A Basket of Ripe Fruit

¹ This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. ² “What do you see, Amos?” he asked.
“A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered.
Then the Lord said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.
³ “In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies-flung everywhere! Silence!”
⁴ Hear this, you who trample the needy
and do away with the poor of the land,
⁵ saying,
“When will the New Moon be over
that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath be ended
that we may market wheat?”-
skimping on the measure,
boosting the price
and cheating with dishonest scales,
⁶ buying the poor with silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
selling even the sweepings with the wheat.
⁷ The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget anything they have done.
⁸ “Will not the land tremble for this,
and all who live in it mourn?
The whole land will rise like the Nile;
it will be stirred up and then sink
like the river of Egypt.
⁹ “In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord,
“I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
¹⁰ I will turn your religious festivals into mourning
and all your singing into weeping.
I will make all of you wear sackcloth
and shave your heads.
I will make that time like mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.
¹¹ “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord,
“when I will send a famine through the land-
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
¹² People will stagger from sea to sea
and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the Lord,
but they will not find it.
¹³ “In that day
“the lovely young women and strong young men
will faint because of thirst.
¹⁴ Those who swear by the sin of Samaria–
who say, ‘As surely as your god lives, Dan,’
or, ‘As surely as the god of Beersheba lives’-
they will fall, never to rise again.”