The Holy Bible – Knox Translation
The Prophecy of Amos
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Chapter 4
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1
Here is word for you, pampered cattle that dwell at Samaria, the poor wronging, the friendless folk spurning, and ever crying out upon your husbands, Wine, there! We would drink!
2
Never let me be called holy, the Lord God says, if doom does not overtake you for this; see if you be not trussed on spears, and your children given up to feed the cooking-pan!
3
Leave the city walls you must, the Lord says, one by this breach, one by that, and be cast away in Armon.

4
On with you to Bethel, and defy me, thence to Galgal, and repeat defiance there; morning victims, tithes on the third day,
5
bread, leavened bread, for thank-offering, gifts of devotion publicly proclaimed! Have your will, men of Israel, says the Lord God, have your will.

6
What would you? Never a city left but men’s teeth were idle, never a village but bread lacked there, and you would not come back to me, the Lord says.
7
It was three months to harvest, and rain I denied you; or rain fell on one city, and not on the next, one village had a drenching and the next was dry,
8
till one city must supply water for three neighbours, and none had its fill, and you would not come back to me.
9
You would not come back to me, the Lord says, when sirocco I sent, and mildew, and the locust preyed on garden and vineyard, fig-tree and olive-tree of yours;
10
you would not come back to me, when with Egypt’s pestilence I slew you, when your warriors fell at the sword’s point, and your horses were carried off, and never a camp of yours but the stench of it plagued your nostrils;
11
you would not come back to me, when ruin threatened, swift as the divine stroke that ruined Sodom and Gomorrha, and you yourselves were like a brand saved from the burning.

12
Now I have worse, Israel, in store for thee; when that worse comes, prepare thou must, Israel, to meet thy God.
13
He is here, that fashioned the hills and made the winds; he is here, that gives man warning of his designs, that turns dawn into darkness, and sets his feet on the highest heights of earth; the Lord God of hosts is the name of him.