8:1 This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: a basket of ripe fruit.

8:2 "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.

8:3 "In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD, "the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies--flung everywhere! Silence!"

8:4 Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land,

8:5 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,

8:6 buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

8:7 The LORD has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: "I will never forget anything they have done.

8:8 "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.

8:9 "In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD, "I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.

8:10 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.

8:11 "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.

8:12 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.

8:13 "In that day "the lovely young women and strong young men will faint because of thirst.

8:14 They who swear by the shame of Samaria, or say, 'As surely as your god lives, O Dan,' or, 'As surely as the god of Beersheba lives'--they will fall, never to rise again."