophesy any more at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary and a seat of his kingdom.^(G)

¹⁴ Then Amos said to Amaziah, I was no prophet [by profession]! Neither was I a prophet’s son; [but I had my occupation] I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees and a gatherer of sycamore figs.

¹⁵ And the Lord took me as I followed the flock and the Lord said to me, Go, prophesy to My people Israel.

¹⁶ Now therefore listen to the word of the Lord: You say, Do not prophesy against Israel and drop no statements not complimentary to the house of Isaac.

¹⁷ Therefore thus says the Lord: Your wife shall be a harlot in the city and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided up by line; you yourself shall die in an unclean and defiled land, and Israel shall surely go forth out of his land into exile.

8 Thus the Lord God showed to me, and behold, a basket of [ripe and therefore soon to perish] summer fruit.

² And He said, Amos, what do you see? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the Lord to me, The end has come upon My people Israel; I will not pass by and spare them any more.

³ And the songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day, says the Lord God. The dead bodies shall be many; in every place they shall be cast forth in silence.

⁴ Hear this, O you who would swallow up and trample down the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail and come to an end,

⁵ Saying, When will the New Moon festival be past that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale, making the ephah [measure] small and the shekel [measure] great and falsifying the scales by deceit,

⁶ That we may buy [into slavery] the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals; yes, and sell the refuse of the wheat [as if it were good grade]?

⁷ The Lord has sworn by [Himself Who is] the Glory and Pride of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their [rebellious] deeds.

⁸ Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who dwells in it? Yes, it shall rise like the river [Nile], all of it, and it shall be tossed about and sink back again to normal level, as does the Nile of Egypt.

⁹ And in that day, says the Lord God, I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the broad daylight.^(H)

¹⁰ And I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation, and I will cause sackcloth to be put upon all loins and baldness [for mourning] shall come on every head; and I will make that time as the mourning for an only son, and the end of it as a bitter day.

¹¹ Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but [a famine] for hearing the words of the Lord.

¹² And [the people] shall wander from sea to sea and from the north even to the east; they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord [inquiring for and requiring it as one requires food], but shall not find it.

¹³ In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.

¹⁴ Those who swear by Ashimah or the sin of Samaria and say, By the life of your god [the golden calf], O Dan! and [swear], By the life of the way of [idolatrous] Beersheba, they shall fall and rise no more.

9 I saw the Lord standing at the altar, and He said, Smite the tops of the pillars until the thresholds tremble, and shatter them on the heads of all of the people; and the remainder of them I will slay with the sword. He who flees of them shall not get away, and he who escapes of them shall not be delivered.

² Though they dig into Sheol (Hades, the dark abode of the gathered dead), from there shall My hand take them; though they climb up to heaven [the abode of light], from there will I bring them down;

³ And though they hide themselves on the top of [Mount] Carmel, from there I will search out and take them; and though they [try to] hide from My sight at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent and it shall bite them.

⁴ And though they go into captivity before their enemies, there will I command the sword and it shall slay them, and I will set My eyes upon them for evil and not for good.

⁵ The Lord God of hosts, it is He Who touches the earth and it melts, and all who dwell in it mourn; it shall rise like the [river] Nile, all of it, and it shall sink again like the Nile of Egypt.

⁶ It is He Who builds His upper chambers in the heavens and Who founds His vault over the earth, Who calls to the waters of the sea and pours them out on the face of the earth—The Lord is His name.

⁷ You [O degenerate children of Israel] are no more to Me than these [despised] Cushites, says the Lord. I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, but have I not [also] brought the Philistines out of Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?

⁸ Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom [of Israel’s ten tribes] and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground, except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, says the Lord.

⁹ For behold, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations and cause it to move to and fro as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least kernel fall upon the earth and be lost [from My sight].^(I)

¹⁰ All the sinners of My people shall die by the sword, who say, The evil shall not overtake or meet [and assail] us.

¹¹ In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David, the fallen hut or booth, and close up its breaches; and I will raise up its ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old,

¹² That they may possess the remnant of Edom and of all the nations that are called by My name, says the Lord Who does this.^(J)

¹³ Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine and all the hills shall melt [that is, everything heretofore barren and unfruitful shall overflow with spiritual blessing].^(K)

¹⁴ And I will bring back the exiles of My people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine from them; they shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them.

¹⁵ And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be torn up out of their land which I gave them, says the Lord your God.