Capítulo 8

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. Or ["the temple singers will wail] 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 Hebrew [the way] of Beersheba lives' - they will fall, never to rise again."