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Chapter 1
1:1The words of Amos, who was among the sheep breeders of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah and in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.1:2And he said, “The LORD roars from Zion and gives forth His voice from Jerusalem; the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the summit of Carmel withers.”1:3Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke it, because they threshed Gilead with threshing sledges of iron.1:4I will send fire against the house of Hazael, and it will consume the palaces of Ben-Hadad.1:5I will break the bar of Damascus and cut off the inhabitant from the Valley of Aven, and the one who holds the scepter from Beth-Eden; and the people of Aram will go into exile to Kir,” says the LORD.1:6Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Gaza, and for four, I will not revoke it, because they exiled an entire population to deliver it up to Edom.1:7I will send fire against the wall of Gaza, and it will consume her palaces.1:8I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod and the one who holds the scepter from Ashkelon; I will turn My hand against Ekron, and the remnant of the Philistines will perish,” says Lord, the LORD.1:9Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Tyre, and for four, I will not revoke it, because they delivered up an entire population to Edom and did not remember the covenant of brothers.1:10I will send fire against the wall of Tyre, and it will consume her palaces.”1:11Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Edom, and for four, I will not revoke it, because he pursued his brother with the sword and stifled all compassion; his anger tore continually, and he kept his wrath forever.1:12I will send fire against Teman, and it will consume the palaces of Bozrah.”1:13Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of the Ammonites, and for four, I will not revoke it, because they ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead to enlarge their border.1:14I will kindle fire against the wall of Rabbah, and it will consume her palaces, with shouting in the day of battle, with a whirlwind in the day of storm.1:15Their king will go into exile, he and his rulers together,” says the LORD.Chapter 2
2:1Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I will not revoke it, because Moab burned the bones of the king of Edom to lime.2:2I will send fire against Moab, and it will consume the palaces of Kerioth; and Moab will die amid tumult, amid shouting and the sound of a horn.2:3I will cut off the judge from her midst and slay all her rulers with him,” says the LORD.2:4Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not revoke it, because they rejected the Law of the LORD and did not keep His statutes; their lies led them astray, after which their fathers walked.2:5I will send fire against Judah, and it will consume the palaces of Jerusalem.”2:6Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke it, because they sold the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals—2:7those who pant after even the dust of the earth upon the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the humble. A man and his father go in to the same young woman, so as to profane My holy Name.2:8Beside every altar they stretch themselves upon garments taken in pledge, and in the house of their gods they drink the wine of those who were fined.2:9Yet I destroyed the Amorites before them, who were tall as cedars and strong as oaks; I destroyed their fruit above and their roots beneath.2:10I brought you up from the land of Egypt and led you through the wilderness forty years, to possess the land of the Amorites.2:11I raised up some of your sons as prophets and some of your young men as Nazirites. Is this not so, O sons of Israel?” declares the LORD.2:12“But you made the Nazirites drink wine, and commanded the prophets, saying, ‘Do not prophesy!’2:13Behold, I will press you down in your place, as a cart full of sheaves presses down.2:14Escape will perish from the swift; the strong will not strengthen his power, and the mighty will not deliver his life.2:15The archer will not stand; the swift of foot will not deliver himself, and the rider on a horse will not deliver his life.2:16Even the bravest of heart among the mighty will flee naked in that day,” declares the LORD.Chapter 3
3:1Hear this word that the LORD has spoken concerning you, O sons of Israel, concerning the whole family that I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying,3:2“Only you have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”3:3Do two walk together unless they have agreed?3:4Does a lion roar in the forest when it has no prey? Does a young lion give forth its voice from its den unless it has caught something?3:5Does a bird fall into a snare on the earth when there is no trap for it? Does a snare spring up from the ground when it has caught nothing?3:6Is a horn blown in a city, and do the people not tremble? Is there disaster in a city, and has the LORD not done it?3:7For Lord, the LORD, does nothing unless He reveals His counsel to His servants the prophets.3:8A lion has roared—who does not fear? Lord, the LORD, has spoken—who does not prophesy?3:9“Proclaim to the palaces in Ashdod and to the palaces in the land of Egypt, and say, ‘Gather yourselves upon the mountains of Samaria, and see the great tumults within her and the oppressed in her midst.’3:10They do not know how to do what is right,” declares the LORD, “those who store up violence and spoil in their palaces.”3:11Therefore, thus says Lord, the LORD: “An enemy will surround the land; he will bring down your strength from you, and your palaces will be plundered.”3:12Thus says the LORD: “As the shepherd rescues from the lion’s mouth two legs or a piece of an ear, so will the sons of Israel be rescued—those who sit in Samaria on the corner of a bed and in Damascus on a couch.”3:13“Hear, and testify against the house of Jacob,” declares Lord, the LORD, God of Hosts.3:14“For on the day when I punish Israel for his transgressions, I will also punish the altars of Bethel; and the horns of the altar will be cut off and fall to the earth.3:15I will strike the winter house along with the summer house; the houses of ivory will perish, and the many houses will come to an end,” declares the LORD.Chapter 4
4:1Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor and crush the needy, who say to their husbands, “Bring, and let us drink.”4:2Lord, the LORD, has sworn by His holiness: “Behold, days are coming upon you when you will be taken away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.4:3You will go out through the breaches, each woman straight before her; and you will cast yourselves toward Harmon,” declares the LORD.4:4“Enter Bethel and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression. Bring your sacrifices every morning and your tithes every three days.4:5Burn a thanksgiving offering of leavened bread, and proclaim freewill offerings aloud; for this is what you love, O sons of Israel,” declares Lord, the LORD.4:6“I also gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities and lack of bread in all your places; yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.4:7“I also withheld the rain from you while there were still three months until harvest. I sent rain upon one city, and upon another city I did not send rain; one portion was rained upon, and the portion upon which it did not rain withered.4:8Two or three cities staggered to one city to drink water, but they were not satisfied; yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.4:9“I struck you with blight and mildew; the cutting locust devoured the abundance of your gardens and vineyards, your fig trees and olive trees; yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.4:10“I sent pestilence among you after the manner of Egypt; I slew your young men with the sword, together with your captured horses; and I caused the stench of your camps to rise into your nostrils; yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.4:11“I overturned some among you, as God overturned Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a brand snatched from the burning; yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.4:12“Therefore, thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel.”4:13For behold, He forms the mountains and creates the wind; He declares to man what his thought is, makes the dawn darkness, and treads upon the high places of the earth—the LORD, God of Hosts, is His Name.Chapter 5
5:1Hear this word that I take up over you as a lamentation, O house of Israel:5:2“Fallen, no more to rise, is the virgin of Israel; she is abandoned on her land, with none to raise her up.”5:3For thus says Lord, the LORD: “The city that marches out with a thousand will have a hundred left, and that which marches out with a hundred will have ten left to the house of Israel.”5:4For thus says the LORD to the house of Israel: “Seek Me, and live.5:5Do not seek Bethel, do not enter Gilgal, and do not pass through Beersheba; for Gilgal will surely go into exile, and Bethel will come to nothing.5:6Seek the LORD, and live, lest He break forth like fire against the house of Joseph and consume it, with none to quench it for Bethel—5:7you who turn judgment into wormwood and cast righteousness down to the earth.”5:8He is the Maker of the Pleiades and Orion, who turns death-shadow into morning and darkens day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them upon the face of the earth—the LORD is His Name.5:9He brings sudden destruction upon the strong, and destruction comes upon the fortress.5:10They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks uprightly.5:11Therefore, because you trample upon the poor and exact a grain tax from him, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you will not dwell in them; you have planted desirable vineyards, but you will not drink their wine.5:12For I know how many are your transgressions and how mighty are your sins—you who afflict the righteous, take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate.5:13Therefore the prudent is silent at that time, for it is an evil time.5:14Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the LORD, God of Hosts, will be with you, as you have said.5:15Hate evil, love good, and establish judgment in the gate; perhaps the LORD, God of Hosts, will show favor to the remnant of Joseph.5:16Therefore, thus says the LORD, God of Hosts, the Lord: “Lamentation will be in all the city squares, and in all the streets they will say, ‘Alas! Alas!’ They will call the farmer to mourning, and those skilled in wailing to lamentation.5:17In all the vineyards there will be lamentation, for I will pass through your midst,” says the LORD.5:18Woe to you who desire the Day of the LORD! What is the Day of the LORD to you? It is darkness, and not light—5:19as when a man flees from a lion, and a bear meets him; or he enters the house, leans his hand on the wall, and a serpent bites him.5:20Is not the Day of the LORD darkness, and not light—even thick darkness, with no brightness in it?5:21“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.5:22Though you offer burnt offerings and grain offerings to Me, I will not accept them; and I will not regard the peace offerings of your fattened animals.5:23Take the noise of your songs away from Me; I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments.5:24But let judgment roll on like waters, and righteousness like a perennial stream.5:25Did you bring sacrifices and offerings near to Me in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?5:26Yet you carried Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun your images—the star of your god, which you made for yourselves.5:27Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the LORD, whose Name is God of Hosts.Chapter 6
6:1Woe to those at ease in Zion, and to those secure on the mountain of Samaria—the notable men of the foremost of nations, to whom the house of Israel comes.6:2Cross over to Calneh and see; from there go to Hamath the Great; then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are you better than these kingdoms? Or is their territory greater than yours?6:3You who put far away the day of calamity, yet bring near the seat of violence;6:4who lie upon beds of ivory and sprawl upon their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall;6:5who improvise to the sound of the harp, and like David invent instruments of music;6:6who drink wine from bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.6:7Therefore they will now go into exile at the head of the exiles, and the revelry of those who sprawl will pass away.6:8Lord, the LORD, has sworn by Himself—declares the LORD, God of Hosts: “I abhor the pride of Jacob, and I hate his palaces; therefore I will deliver up the city and all that fills it.”6:9And it will come to pass, if ten men remain in one house, they will die.6:10And a man’s relative, the one who burns him, will lift him up to bring the bones out of the house; and he will say to the one in the innermost part of the house, “Is anyone still with you?” And he will say, “No one.” Then he will say, “Hush! We must not invoke the Name of the LORD.”6:11For behold, the LORD commands, and He will strike the great house into fragments and the little house into splinters.6:12Do horses run upon rock? Does one plow there with oxen? Yet you have turned judgment into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood.6:13You who rejoice over Lo-Debar, who say, “Have we not by our own strength taken Karnaim for ourselves?”6:14“For behold, I am raising up a nation against you, O house of Israel,” declares the LORD, God of Hosts, “and they will oppress you from Lebo-hamath to the Brook of the Arabah.”Chapter 7
7:1Thus Lord, the LORD, showed me: behold, He was forming locusts when the latter growth began to sprout; and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings.7:2And when they had finished consuming the vegetation of the land, I said, “Lord, the LORD, please forgive. How can Jacob stand? For he is small.”7:3The LORD relented concerning this. “It will not be,” said the LORD.7:4Thus Lord, the LORD, showed me: behold, Lord, the LORD, was calling for judgment by fire; and it consumed the great deep and began to consume the allotted land.7:5Then I said, “Lord, the LORD, please cease. How can Jacob stand? For he is small.”7:6The LORD relented concerning this. “This also will not be,” said Lord, the LORD.7:7Thus He showed me: behold, the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in His hand.7:8And the LORD said to me, “What do you see, Amos?” And I said, “A plumb line.” And the Lord said, “Behold, I am setting a plumb line among My people Israel; I will no longer pass him by.7:9The high places of Isaac will be desolated, and the sanctuaries of Israel will be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”7:10Then Amaziah, priest of Bethel, sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words.7:11For thus says Amos: ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will surely go into exile from its land.’”7:12And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go; flee to the land of Judah. Eat bread there, and there prophesy.7:13But no longer prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary and the royal house.”7:14And Amos answered Amaziah, “I was not a prophet, nor was I a prophet’s son; but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs.7:15And the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to My people Israel.’7:16And now, hear the word of the LORD: You say, ‘Do not prophesy against Israel, nor preach against the house of Isaac.’7:17Therefore, thus says the LORD: ‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword; your land will be apportioned by line, and you will die in an unclean land; and Israel will surely go into exile from its land.’”Chapter 8
8:1Thus Lord, the LORD, showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit.8:2And He said, “What do you see, Amos?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” And the LORD said to me, “The end has come upon My people Israel; I will no longer pass him by.8:3The songs of the palace will become wailings in that day,” declares Lord, the LORD. “Many will be the corpses; in every place they will cast them down—hush!”8:4Hear this, you who trample the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end,8:5saying, “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may open the wheat market—making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit,8:6that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and sell the refuse of the wheat?”8:7The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: “I will never forget any of their deeds.8:8Will not the land tremble for this, and everyone who dwells in it mourn? All of it will rise like the Nile; it will surge and sink like the Nile of Egypt.8:9And it will come to pass in that day,” declares Lord, the LORD, “that I will cause the sun to go down at noon and darken the land in broad daylight.8:10I will turn your festivals into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth upon every waist and baldness upon every head. I will make it like mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.8:11Behold, days are coming,” declares Lord, the LORD, “when I will send a famine into the land—not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.8:12They will wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they will go to and fro seeking the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.8:13In that day the beautiful young women and the young men will faint with thirst.8:14Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria, and say, ‘Your god lives, O Dan,’ and, ‘The way of Beersheba lives,’ will fall and will not rise again.”Chapter 9
9:1I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and He said, “Strike the capital, that the thresholds may shake; break them upon the heads of them all. And I will slay the rest of them with the sword; none who flee will get away, and none who escape will be delivered.9:2Though they dig into the realm of the dead, from there My hand will take them; and though they ascend to the heavens, from there I will bring them down.9:3Though they hide themselves on the summit of Carmel, from there I will search them out and take them; and though they hide from My eyes at the bottom of the sea, from there I will command the serpent, and it will bite them.9:4Though they go into captivity before their enemies, from there I will command the sword, and it will slay them; and I will set My eye upon them for harm, and not for good.”9:5Lord, the LORD of Hosts, touches the land and it melts, and all who dwell in it mourn; all of it rises like the Nile and sinks like the Nile of Egypt.9:6He builds His upper chambers in the heavens and establishes His vault upon the earth; He calls for the waters of the sea and pours them upon the face of the land—the LORD is His Name.9:7“Are you not like the Cushites to Me, O sons of Israel?” declares the LORD. “Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and Aram from Kir?9:8Behold, the eyes of Lord, the LORD, are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the face of the ground; yet I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” declares the LORD.9:9“For behold, I am commanding, and I will shake the house of Israel among all the nations, as grain is shaken in a sieve; yet not even a pebble will fall to the ground.9:10All the sinners of My people will die by the sword, those who say, ‘Calamity will not overtake us or meet us.’9:11In that day I will raise up the fallen booth of David and repair its breaches; I will raise up its ruins and build it as in days of old,9:12so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations upon whom My Name is called,” declares the LORD, who does this.9:13“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when the plowman will overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes the one who sows seed; the mountains will drip with new wine, and all the hills will flow with it.9:14I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel; they will rebuild the desolate cities and inhabit them, plant vineyards and drink their wine, and make gardens and eat their fruit.9:15I will plant them in their own land, and they will never again be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the LORD your God.