Amos 9

²¹Surely God will crush the heads of His enemies, the hairy crowns of those who persist in guilty ways.

¹⁴On the day I punish Israel for their transgressions, I will visit destruction on the altars of Bethel; the horns of the altar will be cut off, and they will fall to the ground.

¹⁸No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.

¹⁷When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. But He placed His right hand on me and said, “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last,

¹In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted; and the train of His robe filled the temple.

³And they were calling out to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; all the earth is full of His glory.”

⁴At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke.

⁵³Even if Babylon ascends to the heavens and fortifies her lofty stronghold, the destroyers I send will come against her,” declares the Lord.

⁷Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?

⁸If I ascend to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there.

⁴Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars, even from there I will bring you down,” declares the Lord.

¹⁸So He told them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

¹³You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every kind of precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald. Your mountings and settings were crafted in gold, prepared on the day of your creation.

¹⁴You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for I had ordained you. You were on the holy mountain of God; you walked among the fiery stones.

¹³You said in your heart: “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount of assembly, in the far reaches of the north.

¹⁴I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

¹⁶But for now I will send for many fishermen, declares the Lord, and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill, even from the clefts of the rocks.

²³“Am I only a God nearby,” declares the Lord, “and not a God far away?”

²⁴“Can a man hide in secret places where I cannot see him?” declares the Lord. “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” declares the Lord.

²²There is no darkness or deep shadow where the workers of iniquity can hide.

¹In that day the Lord will take His sharp, great, and mighty sword, and bring judgment on Leviathan the fleeing serpent—Leviathan the coiling serpent—and He will slay the dragon of the sea.

⁹If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle by the farthest sea,

¹⁰even there Your hand will guide me; Your right hand will hold me fast.

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.”

³³But I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes desolate and your cities are laid waste.

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.’

¹¹Therefore this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: I will set My face to bring disaster and to cut off all Judah.

¹²A third of your people will die by plague or be consumed by famine within you, a third will fall by the sword outside your walls, and a third I will scatter to every wind and unleash a sword behind them.

¹⁰If anyone from the house of Israel or a foreigner living among them eats any blood, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from among his people.

⁶³Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and multiply, so also it will please Him to annihilate you and destroy you. And you will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.

⁶⁴Then the Lord will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.

⁸Will not the land quake for this, and all its dwellers mourn? All of it will swell like the Nile; it will surge and then subside like the Nile in Egypt.

⁶Nations rage, kingdoms crumble; the earth melts when He lifts His voice.

³For behold, the Lord comes forth from His dwelling place; He will come down and tread on the high places of the earth.

⁴The mountains will melt beneath Him, and the valleys will split apart, like wax before the fire, like water rushing down a slope.

¹If only You would rend the heavens and come down, so that mountains would quake at Your presence,

¹¹Then I saw a great white throne and the One seated on it. Earth and heaven fled from His presence, and no place was found for them.

³The floodwaters have risen, O Lord; the rivers have raised their voice; the seas lift up their pounding waves.

⁴Above the roar of many waters—the mighty breakers of the sea—the Lord on high is majestic.

⁸He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns darkness into dawn and darkens day into night, who summons the waters of the sea and pours them over the face of the earth—the Lord is His name—

³laying the beams of His chambers in the waters above, making the clouds His chariot, walking on the wings of the wind.

¹³For behold, He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind and reveals His thoughts to man, who turns the dawn to darkness and strides on the heights of the earth—the Lord, the God of Hosts, is His name.”

¹³He waters the mountains from His chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of His works.

²²Do you not fear Me?” declares the Lord. “Do you not tremble before Me, the One who set the sand as the boundary for the sea, an enduring barrier it cannot cross? The waves surge, but they cannot prevail. They roar but cannot cross it.

¹¹In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.

¹²And the rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.

⁴For the day has come to destroy all the Philistines, to cut off from Tyre and Sidon every remaining ally. Indeed, the Lord is about to destroy the Philistines, the remnant from the coasts of Caphtor.

²³And the Avvim, who lived in villages as far as Gaza, were destroyed by the Caphtorites, who came out of Caphtor and settled in their place.)

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.

⁵I will break down the gates of Damascus; I will cut off the ruler from the Valley of Aven and the one who wields the scepter in Beth-eden. The people of Aram will be exiled to Kir,” says the Lord.

²³Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Neither are you able to do good—you who are accustomed to doing evil.

²⁵“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh—

²⁶Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and all the inhabitants of the desert who clip the hair of their temples. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.”

¹¹For I am with you to save you, declares the Lord. Though I will completely destroy all the nations to which I have scattered you, I will not completely destroy you. Yet I will discipline you justly, and will by no means leave you unpunished.”

⁴Though they are driven by their enemies into captivity, there I will command the sword to slay them. I will fix My eyes upon them for harm and not for good.”

²⁷I am watching over them for harm and not for good, and every man of Judah who is in the land of Egypt will meet his end by sword or famine, until they are finished off.

¹⁰Go up through her vineyards and ravage them, but do not finish them off. Strip off her branches, for they do not belong to the Lord.

²¹For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and the Lord examines all his paths.

³The eyes of the Lord are in every place, observing the evil and the good.

³¹Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you like wheat.

⁶⁴Then the Lord will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.

³³But I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes desolate and your cities are laid waste.

²⁸His breath is like a rushing torrent that rises to the neck. He comes to sift the nations in a sieve of destruction; He bridles the jaws of the peoples to lead them astray.

³You dismiss the day of calamity and bring near a reign of violence.

¹⁴The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling grips the ungodly: “Who of us can dwell with a consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting flames?”

⁴⁹So will it be at the end of the age: The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous

⁵⁰and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

¹⁰The axe lies ready at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

¹¹I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me will come One more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

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.

²But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He will be like a refiner’s fire, like a launderer’s soap.

³And He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver. Then they will present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.

¹⁵The words of the prophets agree with this, as it is written:

¹⁶‘After this I will return and rebuild the fallen tent of David. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it,

¹⁴Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the gracious promise that I have spoken to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

¹⁵In those days and at that time I will cause to sprout for David a righteous Branch, and He will administer justice and righteousness in the land.

⁵in loving devotion a throne will be established in the tent of David. A judge seeking justice and hastening righteousness will sit on it in faithfulness.

⁵Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and He will reign wisely as King and will administer justice and righteousness in the land.

⁶In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is His name by which He will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.

¹²Why have You broken down its walls, so that all who pass by pick its fruit?

¹¹Then His people remembered the days of old, the days of Moses. Where is He who brought them through the sea with the shepherds of His flock? Where is the One who set His Holy Spirit among them,

⁷everyone called by My name and created for My glory, whom I have indeed formed and made.”

¹“I revealed Myself to those who did not ask for Me; I was found by those who did not seek Me. To a nation that did not call My name, I said, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’

¹⁷so that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by My name, says the Lord who does these things

⁹Why are You like a man taken by surprise, like a warrior powerless to save? Yet You are among us, O Lord, and we are called by Your name. Do not forsake us!

¹⁹We have become like those You never ruled, like those not called by Your name.

¹⁸Incline Your ear, O my God, and hear; open Your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears Your name. For we are not presenting our petitions before You because of our righteous acts, but because of Your great compassion.

¹⁹O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hear and act! For Your sake, O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people bear Your name.”

¹⁸And in that day the mountains will drip with sweet wine, and the hills will flow with milk. All the streams of Judah will run with water, and a spring will flow from the house of the Lord to water the Valley of Acacias.

³⁵Do you not say, ‘There are still four months until the harvest’? I tell you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are ripe for harvest.

⁵Your threshing will continue until the grape harvest, and the grape harvest will continue until sowing time; you will have your fill of food to eat and will dwell securely in your land.

¹³Instead of the thornbush, the cypress will grow, and instead of the brier, the myrtle will spring up; this will make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign, never to be destroyed.”

¹The wilderness and the dry land will be glad; the desert will rejoice and blossom like a rose.

²It will bloom profusely and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God.

³⁵Then they will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden. The cities that were once ruined, desolate, and destroyed are now fortified and inhabited.’

⁴They will rebuild the ancient ruins; they will restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations.

³For behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will restore from captivity My people Israel and Judah, declares the Lord. I will restore them to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they will possess it.’”

¹⁸This is what the Lord says: “I will restore the fortunes of Jacob’s tents and have compassion on his dwellings. And the city will be rebuilt on her own ruins, and the palace will stand in its rightful place.

²⁶And there they will dwell securely, build houses, and plant vineyards. They will dwell securely when I execute judgments against all those around them who treat them with contempt. Then they will know that I am the Lord their God.’”

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.

²¹They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

⁶I will keep My eyes on them for good and will return them to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them.

²⁵They will live in the land that I gave to My servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They will live there forever with their children and grandchildren, and My servant David will be their prince forever.

²¹Then all your people will be righteous; they will possess the land forever; they are the branch of My planting, the work of My hands, so that I may be glorified.

²⁸They will no longer be prey for the nations, and the beasts of the earth will not consume them. They will dwell securely, and no one will frighten them.

²⁰But Judah will be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation.

⁴¹Yes, I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will faithfully plant them in this land with all My heart and with all My soul.