Amo 5:25-26 | KD | STEP | Their heartless worship would not arrest the flood of divine judgments, since Israel had from time immemorial been addicted to idolatry. Amo 5:25. “Have ye offered me sacrifices and gifts in the desert forty years, O house of Israel? Amo 5:26. But have ye borne the booth of your king and the pedestal of your images, the star of your gods, which ye made for yourselves? Amo 5:27. Then I will carry you beyond Damascus, saith Jehovah; God of hosts is His name.” The connection between these verses and what precedes is explained by Hengstenberg thus: “All this (the acts of worship enumerated in ) can no more be called a true worship, than the open idolatry in the wilderness. Therefore ( ) as in that instance the outwardly idolatrous people did not tread the holy land, so now will the inwardly idolatrous people be driven out of the holy land” ( Dissertations on the Pentateuch , vol. i. p. 157 transl.). But if this were the train of thought, the prophet would not have omitted all reference to the punishment of the idolatrous people in the wilderness. And as there is no such allusion here, it is more natural to take and , as Calvin does, and regard the reference to the idolatry of the people, which was practised even in the wilderness, as assigning a further reason for their exposure to punishment. The question, “Have ye offered me sacrifices?” is equivalent to a denial, and the words apply to the nation as a whole, or the great mass of the people, individual exceptions being passed by. The forty years are used as a round number, to denote the time during which the people were sentenced to die in the wilderness after the rebellion at Kadesh, just as in Num 14:33-34, and , where this time, which actually amounted to only thirty-eight years, is given, as it is here, as forty years. And “the prophet could speak all the more naturally of forty years, since the germ of apostasy already existed in the great mass of the people, even when they still continued outwardly to maintain their fidelity to the God of Israel” (Hengstenberg). During that time even the circumcision of the children born in the thirty-eight years was suspended (see at ), and the sacrificial worship prescribed by the law fell more and more into disuse, so that the generation that was sentenced to die out offered no more sacrifices. Zebhâchı̄m (slain-offerings) and minchâh (meat-offerings), i.e., bleeding and bloodless sacrifices, are mentioned here as the two principal kinds, to denote sacrifices of all kinds. We cannot infer from this that the daily sacrificial worship was entirely suspended: in Num 17:11, indeed, the altar-fire is actually mentioned, and the daily sacrifice assumed to be still in existence; at the same time, the event there referred to belonged to the time immediately succeeding the passing of the sentence upon the people. Amos mentions the omission of the sacrifices, however, not as an evidence that the blessings which the Lord had conferred upon the people were not to be attributed to the sacrifices they had offered to Him, As Ephraem Syrus supposes, nor to support the assertion that God does not need or wish for their worship, for which Hitzig appeals to ; but as a proof that from time immemorial Israel has acted faithlessly towards its God, in adducing which he comprehends all the different generations of the people in the unity of the house of Israel, because the existing generation resembled the contemporaries of Moses in character and conduct.

‏ Amos 5:25-26

Their heartless worship would not arrest the flood of divine judgments, since Israel had from time immemorial been addicted to idolatry. Amo 5:25. “Have ye offered me sacrifices and gifts in the desert forty years, O house of Israel? Amo 5:26. But have ye borne the booth of your king and the pedestal of your images, the star of your gods, which ye made for yourselves? Amo 5:27. Then I will carry you beyond Damascus, saith Jehovah; God of hosts is His name.” The connection between these verses and what precedes is explained by Hengstenberg thus: “All this (the acts of worship enumerated in Amo 5:21-23) can no more be called a true worship, than the open idolatry in the wilderness. Therefore (Amo 5:17) as in that instance the outwardly idolatrous people did not tread the holy land, so now will the inwardly idolatrous people be driven out of the holy land” (Dissertations on the Pentateuch, vol. i. p. 157 transl.). But if this were the train of thought, the prophet would not have omitted all reference to the punishment of the idolatrous people in the wilderness. And as there is no such allusion here, it is more natural to take Amo 5:25 and Amo 5:26, as Calvin does, and regard the reference to the idolatry of the people, which was practised even in the wilderness, as assigning a further reason for their exposure to punishment. ^{▼▼“In this place,” says Calvin, “the prophet proves more clearly, that he is not merely reproving hypocrisy among the Israelites, or the fact that they only obtruded their external pomps upon the notice of God, without any true piety of heart, but he also condemns their departure from the precepts of the law. And he shows that this was not a new disease among the Israelitish people, since their fathers had mixed up such leaven as this with the worship of God from the very beginning, and had thereby corrupted that worship. He therefore shows that the Israelites had always been addicted to superstitions, and could not be kept in any way whatever to the true and innate worship of God.”}

The question, “Have ye offered me sacrifices?” is equivalent to a denial, and the words apply to the nation as a whole, or the great mass of the people, individual exceptions being passed by. The forty years are used as a round number, to denote the time during which the people were sentenced to die in the wilderness after the rebellion at Kadesh, just as in Num 14:33-34, and Jos 5:6, where this time, which actually amounted to only thirty-eight years, is given, as it is here, as forty years. And “the prophet could speak all the more naturally of forty years, since the germ of apostasy already existed in the great mass of the people, even when they still continued outwardly to maintain their fidelity to the God of Israel” (Hengstenberg). During that time even the circumcision of the children born in the thirty-eight years was suspended (see at Jos 5:5-7), and the sacrificial worship prescribed by the law fell more and more into disuse, so that the generation that was sentenced to die out offered no more sacrifices. Zebhâchı̄m (slain-offerings) and minchâh (meat-offerings), i.e., bleeding and bloodless sacrifices, are mentioned here as the two principal kinds, to denote sacrifices of all kinds. We cannot infer from this that the daily sacrificial worship was entirely suspended: in Num 17:11, indeed, the altar-fire is actually mentioned, and the daily sacrifice assumed to be still in existence; at the same time, the event there referred to belonged to the time immediately succeeding the passing of the sentence upon the people. Amos mentions the omission of the sacrifices, however, not as an evidence that the blessings which the Lord had conferred upon the people were not to be attributed to the sacrifices they had offered to Him, As Ephraem Syrus supposes, nor to support the assertion that God does not need or wish for their worship, for which Hitzig appeals to Jer 7:22; but as a proof that from time immemorial Israel has acted faithlessly towards its God, in adducing which he comprehends all the different generations of the people in the unity of the house of Israel, because the existing generation resembled the contemporaries of Moses in character and conduct.