Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Amos 5:21-27
The Day Of Darkness Is Coming Because Of The Falsity of Their Worship In That While They Worship They Ignore Justice And Righteousness (Amos 5:21).
Amos now emphatically brings out where their error lay. They came to YHWH with feasting and joyful assemblies, offering their different offerings and singing and making melody with their instruments, thinking that thereby they were pleasing YHWH (and the other gods), while all the time He looked on what they were doing and the noise that they were making with loathing and contempt. And this was because they were failing to truly honour Him by allowing justice and righteousness to prevail among them like a continually flowing stream that never dried up. This should they have done, and not left the other undone. He then goes on to question whether they had ever really truly worshipped Him, even in the wilderness, for even there, as now, they had on the one hand borne the Tabernacle of their King, while on the other they had borne the shrine of their images, the star of their god which they had made for themselves. Both then and now the house of Israel had engaged in the same double act, and had been equally unacceptable. Compare for the similar idea Isaiah 1:11.
“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in (literally ‘do not like to smell') your festal assemblies.”
YHWH firstly wanted to make it clear to them that they were mistaken if they thought that He obtained any pleasure from their worship. The odour of it was not pleasant to Him. Rather He wanted them to know that He hated and despised it because it was all superficial and there was nothing underneath. What they engaged in were their feasts and not His. And similarly He wanted them to know that He took no delight in their (not His) festal gatherings in which they themselves participated with such joy. For central to the true worship of YHWH was the offering of a righteous and obedient life. There was no point in gathering to declare loyalty to YHWH if they did not keep His covenant.
“Yes, though you offer me your burnt-offerings and meal-offerings, I will not accept them, nor will I regard the peace-offerings of your fat beasts.”
Furthermore He wanted them to know that even though they offered Him their (not His) dedicatory offerings, and their (not His) meal-offerings which celebrated the provisions of creation, He would not accept them, nor would He pay any regard to their peace-offerings, (supposedly offered in thanksgiving and in order to enjoy fellowship with YHWH) however fat they were. The worship that they delighted in was a waste of time because it was simply not acceptable. It was not the kind of worship that YHWH had provided for in the covenant, for it lacked an essential ingredient, the offering of a righteous life. To YHWH worship and righteousness went together as part of the same covenant. Both were essential ingredients. (And if the same conditions of unrighteous living prevail for us, the same is true of our worship today. We cannot come ‘in the Name of Jesus' if what we are doing in our lives is contrary to His will, for to truly come ‘in the Name of Jesus,' is to come as those who are aligned with Him. If we are not doing His will then we will do better to keep our mouths shut).
“Take you away from me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your viols.”
Let them also stop singing and making music (singular tense indicating the whole nation), for in so far as He heard them at all they were just making an unpleasant noise to Him if they were not truly walking in His ways. Indeed the louder their efforts the less He liked it. He simply closed His ear to it.
The viol was probably an instrument consisting of ten strings stretched over a sound box. In Egypt such instruments could be three metres (ten feet) or more high. (Compare our double bass).
“But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as an ever-flowing stream.”
What they should rather do was to ensure that justice flowed smoothly through their society, and that their righteousness was not ‘on and off', but continually flowed out of them like a perpetual river which was constantly fed with water, and flowed freely, never ceasing to flow even in the hottest dry summer. (In Israel far too many rivers dried up in the summer when there was no rain to feed them). Then they would be able to worship Him and be acceptable.
Alternately we could translate ‘let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as an ever-flowing stream' indicating that God's righteous judgment is coming on them because of their sins (compare Isaiah 10:22).
“Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?”
Looking on Israel past and present as one He asked whether they really thought that they, as Israel, had brought to Him genuine sacrifices and offerings during their forty years in the wilderness. The answer that they should have given, and which would have been given by an intelligent observer, was ‘no'. And this was obvious from the fact that because of their unbelief they had had to spend forty years in the wilderness at all. The point is not that they had not engaged in offering sacrifices at all, but they had not been genuinely to Him as the One Who demanded righteousness. They had, of course, actually offered sacrifices in the wilderness, but the emphasis is on the fact that that worship had had as little to do with genuine worship of YHWH as their worship at this present time. Amos was not denying that sacrifices were offered, only saying that they were not genuinely offered to YHWH. (As now they were THEIR sacrifices, not HIS).
For the truth was that they were all the same, and had been from the beginning. His present hearers were no better than their fathers. Their fathers too had mechanically brought sacrifices and offerings to Him in the wilderness for forty years. But they had not really brought them to Him, for their supposed worship had not been backed up by their lives and their behaviour in a true response to he covenant. They too had overlooked the need for justice and righteousness and obedience, which was why they had had to spend forty years in the wilderness in the first place until all had perished there, instead of only being in the wilderness for just a few months between Sinai and Kadesh, and it was why they had not been allowed to even approach the promised land.
‘Oh house of Israel.' They and their fathers were all one together, for they revealed their oneness by behaving in the same way.
“Yes, you have borne the booth (sukkat) of your king and the pedestal (ciyyun) of your images, the star of your god (i.e. your star-god), which you made to yourselves.”
This statement is applied to both the time in the wilderness and the present, for they were really all the same within their hearts. It is saying that it had been true that outwardly they had paid lip service to Yahwism in the wilderness, just as they did today, while at the same time worshipping other gods. Thus the truth was that YHWH had not really been their King then, any more than He was now, for had He been they would not have also had shrines to their ‘king', and pedestals for their images, even for ‘the star-god that they had made for themselves'. Their worship had thus been syncretistic then and it still was. The reference to the star-god may have had in mind current worship rather than wilderness worship, but we must bear in mind that we actually know little about their false worship in the wilderness (indeed we actually know almost nothing about the final thirty eight years in the wilderness which are on the whole passed over without comment until the actual commencement of the new approach to Canaan), apart from that of the molten calf, but that, and their association with Egypt, and the presence of Egyptians and other foreigners among them (Exodus 12:38), makes a star-god a good possibility even then. Egypt, for example, had many star-gods.
(Note. This could be translated, ‘ Yes, you have borne Sakkuth your king (or equally as ‘the shrine of Molech'), and Kaiwan your star-god, which you made to yourselves'. Sakkuth and Kaiwan are both mentioned in Assyrian text lists as gods, and names of the planet Saturn. Thus both are mentioned as star-gods. But this very fact that both were connected with Saturn does not fit in with the description of Sakkuth as on the one hand their king, and Kaiwan on the other as their star-god, unless of course the two names applied to an identical god who is mentioned in parallel. But even more importantly there is no suggestion elsewhere of the worship of Assyrian deities in Israel at this time of freedom from Assyrian oppression and no reason why Assyrian gods should have been worshipped. It is far more probable that Egyptian gods, or local gods, were in mind.
In Acts 7:43 this is cited on the basis of LXX as, ‘you took up the booth of Moloch, and the star of the god Rephan'. This would support the idea of local gods. The inference is then drawn in Acts that Israel during the time in the wilderness worshipped ‘the host of heaven' (Canaanite sky-gods), which there is no reason to deny. But we must not take the citation of LXX as evidence that it was citing the original Hebrew text, any more than our citation of a modern translation as ‘the word o God' is a guarantee that it has actually correctly translated the Hebrew text in all cases. End of note).
“Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, says YHWH, whose name is the God of hosts.”
And it was because of their idolatry, and their lack of true righteousness and obedience to the covenant, that YHWH had determined to send them into captivity and exile ‘beyond Damascus'. This very description fits well into a time when ideas of Assyria were still vague. Many had been taken into captivity to Damascus and its surrounding area, but this would be something far worse. They would be taken far off to a distant land. News had no doubt reached Israel and Judah, even by this time, of what Assyria did to recalcitrant nations, and such a fate was precisely what Leviticus 26:33; Leviticus 26:38 and Deuteronomy 28:64 had foreseen.
‘Says YHWH, whose name is the God of hosts.' All this would happen because YHWH, Whose Name is the God of hosts, had spoken. Amos's continual mention of YHWH as ‘the God of hosts' probably includes both the thought that He was the God of the heavenly hosts (including the stars), and also the God of all hosts on earth. In other words all activity in and upon the world of any kind was under His control.