Amos 5

A Lament and Call to Repentance

¹Hear this word, Israel, this lament I take up concerning you:

²“Fallen is Virgin Israel,

never to rise again,

deserted in her own land,

with no one to lift her up.”

³This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Israel:

“Your city that marches out a thousand strong

will have only a hundred left;

your town that marches out a hundred strong

will have only ten left.”

⁴This is what the Lord says to Israel:

“Seek me and live;

⁵do not seek Bethel,

do not go to Gilgal,

do not journey to Beersheba.

For Gilgal will surely go into exile,

and Bethel will be reduced to nothing.”

⁶Seek the Lord and live,

or he will sweep through the tribes of Joseph like a fire;

it will devour them,

and Bethel will have no one to quench it.

⁷There are those who turn justice into bitterness

and cast righteousness to the ground.

⁸He who made the Pleiades and Orion,

who turns midnight into dawn

and darkens day into night,

who calls for the waters of the sea

and pours them out over the face of the land—

the Lord is his name.

⁹With a blinding flash he destroys the stronghold

and brings the fortified city to ruin.

¹⁰There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court

and detest the one who tells the truth.

¹¹You levy a straw tax on the poor

and impose a tax on their grain.

Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,

you will not live in them;

though you have planted lush vineyards,

you will not drink their wine.

¹²For I know how many are your offenses

and how great your sins.

There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes

and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.

¹³Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times,

for the times are evil.

¹⁴Seek good, not evil,

that you may live.

Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,

just as you say he is.

¹⁵Hate evil, love good;

maintain justice in the courts.

Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy

on the remnant of Joseph.

¹⁶Therefore this is what the Lord, the Lord God Almighty, says:

“There will be wailing in all the streets

and cries of anguish in every public square.

The farmers will be summoned to weep

and the mourners to wail.

¹⁷There will be wailing in all the vineyards,

for I will pass through your midst,”

says the Lord.

The Day of the Lord

¹⁸Woe to you who long

for the day of the Lord!

Why do you long for the day of the Lord?

That day will be darkness, not light.

¹⁹It will be as though a man fled from a lion

only to meet a bear,

as though he entered his house

and rested his hand on the wall

only to have a snake bite him.

²⁰Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—

pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?

²¹“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;

your assemblies are a stench to me.

²²Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,

I will not accept them.

Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,

I will have no regard for them.

²³Away with the noise of your songs!

I will not listen to the music of your harps.

²⁴But let justice roll on like a river,

righteousness like a never-failing stream!

²⁵“Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings

forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel?

²⁶You have lifted up the shrine of your king,

the pedestal of your idols,

the star of your god—

which you made for yourselves.

²⁷Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,”

says the Lord, whose name is God Almighty.