Amos 2:3-13

3 I'll remove the king from the center and kill all his princes with him."
4 God's Message: "Because of the three great sins of Judah - make that four - I'm not putting up with them any longer. They rejected God's revelation, refused to keep my commands. But they swallowed the same old lies that got their ancestors onto dead-end roads.
5 For that, I'm burning down Judah, burning down all the forts of Jerusalem." Destroyed from the Roots Up
6 God's Message: "Because of the three great sins of Israel - make that four - I'm not putting up with them any longer. They buy and sell upstanding people. People for them are only things - ways of making money. They'd sell a poor man for a pair of shoes. They'd sell their own grandmother!
7 They grind the penniless into the dirt, shove the luckless into the ditch. Everyone and his brother sleeps with the 'sacred whore' - a sacrilege against my Holy Name.
8 Stuff they've extorted from the poor is piled up at the shrine of their god, While they sit around drinking wine they've conned from their victims.
9 "In contrast, I was always on your side. I destroyed the Amorites who confronted you, Amorites with the stature of great cedars, tough as thick oaks. I destroyed them from the top branches down. I destroyed them from the roots up.
10 And yes, I'm the One who delivered you from Egypt, led you safely through the wilderness for forty years And then handed you the country of the Amorites like a piece of cake on a platter.
11 I raised up some of your young men to be prophets, set aside your best youth for training in holiness. Isn't this so, Israel?" God's Decree.
12 "But you made the youth-in-training break training, and you told the young prophets, 'Don't prophesy!'
13 You're too much for me. I'm hard-pressed - to the breaking point. I'm like a wagon piled high and overloaded, creaking and groaning.
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.