Amos 8

1This is what the Lord GOD showed me: a basket of summer fruit. 2He asked, “What do you see, Amos?” I answered, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the LORD said to me, “The end has come upon my people Israel. Never again will I pass them by. 3On that day the songs of the temple will turn to wailing, declares the Lord GOD. There will be many dead bodies, thrown out everywhere. Hush!”

4Hear this, you who trample on the needy and would wipe out the poor of the land, 5who say, “When will the new moon festival be over, so that we can sell grain? When will the sabbath end, so that we can put out wheat for sale, making the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier, and cheating with dishonest scales, 6so that we can purchase the poor with silver and the needy for the price of a pair of sandals, and even sell the sweepings with the wheat?” 7The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Never will I forget anything they have done. 8Will not the land shake because of this, and all who live in it mourn? All of it will rise like the Nile; it will heave and sink again like the Nile of Egypt.

9On that day, declares the Lord GOD, I will make the sun set at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. 10I will turn your festivals into mourning and all your songs into laments; I will put sackcloth around every waist and make every head bald. I will make that time like mourning for an only son, and its end a bitter day. 11The days are coming, declares the Lord GOD, when I am going to send famine through the land: not hunger for bread or thirst for water, but for hearing the words of the LORD. 12People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east; they will run back and forth, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it. 13On that day the beautiful young women and the young men will faint from thirst. 14Those who swear by Samaria’s guilt and say, “As surely as your god lives, Dan,” or, “As surely as the way of Beersheba lives,” will fall and never rise again.