Fourth Vision: A Basket of Summer Fruit
1The Lord God showed me this: a basket of summer fruit. 2He asked me, “What do you see, Amos?”
I replied, “A basket of summer fruit.”
The Lord said to me, “The end has come for my people Israel; I will no longer spare them. 3In that day the temple songs will become wailing” — this is the Lord God’s declaration. “Many dead bodies, thrown everywhere! Silence!”
4Hear this, you who trample on the needy
and do away with the poor of the land,
5asking, “When will the New Moon be over
so we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath,
so we may market wheat?
We can reduce the measure
while increasing the price
and cheat with dishonest scales.
6We can buy the poor with silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals
and even sell the chaff!”
7The Lord has sworn by the Pride of Jacob:
I will never forget all their deeds.
8Because of this, won’t the land quake
and all who dwell in it mourn?
All of it will rise like the Nile;
it will surge and then subside
like the Nile in Egypt.
9And in that day —
this is the declaration of the Lord God —
I will make the sun go down at noon;
I will darken the land in the daytime.
10I 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 that grief
like mourning for an only son
and its outcome like a bitter day.
11Look, the days are coming —
this is the declaration of the Lord God —
when I will send a famine through the land:
not a famine of bread or a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
12People will stagger from sea to sea
and roam from north to east
seeking the word of the Lord,
but they will not find it.
13In that day the beautiful young women,
the young men also, will faint from thirst.
14Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria
and say, “As your god lives, Dan,”
or, “As the way of Beer-sheba lives” —
they will fall, never to rise again.