This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, he was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout, and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings. When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,

    “O Lord GOD, please forgive!
        How can Jacob stand?
        He is so small!”
    The LORD relented concerning this:
        “It shall not be,” said the LORD.
    
    
      This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, the Lord GOD was calling for a judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said,

    “O Lord GOD, please cease!
        How can Jacob stand?
        He is so small!”
    The LORD relented concerning this:
        “This also shall not be,” said the Lord GOD.
    
    
      This is what he showed me: behold, the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the LORD said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said,

    “Behold, I am setting a plumb line
        in the midst of my people Israel;
        I will never again pass by them;
    the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
        and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
        and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”
    
    
      Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said,

    “‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword,
        and Israel must go into exile
        away from his land.’”
    
    
      And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and prophesy there, but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”

  Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ Now therefore hear the word of the LORD.

    “You say, ‘Do not prophesy against Israel,
        and do not preach against the house of Isaac.’
    
    
      Therefore thus says the LORD:

    “‘Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city,
        and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,
        and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line;
    you yourself shall die in an unclean land,
        and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.’”
    
    
      This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit. And he said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the LORD said to me,

    “The end has come upon my people Israel;
        I will never again pass by them.
    The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,”
                                            declares the Lord GOD.
    “So many dead bodies!”
    “They are thrown everywhere!”
    “Silence!”
    
    
    Hear this, you who trample on the needy
        and bring the poor of the land to an end,
    saying, “When will the new moon be over,
        that we may sell grain?
    And the Sabbath,
        that we may offer wheat for sale,
    that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great
        and deal deceitfully with false balances,
    that we may buy the poor for silver
        and the needy for a pair of sandals
        and sell the chaff of the wheat?”
    
    
    The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
    “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
    Shall not the land tremble on this account,
        and everyone mourn who dwells in it,
    and all of it rise like the Nile,
        and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?”
    
    
    “And on that day,” declares the Lord GOD,
        “I will make the sun go down at noon
        and darken the earth in broad daylight.
    I will turn your feasts into mourning
        and all your songs into lamentation;
    I will bring sackcloth on every waist
        and baldness on every head;
    I will make it like the mourning for an only son
        and the end of it like a bitter day.
    
    
    “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD,
        “when I will send a famine on the land—
    not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
        but of hearing the words of the LORD.
    They shall wander from sea to sea,
        and from north to east;
    they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD,
        but they shall not find it.
    
    
    “In that day the lovely virgins and the young men
        shall faint for thirst.
    Those who swear by the Guilt of Samaria,
        and say, ‘As your god lives, O Dan,’
    and, ‘As the Way of Beersheba lives,’
        they shall fall, and never rise again.”
    
    
      I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said:

    “Strike the capitals until the thresholds shake,
        and shatter them on the heads of all the people;
    and those who are left of them I will kill with the sword;
        not one of them shall flee away;
        not one of them shall escape.
    
    
    “If they dig into Sheol,
        from there shall my hand take them;
    if they climb up to heaven,
        from there I will bring them down.
    If they hide themselves on the top of Carmel,
        from there I will search them out and take them;
    and if they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea,
        there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them.
    And if they go into captivity before their enemies,
        there I will command the sword, and it shall kill them;
    and I will fix my eyes upon them
        for evil and not for good.”
    
    
    The Lord GOD of hosts,
    he who touches the earth and it melts,
        and all who dwell in it mourn,
    and all of it rises like the Nile,
        and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt;
    who builds his upper chambers in the heavens
        and founds his vault upon the earth;
    who calls for the waters of the sea
        and pours them out upon the surface of the earth—
    the LORD is his name.
    
    
    “Are you not like the Cushites to me,
        O people of Israel?” declares the LORD.
    “Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt,
        and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?
    Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful kingdom,
        and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground,
        except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,”
                                            declares the LORD.
    
    
    “For behold, I will command,
        and shake the house of Israel among all the nations
    as one shakes with a sieve,
        but no pebble shall fall to the earth.
    All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword,
        who say, ‘Disaster shall not overtake or meet us.’
    
    
        “In that day I will raise up
        the booth of David that is fallen
    and repair its breaches,
        and raise up its ruins
        and rebuild it as in the days of old,
    that they may possess the remnant of Edom
        and all the nations who are called by my name,”
        declares the LORD who does this.
    
    
    “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD,
        “when the plowman shall overtake the reaper
        and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed;
    the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
        and all the hills shall flow with it.
    I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
        and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
    they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,
        and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.
    I will plant them on their land,
        and they shall never again be uprooted
        out of the land that I have given them,”
                                            says the LORD your God. (ESV)

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

  Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

  What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

  Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

  So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (ESV)