8Amos 8

A Vision of a Basket of Fruit

1I had another vision from the Sovereign Lord. In it I saw a basket of fruit.Select Amos 8:1

2The Lord asked, “Amos, what do you see?” “A basket of fruit,” I answered. The Lord said to me, “The end has come for my people Israel. I will not change my mind again about punishing them.Select Amos 8:2

3On that day the songs in the palace will become cries of mourning. There will be dead bodies everywhere. They will be cast out in silence.”Select Amos 8:3

Israel's Doom

4Listen to this, you that trample on the needy and try to destroy the poor of the country.Select Amos 8:4

5You say to yourselves, “We can hardly wait for the holy days to be over so that we can sell our grain. When will the Sabbath end, so that we can start selling again? Then we can overcharge, use false measures, and fix the scales to cheat our customers.Select Amos 8:5

6We can sell worthless wheat at a high price. We'll find someone poor who can't pay his debts, not even the price of a pair of sandals, and we'll buy him as a slave.”Select Amos 8:6

7The Lord, the God of Israel, has sworn, “I will never forget their evil deeds.Select Amos 8:7

8And so the earth will quake, and everyone in the land will be in distress. The whole country will be shaken; it will rise and fall like the Nile River.Select Amos 8:8

9The time is coming when I will make the sun go down at noon and the earth grow dark in daytime. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken.Select Amos 8:9

10I will turn your festivals into funerals and change your glad songs into cries of grief. I will make you shave your heads and wear sackcloth, and you will be like parents mourning for their only child. That day will be bitter to the end.Select Amos 8:10

11“The time is coming when I will send famine on the land. People will be hungry, but not for bread; they will be thirsty, but not for water. They will hunger and thirst for a message from the Lord. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken.Select Amos 8:11

12People will wander from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean and then on around from the north to the east. They will look everywhere for a message from the Lord, but they will not find it.Select Amos 8:12

13On that day even healthy young men and women will collapse from thirst.Select Amos 8:13

14Those who swear by the idols of Samaria, who say, ‘By the god of Dan’ or ‘By the god of Beersheba’—those people will fall and not rise again.”Select Amos 8:14