Amos 7:9

Hear this, you elders, And listen, all you inhabitants of the land. Has this ever happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?

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

Then they will begin to tell the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and tell the hills, ‘Cover us.’

They told the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb,

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

Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.

Behold, Yahweh stood above it, and said, “I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. I will give the land you lie on to you and to your offspring.

Unless the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty. God has seen my affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked you last night.”

Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, even that altar and the high place he broke down; and he burned the high place and beat it to dust, and burned the Asherah.

“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.’

For, behold, they have gone away from destruction. Egypt will gather them up. Memphis will bury them. Nettles will possess their pleasant things of silver. Thorns will be in their tents.

A prophet watches over Ephraim with my God. A fowler’s snare is on all of his paths, and hostility in the house of his God.

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.

Therefore he called that place Beersheba, because they both swore an oath there.

Men shall go into the caves of the rocks, and into the holes of the earth, from before the terror of Yahweh, and from the glory of his majesty, when he arises to shake the earth mightily.

Thorns and briers will come up on my people’s land; yes, on all the houses of joy in the joyous city.

I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done. I say: My counsel will stand, and I will do all that I please.

Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard. They have trodden my portion under foot. They have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.

As gangs of robbers wait to ambush a man, so the company of priests murder on the path toward Shechem, committing shameful crimes.

They are all hot as an oven, and devour their judges. All their kings have fallen. There is no one among them who calls to me.

Therefore they will now go captive with the first who go captive; and the feasting and lounging will end.

“All this is for the disobedience of Jacob, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the disobedience of Jacob? Isn’t it Samaria? And what are the high places of Judah? Aren’t they Jerusalem?

But my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, didn’t they overtake your fathers? “Then they repented and said, ‘Just as Yahweh of Armies determined to do to us, according to our ways, and according to our practices, so he has dealt with us.’ ”

Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread and a container of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder; and gave her the child, and sent her away. She departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.

Israel traveled with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father, Isaac.

I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire, and crushed it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust. I threw its dust into the brook that descended out of the mountain.

She sent and called Barak the son of Abinoam out of Kedesh Naphtali, and said to him, “Hasn’t Yahweh, the God of Israel, commanded, ‘Go and lead the way to Mount Tabor, and take with you ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun?

This thing became sin to the house of Jeroboam, even to cut it off, and to destroy it from off the surface of the earth.

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.

The earth will stagger like a drunken man, and will sway back and forth like a hammock. Its disobedience will be heavy on it, and it will fall and not rise again.

For the fortified city is solitary, a habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness. The calf will feed there, and there he will lie down, and consume its branches.

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?”

Hear Yahweh’s word, you children of Israel; for Yahweh has a charge against the inhabitants of the land: “Indeed there is no truth, nor goodness, nor knowledge of God in the land.

The inhabitants of Samaria will be in terror for the calves of Beth Aven; for its people will mourn over it, Along with its priests who rejoiced over it, for its glory, because it has departed from it.

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.’ ”

I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said, “Strike the tops of the pillars, that the thresholds may shake; and break them in pieces on the head of all of them; and I will kill the last of them with the sword: there shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them escape.

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

“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, then where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me? Says Yahweh of Armies to you, priests, who despise my name. You say, ‘How have we despised your name?’

By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

and asked for letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, that if he found any who were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Abel also brought some of the firstborn of his flock and of its fat. Yahweh respected Abel and his offering,

Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

But God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night, and said to him, “Behold, you are a dead man, because of the woman whom you have taken; for she is a man’s wife.”

He erected an altar there, and called it El Elohe Israel.

Let’s arise, and go up to Bethel. I will make there an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me on the way which I went.”

He will make you high above all nations that he has made, in praise, in name, and in honor; and that you may be a holy people to Yahweh your God, as he has spoken.

All Israel from Dan even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of Yahweh.

Why have you despised Yahweh’s word, to do that which is evil in his sight? You have struck Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.

Now therefore the sword will never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken Uriah the Hittite’s wife to be your wife.’

But when king David heard of all these things, he was very angry.

Even in the third year of Asa king of Judah, Baasha killed him, and reigned in his place.

His servant Zimri, captain of half his chariots, conspired against him. Now he was in Tirzah, drinking himself drunk in the house of Arza, who was over the household in Tirzah;

As Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, “Do you come in peace, Zimri, you murderer of your master?”

They made a conspiracy against him in Jerusalem, and he fled to Lachish; but they sent after him to Lachish, and killed him there.

Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him, and struck him before the people, and killed him, and reigned in his place.

Pekah the son of Remaliah, his captain, conspired against him and attacked him in Samaria, in the fortress of the king’s house, with Argob and Arieh; and with him were fifty men of the Gileadites. He killed him, and reigned in his place.

Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, attacked him, killed him, and reigned in his place, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah.

Now therefore, take to yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept him, that I not deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has.”

You have shortened the days of his youth. You have covered him with shame.

Yah has punished me severely, but he has not given me over to death.

Whoever rewards evil for good, evil shall not depart from his house.

In that day, their strong cities will be like the forsaken places in the woods and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the children of Israel; and it will be a desolation.

Isn’t it yet a very little while, and Lebanon will be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field will be regarded as a forest?

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

They say continually to those who despise me, ‘Yahweh has said, “You will have peace;” ’ and to everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart they say, ‘No evil will come on you.’

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.

The adversary has spread out his hand on all her pleasant things; for she has seen that the nations have entered into her sanctuary, concerning whom you commanded that they should not enter into your assembly.

He has violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden. He has destroyed his place of assembly. Yahweh has caused solemn assembly and Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion. In the indignation of his anger, he has despised the king and the priest.

Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to aliens.

“Listen to this, you priests! Listen, house of Israel, and give ear, house of the king! For the judgment is against you; for you have been a snare at Mizpah, and a net spread on Tabor.

Ephraim will become a desolation in the day of rebuke. Among the tribes of Israel, I have made known that which will surely be.

Gilead is a city of those who work iniquity; it is stained with blood.

When I would heal Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered, also the wickedness of Samaria; for they commit falsehood, and the thief enters in, and the gang of robbers ravages outside.

The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel, will be destroyed. The thorn and the thistle will come up on their altars. They will tell the mountains, “Cover us!” and the hills, “Fall on us!”

I will meet them like a bear that is bereaved of her cubs, and will tear the covering of their heart. There I will devour them like a lioness. The wild animal will tear them.

Hear this word that Yahweh has spoken against you, children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up out of the land of Egypt, saying:

“For in the day that I visit the transgressions of Israel on him, I will also visit the altars of Bethel; and the horns of the altar will be cut off, and fall to the ground.

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.

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

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.”

I said, “Please listen, you heads of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel: Isn’t it for you to know justice?

Please listen to this, you heads of the house of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor justice, and pervert all equity.

“Now, you priests, this commandment is for you.

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon.

Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.