Amos 5 Footnotes

5:18-24 Amos says that the “day of the LORD,” for which the people longed, would not be a day of gladness and “light” but of treacherous “darkness” and “gloom” (v. 20). The people’s desire for the day and the context, which refers to feasts and worship assemblies (vv. 21-22), suggest that the prophet was referring not only to the final day of judgment but also to a popular festival observance. Scholars have suggested that the “day of the LORD” may have been the annual festival of the new year, which, because it celebrated the kingship of the Lord, was associated with his role as Judge of the people. (Commentators who hold this view find extensive evidence for it in the psalms.)

If a particular worship festival was not in view, it is difficult to see why the prophet would move immediately from a terrifying description of the day to an indictment of the community’s hypocritical worship. Amos preached during the prosperous reign of Jeroboam II of Israel, but the national prosperity was limited to the wealthier families and came at the expense of the poor who were victims of injustice (vv. 10-13). It was this inequity that rendered the people’s worship repulsive to the Lord, for it violated his covenant in which justice and fairness for all were supposed to prevail.

5:25 The Lord’s rhetorical question about Israel’s offering sacrifices in the wilderness expected the answer, “No, we did not.” This answer would fit the context in which the Lord found the many sacrifices of the people offensive because of the injustice the nation had come to tolerate. But this appears to contradict passages that show that Israel did offer sacrifices during the wilderness wanderings (Ex 24:4-8; Nm 7). One suggestion is that Israel did not sustain her relationship with the Lord by regularly offering these sacrifices. But Scripture nowhere else indicates that the Israelites did not offer sacrifices in the wilderness, and the presence of the tabernacle suggests that they did so frequently. Another solution places the main emphasis of the passage with to me, so that the Lord was saying, “It was not to me that you offered sacrifices.” The reference to false gods in the following verse (“Sakkuth” and “Kaiwan,” v. 26) would support this view.

Either Israel’s worship in the wilderness had been insincere, or it had consisted of idolatrous practices. If the Lord expected the answer “yes” to his rhetorical question, the meaning of his statement would be, “Indeed you did offer sacrifices and grain offerings in the wilderness, but now you will take up your idols, since you have rejected me, and I will send you into exile.”