UST AMOS Chapter 8

8 This is what Yahweh our Lord showed me in a vision: Look, a basket full of ripe fruit. 2 Yahweh asked me, “Amos, what do you see?”

I replied, “A basket full of ripe fruit.”

He said, “That indicates that it is almost the end for my Israelite people. I will not spare them from punishment any longer.

3 Soon the people will be wailing instead of singing in the temple. There will be corpses everywhere, and people will say nothing as they remove them.” Yahweh the Lord has declared this will happen.

4 Listen to your covenant crimes, rich rulers! When you cheat the poor, it is as though you people are trampling on the needy people,

and you destroy the poor people.

5 You habitually say,

“We wish that the new moon festival would end soon,

in order that we may sell our grain.

We wish that the Sabbath would end soon,

in order that we may sell our wheat.—

When we sell it,

we can charge a big price for it,

and we can cheat people by using scales that do not weigh correctly.

6 We will sell wheat that is no good.

Those who are needy and poor and who do not have money to buy things,

we will make them our slaves

by buying them with the little amount of silver with which we could buy a pair of sandals!”

7 Yahweh has declared, “I am the God you should worship. Surely I will never forget the evil things that you have done.

8 Because of those evil things, your country will certainly soon tremble,

and everyone who lives there will mourn.

It will repeatedly rise and fall

like the Nile River whose floodwaters overflow its banks

and then recede.

9 Yahweh the Lord has declared this will happen: "The time is coming soon when I will bring judgment.

I will cause the sun to set at noontime,

and the entire earth will be dark in the daytime.

10 I will cause your religious celebrations to become times when you mourn;

instead of singing, everyone will be weeping.

Because of what I will do, all of you will wear rough sackcloth and shave your heads

to show that you are sorrowing.

I will cause that time to be like when people mourn after an only son has died.

All of you will be very sad all of that time.”

11 Yahweh the Lord declares this:

“Behold, It will soon be the time when I will cause something to be very scarce throughout the country.

But it will not be a time when there is no food or water;

it will instead be a time when there will be no messages from me for anyone to hear.

12 People will stagger from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean Sea,

and wander from the north to the east,

searching for a message from me,

but there will not be any.

13 At that time,

even beautiful young women and strong young men will faint

because they will be very thirsty.

14 Those who make oaths using the name of their shameful god of Samaria,

and those who solemnly promise to do something using the name of the god of Dan,

and those who swear using the name of the god of Beersheba—

they will all die;

they will never get up again.”

◄ AMOS 8 ► ║ ©

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