Amos 2:6

6 God's Message: "Because of the three great sins of Israel - make that four - I'm not putting up with them any longer. They buy and sell upstanding people. People for them are only things - ways of making money. They'd sell a poor man for a pair of shoes. They'd sell their own grandmother!

Amos 2:6 Meaning and Commentary

Amos 2:6

Thus saith the Lord, for three transgressions of Israel
The ten tribes rent from the house of David in the times of Rehoboam, and who departed from the true worship of God, and set up calves at Dan and Bethel: and for four, I will not turn away [the punishment] thereof;
the following part of this prophecy is taken up in pointing at the sins and punishment of Israel; now the prophet is come to the main business he was sent to do: because they sold the righteous for silver;
meaning not any particular person, as Joseph sold by his brethren, for in that they were all concerned, Judah as well as the rest; nor Christ, as others ^F17, sold for thirty pieces of silver; since the persons here charged with it, and the times in which it was done, will not agree with that case; but the sense is, that the judges of Israel were so corrupt, that for a piece of money they would give a cause against a righteous man, and in favour of an unjust man that bribed them: and the poor for a pair of shoes;
that is, for a mere trifle they would pervert justice; if two men came before them with a cause, and both poor; yet if one could but give a pair of shoes, or anything he could part with, though he could not give money; so mean and sordid were they, they would take it, and give the cause for him, however unjust it was.

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FOOTNOTES:

F17 Vid. Galatin. Cathol. Ver. Arcan. l. 4. c. 24.

Amos 2:6 In-Context

4 God's Message: "Because of the three great sins of Judah - make that four - I'm not putting up with them any longer. They rejected God's revelation, refused to keep my commands. But they swallowed the same old lies that got their ancestors onto dead-end roads.

5 For that, I'm burning down Judah, burning down all the forts of Jerusalem." Destroyed from the Roots Up

6 God's Message: "Because of the three great sins of Israel - make that four - I'm not putting up with them any longer. They buy and sell upstanding people. People for them are only things - ways of making money. They'd sell a poor man for a pair of shoes. They'd sell their own grandmother!

7 They grind the penniless into the dirt, shove the luckless into the ditch. Everyone and his brother sleeps with the 'sacred whore' - a sacrilege against my Holy Name.

8 Stuff they've extorted from the poor is piled up at the shrine of their god, While they sit around drinking wine they've conned from their victims.