Amos 5:12

For; wonder not at the threatened severity, as if it were too rigorous; it is but proportioned to your sins. I, the Lord, whom you provoke, who have threatened you, know, clearly, fully, and in all the circumstances of them, what moves you to do so, what pretences of law you make: all your evasions are vain and foolish. Your manifold transgressions; the increased number of your sins, and the greatness of them too, as the word importeth. Your mighty sins; which mightily wrong and break the poor and needy. They afflict, besiege, or with hostile minds watch against, and gladly take any occasion to wrong and grieve, the just; not absolutely and sinlessly just, but such as are comparatively just, or those whose cause is just, or those that live with regard to all the commands of God, and follow righteousness: it was the mighty sin of the corrupt rulers in Samaria and Israel at that day, that they were enemies to all righteousness. They take a bribe; in civil causes bribes carried it; see Amos 2:6; here bribes set criminals free, a ransom. as the word in the Hebrew, buys off the punishment appointed by the law against murderers, adulterers, &c. They turn aside the poor in the gate; the poor, who appear in their courts for justice, they turn them away, or delay to hear, or hear and judge unjustly, and so send them away wronged and crying. From their right: these words fully express the prophet's meaning, and are therefore well supplied in our version.