Will it not be on this account that the land will be agitated, and every inhabitant in it will have to mourn; and it will, all of it, certainly come up just like the Nile and be tossed and sink down like the Nile of Egypt?’”​—Amos 8:7, 8.

Under the weight of his judgment, the land would be in a state of agitation and the inhabitants would mourn. Thus the land would, in effect, rise and fall as does the Nile when it overflows its banks and then recedes.