The best of them is like a brier: the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge: the day of your watchmen and your visitation comes; now shall be their perplexity.
And what will you do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from afar? to whom will you flee for help? and where will you leave your treasures?
For it is a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity by the Lord GOD of hosts in the valley of vision, of breaking down the walls, and crying to the mountains.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
Also her hired men are in the midst of her like fatted bullocks; for they also are turned back, and have fled away together: they did not stand, because the day of their calamity had come upon them, and the time of their visitation.
Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among those who fall: in the time of their visitation they shall be thrown down, says the LORD.
And you, son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns be with you, and you dwell among scorpions: be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house.
And there shall be no more a piercing brier to the house of Israel, nor any painful thorn among all who are round about them, who despised them; and they shall know that I am the Lord GOD.
And he said, Amos, what do you see? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD to me, The end has come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.
And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;