1The Lord Yahweh showed me another vision. I saw a basket of summer fruit.
2He asked, 'Amos, what do you see?' I answered, 'A basket of summer fruit.' Then Yahweh said to me, 'The end has come for my people Israel. I will no longer overlook their sins.'
3“On that day, the temple songs will become painful cries,” says the Lord Yahweh. “There will be many dead bodies, thrown out everywhere in silence.”
4Listen to this, you who are eager to crush the poor and destroy the needy people of the land.
5You say, “When will the New Moon festival be over so we can sell grain? And when will the Sabbath be over so we can sell wheat? We will make the measuring basket smaller and the money weight heavier, and cheat with rigged scales.
6We will buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals, and even sell the leftover husks along with the wheat.”
7Yahweh has sworn by the pride of Jacob: “I will certainly never forget anything they have done.”
8“Won’t the land tremble because of this, and everyone living in it mourn? Yes, the whole land will rise up like the Nile River, then it will be stirred up and sink back down, just like the Nile of Egypt.
9“On that day,” says the Lord Yahweh, “I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in broad daylight.”
10“I will turn your celebrations into times of sadness, and all your songs into cries of grief. I will make you wear sackcloth and shave your heads. I will make it like mourning for an only son, and its end will be like a bitter day.”
11“Look, the days are coming,” says the Lord Yahweh, “when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing Yahweh’s words.”
12“They will wander from sea to sea, and from the north to the east; they will run back and forth searching for Yahweh’s word, but they will not find it.”
13“On that day, even the beautiful young women and strong young men will faint from thirst.”
14“Those who swear by the sin of Samaria, saying, ‘As your god, Dan, lives!’ and ‘As the way of Beersheba lives!’—they will fall and never rise again.”