Amos 7:1-17
7 This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah showed me: Look! He formed a locust swarm when the late crop* was beginning to come up. This was the later crop after the king’s hay had been cut.
2 When the swarm finished eating up the vegetation of the land, I said: “O Sovereign Lord Jehovah, please forgive!+ How can Jacob survive?* For he is weak!”+
3 So Jehovah reconsidered* this.+ “It will not happen,” Jehovah said.
4 This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah showed me: Look! The Sovereign Lord Jehovah called for a punishment by fire. It consumed the vast deep waters, and it consumed a portion of the land.
5 Then I said: “O Sovereign Lord Jehovah, please hold this back.+ How can Jacob survive?* For he is weak!”+
6 So Jehovah reconsidered* this.+ “That too will not happen,” the Sovereign Lord Jehovah said.
7 This is what he showed me: Look! Jehovah was standing on a wall made with a plumb line,* and there was a plumb line in his hand.
8 Then Jehovah said to me: “What do you see, Aʹmos?” So I said: “A plumb line.” Jehovah then said: “Here I am putting a plumb line among my people Israel. I will no longer pardon them.+
9 The high places of Isaac+ will be desolated, and the sanctuaries of Israel will be devastated;+ and I will come against the house of Jer·o·boʹam with a sword.”+
10 Am·a·ziʹah the priest of Bethʹel+ sent this message to King Jer·o·boʹam+ of Israel: “Aʹmos is conspiring against you right in the midst of the house of Israel.+ The land cannot put up with all his words.+
11 For this is what Aʹmos says, ‘Jer·o·boʹam will die by the sword, and Israel will surely go into exile from its land.’”+
12 Am·a·ziʹah then said to Aʹmos: “O visionary, go, run away to the land of Judah, earn your bread* there, and there you may prophesy.+
13 But you must no longer prophesy at Bethʹel,+ for it is the sanctuary of a king+ and the house of a kingdom.”
14 Then Aʹmos answered Am·a·ziʹah: “I was not a prophet nor the son of a prophet; but I was a herdsman,+ and I took care of sycamore fig trees.*
15 But Jehovah took me away from following the flock, and Jehovah said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’+
16 So now hear the word of Jehovah: ‘You are saying, “Do not prophesy against Israel,+ and do not preach+ against the house of Isaac.”
17 Therefore this is what Jehovah says: “Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters will fall by the sword. Your land will be apportioned out with a measuring line, and you yourself will die in an unclean land; and Israel will surely go into exile from its land.”’”+
Footnotes
^ That is, during January and February.
^ Lit., “rise up?”
^ Or “felt regret over.”
^ Lit., “rise up?”
^ Or “felt regret over.”
^ Or “a plummet.”
^ Lit., “eat bread.”
^ Or “was a nipper of sycamore figs.”