Amos 8

1This is what Lord Yahweh showed me: a basket of summer fruit.

2He said, “What do you see, Amos?” I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then Yahweh said to me, “The end has come for my people Israel; I will no longer pass them by.

3On that day the songs of the temple will turn to wailing, declares Lord Yahweh. Many will be the corpses, thrown out everywhere. Silence!”

4Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land,

5saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we can sell grain, and the Sabbath, so that we can put wheat on sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel heavy and cheat with dishonest scales,

6buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling even the sweepings of the wheat.”

7Yahweh has sworn by the pride of Jacob: I will never forget anything they have done.

8Will not the land tremble because of this, and everyone who lives in it mourn? The whole land will rise like the Nile; it will be tossed about and sink again like the river of Egypt.

9On that day, declares Lord Yahweh, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.

10I will turn your festivals into mourning and all your songs into laments. I will put sackcloth around every waist and make every head bald. I will make it like mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.

11The days are coming, declares Lord Yahweh, when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Yahweh.

12People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of Yahweh, but they will not find it.

13On that day the lovely young women and the young men will faint from thirst.

14Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, “As your god lives, Dan,” and, “As the way to Beersheba lives,” will fall and never rise again.