The Living Bible (285 page)

Amos
6

Woe to those lounging in luxury at Jerusalem and Samaria, so famous and popular among the people of Israel.
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 Go over to Calneh and see what happened there; then go to great Hamath and down to Gath in the Philistines’ land. Once they were better and greater than you, but look at them now.
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 You push away all thought of punishment awaiting you, but by your deeds you bring the Day of Judgment near.

    
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 You lie on ivory beds surrounded with luxury, eating the meat of the tenderest lambs and the choicest calves.
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 You sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and fancy yourselves to be great musicians as King David was.

    
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 You drink wine by the bucketful and perfume yourselves with sweet ointments, caring nothing at all that your brothers need your help.
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 Therefore you will be the first to be taken as slaves; suddenly your revelry will end.

    
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 Jehovah the Almighty Lord has sworn by his own name, “I despise the pride and false glory of Israel and hate their beautiful homes. I will turn over this city and everything in it to her enemies.”

    
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 If there are as few as ten of them left and only one house, they too will perish.
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 A man’s uncle will be the only one left to bury him, and when he goes in to carry his body from the house, he will ask the only one still alive inside, “Are any others left?” And the answer will be, “No,” and he will add, “Shhh . . . don’t mention the name of the Lord—he might hear you.”

    
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 For the Lord commanded this: that homes both great and small should be smashed to pieces.
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 Can horses run on rocks? Can oxen plow the sea? Stupid even to ask—but no more stupid than what you do when you make a mockery of justice and corrupt and sour all that should be good and right.
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 And just as stupid is your rejoicing in how great you are when you are less than nothing—and priding yourselves on your own tiny power!

    
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 “O Israel, I will bring against you a nation that will bitterly oppress you from your northern boundary to your southern tip, all the way from Hamath to the brook of Arabah,” says the Lord, the Lord Almighty.

Amos
7

This is what the Lord God showed me in a vision: He was preparing a vast swarm of locusts to destroy all the main crop that sprang up after the first mowing, which went as taxes to the king.
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 They ate everything in sight. Then I said, “O Lord God, please forgive your people! Don’t send them this plague! If you turn against Israel, what hope is there? For Israel is so small!”

    
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 So the Lord relented and did not fulfill the vision. “I won’t do it,” he told me.

    
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 Then the Lord God showed me a great fire he had prepared to punish them; it had burned up the waters and was devouring the entire land.

    
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 Then I said, “O Lord God, please don’t do it. If you turn against them, what hope is there? For Israel is so small!”

    
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 Then the Lord turned from this plan too, and said, “I won’t do that either.”

    
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 Then he showed me this: The Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, checking it with a plumb line to see if it was straight.
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 And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?”

    
I answered, “A plumb line.”

    
And he replied, “I will test my people with a plumb line. I will no longer turn away from punishing.
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 The idol altars and temples of Israel will be destroyed, and I will destroy the dynasty of King Jeroboam by the sword.”

    
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 But when Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, heard what Amos was saying, he rushed a message to Jeroboam, the king: “Amos is a traitor to our nation and is plotting your death. This is intolerable. It will lead to rebellion all across the land.
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 He says you will be killed and Israel will be sent far away into exile and slavery.”

    
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 Then Amaziah sent orders to Amos, “Get out of here, you prophet, you! Flee to the land of Judah and do your prophesying there!
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 Don’t bother us here with your visions, not here in the capital where the king’s chapel is!”

    
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 But Amos replied, “I am not really one of the prophets. I do not come from a family of prophets. I am just a herdsman and fruit picker.
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 But the Lord took me from caring for the flocks and told me, ‘Go and prophesy to my people Israel.’

    
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 “Now, therefore, listen to this message to you from the Lord. You say, ‘Don’t prophesy against Israel.’
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 The Lord’s reply is this: ‘Because of your interference, your wife will become a prostitute in this city, your sons and daughters will be killed, and your land divided up. You yourself will die in a heathen land, and the people of Israel will certainly become slaves in exile, far from their land.’”

Amos
8

Then the Lord God showed me, in a vision, a basket full of ripe fruit.

    
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 “What do you see, Amos?” he asked.

    
I replied, “A basket full of ripe fruit.”

    
Then the Lord said, “This fruit represents my people Israel—ripe for punishment. I will not defer their punishment again.
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 The riotous sound of singing in the Temple will turn to weeping then. Dead bodies will be scattered everywhere. They will be carried out of the city in silence.” The Lord has spoken.

    
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 Listen, you merchants who rob the poor, trampling on the needy;
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 you who long for the Sabbath to end and the religious holidays to be over so you can get out and start cheating again—using your weighted scales and under-sized measures;
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 you who make slaves of the poor, buying them for their debt of a piece of silver or a pair of shoes, or selling them your moldy wheat:

    
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 The Lord, the Pride of Israel, has sworn: “I won’t forget your deeds!
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 The land will tremble as it awaits its doom, and everyone will mourn. It will rise up like the river Nile at floodtime, toss about, and sink again.
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 At that time I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in the daytime.
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 And I will turn your parties into times of mourning, and your songs of joy will be turned to cries of despair. You will wear funeral clothes and shave your heads as signs of sorrow, as if your only son had died; bitter, bitter will be that day.

    
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 “The time is surely coming,” says the Lord God, “when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread or water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.
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 Men will wander everywhere from sea to sea, seeking the word of the Lord, searching, running here and going there, but will not find it.
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 Beautiful girls and fine young men alike will grow faint and weary, thirsting for the word of God.
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 And those who worship the idols of Samaria, Dan, and Beersheba shall fall and never rise again.”

Amos
9

I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, saying, “Smash the tops of the pillars and shake the Temple until the pillars crumble and the roof crashes down upon the people below. Though they run, they will not escape; they all will be killed.

    
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 “Though they dig down to Sheol, I will reach down and pull them up; though they climb into the heavens, I will bring them down.
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 Though they hide among the rocks at the top of Carmel, I will search them out and capture them. Though they hide at the bottom of the ocean, I will send the sea serpent after them to bite and destroy them.
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 Though they volunteer for exile, I will command the sword to kill them there. I will see to it that they receive evil and not good.”

    
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 The Lord Almighty touches the land and it melts, and all its people mourn. It rises like the river Nile in Egypt and then sinks again.
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 The upper stories of his home are in the heavens, the first floor on the earth. He calls for the vapor to rise from the ocean and pours it down as rain upon the ground. Jehovah, the Lord, is his name.

    
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 “O people of Israel, are you any more to me than the Ethiopians are? Have not I, who brought you out of Egypt, done as much for other people too? I brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians out of Kir.

    
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 “The eyes of the Lord God are watching Israel, that sinful nation, and I will root her up and scatter her across the world.
Yet I have promised that this rooting out will not be permanent.
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 For I have commanded that Israel be sifted by the other nations as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet not one true kernel will be lost.
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 But all these sinners who say, ‘God will not touch us,’ will die by the sword.

    
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 “Then, at that time I will rebuild the City of David, which is now lying in ruins, and return it to its former glory,
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 and Israel will possess what is left of Edom and of all the nations that belong to me.” For so the Lord, who plans it all, has said.

    
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 “The time will come when there will be such abundance of crops that the harvesttime will scarcely end before the farmer starts again to sow another crop, and the terraces of grapes upon the hills of Israel will drip sweet wine!
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 I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they will rebuild their ruined cities and live in them again; they will plant vineyards and gardens; they will eat their crops and drink their wine.
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 I will firmly plant them there upon the land that I have given them; they shall not be pulled up again,” says the Lord your God.