This is what the Lord says: "Because Damascus has committed three crimes -- make that four! -- I will not revoke my decree of judgment. They ripped through Gilead like threshing sledges with iron teeth.

Look! I will press you down, like a cart loaded down with grain presses down.

This is what the Lord says: "Just as a shepherd salvages from the lion's mouth a couple of leg bones or a piece of an ear, so the Israelites who live in Samaria will be salvaged. They will be left with just a corner of a bed, and a part of a couch."

"I sent against you a plague like one of the Egyptian plagues. I killed your young men with the sword, along with the horses you had captured. I made the stench from the corpses rise up into your nostrils. Still you did not come back to me." The Lord is speaking!

"I overthrew some of you the way God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You were like a burning stick snatched from the flames. Still you did not come back to me." The Lord is speaking!

Seek the Lord so you can live! Otherwise he will break out like fire against Joseph's family; the fire will consume and no one will be able to quench it and save Bethel.

Even if you offer me burnt and grain offerings, I will not be satisfied; I will not look with favor on your peace offerings of fattened calves.

Justice must flow like torrents of water, righteous actions like a stream that never dries up.

They say to the people: "Journey over to Calneh and look at it! Then go from there to Hamath-Rabbah! Then go down to Gath of the Philistines! Are they superior to our two kingdoms? Is their territory larger than yours?"

They sing to the tune of stringed instruments; like David they invent musical instruments.

Indeed, look! The Lord is giving the command. He will smash the large house to bits, and the small house into little pieces.

"Look! I am about to bring a nation against you, family of Israel." The Lord, the God who commands armies, is speaking. "They will oppress you all the way from Lebo-Hamath to the Stream of the Arabah."

The Lord said to me, "What do you see, Amos?" I said, "Tin." The sovereign One then said, "Look, I am about to place tin among my people Israel. I will no longer overlook their sin.

Because of this the earth will quake, and all who live in it will mourn. The whole earth will rise like the River Nile, it will surge upward and then grow calm, like the Nile in Egypt.

The sovereign Lord who commands armies will do this. He touches the earth and it dissolves; all who live on it mourn. The whole earth rises like the River Nile, and then grows calm like the Nile in Egypt.

"You Israelites are just like the Ethiopians in my sight," says the Lord. "Certainly I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt, but I also brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir.

Look, the sovereign Lord is watching the sinful nation, and I will destroy it from the face of the earth. But I will not completely destroy the family of Jacob," says the Lord.

"For look, I am giving a command and I will shake the family of Israel together with all the nations. It will resemble a sieve being shaken, when not even a pebble falls to the ground.

"In that day I will rebuild the collapsing hut of David. I will seal its gaps, repair its ruins, and restore it to what it was like in days gone by.