Amos Chapter 8
During a time of prosperity, this prophet from Judah preached to Israel's rich leaders about God's judgment, he insisted that they think of the poor and oppressed, before thinking of their own satisfaction.
A Conservative Version
8 : 1 Thus the lord Jehovah showed me: And, behold, a basket of summer fruit.
8 : 2 And he said, Amos, what do thou see? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then Jehovah said to me, The end has come upon my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more.
8 : 3 And the songs of the temple shall be wailings in that day, says the lord Jehovah. The dead bodies shall be many. In every place they shall cast them forth with silence.
8 : 4 Hear this, O ye who would swallow up a needy man, and cause the poor of the land to fail,
8 : 5 saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? And the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit,
8 : 6 that we may buy the poor for silver, and a needy man for a pair of shoes, and sell the refuse of the wheat?
8 : 7 Jehovah has sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.
8 : 8 Shall the land not tremble for this, and everyone mourn who dwells therein? Yea, it shall rise up wholly like the River, and it shall be troubled and sink again like the River of Egypt.
8 : 9 And it shall come to pass in that day, says the lord Jehovah, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.
8 : 10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation. And I will bring sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head, and I will make it as the mourning for an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.
8 : 11 Behold, the days come, says the lord Jehovah, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah.
8 : 12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of Jehovah, and shall not find it.
8 : 13 In that day the fair virgins and the young men shall faint for thirst.
8 : 14 Those who swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, As thy god, O Dan, lives, and, As the way of Beersheba lives, they shall fall, and never rise up again.