Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

82 God stands up to open heaven’s court. He pronounces judgment on the judges.^{[a] 2} How long will you judges refuse to listen to the evidence? How long will you shower special favors on the wicked? ³ Give fair judgment to the poor man, the afflicted, the fatherless, the destitute. ⁴ Rescue the poor and helpless from the grasp of evil men. ⁵ But you are so foolish and so ignorant! Because you are in darkness, all the foundations of society^[b] are shaken to the core. ⁶ I have called you all “gods” and “sons of the Most High.” ⁷ But in death you are mere men. You will fall as any prince—for all must die.

⁸ Stand up, O God, and judge the earth. For all of it belongs to you. All nations are in your hands.

1 Amos was a herdsman living in the village of Tekoa. All day long he sat on the hillsides watching the sheep, keeping them from straying.^[a]

² One day, in a vision, God told him some of the things that were going to happen to his nation, Israel. This vision came to him at the time Uzziah was king of Judah and while Jeroboam (son of Joash) was king of Israel—two years before the earthquake.

This is his report of what he saw and heard: The Lord roared—like a ferocious lion from his lair—from his Temple on Mount Zion. And suddenly the lush pastures of Mount Carmel withered and dried, and all the shepherds mourned.

³ The Lord says, “The people of Damascus have sinned again and again, and I will not forget it. I will not leave her unpunished anymore. For they have threshed my people in Gilead as grain is threshed with iron rods. ⁴ So I will set fire to King Hazael’s palace, destroying the strong fortress of Ben-hadad. ⁵ I will snap the bars that locked the gates of Damascus and kill her people as far away as the plain of Aven, and the people of Syria shall return to Kir^[b] as slaves.” The Lord has spoken.

⁶ The Lord says, “Gaza has sinned again and again, and I will not forget it. I will not leave her unpunished anymore. For she sent my people into exile, selling them as slaves in Edom. ⁷ So I will set fire to the walls of Gaza, and all her forts shall be destroyed. ⁸ I will kill the people of Ashdod and destroy Ekron and the king of Ashkelon; all Philistines left will perish.” The Lord has spoken.

⁹ The Lord says, “The people of Tyre have sinned again and again, and I will not forget it. I will not leave them unpunished anymore. For they broke their treaty with their brother, Israel; they attacked and conquered him, and led him into slavery to Edom. ¹⁰ So I will set fire to the walls of Tyre, and it will burn down all his forts and palaces.”

¹¹ The Lord says, “Edom has sinned again and again, and I will not forget it. I will not leave him unpunished anymore. For he chased his brother, Israel, with the sword; he was pitiless in unrelenting anger. ¹² So I will set fire to Teman, and it will burn down all the forts of Bozrah.”^[c]

¹³ The Lord says, “The people of Ammon have sinned again and again, and I will not forget it. I will not leave them unpunished anymore. For in their wars in Gilead to enlarge their borders they committed cruel crimes, ripping open pregnant women with their swords.

¹⁴ “So I will set fire to the walls of Rabbah, and it will burn down their forts and palaces; there will be wild shouts of battle like a whirlwind in a mighty storm. ¹⁵ And their king and his princes will go into exile together.” The Lord has spoken.

2 The Lord says, “The people of Moab have sinned again and again, and I will not forget it. I will not leave them unpunished anymore. For they desecrated the tombs of the kings of Edom, with no respect for the dead. ² Now in return I will send fire upon Moab, and it will destroy all the palaces in Kerioth. Moab shall go down in tumult as the warriors shout and trumpets blare. ³ And I will destroy their king and slay all the leaders under him.” The Lord has spoken.

¹⁴ Dear brothers, what’s the use of saying that you have faith and are Christians if you aren’t proving it by helping others? Will that kind of faith save anyone? ¹⁵ If you have a friend who is in need of food and clothing, ¹⁶ and you say to him, “Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat hearty,” and then don’t give him clothes or food, what good does that do?

¹⁷ So you see, it isn’t enough just to have faith. You must also do good to prove that you have it. Faith that doesn’t show itself by good works is no faith at all—it is dead and useless.

¹⁸ But someone may well argue, “You say the way to God is by faith alone, plus nothing; well, I say that good works are important too, for without good works you can’t prove whether you have faith or not; but anyone can see that I have faith by the way I act.”

¹⁹ Are there still some among you who hold that “only believing” is enough? Believing in one God? Well, remember that the demons believe this too—so strongly that they tremble in terror! ²⁰ Fool! When will you ever learn that “believing” is useless without doing what God wants you to? Faith that does not result in good deeds is not real faith.

²¹ Don’t you remember that even our father Abraham was declared good because of what he did when he was willing to obey God, even if it meant offering his son Isaac to die on the altar? ²² You see, he was trusting God so much that he was willing to do whatever God told him to; his faith was made complete by what he did—by his actions, his good deeds. ²³ And so it happened just as the Scriptures say, that Abraham trusted God, and the Lord declared him good in God’s sight, and he was even called “the friend of God.” ²⁴ So you see, a man is saved by what he does, as well as by what he believes.

²⁵ Rahab, the prostitute, is another example of this. She was saved because of what she did when she hid those messengers and sent them safely away by a different road. ²⁶ Just as the body is dead when there is no spirit in it, so faith is dead if it is not the kind that results in good deeds.