After listing repeated warnings that did not lead Israel to return, the LORD says, “prepare to meet your God, O Israel.” The statement is followed by a description of the LORD as Creator and the one who declares his thoughts and treads the heights. See Amos 4:12–13.
In Amos 4:12–13, the speaker turns from listing earlier warnings to announcing a final, unavoidable confrontation: “Therefore…prepare to meet your God, Israel.” The exact action God will take is left unstated, but the point is that it is settled and imminent. This closes a section where Amos has been recounting repeated troubles that came on Israel—scarcity, drought, crop failure, disease, and calamities—each followed by the refrain that Israel still did not return to God (Amos 4:6–11).
Amos 4:12–13 functions as the closing punchline to the prior list of warnings (4:6–11). The text presents a clear cause-and-effect: because Israel did not respond to earlier troubles, God now announces a further act against them (“Therefore… I will do this to you”).
A common mistake is to turn the wording into a slogan. The better reading keeps the phrase tied to the passage, the speaker, and the problem the book is addressing.
Start with Amos 4:12-13, then read the surrounding section so the answer stays connected to the passage's flow.
12Therefore thus will I do to you, Israel; [and] because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel.
13For, behold, he who forms the mountains, and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought; that makes the morning darkness, and treads on the high places of the Earth Yahweh, the God of hosts, is his name.