Fourth vision: the basket of ripe fruit
1Yahweh showed me a basket of ripe fruit 2and asked, “Amos, what do you see?” I replied, “A basket of ripe fruit.”
Then Yahweh said to me, “My people Israel is ripe for destruction; I will no longer forgive them. 3The songs of the palace will become wailings on that day, says the Lord. Heaps of corpses everywhere, all cast out in silence.”
4Hear this, you who trample on the needy to do away with the weak of the land. 5You who say, “When will the new moon or the sabbath feast be over that we may open the store and sell our grain? Let us lower the measure and raise the price; let us cheat and tamper with the scales, 6and even sell the refuse with the whole grain. We will buy up the poor for money and the needy for a pair of sandals.”
7Yahweh, the pride of Jacob, has sworn by himself, “I shall never forget their deeds.”
8Shall not the land tremble because of this, and all who dwell in it mourn, while it rises up and heaves like the Nile and settles back again like the river of Egypt?
9Yahweh says, “On that day I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.
10I will turn your festivals into mourning and all your singing into wailing. Everyone will mourn, covered with sackcloth and every head will be shaved. I will make them mourn as for an only son and bring their day to a bitter end.”
11Yahweh says, “Days are coming when I will send famine upon the land, not hunger for bread or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of Yahweh.
12Men will stagger from sea to sea, wander to and fro, from north to east, searching for the word of Yahweh, but they will not find it.
13On that day, fair virgins and strong young men will faint from thirst, 14all the young people who swore by the god of Samaria and said: Long life to the god of Dan, long life to the god of Bersheba! They shall fall, never to rise again.”
