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Thus says the L ord:

For three transgressions of Moab,

and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;

because he burned to lime

the bones of the king of Edom.

So I will send a fire on Moab,

and it shall devour the strongholds of Kerioth,

and Moab shall die amid uproar,

amid shouting and the sound of the trumpet;

I will cut off the ruler from its midst,

and will kill all its officials with him,

says the L ord.

Judgment on Judah

Thus says the L ord:

For three transgressions of Judah,

and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;

because they have rejected the law of the L ord,

and have not kept his statutes,

but they have been led astray by the same lies

after which their ancestors walked.

So I will send a fire on Judah,

and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem.

Judgment on Israel

Thus says the L ord:

For three transgressions of Israel,

and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;

because they sell the righteous for silver,

and the needy for a pair of sandals—

they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,

and push the afflicted out of the way;

father and son go in to the same girl,

so that my holy name is profaned;

they lay themselves down beside every altar

on garments taken in pledge;

and in the house of their God they drink

wine bought with fines they imposed.

Yet I destroyed the Amorite before them,

whose height was like the height of cedars,

and who was as strong as oaks;

I destroyed his fruit above,

and his roots beneath.

Also I brought you up out of the land of Egypt,

and led you forty years in the wilderness,

to possess the land of the Amorite.

And I raised up some of your children to be prophets

and some of your youths to be nazirites.

Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel?

says the L ord.

But you made the nazirites drink wine,

and commanded the prophets,

saying, “You shall not prophesy.”

So, I will press you down in your place,

just as a cart presses down

when it is full of sheaves.

Flight shall perish from the swift,

and the strong shall not retain their strength,

nor shall the mighty save their lives;

those who handle the bow shall not stand,

and those who are swift of foot shall not save themselves,

nor shall those who ride horses save their lives;

and those who are stout of heart among the mighty

shall flee away naked in that day,

says the L ord.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Here Amos charges them first with insatiable avarice; they panted for the heads of the poor on the dust of the earth. This place is in my judgment not well understood. שאף, shaph, means to pant and to breathe, and is taken often metaphorically as signifying to desire: hence some render the words, “They desire the heads of the poor to be in the dust of the earth;” that is, they are anxious to see the innocent cast down and prostrate on the ground. But there is no need of many words to refute this comment; for ye see that it is strained. Others say, that in their cupidity they cast down the miserable into the dust; they therefore think that a depraved cupidity is connected with violence, and they put the lust for the deed itself.

But what need there is of having recourse to these extraneous meanings, when the words of the Prophet are in themselves plain and clear enough? He says that they panted for the heads of the poor on the ground; as though he had said, that they were not content with casting down the miserable, but that they gaped anxiously, until they wholly destroyed them. There is then nothing to be changed or added in the Prophet’s words, which harmonize well together, and mean, that through cupidity they panted for the heads of the poor, after the poor had been cast down, and were laid prostrate in the dust. The very misery of the poor, whom they saw to be in their power, and lying at their feet, ought to have satisfied them: but when such an insatiable cupidity still inflamed them, that they panted for more punishment on the poor and the miserable, was it not a fury wholly outrageous? We now perceive the Prophet’s meaning: He points out again what he has said in the former verse, — that the Israelites were given to rapacity, avarice, and cruelty of every kind.

He adds at last, and the way of the miserable they pervert. He still inveighs against the judges; for it can hardly comport with what belongs to private individuals, but it properly appertains to judges to pervert justice, and to violate equity for bribery; so that he who had the best cause became the loser, because he brought no bribe sufficiently ample. We now see what was the accusation he alleged against the Israelites. But there follows another charge, that of indulgence in lusts.