Amos 7

⁴What the devouring locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; what the swarming locust has left, the young locust has eaten; and what the young locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten.

¹This is what the Lord God showed me: I saw a basket of summer fruit.

¹⁵There the fire will devour you; the sword will cut you down and consume you like a young locust. Make yourself many like the young locust; make yourself many like the swarming locust!

¹⁶You have multiplied your merchants more than the stars of the sky. The young locust strips the land and flies away.

⁴Your spoil, O nations, is gathered as by locusts; like a swarm of locusts men sweep over it.

²⁵I will repay you for the years eaten by locusts—the swarming locust, the young locust, the destroying locust, and the devouring locust—My great army that I sent against you.

⁹“I struck you with blight and mildew in your growing gardens and vineyards; the locust devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the Lord.

⁴Perhaps the Lord your God will hear the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to defy the living God, and He will rebuke him for the words that the Lord your God has heard. Therefore lift up a prayer for the remnant that still survives.”

¹³Now as I was prophesying, Pelatiah son of Benaiah died. Then I fell facedown and cried out in a loud voice, “Oh, Lord God, will You bring the remnant of Israel to a complete end?”

¹⁵They covered the face of all the land until it was black, and they consumed all the plants on the ground and all the fruit on the trees that the hail had left behind. Nothing green was left on any tree or plant in all the land of Egypt.

²⁰We acknowledge our wickedness, O Lord, the guilt of our fathers; indeed, we have sinned against You.

²¹For the sake of Your name do not despise us; do not disgrace Your glorious throne. Remember Your covenant with us; do not break it.

²Jeremiah the prophet and said, “May our petition come before you; pray to the Lord your God on behalf of this entire remnant. For few of us remain of the many, as you can see with your own eyes.

⁸While they were killing, I was left alone. And I fell facedown and cried out, “Oh, Lord God, when You pour out Your wrath on Jerusalem, will You destroy the entire remnant of Israel?”

³⁶For the Lord will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants when He sees that their strength is gone and no one remains, slave or free.

¹⁰When God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—He relented from the disaster He had threatened to bring upon them.

⁸How could I give you up, O Ephraim? How could I surrender you, O Israel? How could I make you like Admah? How could I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned within Me; My compassion is stirred!

⁴⁵And He remembered His covenant with them, and relented by the abundance of His loving devotion.

⁶So the Lord relented from this plan. “It will not happen either,” said the Lord God.

¹⁴Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him—grain and drink offerings for the Lord your God.

¹This is what the Lord God showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts just after the king’s harvest, as the late spring crop was coming up.

¹⁵For behold, the Lord will come with fire—His chariots are like a whirlwind—to execute His anger with fury and His rebuke with flames of fire.

¹⁶For by fire and by His sword, the Lord will execute judgment on all flesh, and many will be slain by the Lord.

¹¹“Some of you I overthrew as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the Lord.

⁷This is what He showed me: Behold, the Lord was standing by a wall true to plumb, with a plumb line in His hand.

²³So Moses stretched out his staff toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and lightning struck the earth. So the Lord rained down hail upon the land of Egypt.

²⁴The hail fell and the lightning continued flashing through it. The hail was so severe that nothing like it had ever been seen in all the land of Egypt from the time it became a nation.

¹After this I looked and saw a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had previously heard speak to me like a trumpet was saying, “Come up here, and I will show you what must happen after these things.”

⁴Restore us, O God of our salvation, and put away Your displeasure toward us.

²And when the locusts had eaten every green plant in the land, I said, “Lord God, please forgive! How will Jacob survive, since he is so small?”

³So the Lord relented from this plan. “It will not happen,” He said.

¹⁷Let the priests who minister before the Lord weep between the portico and the altar, saying, “Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not make Your heritage a reproach, an object of scorn among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

²⁵For in just a little while My fury against you will subside, and My anger will turn to their destruction.”

¹⁹Thanksgiving will proceed from them, a sound of celebration. I will multiply them, and they will not be decreased; I will honor them, and they will not be belittled.

⁹Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a few survivors, we would have become like Sodom, we would have resembled Gomorrah.

¹⁹Did Hezekiah king of Judah or anyone else in Judah put him to death? Did Hezekiah not fear the Lord and seek His favor, and did not the Lord relent of the disaster He had pronounced against them? But we are about to bring great harm on ourselves!”

³So the Lord relented from this plan. “It will not happen,” He said.

¹⁶So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the Lord, and He could no longer bear the misery of Israel.

²So he prayed to the Lord, saying, “O Lord, is this not what I said while I was still in my own country? This is why I was so quick to flee toward Tarshish. I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion—One who relents from sending disaster.

¹⁴For the Lord will vindicate His people and will have compassion on His servants.

¹⁰When God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—He relented from the disaster He had threatened to bring upon them.

¹³I will stretch out over Jerusalem the measuring line used against Samaria and the plumb line used against the house of Ahab, and I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes out a bowl—wiping it and turning it upside down.

¹⁷I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the level. Hail will sweep away your refuge of lies, and water will flood your hiding place.

¹⁵The angel who spoke with me had a golden measuring rod to measure the city and its gates and walls.

¹Then I lifted up my eyes and saw a man with a measuring line in his hand.

²“Where are you going?” I asked. “To measure Jerusalem,” he replied, “and to determine its width and length.”

¹Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, and count the number of worshipers there.

¹¹The desert owl and screech owl will possess it, and the great owl and raven will dwell in it. The Lord will stretch out over Edom a measuring line of chaos and a plumb line of destruction.

²“Amos, what do you see?” He asked. “A basket of summer fruit,” I replied. So the Lord said to me, “The end has come for My people Israel; I will no longer spare them.”

⁸The Lord determined to destroy the wall of the Daughter of Zion. He stretched out a measuring line and did not withdraw His hand from destroying. He made the ramparts and walls lament; together they waste away.

⁶You have forsaken Me, declares the Lord. You have turned your back. So I will stretch out My hand against you and I will destroy you; I am weary of showing compassion.

²“O son of man, this is what the Lord God says to the land of Israel: ‘The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land.

³The end is now upon you, and I will unleash My anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways and repay you for all your abominations.

¹⁷I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the level. Hail will sweep away your refuge of lies, and water will flood your hiding place.

¹⁸Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance—who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in loving devotion?

⁸In the thirty-eighth year of Azariah’s reign over Judah, Zechariah son of Jeroboam became king of Israel, and he reigned in Samaria six months.

⁹And he did evil in the sight of the Lord, as his fathers had done. He did not turn away from the sins that Jeroboam son of Nebat had caused Israel to commit.

¹So Israel set out with all that he had, and when he came to Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.

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.

¹⁸For a short while Your people possessed Your holy place, but our enemies have trampled Your sanctuary.

¹⁴Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’ or, ‘As surely as the way of Beersheba lives’—they will fall, never to rise again.”

³⁰I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and heap your lifeless bodies on the lifeless remains of your idols; and My soul will despise you.

³¹I will reduce your cities to rubble and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will refuse to smell the pleasing aroma of your sacrifices.

⁴Then the officials said to the king, “This man ought to die, for he is discouraging the warriors who remain in this city, as well as all the people, by speaking such words to them; this man is not seeking the well-being of these people, but their ruin.”

³¹Jeroboam also built shrines on the high places and appointed from every class of people priests who were not Levites.

³²And Jeroboam ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the feast that was in Judah, and he offered sacrifices on the altar; he made this offering in Bethel to sacrifice to the calves he had set up, and he installed priests in Bethel for the high places he had set up.

⁸and as soon as he had finished telling all the people everything the Lord had commanded him to say, the priests and prophets and all the people seized him, shouting, “You must surely die!

⁹How dare you prophesy in the name of the Lord that this house will become like Shiloh and this city will be desolate and deserted!” And all the people assembled against Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.

²³When Jesus returned to the temple courts and began to teach, the chief priests and elders of the people came up to Him. “By what authority are You doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave You this authority?”

⁵We have found this man to be a pestilence, stirring up dissension among the Jews all over the world. He is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes,

²And they began to accuse Him, saying, “We found this man subverting our nation, forbidding payment of taxes to Caesar, and proclaiming Himself to be Christ, a King.”

⁷Therefore, you will now go into exile as the first of the captives, and your feasting and lounging will come to an end.

⁸The Lord God has sworn by Himself—the Lord, the God of Hosts, has declared: “I abhor Jacob’s pride and detest his citadels, so I will deliver up the city and everything in it.”

⁶In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried away the Israelites to Assyria, where he settled them in Halah, in Gozan by the Habor River, and in the cities of the Medes.

⁵All day long they twist my words; all their thoughts are on my demise.

⁹The high places of Isaac will be deserted, and the sanctuaries of Israel will be laid waste; and I will rise up against the house of Jeroboam with My sword.”

¹⁴For we have heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs that Moses handed down to us.”

⁶¹and declared, “This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.’”

¹⁴The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

³⁴Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw Him, they begged Him to leave their region.

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.

⁹(Formerly in Israel, a man on his way to inquire of God would say, “Come, let us go to the seer.” For the prophet of today was formerly called the seer.)

¹⁸For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.

³⁹They came to appease them and led them out, requesting that they leave the city.

³²And Jeroboam ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the feast that was in Judah, and he offered sacrifices on the altar; he made this offering in Bethel to sacrifice to the calves he had set up, and he installed priests in Bethel for the high places he had set up.

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

²⁹One calf he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.

¹Suddenly, as Jeroboam was standing beside the altar to burn incense, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord.

⁴⁰At this, they yielded to Gamaliel. They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and released them.

²⁸“We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us responsible for this man’s blood.”

¹These are the words of Amos, who was among the sheepherders of Tekoa—what he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, in the days when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.

⁵He will say, ‘I am not a prophet; I work the land, for I was purchased as a servant in my youth.’

³⁸When Elisha returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land. As the sons of the prophets were sitting at his feet, he said to his attendant, “Put on the large pot and boil some stew for the sons of the prophets.”

⁵Then the sons of the prophets at Jericho came up 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.”

²⁷But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

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.”

⁸Now then, you are to tell My servant David that this is what the Lord of Hosts says: I took you from the pasture, from following the flock, to be the ruler over My people Israel.

³“Son of man,” He said to me, “I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against Me. To this very day they and their fathers have rebelled against Me.

⁴They are obstinate and stubborn children. I am sending you to them, and you are to say to them, ‘This is what the Lord God says.’

⁷But the Lord told me: “Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ For to everyone I send you, you must go, and all that I command you, you must speak.

⁷⁰He chose David His servant and took him from the sheepfolds;

⁷¹from tending the ewes He brought him to be shepherd of His people Jacob, of Israel His inheritance.

⁹As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax booth. “Follow Me,” He told him, and Matthew got up and followed Him.

²⁰“Go, stand in the temple courts and tell the people the full message of this new life.”

⁴⁶“Son of man, set your face toward the south, preach against it, and prophesy against the forest of the Negev.

²“Son of man, set your face against Jerusalem and preach against the sanctuaries. Prophesy against the land of Israel

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

¹⁵Then the prophet Jeremiah said to the prophet Hananiah, “Listen, Hananiah! The Lord did not send you, but you have persuaded this people to trust in a lie.

¹⁶Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. You will die this year because you have preached rebellion against the Lord.’”

²Let my teaching fall like rain and my speech settle like dew, like gentle rain on new grass, like showers on tender plants.

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

³They will not remain in the land of the Lord; Ephraim will return to Egypt and eat unclean food in Assyria.

⁶In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried away the Israelites to Assyria, where he settled them in Halah, in Gozan by the Habor River, and in the cities of the Medes.

¹³Then the Lord said, “This is how the Israelites will eat their defiled bread among the nations to which I will banish them.”

¹⁶Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. You will die this year because you have preached rebellion against the Lord.’”

¹³They sacrifice on the mountaintops and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is pleasant. And so your daughters turn to prostitution and your daughters-in-law to adultery.

¹⁴I will not punish your daughters when they prostitute themselves, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery. For the men themselves go off with prostitutes and offer sacrifices with shrine prostitutes. So a people without understanding will come to ruin.

¹¹for this is what Amos has said: ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will surely go into exile, away from their homeland.’”