Amos 5:21

Amos spoke these words to the northern kingdom of Israel around 760–750 BC, in the reign of Jeroboam II (about 793–753 BC). Amos himself was a shepherd and a gatherer of figs from the southern kingdom of Judah, called by God to confront the north. It was a time of wealth, political stability and expanding borders, and the wealth gathered at the top. The rich exploited the poor, bribes bent the courts, and the needy were turned aside in the gate, all of which the verses just before this passage condemn (Amos 5:7–13).

Through all of it the people kept up their religion. They held the feasts, brought sacrifices and sang at shrines such as Bethel, Gilgal and Dan, where the worship of the LORD was blended with the idolatry of the nations around them and where the monarchy had sanctioned golden calves. They trusted that festivals and sacrifices would keep God’s favour whatever their lives were like.

The chapter opens with a funeral lament over Israel (Amos 5:1–3) and then pleads, “Seek ye me, and ye shall live” (Amos 5:4–6). Our passage closes a woe spoken over those who long for the day of the LORD, and it gives God’s own verdict on the religion of a people who had refused to seek him. The book began with oracles against the surrounding nations and against Israel (Amos 1–2), and Amos had already mocked this zealous, unrighteous worship by urging the people on to more of it at Bethel and Gilgal (Amos 4:4–5).

God opens with two strong verbs set side by side. To hate, sânêʼ, is to hold something in strong personal aversion, and to despise, mâʼaç, is to spurn or reject it. Together they tell Israel that God is pushing their worship away from himself. The “feast days” (chaggim) are the yearly pilgrimage festivals of Passover, Weeks and Tabernacles, the three feasts the law appointed (Deuteronomy 16:16). The “solemn assemblies” (ʻătsârâh) are the sacred gatherings that went with them. They were meant to be glad occasions for remembering God’s faithfulness to his covenant.

“I will not smell” comes from the language of sacrifice. The verb rûwach means to blow or breathe, and so to smell or perceive. When Noah offered his sacrifice after the flood, the LORD smelled a sweet savour, which was the sign that he accepted it (Genesis 8:21). Here God speaks in the same human terms to say the opposite. The smoke goes up from Israel’s altars, and he refuses to take any pleasure in it. The rites that were meant to rise to him as a pleasing aroma have become offensive to him. The two halves of the verse say one thing in two ways, as Hebrew poetry often does, and the second half presses the first further.

Verse 22 goes through Israel’s sacrifices one kind at a time. The verb for “offer”, ʻâlâh, means to go up or ascend, and the burnt offerings (‘olot) were the sacrifices wholly consumed on the altar, a sign of complete devotion and of atonement. The smoke went up as it always had, and God’s acceptance stayed where it was. The “meat offerings” (minchâh) are what is now usually called grain offerings. The word means a gift or tribute, and in worship it names a bloodless offering of flour, oil and frankincense, usually brought freely in thanksgiving or devotion. The “peace offerings” (shelem) were fellowship offerings. Part went to God, part to the priests, and the worshippers ate the rest together in a meal that spoke of peace and communion with him. The “fat beasts” (mᵉrîyʼ) show that Israel was bringing its best and costliest animals.

Each of these was a rightful part of the law of Moses, and God turns each one away. “I will not accept them” uses râtsâh, to be pleased with something or to accept it. “Neither will I regard” uses nâbaṭ, to look or gaze at something, and so to have regard for it. God declines even to look at the finest animals they bring. Israel thought that the quality and cost of a sacrifice would win his favour, so the mention of the fat beasts is pointed. The best that money can buy leaves God unmoved when the life behind it is unjust.

After the feasts and the sacrifices, God turns to the music. “Take thou away” is çûwr, to turn aside or remove, and here it is a command (sūr mēʿālay in the Hebrew, “take away from me”). God wants the singing removed from his presence. He calls their songs (shīreyḵā) “noise”, hâmôwn, a word for a tumult or the sound of a crowd. What Israel offered as devotion reached him as a din.

The “melody” (zimrāh) of the “viols” (nəḇāleḵā), stringed instruments used in worship, is the beauty and feeling of their music, and God says of it, “I will not hear.” The verb shâmaʻ means to hear, and often to hear with attention and a response. Every sound reaches God, so this is his decision to withhold acceptance and answer from their worship.

Verse 24 turns on the word “But”. Having refused the feasts, the offerings and the songs, God says what he does want, and it is the best-known line in the book.

“Judgment”, mishpâṭ, is justice as it is carried out: a verdict given, the law applied fairly, disputes settled impartially and rights upheld, especially for those who are unable to defend themselves. “Righteousness”, tsᵉdâqâh, is rightness of character and conduct, a life that conforms to God’s own holy character and standards. The two belong together. Mishpâṭ is justice in action, and tsᵉdâqâh is the uprightness from which that justice flows.

“Run down” is gâlal, to roll. Justice is to roll on like water going downhill, constantly, reaching everything in its path. The “mighty stream” joins nachal, a stream, with ʼêythân, mighty or enduring. A seasonal wadi runs for a while and then dries up, and God asks for a stream that flows all year with force and carves its own path. Water also gives life, cleanses and makes things grow, so the picture is of justice that is plentiful, life-giving and too strong to hold back. The second line of the verse repeats and strengthens the first, so that the public side of justice and the moral side of righteousness flow together through the community.

Amos is saying what Scripture says throughout. Samuel told Saul that “to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22). Through Isaiah God says he is weary of the sacrifices and assemblies of a people whose hands are unclean, and he tells them to seek judgment and relieve the oppressed (Isaiah 1:11–17). Micah asks what offering a man should bring before the LORD and answers with what the LORD requires: to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6:6–8). Hosea speaks of God desiring mercy above sacrifice (Hosea 6:6), David says that the sacrifice God wants is a broken spirit (Psalm 51:16–17), and Proverbs sets doing righteousness and justice above sacrifice (Proverbs 21:3).

Jesus brought the same charge against the religious leaders of his day. He said of them that they honoured God with their lips while their heart was far from him, so that their worship was in vain (Matthew 15:8–9), and he pronounced a woe on the scribes and Pharisees for careful outward religion that left out justice, mercy and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23).

God now reaches back to the beginning of the nation. The “wilderness”, midbar, is the desert Israel crossed for forty years after the Exodus, where God fed them with manna (Exodus 16:1–35), tested them and made his covenant with them. “Sacrifices” is zebach, the flesh of a slaughtered animal offered to God, often with a shared meal that spoke of communion with him. “Offerings” is minchah again, the bloodless gift of grain. Between them the two words cover the whole of Israel’s worship. “O house of Israel” addresses the northern kingdom as a people, so the charge is national as well as personal.

The question is asked to make a point, and the point is a history. Those same forty years were full of grumbling and rebellion, and the golden calf was made at the foot of the mountain where the covenant was given (Exodus 32). The divided worship of Amos’s day was an old pattern. Israel took pride in its religious heritage, and God answers that pride by pointing to what the heritage actually held. His long patience with them stands behind the judgment he is about to announce.

Verse 26 uncovers what lay beneath the busy worship. “Ye have borne” is nâsâʼ, to lift or carry. Israel carried these objects about, in processions or for private devotion, and there is a bitter turn in it: the people whom God had carried were carrying gods of their own. The first two commandments forbid exactly this, any other god before the LORD and any image made to be worshipped (Exodus 20:3–5).

The “images” are tselem, figures made to represent a god, and the plural points to a number of them. “The star of your god” uses kôwkâb, the ordinary word for a star, and it ties this worship to the heavens. Moses had warned Israel against being drawn to worship the sun, moon and stars (Deuteronomy 4:19). “Which ye made to yourselves” closes the charge with ʻâsâh, the common verb for making or doing. These gods came from Israel’s own hands and from the nations around them, while the worship of the LORD rests on what he has revealed and commanded. Outward religion had hidden all this from other people, and God saw through it to where the people’s hearts were given.

“Therefore” ties the sentence to everything before it: the injustice, the hollow worship and the idols. “I will cause you to go” makes God himself the one who sends the nation away. He is bringing the exile about. “Captivity” is gâlâh, a word whose first meaning is to uncover or strip bare, and which came to mean going into exile. It carries the shame and helplessness of a people removed from their land by force.

Damascus, the Aramean capital, was a place every Israelite knew. “Beyond” is hâlᵉʼâh, “to the distance”, far away. Past Damascus lay Mesopotamia and the rising empire of Assyria, which deported the peoples it conquered and scattered them far from home to break their identity as nations. The prophecy came true in 722 BC, when the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away (2 Kings 17:6). The law had warned of this from the start. Among the curses for breaking the covenant, Moses said that the LORD would scatter them among all people (Deuteronomy 28:64). So the exile shows God keeping his word in judgment as surely as he keeps it in blessing.

The sacrifices Israel abused were always a shadow of something greater. They were unable to perfect the worshipper or take away sin (Hebrews 10:1–4). Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). He offered himself once, the final and sufficient sacrifice (Hebrews 9:26–28), and his blood cleanses the conscience as the blood of animals never could (Hebrews 9:11–14). His offering was the opposite of an empty rite. It was an act of perfect obedience and love, “an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:2), the pleasing aroma that Israel’s altars had ceased to send up.

Jesus also lived the justice and righteousness that Israel failed to show. He blessed those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness” (Matthew 5:6). In the synagogue he read Isaiah’s words about good news for the poor and liberty for the captives as his own mission (Isaiah 61:1–2, Luke 4:18–19), and he gave his followers the command to love one another as the mark by which they would be known (John 13:34–35). The righteousness God demands he also provides in Christ, who was made sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Through him a new kind of worship is opened. Jesus said that the true worshippers worship the Father “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23–24), and he is himself the way to the Father, the truth and the life (John 14:6). In the new covenant God writes his law on the hearts of his people (Jeremiah 31:31–34). Believers offer their own selves as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1–2), along with the sacrifice of praise, doing good and sharing with others, “for with such sacrifices God is well pleased” (Hebrews 13:15–16).

Christ answers the idols of verse 26 as well. He is the true Light (John 1:9), set against the star of a god that led Israel astray, and he claims an undivided heart: “No man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). The gospel turns people “from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10).

Israel’s captivity also pictures the deeper exile of all people from God through sin, whose wages is death (Romans 6:23). The God of hosts who pronounced that judgment sent his Son to end it. At the cross Christ triumphed over the powers that held us (Colossians 2:15), and God has delivered us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption (Colossians 1:13–14). The story ends with the exile over for good, God dwelling with his people and wiping away every tear (Revelation 21:3–4).

This passage shows us a God who looks through our worship to the life behind it. Feasts, costly gifts and beautiful music all pass before him, and what he weighs is whether the people offering them deal justly, love their neighbour and belong to him alone. That is searching, and it is also good news about who God is. He cares how the poor are treated in the gate, and a full sanctuary does nothing to buy his silence about it.

The passage also gives us a way to test our own religion that is kinder than it first sounds. God is asking for something whole: a heart that seeks him, hands that do right, and songs that come from both. Attendance, giving and singing are his gifts, and they please him when they are the overflow of a life that is his through the week. The idols of verse 26 have quieter forms now, such as wealth, comfort, success and the approval of others, and anything that takes first place in our affection and trust is a god we have made for ourselves.

In Christ none of this is left as a bare demand. He is the sacrifice God accepted, and the Spirit he gives is the source of the stream Amos saw, so that justice and righteousness can flow from people who have first received righteousness as a gift. The plea that stands before this passage still stands: “Seek ye me, and ye shall live.”