Amos Chapter 5 verse 25 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 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. Sacrifices; slain, bloody sacrifices. Offerings; bloodless sacrifices, meal offerings.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(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. . . .