Amos 5:5-9
The Message
4-5 God’s Message to the family of Israel:
“Seek me and live.
Don’t fool around at those shrines of Bethel,
Don’t waste time taking trips to Gilgal,
and don’t bother going down to Beer-sheba.
Gilgal is here today and gone tomorrow
and Bethel is all show, no substance.”
6 So seek God and live! You don’t want to end up
with nothing to show for your life
But a pile of ashes, a house burned to the ground.
For God will send just such a fire,
and the firefighters will show up too late.
Raw Truth Is Never Popular
7-9 Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar
and stomp righteousness into the mud.
Do you realize where you are? You’re in a cosmos
star-flung with constellations by God,
A world God wakes up each morning
and puts to bed each night.
God dips water from the ocean
and gives the land a drink.
God, God-revealed, does all this.
And he can destroy it as easily as make it.
He can turn this vast wonder into total waste.
Amos 5:5-7
New International Version
5 do not seek Bethel,
do not go to Gilgal,(A)
do not journey to Beersheba.(B)
For Gilgal will surely go into exile,
and Bethel will be reduced to nothing.[a](C)”
6 Seek(D) the Lord and live,(E)
or he will sweep through the tribes of Joseph like a fire;(F)
it will devour them,
and Bethel(G) will have no one to quench it.(H)
Footnotes
- Amos 5:5 Hebrew aven, a reference to Beth Aven (a derogatory name for Bethel); see Hosea 4:15.
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson
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