A basket of ripe fruit

1This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. 2‘What do you see, Amos?’ he asked.

‘A basket of ripe fruit,’ I answered.

Then the Lord said to me, ‘The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

3‘In that day,’ declares the Sovereign Lord, ‘the songs in the temple will turn to wailing.8:3 Or ‘the temple singers will wail Many, many bodies – flung 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

that we may sell grain,

and the Sabbath be ended

that we may market wheat?’ –

skimping on the measure,

boosting the price

and cheating with dishonest scales,

6buying the poor with silver

and the needy for a pair of sandals,

selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

7The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: ‘I will never forget anything they have done.

8‘Will not the land tremble for this,

and all who live in it mourn?

The whole land will rise like the Nile;

it will be stirred up and then sink

like the river of Egypt.

9‘In that day,’ declares the Sovereign Lord,

‘I will make the sun go down at noon

and darken the earth in broad daylight.

10I will turn your religious festivals into mourning

and all your singing into weeping.

I will make all of you wear sackcloth

and shave your heads.

I will make that time like mourning for an only son

and the end of it like a bitter day.

11‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign Lord,

‘when I will send a famine through the land –

not a famine of food or a thirst for water,

but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

12People will stagger from sea to sea

and wander from north to east,

searching for the word of the Lord,

but they will not find it.

13‘In that day

‘the lovely young women and strong young men

will faint because of thirst.

14Those who swear by the sin of Samaria –

who say, “As surely as your god lives, Dan”,

or, “As surely as the god8:14 Hebrew the way of Beersheba lives” –

they will fall, never to rise again.’