Amos 8

1 This is what the Lord showed me: There was a fowler’s basket.

2 He asked,

“What do you see, Amos?”

I said, “A fowler’s basket.”

Then the Lord said to me,

“The end has come on my people Israel. I will no longer pass them by.

3 The temple ceilings will howl on that day,” says the Lord. “There will be many fallen people in every place. I will cast silence over them.”

4 Hear this now, you who grind down the poor in the morning and drive the needy from the earth by tyranny.

5 You say, ‘When will the month pass so that we can sell, and the Sabbaths so that we can open the storehouses? We will make the measure small and the weights heavy and make the scales dishonest,

6 so that we can buy the poor for silver and the humble for sandals. We will trade in every kind of produce.’

7 The Lord swears by the pride of Jacob: “I will certainly never forget any of your works.

8 Will the land not be shaken because of these things, and will everyone living in it not mourn? Destruction will rise like a river and fall like the river of Egypt.

9 On that day,” says the Lord God, “the sun will set at noon, and the daylight will grow dark over the earth.

10 I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will put sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head. I will make it like mourning for someone dearly loved, and those with him like a day of grief.

11 Look, days are coming,” says the Lord, “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 Lord’s word.

12 The waters will be shaken as far as the sea. People will run from north to east seeking the Lord’s word, but they will not find it.

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

14 Those who swear by Samaria’s atonement and say, ‘Your god lives, Dan,’ and, ‘Your god lives, Beersheba,’ will fall and never rise again.”