Amos 5 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Listen to this word I am lifting over you, a funeral song, house of Israel:

She has fallen and will not get up again, the young woman Israel. She lies dumped on her own ground with no one to lift her.

This is what the Master Yahweh says: The town that marches out a thousand will have a hundred left, and the town that marches out a hundred will have ten left, for the house of Israel.

This is what Yahweh says to the house of Israel: Come looking for me, and live.

Do not go looking at Bethel. Do not walk into Gilgal. Do not cross over to Beersheba, because Gilgal will be rolled off into exile and Bethel will come to nothing.

Come looking for Yahweh, and live, or he will break out like fire on the house of Joseph. It will eat Bethel up and nobody will put it out.

You turn fair judgment into wormwood and throw what is right down in the dirt.

He made the Pleiades and Orion. He turns pitch black into morning and darkens the day down into night. He calls up the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land. Yahweh is his name.

He brings sudden wreckage down on the strong, and ruin comes over the walled city.

At the gate they hate the man who sets things straight, and they cannot stand anyone who tells it plainly.

So, because you trample the poor and take a cut of his grain, you have built houses out of cut stone and you will not live in them. You have planted vineyards worth having and you will not drink their wine.

I know how many times you have broken faith and how heavy your failures are, you who corner the innocent and take payoffs and shove the poor aside at the gate.

So the sensible man says nothing in a time like this, because the time is evil.

Go looking for good and not evil, so that you live, and then Yahweh, God who commands armies, will be with you, the way you keep saying he is.

Hate evil and love good. Stand fair judgment back up at the gate. Maybe then Yahweh, God who commands armies, will have mercy on what is left of Joseph.

So this is what Yahweh says, God who commands armies, the Master: In every open square there will be wailing. In every street they will be saying, "Oh no, oh no." They will call the farmer in from his field to mourn and hire the singers who know the death songs.

In every vineyard there will be wailing, because I am going to pass through the middle of you, says Yahweh.

How terrible for you who are longing for the day of Yahweh. What do you want with it? The day of Yahweh is darkness and not light.

It will be like a man running from a lion who runs into a bear, or who gets home, puts his hand on the wall, and a snake bites him.

Isn't the day of Yahweh darkness and not light, pitch dark with no glimmer in it anywhere?

I hate your festivals. I want nothing to do with them. I will not breathe in the smoke of your gatherings.

Even if you bring me whole burnt offerings and your grain gifts, I will not take them, and the fattened animals you bring to make peace with me, I will not so much as look at them.

Take the racket of your songs away from me. I will not listen to the sound of your harps.

Let fair judgment roll down like water, and doing right like a stream that never dries up.

Did you bring me sacrifices and grain gifts through those forty years in the wilderness, house of Israel?

You have carried Sakkuth your king and Kaiwan your star god, the images you made for yourselves.

So I will send you into exile past Damascus, says Yahweh. God who commands armies is his name.