Amos 3

¹⁰And I brought you up from the land of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness, that you might take possession of the land of the Amorite.

¹Then I said: “Hear now, O leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel. Should you not know justice?

³And wherever I have banished them, the remnant of this evil family will choose death over life,” declares the Lord of Hosts.

¹“At that time,” declares the Lord, “I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they will be My people.”

¹Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel, for the Lord has a case against the people of the land: “There is no truth, no loving devotion, and no knowledge of God in the land!

¹⁵And he said, “Listen, all you people of Judah and Jerusalem! Listen, King Jehoshaphat! This is what the Lord says: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army, for the battle does not belong to you, but to God.

⁶For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His prized possession out of all peoples on the face of the earth.

⁵Now if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you will be My treasured possession out of all the nations—for the whole earth is Mine.

⁶And unto Me you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you are to speak to the Israelites.”

¹⁵Yet the Lord has set His affection on your fathers and loved them. And He has chosen you, their descendants after them, above all the peoples, even to this day.

¹⁷For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who disobey the gospel of God?

¹⁷And should any of the families of the earth not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, then the rain will not fall on them.

¹⁸And if the people of Egypt will not go up and enter in, then the rain will not fall on them; this will be the plague with which the Lord strikes the nations who do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

¹⁰This is what the Lord says about this people: “Truly they love to wander; they have not restrained their feet. So the Lord does not accept them; He will now remember their iniquity and punish them for their sins.”

¹⁴Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership can righteousness have with wickedness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

¹⁵What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?

¹When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty. Walk before Me and be blameless.

²²And after he had become the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters.

⁹This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.

¹⁰They will walk after the Lord; He will roar like a lion. When He roars, His children will come trembling from the west.

²¹The young lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God.

²He said: “The Lord roars from Zion and raises His voice from Jerusalem; the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the summit of Carmel withers.”

¹⁴For I am like a lion to Ephraim and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear them to pieces and then go away. I will carry them off where no one can rescue them.

⁸The lion has roared—who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken—who will not prophesy?

¹²For surely no man knows his time: Like fish caught in a cruel net or birds trapped in a snare, so men are ensnared in an evil time that suddenly falls upon them.

²⁸Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, to demolish, destroy, and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” declares the Lord.

¹⁴Therefore the Lord has kept the calamity in store and brought it upon us. For the Lord our God is righteous in all He does; yet we have not obeyed His voice.

⁷I form the light and create the darkness; I bring prosperity and create calamity. I, the Lord, do all these things.

¹⁶a day of horn blast and battle cry against the fortified cities, and against the high corner towers.

²⁴The Lord of Hosts has sworn: “Surely, as I have planned, so will it be; as I have purposed, so will it stand.

²⁵I will break Assyria in My land; I will trample him on My mountain. His yoke will be taken off My people, and his burden removed from their shoulders.”

¹¹Therefore, since we know what it means to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is clear to God, and I hope it is clear to your conscience as well.

²⁰As for you, what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good, in order to accomplish a day like this—to preserve the lives of many people.

⁷Who would not fear You, O King of nations? This is Your due. For among all the wise men of the nations, and in all their kingdoms, there is none like You.

¹⁵No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because everything I have learned from My Father I have made known to you.

¹⁷And the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?

¹⁴The Lord confides in those who fear Him, and reveals His covenant to them.

¹This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants what must soon come to pass. He made it known by sending His angel to His servant John,

²²He instructed me and spoke with me, saying: “O Daniel, I have come now to give you insight and understanding.

²³At the beginning of your petitions, an answer went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are highly precious. So consider the message and understand the vision:

¹³Then God said to Noah, “The end of all living creatures has come before Me, because through them the earth is full of violence. Now behold, I will destroy both them and the earth.

⁹If I say, “I will not mention Him or speak any more in His name,” His message becomes a fire burning in my heart, shut up in my bones, and I become weary of holding it in, and I cannot prevail.

⁴Does a lion roar in the forest when he has no prey? Does a young lion growl in his den if he has caught nothing?

²⁰For we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

²He said: “The Lord roars from Zion and raises His voice from Jerusalem; the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the summit of Carmel withers.”

¹²“But you made the Nazirites drink wine and commanded the prophets not to prophesy.

¹²And Amaziah said to Amos, “Go away, you seer! Flee to the land of Judah; earn your bread there and do your prophesying there.

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

¹Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy, who say to your husbands, “Bring us more to drink.”

¹Woe to those at ease in Zion and those secure on Mount Samaria, the distinguished ones of the foremost nation, to whom the house of Israel comes.

⁸I will cut off the ruler of Ashdod and the one who wields the scepter in Ashkelon. I will turn My hand against Ekron, and the remnant of the Philistines will perish,” says the Lord God.

¹After the Philistines had captured the ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod,

⁶Let us buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the chaff with the wheat!”

⁸And many nations will pass by this city and ask one another, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this great city?’

⁹Then people will reply, ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God and have worshiped and served other gods.’”

⁹On that day I will punish all who leap over the threshold, who fill the house of their master with violence and deceit.

²²“For My people are fools; they have not known Me. They are foolish children, without understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but they know not how to do good.”

⁴Will the workers of iniquity never learn? They devour my people like bread; they refuse to call upon the Lord.

³Then he told me, “This is the curse that is going out over the face of all the land, for according to one side of the scroll, every thief will be removed; and according to the other side, every perjurer will be removed.

⁴I will send it out, declares the Lord of Hosts, and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of him who swears falsely by My name. It will remain inside his house and destroy it, down to its timbers and stones.”

⁸Because you have plundered many nations, the remnant of the people will plunder you—because of your bloodshed against man and your violence against the land, the city, and all their dwellers.

⁹Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain, to place his nest on high and escape the hand of disaster!

⁵But they deliberately overlook the fact that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water,

⁹In the fourth year of Hezekiah’s reign, which was the seventh year of the reign of Hoshea son of Elah over Israel, Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against Samaria and besieged it.

¹⁰And at the end of three years, the Assyrians captured it. So Samaria was captured in the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel.

¹⁴For behold, I will raise up a nation against you, O house of Israel,” declares the Lord, the God of Hosts, “and they will oppress you from Lebo-hamath to the Brook of the Arabah.”

⁵So I will send fire upon Judah to consume the citadels of Jerusalem.”

³Shalmaneser king of Assyria attacked him, and Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute.

⁴But the king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea had conspired to send envoys to King So of Egypt, and that he had not paid tribute to the king of Assyria as in previous years. Therefore the king of Assyria arrested Hoshea and put him in prison.

¹⁹Then Pul king of Assyria invaded the land, and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver in order to gain his support and strengthen his own grip on the kingdom.

⁷the Lord will surely bring against them the mighty floodwaters of the Euphrates—the king of Assyria and all his pomp. It will overflow its channels and overrun its banks.

⁸It will pour into Judah, swirling and sweeping over it, reaching up to the neck; its spreading streams will cover your entire land, O Immanuel!

³⁴David replied, “Your servant has been tending his father’s sheep, and whenever a lion or a bear came and carried off a lamb from the flock,

³⁵I went after it, struck it down, and delivered the lamb from its mouth. If it reared up against me, I would grab it by its fur, strike it down, and kill it.

⁴And what was the divine reply to him? “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”

⁵In the same way, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.

⁴For this is what the Lord has said to me: “Like a lion roaring or a young lion over its prey—and though a band of shepherds is called out against it, it is not terrified by their shouting or subdued by their clamor—so the Lord of Hosts will come down to do battle on Mount Zion and its heights.

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.

³Though they hide themselves atop Carmel, there I will track them and seize them; and though they hide from Me at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent to bite them.

⁹So the king of Assyria responded to him, marched up to Damascus, and captured it. He took its people to Kir as captives and put Rezin to death.

³⁰The rest of them fled into the city of Aphek, where the wall fell on twenty-seven thousand of the remaining men. Ben-hadad also fled to the city and hid in an inner room.

¹⁷So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.

²¹testifying to Jews and Greeks alike about repentance to God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

²⁴Therefore the Lord God of Hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, declares: “Ah, I will be relieved of My foes and avenge Myself on My enemies.

²⁷Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is the God of Hosts.

⁴⁰With many other words he testified, and he urged them, “Be saved from this corrupt generation.”

⁷But speak My words to them, whether they listen or refuse to listen, for they are rebellious.

¹⁵He even pulled down the altar at Bethel, the high place set up by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin. Then he burned the high place, ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole.

⁵The people of Samaria will fear for the calf of Beth-aven. Indeed, its people will mourn over it with its idolatrous priests—those who rejoiced in its glory—for it has been taken from them into exile.

⁶Yes, it will be carried to Assyria as tribute to the great king. Ephraim will be seized with shame; Israel will be ashamed of its wooden idols.

¹⁴the roar of battle will rise against your people, so that all your fortresses will be demolished as Shalman devastated Beth-arbel in the day of battle, when mothers were dashed to pieces along with their children.

¹⁵Thus it will be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great wickedness. When the day dawns, the king of Israel will be utterly cut off.

⁶Josiah did the same in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Simeon, as far as Naphtali, and in the ruins around them.

⁷He tore down the altars and Asherah poles, crushed the idols to powder, and cut to pieces all the incense altars throughout the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem.

⁵Do not seek Bethel or go to Gilgal; do not journey to Beersheba, for Gilgal will surely go into exile, and Bethel will come to nothing.

⁶Seek the Lord and live, or He will sweep like fire through the house of Joseph; it will devour everything, with no one at Bethel to extinguish it.

¹When all this had ended, the Israelites in attendance went out to the cities of Judah and broke up the sacred pillars, chopped down the Asherah poles, and tore down the high places and altars throughout Judah and Benjamin, as well as in Ephraim and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all. Then all the Israelites returned to their cities, each to his own property.

³⁹As for the rest of the acts of Ahab, along with all his accomplishments and the ivory palace and all the cities he built, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

²²Since it was the ninth month, the king was sitting in his winter quarters with a fire burning before him.

¹¹For the Lord gives a command: “The great house will be smashed to pieces, and the small house to rubble.”

²⁰Then Ehud approached him while he was sitting alone in the coolness of his upper room. “I have a word from God for you,” Ehud said, and the king rose from his seat.

⁹I heard the Lord of Hosts declare: “Surely many houses will become desolate, great mansions left unoccupied.

⁸All your garments are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia; from palaces of ivory the harps make you glad.