The Basket of Summer Fruit 1 UDB Yahweh showed me in a vision a basket full of ripe fruit. BSB BSB: This is what the Lord GOD showed me: I saw a basket of summer fruit.
2 UDB He asked me, "Amos, what do you see?" I replied, "A basket of very ripe fruit." He said, "That indicates that it almost the end for my Israelite people. I will not change my mind again about punishing them. BSB BSB: “Amos, what do you see?” He asked. “A basket of summer fruit,” I replied. So the LORD said to me, “The end has come for My people Israel; I will no longer spare them.”
3 UDB Soon the people will be wailing instead of singing in the temple. There will be corpses everywhere, and people will say nothing as they remove them. These things will surely happen because I, Yahweh, have said it!" BSB BSB: “In that day,” declares the Lord GOD, “the songs of the temple will turn to wailing. Many will be the corpses, strewn in silence everywhere!”
4 UDB It is as though you people were trampling on the needy people, and you destroy the poor people. BSB BSB: Hear this, you who trample the needy, who do away with the poor of the land,
5 UDB You habitually say, "We wish that the new moon festival would end soon, in order that we may be allowed to sell our grain. We wish that the Sabbath would end soon, in order that we may again be permitted to sell our wheat.— When we sell it, we can charge a big price for it, and we can cheat people by using scales that do not weigh correctly. BSB BSB: asking, “When will the New Moon be over, that we may sell grain? When will the Sabbath end, that we may market wheat? Let us reduce the ephah and increase the shekel; let us cheat with dishonest scales.
6 UDB We will sell wheat that is no good. Those who are needy and poor and who do not have money to buy things, we will make them our slaves by buying them with the little amount of silver with which we could buy a pair of sandals!" BSB BSB: Let us buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the chaff with the wheat!”
7 UDB Yahweh has declared, "As I live, I, whom you should worship: I solemnly declare that I will not forget the evil things that you have done. BSB BSB: The LORD has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget any of their deeds.
8 UDB Because of those evil things, your country will certainly soon tremble, and all of you will mourn. It will be as though it will repeatedly rise and fall like the Nile River that gets full of water and overflows its banks and then settles back into its riverbed. BSB BSB: Will not the land quake for this, and all its dwellers mourn? All of it will swell like the Nile; it will surge and then subside like the Nile in Egypt.
9 UDB At the time when I punish my people, I will cause the sun to set at noontime, and the entire earth will be dark in the daytime. BSB BSB: And in that day, declares the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the daytime.
10 UDB I will cause your religious celebrations to become times when you mourn; instead of singing, everyone will be weeping. Because of what I will do, all of you will wear rough sackcloth and shave your heads to show that you are sorrowing. I will cause that time to be like when people mourn after an only son has died. All of you will be very sad all of that time." BSB BSB: I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, and its outcome like a bitter day.
11 UDB And Yahweh our God says this: "It will soon be the time when I will cause something to be very scarce throughout the country. But it will not be a time when there is no food or water; it will instead be a time when there will be no messages from me for anyone to hear. BSB BSB: Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.
12 UDB People will stagger from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and wander from the north to the east, searching for a message from me, but there will not be any. BSB BSB: People will stagger from sea to sea and roam from north to east, seeking the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.
13 UDB At that time, even beautiful young women and strong young men will faint because they will be very thirsty. BSB BSB: In that day the lovely young women—the young men as well—will faint from thirst.
14 UDB Those who make oaths using the name of their shameful god of Samaria, and those who solemnly promise to do something using the name of the god of Dan, and those who swear using the name of the god of Beersheba— they will all die; they will never get up again." BSB BSB: Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’ or, ‘As surely as the way of Beersheba lives’—they will fall, never to rise again.”