Chapter 8

¹ And behold a fowler's basket. ² And he said, What seest thou, Amos? And I said, A fowler's basket. And the Lord said to me, The end is come upon my people Israel; I will not pass by them any more. ³ And the ceilings of the temple shall howl in that day,

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saith the Lord God: there shall be many a fallen one in every place; I will bring silence upon them.

⁴ Hear now this, ye that ¹oppress the poor in the morning, and drive the needy ones by tyranny from the earth, ⁵ saying, When will the month pass away, ²and we shall sell, and the sabbath, and we shall open the treasure, to make the measure small, and to enlarge the weight, and make the balance unfair? ⁶ That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for shoes; and we will trade in every kind of fruit. ⁷ The Lord swears against the pride of Jacob, None of your works shall ever be forgotten. ⁸ And shall not the land be troubled for these things, and shall not every one who dwells in it mourn? whereas destruction shall come up as a river, and shall descend as the river of Egypt.

⁹ And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that the sun shall go down at noon, and the light shall be darkened on the earth by day: ¹⁰ and I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; and I will make them as the mourning of a beloved friend, and those with ³them as a day of grief.

¹¹ Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will send forth a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord. ¹² And the waters shall be troubled from sea to sea, and from the north to the east shall men run hither and thither, seeking the word of the Lord, and they shall not find it. ¹³ In that day shall the fair virgins and the young men faint for thirst; ¹⁴ they who swear by the propitiation of Samaria, and who say, Thy god, O Dan, lives; and, Thy god, O Bersabee, lives; and they shall fall, and shall no more rise again.

Chapter 9

¹ I saw the Lord standing on the altar: and he said,

Smite the ⁴mercy-seat, and the ⁵porch shall be shaken: and cut through into the heads of all; and I will slay the remnant of them with the sword: no one of them fleeing shall escape, and no one of them, striving to save himself shall be delivered. ² Though they hid themselves in hell, thence shall my hand drag them forth; and though they go up to heaven, thence will I bring them down. ³ If they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, thence will I search them out and take them; and if they should go down from my ⁶presence into the depths of the sea, there will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them. ⁴ And if they should go into captivity before the face of their enemies, there will I command the sword, and it shall slay them: and I will set mine eyes against them for evil, and not for good.

⁵ And the Lord, the Lord God Almighty, is he that takes hold of the land, and causes it to shake, and all that inhabit it shall mourn; and its destruction shall go up as a river, and shall descend as the river of Egypt. ⁶ It is he that builds his ascent up

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to the sky, and establishes his promise on the earth; who calls the water of the sea, and pours it out on the face of the earth; the Lord Almighty is his name.

⁷ Are not ye to me as the sons of the Ethiopians, O children of Israel? saith the Lord. Did I not bring Israel up out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Cappadocia, and the Syrians out of the ⁷deep? ⁸ Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the kingdom of sinners, and I will cut it off from the face of the earth; only I will not utterly cut off the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. ⁹ For I will give commandment, and sift the house of Israel among all the Gentiles, as corn is sifted in a sieve, and yet ⁸a fragment shall not in any wise fall upon the earth. ¹⁰ All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say, Calamities shall certainly not draw near, nor come upon us.

^{11 9}In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and will rebuild the ruins of it, and will set up the parts thereof that have been broken down, and will build it up ¹⁰as in the ancient days: ¹² that the remnant of men, and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, may earnestly seek me, saith the Lord who does all these things.

¹³ Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when the harvest shall overtake the vintage, and the grapes shall ripen at seedtime; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall be planted. ¹⁴ And I will turn the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities, and shall inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and shall drink the wine from them; and they shall form gardens, and eat the fruit of them. ¹⁵ And I will plant them on their land, and they shall no more be plucked up from the land which I have given them, saith the Lord God Almighty.