1. This is what the Lord showed me: a basket of ripe fruit.
2. The Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?”I said, “A basket of fruit from the end of the harvest.”Then the Lord said to me, “An end has come for my people, the Israelites. I will not overlook their sins anymore.
3. “On that day the palace songs will become funeral songs,” says the Lord God. “There will be dead bodies thrown everywhere! Silence!”
4. Listen to me you who walk on helpless people.You are trying to destroy the poor people of this country.
5. Your businessmen say,“When will the New Moon Festival be overso we can sell grain?When will the Sabbath be overso we can bring out wheat to sell?We can charge them moreand give them less.We can change the scales to cheat the people.
6. We will buy poor people for silver.And we will buy needy people for the price of a pair of sandals.We will even sell the wheat that was swept up from the floor.”
7. The Lord used his name, the Pride of Jacob, to make a promise. He said, “I will never forget what these people did.
8. The whole land will shake because of it.Everyone who lives in the land will cry for those who died.The whole land will rise like the Nile.It will be shaken, and then it will falllike the Nile River in Egypt.”