Amos 8:1-14

  • Vision of a basket of summer fruit (1-3)

  • Oppressors condemned (4-14)

    • A spiritual famine (11)

8  This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah showed me: Look! There was a basket of summer fruit. 2  Then he said, “What do you see, Aʹmos?” I replied, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then Jehovah said to me: “The end has come for my people Israel. I will no longer pardon them.+ 3  ‘The songs of the temple will turn into wailing in that day,’+ declares the Sovereign Lord Jehovah. ‘There will be many carcasses thrown everywhere+—hush!’  4  Hear this, you who trample on the poorAnd who bring the meek of the land to an end,+  5  Who say, ‘When will the new moon festival be over,+ that we may sell our grain,And the Sabbath,+ that we may offer grain for sale? So that we may make the eʹphah* measure smallerAnd the shekel* weight greater,To falsify our scales of deception;+  6  So that we may buy the needy for silverAnd the poor for a pair of sandals,+And sell the worthless part of the grain.’  7  Jehovah has sworn by the Pride of Jacob,+‘Never will I forget all their deeds.+  8  On this account the land* will tremble,And every inhabitant in it will mourn.+ Will it not all rise like the Nile,And surge and sink down like the Nile of Egypt?’+  9  ‘In that day,’ declares the Sovereign Lord Jehovah,‘I will make the sun go down at high noon,And I will darken the land on a bright day.+ 10  I will turn your festivals into mourning+And all your songs into dirges.* I will put sackcloth on all hips and make every head bald;I will make it like the mourning for an only son,And the end of it like a bitter day.’ 11  ‘Look! The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign Lord Jehovah,‘When I will send a famine into the land,Not a famine for bread or a thirst for water,But for hearing the words of Jehovah.+ 12  They will stagger from sea to seaAnd from the north to the east.* They will rove about searching for the word of Jehovah, but they will not find it. 13  In that day beautiful virgins will faint,Also young men, because of the thirst; 14  Those who swear by the guilt of Sa·marʹi·a+ and who say,“As surely as your god lives, O Dan!”+ And, “As surely as the way of Beʹer-sheʹba+ lives!” They will fall, and they will not rise up again.’”+

Footnotes

Or “earth.”
Or “songs of mourning.”
Or “sunrise.”