Chapter 8

  Thus the Lord Yahweh showed me: and, behold, a basket of summer fruit.  

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  He said, Amos, what see you? I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said Yahweh to me, The end is come on my people Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.  

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  The songs of the temple shall be wailings in that day, says the Lord Yahweh: the dead bodies shall be many: in every place shall they cast them forth with silence.  

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  Hear this, you who would swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to fail,  

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  saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit;  

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  that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and sell the refuse of the wheat?  

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  Yahweh has sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.  

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  Shall not the land tremble for this, and everyone mourn who dwells therein? yes, it shall rise up wholly like the River; and it shall be troubled and sink again, like the River of Egypt.  

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  It shall happen in that day, says the Lord Yahweh, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.  

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  I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; and I will make it as the mourning for an only son, and the end of it as a bitter day.  

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  Behold, the days come, says the Lord Yahweh, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Yahweh.  

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  They shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they shall run back and forth to seek the word of Yahweh, and shall not find it.  

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  In that day shall the beautiful virgins and the young men faint for thirst.  

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  Those who swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, As your god, Dan, lives; and, As the way of Beersheba lives; they shall fall, and never rise up again.  

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