The Coming Day of Bitter Mourning
aThis is what the Lord God showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit. 2 And he said, a“Amos, what do you see?” And I said, b“A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me,
c“The end has come upon my people Israel;
I will never again pass by them.
3 aThe songs of the temple bshall become wailings in that day,”
declares the Lord God.
c“So many dead bodies!”
“They are thrown everywhere!”
d“Silence!”
4 Hear this, ayou who trample on the needy
and bring the poor of the land to an end,
5 saying, “When will athe new moon be over,
that we may sell grain?
And bthe Sabbath,
that we may offer wheat for sale,
that we may make cthe ephah small and the shekel great
and deal deceitfully with false balances,
6 that we may buy the poor for asilver
and the needy for a pair of sandals
and sell the chaff of the wheat?”
7 The Lord has sworn by athe pride of Jacob:
“Surely bI will never forget any of their deeds.
8 aShall not the land tremble on this account,
and everyone mourn who dwells in it,
band all of it rise like the Nile,
and be tossed about cand sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?”
9 “And on that day,” declares the Lord God,
a“I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
10 aI will turn your feasts into mourning
and all your songs into lamentation;
bI will bring sackcloth on every waist
band baldness on every head;
cI will make it like the mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.
11 “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God,
“when aI will send a famine on the land—
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
bbut of hearing the words of the Lord.
12 aThey shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord,
bbut they shall not find it.
13 a“In that day the lovely virgins and the young men
shall bfaint for thirst.
14 Those who swear by athe Guilt of Samaria,
and say, ‘As your god lives, O Dan,’
and, ‘As bthe Way of cBeersheba lives,’
they shall fall, and never rise again.”