Amos 6:7

For I don’t desire you to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, so that you won’t be wise in your own conceits, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in,

In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

While they were yet talking with him, the king’s eunuchs came, and hurried to bring Haman to the banquet that Esther had prepared.

They won’t dwell in Yahweh’s land; but Ephraim will return to Egypt, and they will eat unclean food in Assyria.

“Go to Bethel, and sin; to Gilgal, and sin more. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days,

Those who swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, ‘As your god, Dan, lives;’ and, ‘As the way of Beersheba lives;’ they will fall, and never rise up again.”

Leave out the court which is outside of the temple, and don’t measure it, for it has been given to the nations. They will tread the holy city under foot for forty-two months.

If his children are multiplied, it is for the sword. His offspring will not be satisfied with bread.

Behold, they are like stubble. The fire will burn them. They won’t deliver themselves from the power of the flame. It won’t be a coal to warm at or a fire to sit by.

Your holy people possessed it but a little while. Our adversaries have trodden down your sanctuary.

“Though you, Israel, play the prostitute, yet don’t let Judah offend; and don’t come to Gilgal, neither go up to Beth Aven, nor swear, ‘As Yahweh lives.’

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from off the land which you go over the Jordan to possess it. You will not prolong your days on it, but will utterly be destroyed.

Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people. Your eyes will look, and fail with longing for them all day long. There will be no power in your hand.

then I will cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and I will cast this house, which I have made holy for my name, out of my sight; and Israel will be a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

The children of Israel carried away captive of their brothers two hundred thousand women, sons, and daughters, and also took away much plunder from them, and brought the plunder to Samaria.

Esther said, “If it seems good to the king, let the king and Haman come today to the banquet that I have prepared for him.”

Then Esther the queen answered, “If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request.

Therefore Yahweh says, ‘Behold, I will send you away from off the surface of the earth. This year you will die, because you have spoken rebellion against Yahweh.’ ”

Yahweh said, “Even thus will the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.”

I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand to heaven, and swore by him who lives forever that it will be for a time, times, and a half; and when they have finished breaking in pieces the power of the holy people, all these things will be finished.

For Amos says, ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.’ ”

The best of them is like a brier. The most upright is worse than a thorn hedge. The day of your watchmen, even your visitation, has come; now is the time of their confusion.

“For, behold, the day comes, it burns as a furnace; and all the proud, and all who work wickedness, will be stubble; and the day that comes will burn them up,” says Yahweh of Armies, “that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

for then there will be great suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, nor ever will be.

You took up the tabernacle of Moloch, the star of your god Rephan, the figures which you made to worship. I will carry you away beyond Babylon.’

Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and called there on the name of Yahweh, the Everlasting God.

I will scatter you among the nations, and I will draw out the sword after you. Your land will be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.

Yahweh will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth. There you will serve other gods which you have not known, you nor your fathers, even wood and stone.

until Yahweh removed Israel out of his sight, as he said by all his servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away out of their own land to Assyria to this day.

So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen.

She said, “If it pleases the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem right to the king, and I am pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to reverse the letters devised by Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the king’s provinces.

You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day,

They surrounded me like bees. They are quenched like the burning thorns. In Yahweh’s name I cut them off.

Now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge, and it will be eaten up. I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled down.

Therefore Sheol has enlarged its desire, and opened its mouth without measure; and their glory, their multitude, their pomp, and he who rejoices among them, descend into it.

The light of Israel will be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame; and it will burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day.

I have winnowed them with a fan in the gates of the land. I have bereaved them of children. I have destroyed my people. They didn’t return from their ways.

Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says concerning Ahab the son of Kolaiah, and concerning Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, who prophesy a lie to you in my name: “Behold, I will deliver them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and he will kill them before your eyes.

Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “Yahweh, the God of Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘If you will go out to the king of Babylon’s princes, then your soul will live, and this city will not be burned with fire. You will live, along with your house.

Her adversaries have become the head. Her enemies prosper; for Yahweh has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions. Her young children have gone into captivity before the adversary.

Then I heard a holy one speaking; and another holy one said to that certain one who spoke, “How long will the vision about the continual burnt offering, and the disobedience that makes desolate, to give both the sanctuary and the army to be trodden under foot be?”

He will make a firm covenant with many for one week. In the middle of the week he will cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease. On the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate; and even to the full end, and that determined, wrath will be poured out on the desolate.”

They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, and burn incense on the hills, under oaks and poplars and terebinths, because its shade is good. Therefore your daughters play the prostitute, and your brides commit adultery.

For, behold, he who forms the mountains, and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought; who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the high places of the earth: Yahweh, the God of Armies, is his name.”

but don’t seek Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and don’t pass to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing.

You also will be drunken. You will be hidden. You also will seek a stronghold because of the enemy.

Behold, your house is left to you desolate.

You will father sons and daughters, but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity.

The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and encamped in Gilgal, on the east border of Jericho.

Now the name of his firstborn was Joel; and the name of his second, Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba.

Abigail came to Nabal; and behold, he held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk. Therefore she told him nothing until the morning light.

Absalom commanded his servants, saying, “Mark now, when Amnon’s heart is merry with wine; and when I tell you, ‘Strike Amnon,’ then kill him. Don’t be afraid. Haven’t I commanded you? Be courageous, and be valiant!”

He went up from there to Bethel. As he was going up by the way, some youths came out of the city and mocked him, and said to him, “Go up, you baldy! Go up, you baldy!”

In the days of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglath Pileser king of Assyria came and took Ijon, Abel Beth Maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali; and he carried them captive to Assyria.

At the end of three years they took it. In the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel, Samaria was taken.

If I have found favor in the sight of the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my petition and to perform my request, let the king and Haman come to the banquet that I will prepare for them, and I will do tomorrow as the king has said.”

All day long they twist my words. All their thoughts are against me for evil.

As smoke is driven away, so drive them away. As wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.

He also drove out the nations before them, allotted them for an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

Therefore as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as the dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust, because they have rejected the law of Yahweh of Armies, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

For wickedness burns like a fire. It devours the briers and thorns; yes, it kindles in the thickets of the forest, and they roll upward in a column of smoke.

Their infants also will be dashed in pieces before their eyes. Their houses will be ransacked, and their wives raped.

My heart flutters. Horror has frightened me. The twilight that I desired has been turned into trembling for me.

Wrath is not in me, but if I should find briers and thorns, I would do battle! I would march on them and I would burn them together.

You, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house will go into captivity. You will come to Babylon, and there you will die, and there you will be buried, you, and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied falsely.’ ”

Why have you prophesied in Yahweh’s name, saying, ‘This house will be like Shiloh, and this city will be desolate, without inhabitant?’ ” All the people were crowded around Jeremiah in Yahweh’s house.

Then Yahweh’s word came to Jeremiah, after Hananiah the prophet had broken the bar from off the neck of the prophet Jeremiah, saying,

“Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says, ‘Because you have sent letters in your own name to all the people who are at Jerusalem, and to Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah, the priest, and to all the priests, saying,

When they are heated, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says Yahweh.

I will make her princes, her wise men, her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men drunk. They will sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says the King, whose name is Yahweh of Armies.

“The Lord has set at nothing all my mighty men within me. He has called a solemn assembly against me to crush my young men. The Lord has trodden the virgin daughter of Judah as in a wine press.

They ravished the women in Zion, the virgins in the cities of Judah.

“They won’t return into the land of Egypt; but the Assyrian will be their king, because they refused to repent.

“Listen, and testify against the house of Jacob,” says the Lord Yahweh, the God of Armies.

Therefore Yahweh, the God of Armies, the Lord, says: “Wailing will be in all the wide ways; and they will say in all the streets, ‘Alas! Alas!’ and they will call the farmer to mourning, and those who are skillful in lamentation to wailing.

Therefore I will cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus,” says Yahweh, whose name is the God of Armies.

The high places of Isaac will be desolate, the sanctuaries of Israel will be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”

Therefore Yahweh says: ‘Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided by line; and you yourself shall die in a land that is unclean, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.’ ”

Shave your heads, and cut off your hair for the children of your delight. Enlarge your baldness like the vulture; for they have gone into captivity from you!

For entangled like thorns, and drunken as with their drink, they are consumed utterly like dry stubble.

For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city will be taken, the houses rifled, and the women ravished. Half of the city will go out into captivity, and the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city.

For from the rising of the sun even to its going down, my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering: for my name is great among the nations,” says Yahweh of Armies.

They ate, they drank, they married, and they were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ship, and the flood came and destroyed them all.

They will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us.”

choosing rather to share ill treatment with God’s people than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a time,