Amos 2

⁸“I have heard the reproach of Moab and the insults of the Ammonites, who have taunted My people and threatened their borders.

⁹Therefore, as surely as I live,” declares the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, “surely Moab will be like Sodom and the Ammonites like Gomorrah—a place of weeds and salt pits, a perpetual wasteland. The remnant of My people will plunder them; the remainder of My nation will dispossess them.”

³This is what the Lord says: “For three transgressions of Damascus, even four, I will not revoke My judgment, because they threshed Gilead with sledges of iron.

⁸This is what the Lord God says: ‘Because Moab and Seir said, “Look, the house of Judah is like all the other nations,”

⁹therefore I will indeed expose the flank of Moab beginning with its frontier cities—Beth-jeshimoth, Baal-meon, and Kiriathaim—the glory of the land.

¹Concerning Moab, this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “Woe to Nebo, for it will be devastated. Kiriathaim will be captured and disgraced; the fortress will be shattered and dismantled.

²There is no longer praise for Moab; in Heshbon they devise evil against her: ‘Come, let us cut her off from nationhood.’ You too, O people of Madmen, will be silenced; the sword will pursue you.

¹⁰For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain. But Moab will be trampled in his place as straw is trodden into the dung pile.

¹This is the burden against Moab: Ar in Moab is ruined, destroyed in a night! Kir in Moab is devastated, destroyed in a night!

²Dibon goes up to its temple to weep at its high places. Moab wails over Nebo, as well as over Medeba. Every head is shaved, every beard is cut off.

⁴¹Kirioth has been taken, and the strongholds seized. In that day the heart of Moab’s warriors will be like the heart of a woman in labor.

²⁴upon Kerioth, Bozrah, and all the towns of Moab, those far and near.

¹⁴So I will kindle a fire in the walls of Rabbah to consume its citadels amid war cries on the day of battle and a violent wind on the day of tempest.

⁵For every trampling boot of battle and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.

³⁴There is a cry from Heshbon to Elealeh; they raise their voices to Jahaz, from Zoar to Horonaim and Eglath-shelishiyah; for even the waters of Nimrim have dried up.

⁷Because you trust in your works and treasures, you too will be captured, and Chemosh will go into exile with his priests and officials.

¹⁷I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come forth from Jacob, and a scepter will arise from Israel. He will crush the skulls of Moab and strike down all the sons of Sheth.

²⁵The horn of Moab has been cut off, and his arm is broken,” declares the Lord.

²³He brings the princes to nothing and makes the rulers of the earth meaningless.

¹⁰Therefore be wise, O kings; be admonished, O judges of the earth.

²⁴For they did not practice My ordinances, but they rejected My statutes and profaned My Sabbaths, fixing their eyes on the idols of their fathers.

¹⁶because they kept rejecting My ordinances, refusing to walk in My statutes, and profaning My Sabbaths; for their hearts continually went after their idols.

¹³Yet the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness. They did not follow My statutes and they rejected My ordinances—though the man who does these things will live by them—and they utterly profaned My Sabbaths. Then I resolved to pour out My wrath upon them and put an end to them in the wilderness.

²The Lord has a charge to bring against Judah. He will punish Jacob according to his ways and repay him according to his deeds.

¹⁸What use is an idol, that a craftsman should carve it—or an image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak.

¹⁵For you said, “We have made a covenant with death; we have fashioned an agreement with Sheol. When the overwhelming scourge passes through it will not touch us, because we have made lies our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.”

¹⁴Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces; Judah has multiplied its fortified cities. But I will send fire upon their cities, and it will consume their citadels.

²⁷But if you do not listen to Me to keep the Sabbath day holy by not carrying a load while entering the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle an unquenchable fire in its gates to consume the citadels of Jerusalem.’”

¹⁰For I have set My face against this city to bring disaster and not good, declares the Lord. It will be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, who will destroy it with fire.’

¹³He burned down the house of the Lord, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem—every significant building.

⁸Then the Chaldeans will return and fight against this city. They will capture it and burn it down.

⁹This is what the Lord says: Do not deceive yourselves by saying, ‘The Chaldeans will go away for good,’ for they will not!

⁸The Chaldeans set fire to the palace of the king and to the houses of the people, and they broke down the walls of Jerusalem.

³They cast lots for My people; they bartered a boy for a prostitute and sold a girl for wine to drink.

¹¹Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact from him a tax of grain, you will never live in the stone houses you have built; you will never drink the wine from the lush vineyards you have planted.

¹²For I know that your transgressions are many and your sins are numerous. You oppress the righteous by taking bribes; you deprive the poor of justice in the gate.

²You hate good and love evil. You tear the skin from my people and strip the flesh from their bones.

³You eat the flesh of my people after stripping off their skin and breaking their bones. You chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron.”

⁴Hear this, you who trample the needy, who do away with the poor of the land,

⁵asking, “When will the New Moon be over, that we may sell grain? When will the Sabbath end, that we may market wheat? Let us reduce the ephah and increase the shekel; let us cheat with dishonest scales.

⁵Oholah prostituted herself while she was still Mine. She lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians—warriors

⁶clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all desirable young men, horsemen mounted on steeds.

²¹those who indict a man with a word, who ensnare the mediator at the gate, and who with false charges deprive the innocent of justice.

¹²For I know that your transgressions are many and your sins are numerous. You oppress the righteous by taking bribes; you deprive the poor of justice in the gate.

¹¹One man commits an abomination with his neighbor’s wife; another wickedly defiles his daughter-in-law; and yet another violates his sister, his own father’s daughter.

²to deprive the poor of fair treatment and withhold justice from the oppressed of My people, to make widows their prey and orphans their plunder.

⁹You drive the women of My people from their pleasant homes. You take away My blessing from their children forever.

²They covet fields and seize them; they take away houses. They deprive a man of his home, a fellow man of his inheritance.

¹It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is intolerable even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife.

¹²If he is a poor man, you must not go to sleep with the security in your possession;

¹³be sure to return it to him by sunset, so that he may sleep in his own cloak and bless you, and this will be credited to you as righteousness before the Lord your God.

²⁶If you take your neighbor’s cloak as collateral, return it to him by sunset,

²⁷because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? And if he cries out to Me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

⁶You drink wine by the bowlful and anoint yourselves with the finest oils, but you fail to grieve over the ruin of Joseph.

⁸They feed on the sins of My people and set their hearts on iniquity.

¹⁰For if someone with a weak conscience sees you who are well informed eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged to eat food sacrificed to idols?

⁴You lie on beds inlaid with ivory, and lounge upon your couches. You dine on lambs from the flock and calves from the stall.

¹“For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble; the day is coming when I will set them ablaze,” says the Lord of Hosts. “Not a root or branch will be left to them.”

¹⁶The roots beneath him dry up, and the branches above him wither away.

¹¹Observe what I command you this day. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

²⁸Nevertheless, the people living in the land are strong, and the cities are large and fortified. We even saw the descendants of Anak there.

²⁹The Amalekites live in the land of the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the sea and along the Jordan.”

¹⁶In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

¹¹(For only Og king of Bashan had remained of the remnant of the Rephaim. His bed of iron, nine cubits long and four cubits wide, is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.)

⁷Indeed, the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast wilderness. The Lord your God has been with you these forty years, and you have lacked nothing.

⁵¹And on that very day the Lord brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt by their divisions.

⁴²But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘Did you bring Me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

¹Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt:

¹⁸He endured their conduct for about forty years in the wilderness.

⁸I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

²“Speak to the Israelites and tell them that if a man or woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the Lord,

³he is to abstain from wine and strong drink. He must not drink vinegar made from wine or strong drink, and he must not drink any grape juice or eat fresh grapes or raisins.

²⁵From the day your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent you all My servants the prophets again and again.

¹³Meanwhile a prophet approached Ahab king of Israel and declared, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Do you see this entire great army? Behold, I will deliver it into your hand this very day, and you will know that I am the Lord.’”

¹⁸I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put My words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him.

¹Now the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, “Please take note that the place where we meet with you is too small for us.

²and Elijah said to Elisha, “Please stay here, for the Lord has sent me on to Bethel.” But Elisha replied, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel.

³Then the sons of the prophets at Bethel came out to Elisha and said, “Do you know that the Lord will take your master away from you today?” “Yes, I know,” he replied. “Do not speak of it.”

¹⁰They say to the seers, “Stop seeing visions!” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us the truth! Speak to us pleasant words; prophesy illusions.

¹³But never prophesy at Bethel again, because it is the sanctuary of the king and the temple of the kingdom.”

⁶“Do not preach,” they preach. “Do not preach these things; disgrace will not overtake us.”

²¹Therefore this is what the Lord says concerning the people of Anathoth who are seeking your life and saying, “You must not prophesy in the name of the Lord, or you will die by our hand.”

¹⁶Now, therefore, hear the word of the Lord. You say: ‘Do not prophesy against Israel; do not preach against the house of Isaac.’

¹⁴I hate your New Moons and your appointed feasts. They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them.

¹³Then Isaiah said, “Hear now, O house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you try the patience of my God as well?

¹⁷You have wearied the Lord with your words; yet you ask, “How have we wearied Him?” By saying, “All who do evil are good in the sight of the Lord, and in them He delights,” or, “Where is the God of justice?”

²⁴You have not bought Me sweet cane with your silver, nor satisfied Me with the fat of your sacrifices. But you have burdened Me with your sins; you have wearied Me with your iniquities.

⁴³Because you did not remember the days of your youth, but enraged Me with all these things, I will surely bring your deeds down upon your own head, declares the Lord God. Have you not committed this lewdness on top of all your other abominations?

⁹Then in the nations to which they have been carried captive, your survivors will remember Me—how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts that turned away from Me, and by their eyes that lusted after idols. So they will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their abominations.

²³This is what the Lord says: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the wealthy man in his riches.

¹¹I saw something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; neither is the bread to the wise, nor the wealth to the intelligent, nor the favor to the skillful. For time and chance happen to all.

¹⁶No king is saved by his vast army; no warrior is delivered by his great strength.

¹I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and He said: “Strike the tops of the pillars so that the thresholds shake. Topple them on the heads of all the people, and I will kill the rest with the sword. None of those who flee will get away; none of the fugitives will escape.

²Though they dig down to Sheol, from there My hand will take them; and though they climb up to heaven, from there I will pull them down.

²⁰But the eyes of the wicked will fail, and escape will elude them; they will hope for their last breath.”

¹⁶“No,” you say, “we will flee on horses.” Therefore you will flee! “We will ride swift horses,” but your pursuers will be faster.

¹⁷A thousand will flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you will all flee, until you are left alone like a pole on a mountaintop, like a banner on a hill.

¹⁶No king is saved by his vast army; no warrior is delivered by his great strength.

¹⁷A horse is a vain hope for salvation; even its great strength cannot save.

³Then I will strike the bow from your left hand and dash down the arrows from your right hand.

⁵²but he pulled free of the linen cloth and ran away naked.

⁴¹Kirioth has been taken, and the strongholds seized. In that day the heart of Moab’s warriors will be like the heart of a woman in labor.

¹⁷Meanwhile, Sisera had fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there was peace between Jabin king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite.

⁸When the lepers reached the edge of the camp, they went into a tent to eat and drink. Then they carried off the silver, gold, and clothing, and went and hid them. On returning, they entered another tent, carried off some items from there, and hid them.

⁹Finally, they said to one another, “We are not doing what is right. Today is a day of good news. If we are silent and wait until morning light, our sin will overtake us. Now, therefore, let us go and tell the king’s household.”