Amos, 9

¹ I saw Jehovah^*1 stationed above the altar, and he proceeded to say: “Strike the pillar head, so that the thresholds will rock. And cut them off at the head, all of them. And the last part of them I shall kill with the sword itself. No one fleeing of them will make good his flight, and no one escaping of them will make his getaway.

² If they dig down into Sheʹol,^*1 from there my own hand will take them; and if they go up to the heavens, from there I shall bring them down.

³ And if they hide themselves on the top of Carʹmel, from there I shall carefully search and be certain to take them. And if they conceal themselves from in front of my eyes on the floor of the sea, down there I shall command the serpent, and it must bite them.

⁴ And if they go into captivity before their enemies, from there I shall command the sword, and it must kill them; and I will set my eyes upon them for bad, and not for good.

⁵ And the Sovereign Lord, Jehovah of the armies,^*1 is the One touching the land,^*2 so that it melts; and all the inhabitants in it will have to mourn; and it will certainly come up like the Nile, all of it, and sink down like the Nile of Egypt.

⁶ “‘He who is building in the heavens his stairs, and his structure over the earth that he founded; he who is calling for the waters of the sea, that he may pour them out upon the surface of the earth—Jehovah is his name.’

⁷ “‘Are YOU not like the sons of the Cushʹites^*1 to me, O sons of Israel?’ is the utterance of Jehovah. ‘Did I not bring Israel itself up out of the land of Egypt, and the Phi·lisʹtines out of Crete,^*2 and Syria^*3 out of Kir?’^*4

⁸ “‘Look! The eyes of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah are upon the sinful kingdom, and he will certainly annihilate it from upon the surface of the ground. Nevertheless, I shall not completely annihilate the house of Jacob,’ is the utterance of Jehovah.

⁹ ‘For, look! I am commanding, and I will jiggle the house of Israel among all the nations, just as one jiggles the sieve, so that not a pebble falls to the earth.

¹⁰ By the sword they will die—all the sinners of my people, those who are saying: “The calamity will not come near or reach as far as us.”’

¹¹ “‘In that day I shall raise up the booth^*1 of David that is fallen, and I shall certainly repair their breaches. And its ruins I shall raise up, and I shall certainly build it up as in the days of long ago,

¹² to the end that they may take possession of what is left remaining of Eʹdom, and all the nations^*1 upon whom my name has been called,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, who is doing this.^*2

¹³ “‘Look! There are days coming,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘and the plowman will actually overtake^*1 the harvester, and the treader of grapes, the carrier^*2 of the seed; and the mountains must drip with sweet wine, and the very hills will all find themselves melting.

¹⁴ And I will gather back the captive ones of my people Israel, and they will actually build [the] desolated cities and inhabit [them], and plant vineyards and drink the wine of them, and make gardens and eat the fruit of them.’

¹⁵ “‘And I shall certainly plant them upon their ground, and they will no more be uprooted from their ground that I have given them,’ Jehovah your God^*1 has said.”