Amos, 7
1 This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah showed me: Look! He formed a locust swarm when the late crop*1 was beginning to come up. This was the later crop after the king’s hay had been cut.
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2 When the swarm finished eating up the vegetation of the land, I said: “O Sovereign Lord Jehovah, please forgive! How can Jacob survive?*1 For he is weak!”
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3 So Jehovah reconsidered*1 this. “It will not happen,” Jehovah said.
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4 This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah showed me: Look! The Sovereign Lord Jehovah called for a punishment by fire. It consumed the vast deep waters, and it consumed a portion of the land.
5 Then I said: “O Sovereign Lord Jehovah, please hold this back. How can Jacob survive?*1 For he is weak!”
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6 So Jehovah reconsidered*1 this. “That too will not happen,” the Sovereign Lord Jehovah said.
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7 This is what he showed me: Look! Jehovah was standing on a wall made with a plumb line,*1 and there was a plumb line in his hand.
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8 Then Jehovah said to me: “What do you see, Aʹmos?” So I said: “A plumb line.” Jehovah then said: “Here I am putting a plumb line among my people Israel. I will no longer pardon them.
9 The high places of Isaac will be desolated, and the sanctuaries of Israel will be devastated; and I will come against the house of Jer·o·boʹam with a sword.”
10 Am·a·ziʹah the priest of Bethʹel sent this message to King Jer·o·boʹam of Israel: “Aʹmos is conspiring against you right in the midst of the house of Israel. The land cannot put up with all his words.
11 For this is what Aʹmos says, ‘Jer·o·boʹam will die by the sword, and Israel will surely go into exile from its land.’”
12 Am·a·ziʹah then said to Aʹmos: “O visionary, go, run away to the land of Judah, earn your bread*1 there, and there you may prophesy.
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13 But you must no longer prophesy at Bethʹel, for it is the sanctuary of a king and the house of a kingdom.”
14 Then Aʹmos answered Am·a·ziʹah: “I was not a prophet nor the son of a prophet; but I was a herdsman, and I took care of sycamore fig trees.*1
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15 But Jehovah took me away from following the flock, and Jehovah said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’
16 So now hear the word of Jehovah: ‘You are saying, “Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac.”
17 Therefore this is what Jehovah says: “Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters will fall by the sword. Your land will be apportioned out with a measuring line, and you yourself will die in an unclean land; and Israel will surely go into exile from its land.”’”