UST AMOS Chapter 4

◄ AMOS 4 ► ║ ═ ©

4 Listen to this message, you wealthy women of the city of Samaria! You have indulged yourselves and grown fat, just as the cattle in the region of Bashan grow fat.

You oppress poor people,

and you cause needy people to suffer.

You say to your husbands,

“Bring us more wine to drink!”

2 But Yahweh our Lord has solemnly promised this, and because he is holy, he will certainly do what he says:

“The time is coming when your enemies will capture all of you and drag you away, as easily as someone catches fish with hooks.

They will drag away even the last of you with fishhooks.

3 Each of you women will go straight out through the gaps where your enemies have broken through your city walls,

and your enemies will force you to go out toward the mountain of Harmon.

I, Yahweh, declare that this will happen.

4 I am not really telling you to do this, but here is what you are actually doing: You go to the towns of Bethel and Gilgal, where many people worship me, and there you sin against me again and again!

Every morning you offer your sacrifices there,

and every third day you bring me a tenth of your crops.

5 You burn bread that contains yeast as an offering to thank me,

and you loudly announce the offerings that you bring to me willingly.

You brag about all these offerings,

because that is what you Israelite people love to do, even though you do it to impress others and not to please me.

I, Yahweh your Lord, declare this.

6 “I am the one who caused you to have no food at all in any of your cities and towns,

yet you did not stop sinning and come back to me. I, Yahweh, declare this.

7 I am also the one who held back the rain from you when it was still three months before the time to harvest your crops, when your crops needed rain the most.

Sometimes I sent rain on one town

and held it back from another town.

Rain fell on one field,

but no rain fell on another field, so the crops there dried up.

8 People would stagger from one town to another town to find water,

but they could not get enough water to drink,

yet you did not stop sinning and come back to me. I, Yahweh, declare this.

9 I struck your crops, so that they dried up and rotted.

Locusts ate up everything in your many gardens and vineyards and on your fig trees and olive trees,

yet you did not stop sinning and come back to me. I, Yahweh, declare this.

10 I sent diseases among you, like the diseases that I sent to the people of Egypt long ago.

I caused your enemies to kill your young men in wars, and I let your enemies capture your horses.

I made the camps where your soldiers died stink with the smell of their dead bodies,

yet you did not stop sinning and come back to me. I, Yahweh, declare this.

11 I destroyed some of you, just as I destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah long ago.

Those of you who survived were like a burning stick that someone grabs out of a fire before it burns up completely,

yet you did not stop sinning and come back to me. I, Yahweh, declare this.

12 So now, you people of Israel, this is what I am going to do to you. And because I am going to do this to you, prepare to meet me, your God, when I come to judge you!”

13 Listen! Yahweh is the one who formed the mountains and who created the wind.

He reveals to people what he is thinking.

He turns the morning light into darkness.

He rules over the whole earth, even the highest places.

He is Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies; that is his name!

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