Amos 8

1This is what my Sovereign GOD showed me: There was a basket of figs., lit. “summer fruit.”

2I was asked, “What do you see, Amos?” “A basket of figs,” I replied. And GOD said to me: “The hour of doom. has come for My people Israel; I will not pardon them again.

3And the singing women of the palace shall howl on that day—declares the Sovereign GOD:So many corpsesLeft lying everywhere!Hush!”

4Listen to this, you who devour the needy, annihilating the poor of the land,

5saying, “If only the new moon were over, so that we could sell grain; the sabbath, so that we could offer wheat for sale, using an ephah that is too small, and a shekel that is too big, that is too small, and a shekel that is too big I.e., giving short measures of grain, but using oversize weights for the silver received in payment. tilting a dishonest scale,

6and selling grain refuse as grain! We will buy the poor for silver, the needy for a pair of sandals.”

7GOD swears by the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget any of their doings.”

8Shall not the earth shake for thisAnd all that dwell on it mourn?Shall it not all rise like the NileAnd surge and subside like the Nile of Egypt?

9And in that day—declares the Sovereign GOD—I will make the sun set at noon,I will darken the earth on a sunny day.

10I will turn your festivals into mourningAnd all your songs into dirges;I will put sackcloth on all loinsAnd tonsures on every head.I will make the earth mourn as for an only child,All of it as on a bitter day.

11A time is coming—declares the Sovereign GOD—when I will send a famine upon the land: not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of GOD.

12People shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east to seek the word of GOD, but they shall not find it.

13In that day, the beautiful maidens and the young men shall faint with thirst—

14Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria,Saying, “As your god lives, Dan,” And “As the way to Beer-sheba lives”—They shall fall to rise no more.