Amos 8-9

EasyEnglish Bible

Fruit that is ready to eat

8 Then the Lord God showed another vision to me. I saw a basket with summer fruit in it. ² He asked me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ I answered him, ‘I see a basket of summer fruit.’ Then the Lord said to me, ‘The time has now come to punish my people. I will not forgive them any longer.

³ On the day that I come to punish them, people will not sing in the temple. Instead they will weep loudly. There will be dead bodies everywhere. Be quiet now!’ That is what the Lord God says.

Trouble will come to Israel's people

⁴ So listen to me, you who are cruel to helpless people. You try to destroy people who are poor and weak. ⁵ You say to yourselves, ‘We want the new moon festival to finish so that we can sell food again. We want our Sabbath day of rest to finish so that we can sell grain.’ But when you sell things, you cheat the people who buy from you. You deceive them with false weights, and you make the price too high. ⁶ When poor people cannot pay their debts, you buy them as your slaves. You pay a silver coin to buy them, which would not even buy a pair of shoes. You also mix dust with the grain that you sell.

⁷ The Lord has promised this: ‘You proud descendants of Jacob, I will never forget the wrong things that you have done. ⁸ The whole country will shake because of your sins. Everyone who lives there will weep. The ground will rise up, like the floods of the Nile river in Egypt. Then it will go down again, like the water of the Nile.’

⁹ The Lord God says, ‘At that time, I will make the sun go down at noon. I will make the earth become dark in the daytime. ¹⁰ Your parties will become funerals. You will not sing happy songs but you will weep. You will wear rough clothes and you will cut off all your hair. You will be as sad as if your only son had died. That will be a very bad day for you.’

¹¹ The Lord God says, ‘Listen to me! At that time, I will cause you to be very hungry. It will not be because you need food and water. Instead, everyone in the land will want to hear a message from me. ¹² People will travel everywhere in the country, north and south, east and west. They will want to hear a message from the Lord, but there will be nothing for them to hear.

¹³ At that time, your beautiful young women and your young men will become very thirsty. They will be weak and tired. ¹⁴ They worship Samaria's idols. They use the names of those false gods to make promises. They say, “In the name of the god of Dan,” or “In the name of the god of Beersheba.” Those people will fall down and they will never get up again.’

The Lord is powerful

9 Then I saw a vision of the Lord. He was standing beside the altar in the temple. The Lord said, ‘Hit the tops of the pillars so that the whole foundation shakes! Cause the building to fall on the heads of all the people. If anyone is still alive after that, I will cause them to die in battle. Nobody will escape! ² They might try to dig deep into the earth to save themselves. But my strong hand will pull them out of there. They might climb up into the sky. But I will pull them down from there. ³ They might try to hide on the top of Mount Carmel. But I will find them and I will take them from there. They might try to hide from me deep down in the sea. But I will command the great sea snake to bite them. ⁴ Even when their enemies take them away as prisoners, I will cause them to die in battle. I have decided to destroy them. I will not help them.’

⁵ The Lord God Almighty will do this! When he touches the earth, it shakes. Everyone who lives there weeps. The ground rises up, like the water of the Nile river in Egypt. Then it goes down again, like the river. ⁶ The Lord builds his palace up into heaven, with its foundation on the earth. He takes up the water from the sea, and he pours it out on the earth as rain. The Lord is his name.

⁷ The Lord says, ‘You Israelite people, do not think that you are more important to me than the people of Ethiopia. It is true that I led you safely out of Egypt. But I also brought the Philistines from Crete. And I brought the Aramean people from Kir. ⁸ I, the Lord God, am carefully watching you Israelites. I see that you are a wicked nation, so I will remove you from the earth. But I will not completely destroy all the descendants of Jacob.’ That is what the Lord says.

⁹ ‘Listen to me! I will cause trouble to come to Israel's family, as they live among other nations. It will be like a person who shakes a sieve to remove dirt from grain. ¹⁰ Those among my people who do bad things will die. They say, “God will not send trouble to us. Nothing bad will happen to us.” But their enemies will kill those bad people in war.’

The Israelites will be strong again

¹¹ The Lord says, ‘When that time comes, I will make David's kingdom strong again. It has become like a broken hut, but I will repair it. I will cause it to become as good and strong as it was when king David ruled. ¹² You Israelites will fight the Edomites who still remain. You will win against them and the other nations that once belonged to me.’

That is what the Lord says, and he will do it.

¹³ The Lord says, ‘The time will come when food will grow very well in your fields. People will need to work quickly to cut down all their crops before they plough the ground to plant again. Lots of grapes will grow on your vines. People will work quickly to make wine from the grapes before they plant new vines. So much juice will pour out of the grapes that it will run down the hills!

¹⁴ I will bring the people of Israel, my people, back to their own land. Enemies destroyed their cities, but now my people will build them again. They will live safely in them. My people will plant vines. They will drink wine from their grapes. They will eat the fruit from trees that they have planted in their gardens. ¹⁵ And I will plant my people in their own land. That is the land that I have given to them, and nobody will ever pull them out of that land.’

That is what the Lord your God says.