Amos 5:25

5:18-27 Woe unto those that desire the day of the Lord's judgments, that wish for times of war and confusion; as some who long for changes, hoping to rise upon the ruins of their country! but this should be so great a desolation, that nobody could gain by it. The day of the Lord will be a dark, dismal, gloomy day to all impenitent sinners. When God makes a day dark, all the world cannot make it light. Those who are not reformed by the judgments of God, will be pursued by them; if they escape one, another stands ready to seize them. A pretence of piety is double iniquity, and so it will be found. The people of Israel copied the crimes of their forefathers. The law of worshipping the Lord our God, is, Him only we must serve. Professors thrive so little, because they have little or no communion with God in their duties. They were led captive by Satan into idolatry, therefore God caused them to go into captivity among idolaters.

Amos 5:25 . Have ye offered — Or, did you offer, unto me sacrifices and offerings — “Verborum emphasis in MIHI sita est,” says Spencer: The emphasis of the passage lies in ME. “Did ye offer such sacrifices as were acceptable to ME; such an entire and undivided service as I enjoin?” — Newcome. Certainly they did not. They offered sacrifices indeed, but in general did not offer them in a right manner, in a true spirit of piety; in the genuine fear and love of God, and with an upright intention to glorify him. On the contrary, they joined the worship of idols with the worship of God, and thereby polluted it, and rendered it insignificant in God’s sight. Thus Dr. Whitby: “This question is a strong negative, importing, that though they really did offer sacrifices, as he had commanded, yet he did not accept, or look upon them, as offered to him. The expression is like that of the Prophet Zechariah 7:5 , When ye fasted, &c., did ye at all fast to me, even to me? And this is here denied, 1st, Because God will accept of no worship as done unto him, which is not done unto him alone; and when any other is worshipped with him, he looks upon himself as not worshipped at all.

So, of those nations which came from Assyria into the cities of Samaria, it is said, 2 Kings 17:33 , They feared the Lord, and served their own gods; and then it is added, 2 Kings 17:34 , They feared not the Lord. 2d, Because God will not own any worship as performed to him, while men continue in their disobedience to his laws, and in their hearts depart from him. Thus the Jews, in Zechariah, are said not to fast to him, because they would not hearken to nor obey his words; and he is said to have been angry with them in the wilderness forty years, because they erred from him in their hearts; that is, says the Chaldee, they had their idols in their hearts.”

(25, 26 ) Much uncertainty belongs to the interpretation of these verses and their connection in thought. Some commentators would treat Amos 5:25 as a statement, and not a question, the first word being read as a definite article, and not an interrogative prefix in the Hebrew. But the construction of the following words forbids this supposition, and nearly all exegetes follow the LXX., Vulg., Targ., in taking the sentence as interrogative. Is the expected answer negative or affirmative? Heb. usage points to the former. So Ewald and Keil According to the latter, the words apply to the nation as a whole, or to the great mass of the people, individual exceptions being passed by. The following verse is then taken in an adversative sense, “To me ye have offered no sacrifices, but ye have borne,” &c. The opposition is between the Jehovah-worship, which they suspended, and the idol-worship which they carried on. This is a possible interpretation, as Driver ( Heb. Tenses, § 119a, foot-note) admits. But as that writer shows ( l.c. ), it is more in consonance with grammatical usage to translate in Amos 5:26 by a future, as Ewald does: “So ye shall carry away the tabernacle,” &c., i.e., when driven into exile. To this thought Amos 5:27 forms a natural development: And I will carry you away captive, &c.

Moreover, in the light of this interpretation the logical connection of Amos 5:21-27 becomes much simpler: “I, Jehovah, abhor the mechanical round of corrupt and hollow ceremonial cloaking wickedness of conduct. Live righteously. Did I exact punctilious discharge of ceremonial in the desert wanderings? [No.] Therefore I shall submit you once more to the discipline of exile wanderings.” On the meaning of the difficult clause, Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made for yourselves, as well as on the rendering of the LXX. and St. Stephen’s quotation of the passage, see Excursus B. Kuenen is scarcely justified in founding an argument on this passage as to the origin of the Sabbath. EXCURSUS B (Amos 5:26). Three obscure points render this verse one of the most difficult in the Old Testament. 1. As to tense. The interpretation to which preference has been given in the commentary on the text—the time being regarded as future—has been decided on grounds of grammatical usage only. But certainly the larger number of commentators have rendered the verb as a past tense, “But ye bore the tabernacle,” &c., the time referred to being that of the desert wanderings. This view is upheld by Hitzig, Kuenen, Keil, Henderson, and also by R. S. Poole. It is also supported by the LXX. 2. The word Sikkûth, rendered tabernacle, or tent, in the E.V. and by the LXX., is derived from a root signifying both to interweave and to cover—an etymology which confirms the above rendering.

Their fathers and they, though at so great distance of time, are one people, and so the prophet considers them in this place. Have ye offered? did you not frequently omit to offer, and yet were not reproved or plagued for the omission, when your frequent removes, and many other difficulties, made it unpracticable? so little is sacrifice with your God! and yet, when you did offer, was it to me only? or did you not sacrifice to idols and false gods, and provoked me? Will-worship and idolatry have been hereditary diseases in your generations; and it is well known, too, that these idolaters fell in the wilderness, and are made admonitions to you. Sacrifices of beasts slain, as the word properly speaks. Offerings: minchah, in general, is any gift or present made, but particularly here it is a gift or present of fine flour, oil, and frankincense unto God with the sacrifice. In the wilderness forty years: it was a broken number of years in exact account, that is, thirty-eight years and eleven months; but, as is common in such cases, the full and round number is taken and so the account runs here, and in Acts 7:42 , forty years. O house of Israel; you of the ten tribes.

25, 26. Have ye offered? &c.—Yes: ye have. "But (all the time with strange inconsistency) ye have borne (aloft in solemn pomp) the tabernacle (that is, the portable shrine, or model tabernacle: small enough not to be detected by Moses; compare Ac 19:24) of your Molech" (that idol is "your" god; I am not, though ye go through the form of presenting offerings to Me). The question, "Have ye," is not a denial (for they did offer in the wilderness to Jehovah sacrifices of the cattle which they took with them in their nomad life there, Ex 24:4; Nu 7:1-89; 9:1, &c.), but a strong affirmation (compare 1Sa 2:27, 28; Jer 31:20; Eze 20:4). The sin of Israel in Amos' time is the very sin of their forefathers, mocking God with worship, while at the same time worshipping idols (compare Eze 20:39). It was clandestine in Moses' time, else he would have put it down; he was aware generally of their unfaithfulness, though not knowing the particulars (De 31:21, 27). Molech … Chiun—"Molech" means "king" answering to Mars [Bengel]; the Sun [Jablonski]; Saturn, the same as "Chiun" [Maurer]. The Septuagint translates "Chiun" into Remphan, as Stephen quotes it (Ac 7:42, 43). The same god often had different names. Molech is the Ammonite name; Chiun, the Arabic and Persian name, written also Chevan. In an Arabic lexicon Chiun means "austere"; so astrologers represented Saturn as a planet baleful in his influence.

Hence the Phœnicians offered human sacrifices to him, children especially; so idolatrous Israel also. Rimmon was the Syrian name (2Ki 5:18); pronounced as Remvan, or "Remphan," just as Chiun was also Chevan. Molech had the form of a king; Chevan, or Chiun, of a star [Grotius]. Remphan was the Egyptian name for Saturn: hence the Septuagint translator of Amos gave the Egyptian name for the Hebrew, being an Egyptian. [Hodius II, De Bibliorum Textibus Originalibus. 4.115]. The same as the Nile, of which the Egyptians made the star Saturn the representative [Harenberg]. Bengel considers Remphan or Rephan akin to Teraphim and Remphis, the name of a king of Egypt. The Hebrews became infected with Sabeanism, the oldest form of idolatry, the worship of the Saba or starry hosts, in their stay in the Arabian desert, where Job notices its prevalence (Job 31:26); in opposition, in Am 5:27, Jehovah declares Himself "the God of hosts." the star of your god—R. Isaac Caro says all the astrologers represented Saturn as the star of Israel. Probably there was a figure of a star on the head of the image of the idol, to represent the planet Saturn; hence "images" correspond to "star" in the parallel clause. A star in hieroglyphics represents God (Nu 24:17). "Images" are either a Hebraism for "image," or refer to the many images made to represent Chiun.

Verse 25. - Ye have always been idolaters, corrupters of pure worship. Your service in the wilderness, when you were little exposed to external influence, was no more true and faithful than that which you offer now; that was as unacceptable as this. Have ye offered unto me? Did ye offer unto me? The answer expected is "No;" i.e. you did not so really, because your worship was mixed with falsehood, and was not offered simply and genuinely to me. It is certain, too, that during the sojourn in the wilderness sacrificial worship fell greatly into desuetude, as we know that the rite of circumcision was suspended ( Joshua 5:5-7 ), the Passover was not duly celebrated, and Joshua urged the people to put away the strange gods from among them ( Joshua 24:23 ). Moses, too, doubtless with a view to existing practices, warns them against worshipping the heavenly bodies ( Deuteronomy 4:19 ), and offering sacrifice unto devils ( seirim ), "after whom they had gone a-whoring" ( Leviticus 17:7 ). The prophets, too, allude to the idolatry practised in the desert (see Ezekiel 20:7-26 ; Hosea 9:10 ). But to argue (as some neologians do) from this passage of Amos that the Israelites during those forty years knew nothing of Jehovah, or that Amos himself denies that they offered him any worship, is absurd, seeing that the prophet presupposes the fact, and blames them for corrupting the Divine service and mingling the prescribed and enacted ritual with idolatrous accretions.