Amos 8:1-14

Lord YAHWEH revealed this to me in another vision: a basket of ripe fruit. “Amos, what do you see?” he asked. “A basket of ripe fruit,” I replied. Then YAHWEH said, “The time is ripe for my people Israel. I will not continue to overlook their sins. On that day, those singing songs in the temple will wail instead,” declares the Lord YAHWEH. “There will be corpses piled up everywhere. They will be cast out in silence.” Listen to this, all you who trample on the poor and reduce the needy to nothing! You say to yourselves, “We can’t wait for these holy days to be over so that we can sell our corn!” And, “When will this Sabbath be over so that we can open the storage and sell our wheat? Then we can overcharge our customers, shortchange them, and deceive them by tampering with the scales. We can even sell the worthless chaff we sweep up for silver. We can buy the poor with silver and make them our slaves because they cannot pay their debts, even a debt so small as that of a pair of sandals.” YAHWEH, the Majesty of Jacob, has sworn an oath: “I will never forget all the evil they have done. That is why the earth will tremble for this, and all who live on it mourn. All of the land will rise up like the river Nile— inundated and stirred up by floodwaters— and then subside, just like the river of Egypt!” “On that day,” declares Lord YAHWEH, “I will make the sun set at noon and darken the earth in the middle of the day. I will turn your festivals into funerals, and all your lively singing into funeral dirges. I will make you all wear sackcloth and shave your heads, as if you were mourning the death of an only child. That day will be bitter to the end.” “Behold, the days are coming,” declares Lord YAHWEH, “when I will send a famine on the land. People will not hunger for food nor thirst for water but will starve for a word from YAHWEH. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from the north to the east searching for a revelation from YAHWEH, but they will not hear from me. On that day, even your beautiful young women and strong young men will collapse from thirst. Those who swear by Ashimah, the idol of Samaria, who say, ‘Long live your golden calf-god of Dan!’ and say, ‘As surely as the god of Beersheba lives!’— they will all fall, never to rise again.”