Amos 7:1-17
7 *** Thus the Lord Jehovah showed me: there was he shaping young grasshoppers when the spring growth was starting, and there came full-grown grasshoppers after the king’s clipping.
2 * They were finishing eating the herbage on the ground when I said “Lord Jehovah, forgive! how is Jacob to stand, when he is so little?”
3 Jehovah repented of this: “It shall not happen,” said Jehovah.
4 ** Thus the Lord Jehovah showed me: there was the Lord Jehovah challenging to a contest by fire. And it devoured the great deep and was devouring all nature,
5 and I said “Lord Jehovah, let be! how is Jacob to stand, when he is so little?”
6 Jehovah repented of this: “It shall not happen either,” said the Lord Jehovah.
7 * Thus he showed me: there the Lord had taken his stand by a plumb-line wall, plumb-line in hand.
8 And Jehovah said to me “What do you see, ʽAmos?” and I said “A plumb-line.” And the Lord said “Here I am hanging a plumb-line among my people Israel: I will not go on passing them by anymore.
9 And Isaac’s heights shall be desolated and Israel’s sanctuaries laid waste, and I will stand up against Jeroboam’s house with the sword.”
10 And Priest Amasiah of Bethel sent word to King Jeroboam of Israel “ʽAmos has been organizing for a revolution against you among the house of Israel; there is not room in the country for all his talk;
11 for ʽAmos has been saying ‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword and Israel shall depart deported from its soil.’”
12 And Amasiah said to ʽAmos “Be going, seer, get safe away to Judah and eat bread there, and there you may prophesy;
13 but at Bethel you are not to go on prophesying anymore, because it is a royal sanctuary and it is a state building.”
14 * And ʽAmos answered Amasiah “I am not a prophet and I am not a member of their fellowship, for I am a sheep man and a sycamore-nipper;
15 but Jehovah took me from behind the sheep, and Jehovah said to me ‘Go prophesy to my people Israel.’
16 Now listen to Jehovah’s word: you say ‘You are not to prophesy about Israel nor pour out revelations about Isaac’s house’;
17 so Jehovah says, Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by measure, and you yourself shall die on unclean soil; and Israel shall depart deported from its soil.”
Footnotes
^ 7:1 Susp.
^ 7:1 (young locusts) Unc.
^ 7:1 Var. there was (unc.) spring growth after
^ 7:2 Codd. And if they had finished eating the herbage on the ground I said
^ 7:4 Susp.
^ 7:4 Or was devouring the country, and
^ 7:7-8 (plumb-line) Unc.
^ 7:14 Var. cattleman
