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is what the Lord God showed me: He was forming a swarm of locusts at the time when the second crop was sprouting, after the king’s share had been harvested. 2 When the locusts had finished stripping the land of vegetation, I said, “O Lord God, forgive, I beg you! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!
3 So the Lord relented concerning this.
“It will not happen,” the Lord said.
4 This is what the Lord God showed Me: The Lord God was calling for judgment by fire; and it consumed the great deep and devoured the land. 5 Then I said, “O Lord God, please stop, I beg you! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”
6 So the Lord relented concerning this.
“This will not happen either,” the Lord God said.
7 This is what He showed me: The Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, and He was holding a plumb line in His hand. 8 And the Lord asked me, “What do you see, Amos?”
“A plumb line,” I replied.
Then the Lord said, “Behold, I am setting a plumb line among My people Israel; I will spare them no longer.
9 “The high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel will be reduced to ruins;
I will rise up against the house of Jeroboam with a sword.”
10 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent a message to Jeroboam king of Israel: “Amos has conspired against you right here in the very heart of the house of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words. 11 For this is what Amos has been saying:
“ ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword,
and Israel will certainly go into exile,
away from their homeland’.”
12 Then Amaziah said to Amos, “Go away, you seer! Flee to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and give your prophecies there. 13 Do not ever prophesy at Bethel again, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is the temple of the kingdom.”
14 Amos answered Amaziah, “I was neither a prophet, nor was I the son of a prophet; rather, I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. 15 But the Lord took me from following the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to My people Israel’. 16 Now then, hear the word of the Lord. You say,
‘Do not prophesy against Israel,
and do not preach against the house of Isaac’.
17 “Therefore this is what the Lord says:
‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city,
and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword.
Your land will be divided up with a measuring line,
and you yourself will die in a pagan land;
and Israel will certainly go into exile,
away from its homeland’.”