Amos 7:1-9:10
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
V. Symbolic Visions
Chapter 7
First Vision: The Locust Swarm
1 This is what the Lord God showed me: He was forming a locust swarm when the late growth began to come up (the late growth after the king’s mowing[a]). 2 When they had finished eating the grass in the land, I said:
Forgive, O Lord God!
Who will raise up Jacob?
He is so small!
3 The Lord relented concerning this. “This shall not be,” said the Lord God.
Second Vision: The Rain of Fire
4 This is what the Lord God showed me: He was summoning a rain of fire. It had devoured the great abyss and was consuming the fields. 5 Then I said:
Cease, O Lord God!
Who will raise up Jacob?
He is so small!
6 The Lord relented concerning this. “This also shall not be,” said the Lord God.
Third Vision: The Plummet
7 (A)This is what the Lord God showed me: He was standing, plummet in hand, by a wall built with a plummet.[b] 8 The Lord God asked me, “What do you see, Amos?” And I answered, “A plummet.” Then the Lord said:
See, I am laying the plummet
in the midst of my people Israel;
I will forgive them no longer.
9 The high places of Isaac shall be laid waste,
and the sanctuaries of Israel made desolate;
and I will attack the house of Jeroboam with the sword.
Biographical Interlude: Amos and Amaziah
10 Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent word to Jeroboam, king of Israel: “Amos has conspired against you within the house of Israel; the country cannot endure all his words. 11 For this is what Amos says:
‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword,
and Israel shall surely be exiled from its land.’”
12 To Amos, Amaziah said: “Off with you, seer, flee to the land of Judah and there earn your bread by prophesying! 13 But never again prophesy in Bethel;(B) for it is the king’s sanctuary and a royal temple.” 14 Amos answered Amaziah, “I am not a prophet,[c] nor do I belong to a company of prophets. I am a herdsman and a dresser of sycamores,(C) 15 but the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’(D) 16 Now hear the word of the Lord:
You say: ‘Do not prophesy against Israel,
do not preach against the house of Isaac.’
17 Therefore thus says the Lord:
Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city,
and your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword.
Your land shall be parcelled out by measuring line,
and you yourself shall die in an unclean land;
and Israel shall be exiled from its land.”
Chapter 8
Fourth Vision: The Summer Fruit
1 This is what the Lord God showed me: a basket of end-of-summer fruit.[d] 2 He asked, “What do you see, Amos?” And I answered, “A basket of end-of-summer fruit.” And the Lord said to me:
The end has come for my people Israel;
I will forgive them no longer.
3 The temple singers will wail on that day—
oracle of the Lord God.
Many shall be the corpses,
strewn everywhere—Silence!(E)
4 Hear this, you who trample upon the needy
and destroy the poor of the land:
5 “When will the new moon be over,” you ask,
“that we may sell our grain,
And the sabbath,
that we may open the grain-bins?
We will diminish the ephah,[e]
add to the shekel,
and fix our scales for cheating!(F)
6 We will buy the destitute for silver,
and the poor for a pair of sandals;(G)
even the worthless grain we will sell!”
7 The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Never will I forget a thing they have done!
8 Shall not the land tremble because of this,
and all who dwell in it mourn?
It will all rise up and toss like the Nile,
and subside like the river of Egypt.(H)
9 On that day—oracle of the Lord God—
I will make the sun set at midday
and in broad daylight cover the land with darkness.
10 I will turn your feasts into mourning
and all your songs into dirges.
I will cover the loins of all with sackcloth
and make every head bald.
I will make it like the time of mourning for an only child,
and its outcome like a day of bitter weeping.(I)
11 See, days are coming—oracle of the Lord God—
when I will send a famine upon the land:
Not a hunger for bread, or a thirst for water,
but for hearing the word of the Lord.
12 They shall stagger from sea to sea
and wander from north to east
In search of the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.(J)
13 On that day, beautiful young women and young men
shall faint from thirst,
14 Those who swear by Ashima of Samaria,[f](K)
and who say, “By the life of your god, O Dan,”
“By the life of the Power of Beer-sheba!”
They shall fall, never to rise again.
Chapter 9
Fifth Vision: The Destruction of the Sanctuary
1 I saw the Lord standing beside the altar. And he said:
Strike the capitals
so that the threshold shakes!
Break them off on the heads of them all!
Those who are left I will slay with the sword.
Not one shall get away,
no survivor shall escape.[g](L)
2 Though they dig down to Sheol,
even from there my hand shall take them;
Though they climb to the heavens,
even from there I shall bring them down.(M)
3 Though they hide on the summit of Carmel,
there too I will hunt them down and take them;
Though they hide from my gaze at the bottom of the sea,
there I will command the serpent[h] to bite them.(N)
4 Though they go into captivity before their enemies,
there I will command the sword to slay them.
I will fix my gaze upon them
for evil and not for good.
5 The Lord God of hosts,
Who melts the earth with his touch,
so that all who dwell on it mourn,
So that it will all rise up like the Nile,
and subside like the river of Egypt;(O)
6 Who has built his upper chamber in heaven,
and established his vault over the earth;
Who summons the waters of the sea
and pours them upon the surface of the earth—
the Lord is his name.(P)
7 Are you not like the Ethiopians to me,
O Israelites?—oracle of the Lord—
Did I not bring the Israelites from the land of Egypt
as I brought the Philistines from Caphtor
and the Arameans[i] from Kir?
8 See, the eyes of the Lord God are on this sinful kingdom,
and I will destroy it from the face of the earth—
But I will not destroy the house of Jacob completely—
oracle of the Lord.
9 For see, I have given the command
to sift the house of Israel among all the nations,
As one sifts with a sieve,
letting no pebble fall to the ground.
10 All sinners among my people shall die by the sword,
those who say, “Disaster will not reach or overtake us.”(Q)
Footnotes
- 7:1 The king’s mowing: the first harvesting of the crops apparently belonged to the king as a kind of tax.
- 7:7 A plummet: with this vision, the pleas of the prophet (vv. 1–6) disappear, and disaster is announced. One use of the plummet in ancient times was to see how far out of line a wall or building had become, to determine whether it could be repaired or would have to be torn down. Like a structure that had become architecturally unsound, Israel was unsalvageable and would have to be demolished (cf. 2 Kgs 21:13; Is 34:11; Lam 2:8).
- 7:14 I am not a prophet: Amos reacts strongly to Amaziah’s attempt to classify him as a “prophet-for-hire” who “earns [his] bread” by giving oracles in exchange for payment (cf. 1 Sm 9:3–10; Mi 3:5). To disassociate himself from this kind of “professional” prophet, Amos rejects outright the title of nabi’ (“prophet”). By profession he is a herdsman/sheepbreeder and a dresser of sycamore trees, but God’s call has commissioned him to prophesy to Israel.
- 8:1–2 End-of-summer fruit…the end has come: the English translation attempts to capture the wordplay of the Hebrew. The Hebrew word for “fruit picked late in the season” is qayis, while the word for “end” is qes.
- 8:5 Ephah: see note on Is 5:10.
- 8:14 Ashima of Samaria: a high-ranking goddess worshiped in Hamath, whose cult was transplanted by the people of that city when they were deported to Samaria by the Assyrians (2 Kgs 17:30). The Power of Beer-sheba: possibly an epithet of a deity worshiped in Beer-sheba, either a syncretistic form of the worship of Israel’s God or of another god. Dan…Beer-sheba: the traditional designation for the northern and southern limits of Israel to which the Israelites made pilgrimages.
- 9:1 This vision may describe the destruction of the temple at Bethel and the fulfillment of the oracle in 3:14, linking God’s judgment upon Israel with the “punishment” of the altars of Bethel. This dramatic event (perhaps to be identified with the earthquake mentioned in 1:1) symbolizes the end of the Northern Kingdom as the Lord’s people, the consequence of their steadfast refusal to heed the prophetic word and return to the God of Israel.
- 9:3 The serpent: a name for the primeval chaos monster, vanquished by God at the time of creation but not annihilated. He was a personification of the sea, another primary archetype of chaos in the ancient Near East.
- 9:7 The Ethiopians…the Philistines…the Arameans: although Israel’s relationship to the Lord was special, even unique in some respects (3:2), Israel was not the only people on earth that God cared for. Striking here is the reference to divine intervention in the history of the Philistines and Arameans, not unlike the Lord’s saving intervention to bring Israel out of Egypt. Caphtor: the island of Crete.
Scripture texts, prefaces, introductions, footnotes and cross references used in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC All Rights Reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.