Amos Chapters

1 | •  ¹These are the words of Amos, one of the sheep-breeders of Tekoa, and the visions which he saw concerning Israel during the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah, and Jeroboam, son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. ²He said,

“The Lord roars from Zion,

his voice thunders from Jerusalem.

The pastures of the shepherds are scorched

and the choicest farmland is dried up.”

³The Lord says, “Because Damascus has sinned, not once but three times; and even more, I will not relent. Because they have threshed Gilead with threshing sleds of iron, ⁴I will send fire upon the people of Hazael that shall devour the strongholds of Ben-hadad. I will cut off the ruler from the Valley of Aven, and him who holds the scepter, from Beth-Eden. ⁵I shall break the protective crossbar of Damascus.”

Condemnation of Several Nations

⁶The Lord says this, “Because Gaza has sinned, not once but three times; and even more, I will not relent; because they carried a whole people into captivity, to deliver them over to Edom, ⁷I will send fire upon the wall of Gaza; and it will devour her strongholds. ⁸I will cut off the ruler from Ashdod, and him that holds the scepter, from Ashkelon; I will turn my hand against Ekron, and the remnant of the Philistines will perish,” says the Lord.

⁹The Lord says this, “Because Tyre has sinned, not once but three times; and even more, I will not relent; because they delivered over to Edom, a whole people, and did not remember the Covenant of brotherhood; ¹⁰I will send fire upon the walls of Tyre; and it shall devour her palaces.”

¹¹The Lord says this, “Because Edom has sinned, not once but three times; and even more, I will not relent; because he pursued his brother with the sword and cast off all pity, because his anger rages forever, and his wrath is always wild; ¹²I will send fire upon Teman; and it shall devour the strongholds of Bozrah.”

¹³The Lord says this, “Because the Ammonites have sinned, not once but three times; and even more, I will not relent; because they have ripped open pregnant women in Gilead, that they might enlarge their border; ¹⁴I will set fire to the walls of Rabbah; and it shall devour her strongholds. Then there will be a war cry and battle; then storm winds will blow. ¹⁵Their king will go into exile, he and his princes with him,” says the Lord.

2 | ¹The Lord says this, “Because Moab has sinned, not once but three times; and even more, I will not relent; because they burned to a cinder the bones of the king of Edom, ²I will send fire on Moab, and it shall be destroyed amid the tumult, with war cries and the blast of the trumpet. ³I will do away with their ruler and all the princes with him,” says the Lord.

⁴The Lord says, “Because Judah has sinned, not once but three times; and even more, I will not relent. Because they rejected the law of the Lord and did not keep his statutes but have been led astray by the falsehood after which their fathers walked; ⁵I will send fire upon Judah, and it will devour the fortresses of Jerusalem.”

Judgment on Israel

•  ⁶The Lord says, “Because Israel has sinned, not once but three times; and even more, I will not relent. They sell the just for money and the needy for a pair of sandals; ⁷they tread on the head of the poor and trample them upon the dust of the earth, while they silence the right of the afflicted; a man and his father go to the same woman to profane my holy name; ⁸they stretch out upon garments taken in pledge, beside every altar; they take the wine of those they swindle and are drunk in the house of their God.

⁹I destroyed the Amorites before them, whose height was like the height of the cedar, a people as sturdy as an oak. I destroyed their fruit above and their roots below.

¹⁰I was the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness to take possession of the land of the Amorites.

¹¹It was I who raised up prophets among your sons and Nazirites among your young men. Is this not so, people of Israel?” says the Lord. ¹²“But you gave the Nazirites wine to drink and commanded the prophets not to prophesy.

¹³Behold, I will crush you to the ground, as a cart does when it is full of sheaves. ¹⁴The swift shall not flee, and the strong man shall lose strength. The warrior shall not save himself, nor the bowman stand his ground. ¹⁵The swift of foot shall not escape, nor the horseman saves himself. ¹⁶Even the most stout-hearted among the warriors shall flee away naked on that day,” says the Lord.

Punishment Is Near

3 | ¹Hear this word which the Lord speaks against you, people of Israel, against the whole family which he brought up from the land of Egypt.

²“Only you have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore, I will call you to account for all your wrongdoings.”

•  ³Do two walk together unless they have agreed?

⁴Does a lion roar in the forest when it has no prey? Does a young lion growl in its den unless it has seized something?

⁵Does a bird get caught in a snare if the snare has not been baited?

Does a tiger spring up from the ground unless it has caught something?

⁶If a trumpet sounds in a city, will the people not be frightened?

If disaster strikes a city, has not the Lord caused it? ⁷Yet the Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants, the prophets. ⁸If the lion roars, who will not be afraid? If the Lord speaks, who will not prophesy?

⁹Call on the people living in the palaces of Ashur and Egypt: “Come together against the hill of Samaria and see the many scandals and the oppression there.

¹⁰These people do not know how to do what is right, says the Lord, storing in strongholds what they have taken through violence and extortion. ¹¹Therefore, this is the word of the Lord: The enemy shall surround the land; your strength shall be broken down and your strongholds plundered.”

¹²The Lord says this, “As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion a pair of legs or the tip of an ear, so shall some of you be saved, O Israelites of Samaria who loll on comfortable couches and rest on pillows of Damascus.”

¹³“Hear and accuse the nation of Jacob,” says the Lord, God of hosts, ¹⁴“On the day that I call Israel to account for his crimes, I will also punish the altars of Bethel. The altar's horns will be broken off and fall to the ground. ¹⁵Then I will strike the winter house and the summerhouse. The palaces of ivory shall be ruined, and the great house destroyed.”

4 | •  ¹Listen to this word, you cows of Bashan, you women who live on the hills of Samaria, who oppress the weak and abuse the needy, who order your husbands, “Bring us something to drink quickly!”

²The Lord has sworn by his holiness, “The time is coming upon you when you will be dragged away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks. ³Through the breaks in the wall, you will go out, straight ahead, driven out to Hermon.” It is the Lord who speaks.

Prepare to Meet Your God

•  ⁴“Come, sinners, to the Sanctuary in Bethel; go down to Gilgal and sin even more!

Bring your sacrifices each morning and your tithes on the third day. Burn leavened food for thanksgiving. ⁵Proclaim in public your freewill offering, for this is what makes you happy, people of Israel,” says the Lord.

⁶“Though I have made your teeth clean of food in every city, though I have made your bread in all your dwellings scarce, yet you did not return to me,” says the Lord.

⁷“Though I withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away, though I sent rain upon one town and withheld it from another, ⁸though people staggered from town to town, and found no water to quench their thirst, yet you never returned to me,” says the Lord.

⁹“Though I have stricken your garden and vineyard with blight and calamities, though the locusts devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you never returned to me,” says the Lord.

¹⁰“Though, as in Egypt, I sent you a plague, though I slew your young men with the sword along with your captured horses, and nauseated you with the stench from your own dead, yet you never returned to me,” says the Lord.

¹¹“I overthrew you, a divine punishment, as happened to Sodom and Gomorrah; you were like a brand snatched from the blaze, yet you never returned to me,” says the Lord.

¹²“Therefore, I will deal with you in my own way, Israel, and since I will do this to you, prepare, Israel, to meet your God!”

¹³For he makes the thunder, creates the winds, reveals his mind to humankind, turns dawn to twilight, and strides upon the heights of the earth—the Lord, God of hosts, is his name.

Seek Me and You Shall Live

5 | ¹Listen to these words, this lament I pronounce over you, the nation of Israel, ²“Virgin Israel is fallen, never to rise again! She lies upon her land with no one to help her up, abandoned.”

³The Lord says, “The city that went forth to war a thousand strong shall be left with a hundred, and that which went forth with a hundred shall be left with ten in Israel.”

⁴For the Lord says to the nation of Israel, “Seek me, that you may live, ⁵but not in Bethel; nor come to Gilgal; nor pass through to Beersheba. For Gilgal shall be led into exile and Bethel brought to nothing.”

⁶Seek the Lord, that you may live; or he will rush like fire on the nation of Joseph, and no one will be at Bethel to quench the blaze.

⁸He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns dusk to dawn and darkens the day into night, who summons the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the earth—the Lord is his name. ⁹He makes destruction flash forth against the strong and brings ruin upon the fortified city.

⁷Woe to those whose decrees are bitterness, not justice, who trample on the rights!

¹⁰You hate him who reproves in court; you despise him who speaks the truth.

¹¹Because you have trampled on the poor and extorted levies on their grain, though you have built mansions of hewn stones, you will not dwell in them; though you have planted choice grapevines, you shall not drink of their wine.

¹²For I know the number of your crimes and how grievous your sins are: persecuting the just, taking bribes, turning away the needy at the gates. ¹³See how the prudent keep silent at this time, for it is an evil time.

The Day of the Lord Will Be Darkness

•  ¹⁴Seek good and shun evil, that you may live. Then the Lord, the God of hosts, as you have claimed, will be with you.

¹⁵Hate wickedness and love virtue, and let justice prevail in the courts; perhaps the Lord, the God of hosts, will take pity on Joseph's remnant.

¹⁶The Lord, God of hosts, thus says: “In every square, wailing will be heard, in every street, cries of anguish. Farmers will be summoned to lament and professional mourners to weep noisily. ¹⁷There will be lamentation in every vineyard, for I will pass through your midst, says the Lord.”

¹⁸Woe to you who long for the Lord’s day! Why should you long for that day? It is a day of darkness, not of dawn, ¹⁹as if a man fled from a lion only to run into a bear, or as if he entered his home, rested his hand against the wall, only to be bitten by a viper.

²⁰The day of the Lord will be darkness, not light; gloom, without a glow of brightness.

²¹“I hate, I reject your feasts, I take no pleasure when you assemble ²²to offer me your burnt offerings. I will not accept your cereal offerings! Your offerings of fattened beasts, I will not look upon!

²³Away with the noise of your chanting, away with your strumming on harps. ²⁴But let justice run its course like water, and righteousness be like an ever-flowing river.

²⁵Did you, Israel, bring me offerings and sacrifices for forty years in the wilderness?

²⁶Yet, now, you lift up King Sukuth and Kaiwan, your idols, which you made yourselves. ²⁷Therefore, I will send you into exile, beyond Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is God of hosts.

6 | ¹Woe to those proud people who live overconfident on the hill of Samaria!

Woe to you, men of renown, from the first among the nations, to whom the people of Israel come!

²Pass through Calneh and see; from there, go to Hamath the Great, then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are you better than these kingdoms were? Is your territory greater than theirs? ³You hope to postpone the evil day; you bring about a year of violence.

⁴You lie on beds inlaid with ivory and sprawl on your couches; you eat lamb from the flock and veal from calves fattened in the stall.

⁵You strum on your harps and, like David, try out new musical instruments.

⁶You drink wine by the bowlful and anoint yourselves with the finest oils, but you do not grieve over Joseph's ruins.

⁷Therefore, you will be the first to go into exile, and the feast of sprawlers will be over.

⁸The Lord has sworn by his life, “I hate the proud city of Jacob; I hate its palaces. I will hand over the city and all that fills it.”

⁹In those days, if ten people are left in one house, they shall die. ¹⁰Their relative will lift the corpses and bring the bones from the house; when he will say to his comrade at the back part of the house, “Are there any more?” the other will say, “No, but hush! We must not mention the name of the Lord.”

¹¹For this is the Lord’s command,

“The great house shall crumble, and the small house fall to pieces.”

¹²Do horses run on craggy cliffs? Does anyone plow the sea with oxen? You have turned the rights into a poisonous plant and the court's sentences into wormwood.

¹³You rejoice about unimportant matters when you say, “Are we not winners once more?” ¹⁴Yet, am I stirring up against you, Israel, a nation that will oppress you, from the pass of Lebo-hamath to the brook of the Arabah.

Five Visions

7 | •  ¹This is what the Lord showed me. He was forming a swarm of locusts just as the late sowing began to come up. It was the second growth that followed the king’s mowing. ²When they were about to finish devouring all the crops of the land, I said, “Lord, forgive Israel! How shall Jacob survive, small as he is?” ³The Lord relented and said, “It shall not happen.”

⁴This is what the Lord showed me: he called for burning heat. It consumed the great deep and was consuming the land. ⁵I said, “Lord God, stop! How shall Jacob survive small as he is?” ⁶The Lord relented and said, “This, too, shall not happen.”

⁷This is what the Lord showed me. He was standing beside a wall with a plumb line in his hand. ⁸The Lord asked me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I answered, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “Behold, I am measuring my people Israel with a plumb line. I will forgive them no more. ⁹The high places of Isaac are to be made desolate, and the Sanctuaries of Israel laid waste. For I will arise, sword in hand, against the family of Jeroboam.”

Conflict With the Priest Amaziah

•  ¹⁰Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, then said to King Jeroboam of Israel, “Amos is conspiring against you in the very center of Israel; what he says goes too far. ¹¹These are his very words: Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall be exiled from its land.”

¹²Amaziah told Amos, “Off with you, seer, go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there by prophesying. ¹³But never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is a king’s Sanctuary and a national shrine.”

¹⁴Amos replied to Amaziah, “I am not a prophet or one of the fellow prophets. I am a breeder of sheep and a dresser of sycamore trees. ¹⁵But the Lord took me from shepherding the flock and said, " Go, prophesy to my people Israel.

¹⁶Now hear the word of the Lord, you who say: No more prophecy against Israel, no more insults against the family of Isaac! ¹⁷This is what the Lord says:

Your wife shall be made a harlot in the city, your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword, your land shall be divided up and given to others, and you, yourself, shall die in a foreign land, for Israel shall be driven far from its land.”

Fourth Vision: The Basket of Ripe Fruit

8 | •  ¹The Lord showed me a basket of ripe fruit ²and asked, “Amos, what do you see?” I replied, “A basket of ripe fruit.”

Then the Lord said to me, “My people Israel is ripe for destruction; I will no longer forgive them. ³The songs of the palace will become wailings on that day, says the Lord; heaps of corpses everywhere, all cast out, in silence.”

⁴Hear this, you, who trample on the needy, to do away with the weak of the land. ⁵You who say, “When will the new moon or the Sabbath feast be over that we may open the store and sell our grain? Let us lower the measure and raise the price; let us cheat and tamper with the scales, ⁶and even sell the refuse with the whole grain. We will buy up the poor for money and the needy for a pair of sandals.”

⁷The Lord, Jacob's pride, has sworn by himself, “I shall never forget their deeds.”

⁸Shall not the land tremble because of this, and all who dwell in it mourn, while it rises up and heaves like the Nile and settles back again like the river of Egypt?

⁹The Lord says, “On that day, 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 singing into wailing. Everyone will mourn, covered with sackcloth, and every head will be shaved. I will make them mourn, as for an only son, and bring their day to a bitter end.”

¹¹The Lord says, “Days are coming when I will send famine upon the land; not hunger for bread or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of the Lord.

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

¹³On that day, fair virgins and strong young men will faint from thirst, ¹⁴all the young people who swore by the god of Samaria and said: Long life to the god of Dan, long life to the god of Beersheba! They shall fall, never to rise again.”

Fifth Vision: Fall of the Sanctuary

9 | ¹I saw the Lord standing by the altar, and he said: “Strike the top of the columns so that the beams shake and the roof falls down on the heads of them all. Those who are left I will slay with the sword; no one shall flee or escape.

²Though they dig down to the netherworld, my hand will take them from there; though they climb up to heaven, I will bring them down from there;

³Though they hide on the top of Carmel, I will search them out there and take them; though they hide from me in the depths of the sea, I will bid the sea serpent, bite them.

⁴I will command the sword to slay them when their enemies lead them into captivity.

For I have set my eye upon them, not for help but for harm.”

⁵When the Lord of Hosts touches the earth, it melts, and all who dwell on it mourn. Like the Nile, the earth rises up and heaves and settles back again, like the river of Egypt.

⁶He has built heaven, his upper room, and established the sky's dome over the earth. He summons the waters of the sea and pours them upon the face of the earth: the Lord is his name.

⁷And now the Lord says, “Are you Israelites more to me than the Ethiopians? Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt as I brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?

•  ⁸My eyes are upon your sinful kingdom. I wanted to destroy it from the face of the earth, but I cannot do away completely with the nation of Jacob,” says the Lord.

⁹“This is what I have ordered: I will sift the nation of Israel among the nations, as one sifts with a sieve, letting no pebble pass through. ¹⁰All sinners among my people shall die, those who say, ‘Evil will not reach or overtake us.’

•  ¹¹On that day, I shall restore David's fallen hut, wall up its breaches, raise its ruined walls, and build it as in the old days.

¹²They shall conquer the remnant of Edom and the neighboring nations upon which my name has been called.” Thus says the Lord, the one who will do this.

¹³The Lord also says, “The days are coming when the plowman will overtake the reaper, and the vintage of grapes overtake the sower. The mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.

¹⁴I shall bring back the exiles of my people Israel; they will rebuild the desolate cities and dwell in them. They will plant vineyards, drink wine, orchards, and eat fruit. ¹⁵I shall plant them in their own country, and they shall never again be rooted up from the land I have given them,” says the Lord your God.