Amos - The Old Testament

¹ This is what Lord Yahweh showed me: A basket of ripe fruit.

² 'What do you see, Amos?' he asked. 'A basket of ripe fruit,' I said. Then Yahweh said, 'The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will not continue to overlook their offences.

³ That day, the palace songs will turn to howls, -declares the Lord Yahweh- the corpses will be many that are thrown down everywhere. Keep silent!'

⁴ Listen to this, you who crush the needy and reduce the oppressed to nothing,

⁵ you who say, 'When will New Moon be over so that we can sell our corn, and Sabbath, so that we can market our wheat? Then, we can make the bushel-measure smaller and the shekel-weight bigger, by fraudulently tampering with the scales.

⁶ We can buy up the weak for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals, and even get a price for the sweepings of the wheat.'

⁷ Yahweh has sworn by the pride of Jacob, 'Never will I forget anything they have done.'

⁸ Will not the earth tremble for this and all who live on it lament, as it all rises together like the Nile in Egypt, it swells and then subsides like the Egyptian Nile?

⁹ 'On that Day- declares the Lord Yahweh- I shall make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.

¹⁰ I shall turn your festivals into mourning and all your singing into lamentation; I shall make you all wear sacking round your waists and have all your heads shaved. I shall make it like the mourning for an only child, and it will end like the bitterest of days.

¹¹ 'The days are coming- declares the Lord Yahweh- when I shall send a famine on the country, not hunger for food, not thirst for water, but famine for hearing Yahweh's word.

¹² People will stagger from sea to sea, will wander from the north to the east, searching for Yahweh's word, but will not find it.

¹³ 'That Day, fine girls and stalwart youths will faint from thirst.

¹⁴ The people who swear by the Sin of Samaria, who say, "Long live your god, Dan!" and "Hurrah for the pilgrimage to Beersheba!" will all fall, never to rise again.'