^1. This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: a basket of ripe fruit.

^2. "What do you see, Amos?" he asked. "A basket of ripe fruit," I answered. Then the LORD said to me, "The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

^3. "In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD, "the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. [1] Many, many bodies--flung everywhere! Silence!"

^4. Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land,

^5. saying, "When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?"-- skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales,

^6. buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

^7. The LORD has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: "I will never forget anything they have done.

^8. "Will not the land tremble for this, and all who live in it mourn? The whole land will rise like the Nile; it will be stirred up and then sink like the river of Egypt.

^9. "In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD, "I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.

^10. I will turn your religious feasts into mourning and all your singing into weeping. I will make all of you wear sackcloth and shave your heads. I will make that time like mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.

^11. "The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land-- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.

^12. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.

^13. "In that day "the lovely young women and strong young men will faint because of thirst.

^14. They who swear by the shame [3] of Samaria, or say, `As surely as your god lives, O Dan,' or, `As surely as the god [2] of Beersheba lives'-- they will fall, never to rise again."