CHAPTER 8
“Amos,
what
do you
see?”
He asked.
“A basket
of summer fruit,”
I replied.
So the LORD
said
to me,
“The end
has come
for
My people
Israel;
I will no
longer
spare
them.”
“In that
day,”
declares
the Lord
GOD,
“the songs
of the temple
will turn to wailing.
Many
will be the corpses,
strewn
in silence
everywhere!”
asking,
“When
will the New Moon
be over
that we may sell
grain?
When will the Sabbath end,
that we may market
wheat?
Let us reduce
the ephah
and increase
the shekel;
let us cheat
with dishonest
scales.
Let us buy
the poor
with silver
and the needy
for
a pair of sandals,
selling
even the chaff
with the wheat!”
Will not
the land
quake
for
this
and all
its dwellers
mourn?
All of it
will swell
like the Nile;
it will surge
and then subside
like the Nile
in Egypt.”
“And in that
day,”
declares
the Lord
GOD,
“I will make the sun
go down
at noon;
and I will darken
the earth
in the daytime.
I will turn
your feasts
into mourning
and all
your songs
into lamentation.
I will cause everyone
to wear
sackcloth
and every
head
to be shaved.
I will make it like
a time of mourning
for an only son,
and its outcome
like a bitter
day.
Behold!
The days
are coming,”
declares
the Lord
GOD,
“when I will send
a famine
on the land—
not
a famine
of bread
or a thirst
for water,
but a famine
of hearing
the words
of the LORD.
People will stagger
from sea
to
sea
and roam
from north
to
east,
seeking
the word
of the LORD,
but they will not
find it.
Those who swear
by the guilt
of Samaria
and say,
‘As surely as your god
lives,
O Dan,’
or, ‘As surely as the Way
of Beersheba
lives’—
they will fall,
never
to rise
again.”