6 Woe to Those at Ease in Zion

6:1 “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria, the notable men of the first of the nations, to whom the house of Israel comes! ²Pass over to Calneh, and see, and from there go to Hamath the great; then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are you better than these kingdoms? Or is their territory greater than your territory, ³O you who put far away the day of disaster and bring near the seat of violence?

⁴“Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, ⁵who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David invent for themselves instruments of music, ⁶who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! ⁷Therefore they shall now be the first of those who go into exile, and the revelry of those who stretch themselves out shall pass away.” ⁸The Lord God has sworn by himself, declares the Lord, the God of hosts:

“I abhor the pride of Jacob and hate his strongholds, and I will deliver up the city and all that is in it.” ⁹And if ten men remain in one house, they shall die. ¹⁰And when one’s relative, the one who anoints him for burial, shall take him up to bring the bones out of the house, and shall say to him who is in the innermost parts of the house, “Is there still anyone with you?” he shall say, “No”; and he shall say, “Silence! We must not mention the name of the Lord.”

¹¹For behold, the Lord commands, and the great house shall be struck down into fragments, and the little house into bits. ¹²Do horses run on rocks? Does one plow there[1] with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood[2]— ¹³you who rejoice in Lo-debar,^[3]who say, “Have we not by our own strength captured Karnaim[4] for ourselves?” ¹⁴“For behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel,” declares the Lord, the God of hosts; “and they shall oppress you from Lebo-hamath to the Brook of the Arabah.”

[1] Or the sea [2] Or into bitter fruit [3]Lo-debar means nothing [4]Karnaim means horns (a symbol of strength)

7 Warning Visions

7:1 This is what the Lord God showed me: behold, he was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout, and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings. ²When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,

“O Lord God, please forgive! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” ³The Lord relented concerning this; “It shall not be,” said the Lord. ⁴This is what the Lord God showed me: behold, the Lord God was calling for a judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. ⁵Then I said,

“O Lord God, please cease! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” ⁶The Lord relented concerning this; “This also shall not be,” said the Lord God. ⁷This is what he showed me: behold, the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. ⁸And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said,

“Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass by them; ⁹the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”

Amos Accused

¹⁰Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. ¹¹For thus Amos has said,

“‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.’” ¹²And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and prophesy there, ¹³but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.” ¹⁴Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was[5] no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. ¹⁵But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ ¹⁶Now therefore hear the word of the Lord.

“You say, ‘Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac.’ ¹⁷Therefore thus says the Lord:

“‘Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line; you yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.’”

[5] Or am; twice in this verse

8 The Coming Day of Bitter Mourning

8:1 This is what the Lord God showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit. ²And he said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me,

“The end[6] has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass by them. ³The songs of the temple[7] shall become wailings[8] in that day,” declares the Lord God.

“So many dead bodies!” “They are thrown everywhere!” “Silence!”

⁴Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end, ⁵saying, “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel[9] great and deal deceitfully with false balances, ⁶that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the chaff of the wheat?”

⁷The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. ⁸Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who dwells in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?”

⁹“And on that day,” declares the Lord God, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. ¹⁰I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.

¹¹“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. ¹²They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.

¹³“In that day the lovely virgins and the young men shall faint for thirst. ¹⁴Those who swear by the Guilt of Samaria, and say, ‘As your god lives, O Dan,’ and, ‘As the Way of Beersheba lives,’ they shall fall, and never rise again.”

[6] The Hebrew words for end and summer fruit sound alike [7] Or palace [8] Or The singing women of the palace shall wail [9] An ephah was about 3/5 bushel or 22 liters; a shekel was about 2/5 ounce or 11 grams

9 The Destruction of Israel

9:1 I saw the Lord standing beside[10] the altar, and he said:

“Strike the capitals until the thresholds shake, and shatter them on the heads of all the people;^[11]and those who are left of them I will kill with the sword; not one of them shall flee away; not one of them shall escape.

²“If they dig into Sheol, from there shall my hand take them; if they climb up to heaven, from there I will bring them down. ³If they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, from there I will search them out and take them; and if they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them. ⁴And if they go into captivity before their enemies, there I will command the sword, and it shall kill them; and I will fix my eyes upon them for evil and not for good.”

⁵The Lord God of hosts, he who touches the earth and it melts, and all who dwell in it mourn, and all of it rises like the Nile, and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt; ⁶who builds his upper chambers in the heavens and founds his vault upon the earth; who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the surface of the earth—the Lord is his name.

⁷“Are you not like the Cushites to me, O people of Israel?” declares the Lord. “Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir? ⁸Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground, except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” declares the Lord.

⁹“For behold, I will command, and shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes with a sieve, but no pebble shall fall to the earth. ¹⁰All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say, ‘Disaster shall not overtake or meet us.’

The Restoration of Israel

¹¹“In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old, ¹²that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name,”^[12]declares the Lord who does this.

¹³“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. ¹⁴I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. ¹⁵I will plant them on their land, and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that I have given them,” says the Lord your God.

[10] Or on [11] Hebrew all of them [12] Hebrew; Septuagint (compare Acts 15:17) that the remnant of mankind and all the nations who are called by my name may seek the Lord