1This is what the Lord GOD showed me: look, a basket of summer fruit.
2He said, "Amos, what do you see?" I said, "A basket of summer fruit." Then the LORD said to me, "The end has come upon my people Israel. I will not pass by them any more."
3"On that day the songs of the temple will turn into howling," says the Lord GOD. "There will be many dead bodies in every place. They will throw them out in silence."
4Hear this, you who swallow up the needy, and make the poor of the land fail,
5saying, "When will the new moon be over, so that we may sell grain? When will the sabbath be over, so that we may put out wheat?" You make the ephah small and the shekel great, and you cheat with false scales.
6You do it so that you may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and sell the leftover sweepings of the wheat.
7The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob, "Surely I will never forget any of their deeds."
8Will not the land tremble for this, and everyone who lives in it mourn? All of it will rise up like a flood. It will be tossed about and sink again, like the river of Egypt.
9"On that day," says the Lord GOD, "I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in broad daylight."
10I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into weeping. I will put sackcloth on every waist, and shave every head bald. I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.
11"Look, the days are coming," says the Lord GOD, "when I will send a famine on the land. It will not be a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD."
12They will wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east. They will run here and there to seek the word of the LORD, and will not find it.
13On that day the beautiful young women and the young men will faint from thirst.