Fourth Vision: A Basket of Summer Fruit
1 The Lord God showed me this: A basket of summer fruit.
2
He asked me, "What do you see, Amos?" I replied, "A basket of summer fruit." The Lord said to me, "The end has come for My people Israel; I will no longer spare them.
3
In that day the temple songs will become wailing"-the Lord God 's declaration. "Many dead bodies, thrown everywhere! Silence!"
4
Hear this, you who trample on the needy and do away with the poor of the land,
5
asking, "When will the New Moon be over so we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so we may market wheat? We can reduce the measure while increasing the price and cheat with dishonest scales.
6
We can buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and even sell the wheat husks!"
7
The Lord has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: I will never forget all their deeds.
8
Because of this, won't the land quake and all who dwell in it mourn? All of it will rise like the Nile; it will surge and then subside like the Nile in Egypt.
9
And in that day- [this is]*The bracketed text has been added for clarity. the declaration of the Lord God - I will make the sun go down at noon; I will darken the land in the daytime.
10
I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make that grief like mourning for an only son and its outcome like a bitter day.
11
Hear this! The days are coming- [this is] the declaration of the Lord God - when I will send a famine through the land: not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.