When Patience Runs Out
What happens when a society ignores every warning sign and refuses to change?
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Amos 7:1-9:10
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1Thus the Lord GOD showed me: behold, he formed locusts in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s harvest.
2When they finished eating the grass of the land, then I said, “Lord GOD, forgive, I beg you! How could Jacob stand? For he is small.”
3The LORD relented concerning this. “It shall not be,” says the LORD.
4Thus the Lord GOD showed me: behold, the Lord GOD called for judgment by fire; and it dried up the great deep, and would have devoured the land.
5Then I said, “Lord GOD, stop, I beg you! How could Jacob stand? For he is small.”
6The LORD relented concerning this. “This also shall not be,” says the Lord GOD.
7Thus he showed me: behold, the Lord stood beside a wall made by a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.
8The LORD said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “Behold, I will set a plumb line in the middle of my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more.
9The 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.”
10Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the middle of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words.
11For Amos says, ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.’”
12Amaziah also said to Amos, “You seer, go, flee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there,
13but don’t prophesy again any more at Bethel; for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a royal house!”
14Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman, and a farmer of sycamore figs;
15and the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’
16Now therefore listen to the LORD’s word: ‘You say, Don’t prophesy against Israel, and don’t preach against the house of Isaac.’
17Therefore the LORD 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.’”
1Thus the Lord GOD showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit.
2He said, “Amos, what do you see?” I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the LORD said to me, “The end has come on my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more.
3The songs of the temple will be wailing in that day,” says the Lord GOD. “The dead bodies will be many. In every place they will throw them out with silence.
4Hear this, you who desire to swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to fail,
5saying, ‘When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may market wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel large, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit;
6that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals, and sell the sweepings with the wheat?’”
7The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob, “Surely I will never forget any of their works.
8Won’t the land tremble for this, and everyone mourn who dwells in it? Yes, it will rise up wholly like the River; and it will be stirred up and sink again, like the River of Egypt.
9It will happen in that day,” says the Lord GOD, “that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.
10I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will make you wear sackcloth on all your bodies, and baldness on every head. I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.
11Behold, the days come,” says the Lord GOD, “that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the LORD’s words.
12They will wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they will run back and forth to seek the LORD’s word, and will not find it.
13In that day the beautiful virgins and the young men will faint for thirst.
14Those 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.”
1I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said, “Strike the tops of the pillars, that the thresholds may shake. Break them in pieces on the head of all of them. I will kill the last of them with the sword. Not one of them will flee away. Not one of them will escape.
2Though they dig into Sheol, there my hand will take them; and though they climb up to heaven, there I will bring them down.
3Though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out from there; and though they be hidden from my sight in the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent, and it will bite them.
4Though they go into captivity before their enemies, there I will command the sword, and it will kill them. I will set my eyes on them for evil, and not for good.
5For the Lord, the GOD of Armies, is he who touches the land and it melts, and all who dwell in it will mourn; and it will rise up wholly like the River, and will sink again, like the River of Egypt.
6It is he who builds his rooms in the heavens, and has founded his vault on the earth; he who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth—the LORD is his name.
7Are you not like the children of the Ethiopians to me, children of Israel?” says the LORD. “Haven’t I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?
8Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are on the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the surface of the earth, except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” says the LORD.
9“For behold, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all the nations as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet not the least kernel will fall on the earth.
10All the sinners of my people will die by the sword, who say, ‘Evil won’t overtake nor meet us.’