Let justice roll on: Amos against worship without righteousness

Amos was a herdsman and a tender of sycamore-fig trees from Tekoa, a village in Judah south of Jerusalem (1:1; 7:14-15). He was not a professional prophet, as he told the priest Amaziah, but the LORD took him from following the flock and sent him north to prophesy to Israel. His ministry is dated to the reigns of Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam II of Israel, two years before an earthquake (1:1), which puts it at about 760 BC. His main stage was the royal sanctuary at Bethel (7:10-13).

It was a prosperous time. Under Jeroboam II, Israel had recovered territory and enjoyed the fruits of trade. Assyria, the later threat, was temporarily weak. Amos saw the other side of this prosperity: the rich built stone houses and drank wine from lush vineyards, while the poor were taxed, cheated in the market and denied justice at the city gate, the place where legal cases were heard. Religion was busy, with feasts, offerings and songs, and the people believed that the LORD was on their side.

The book is traditionally credited to Amos. Some scholars think later editors added parts, such as the hymns about God's power (4:13; 5:8-9; 9:5-6) or the closing promise of restoration (9:11-15), while others hold that these belong to the prophet. The class does not rest on that debate. The first hearers were the northern tribes, and the message was that their end was near. About forty years later, in 722 BC, Samaria fell to Assyria and many were taken into exile.

Amos 5 is prophetic poetry made of several short forms joined together: a funeral lament (verses 1-3), commands (4-6, 14-15), accusations (7, 10-13), a hymn to the Creator (8-9), a woe (18-20) and a divine speech against worship (21-27). Hebrew prophets spoke in the name of the LORD to a specific people, and they judged them by the covenant, which means the Law of Moses with its blessings and curses. The words are meant to be heard in public, and their force depends on the audience: this is a message to the privileged who were comfortable.

Many scholars see a ring pattern in verses 1-17: a lament (1-3) answered by another lament (16-17), a call to seek the LORD (4-6) answered by a call to seek good (14-15), and a centre of accusation and praise (7-13). The LORD's name is the pivot. The 'seek' that begins the chapter returns as the central command, and the hymn in verses 8-9, naming the maker of the Pleiades and Orion, sets everything under the Creator. Hebrew narrative and poetry often put the key point at the centre.

There are two main principles.

• First, a prophet's criticism of worship is not an attack on the Law's sacrifices, which the LORD himself commanded in Leviticus. The criticism is aimed at offerings given by people who ignore the justice that the same Law demands. Isaiah 1:11-17, Hosea 6:6 and Micah 6:6-8 are the same kind of statement.
• Second, the words about the Day of the LORD must be read against a popular expectation. Amos's hearers thought that the day would bring victory for Israel. He reverses it.

Verses 1–3

Amos opens with a qinah, a funeral song, though the nation is not yet dead. 'Fallen is Virgin Israel, never to rise again.' The word 'virgin' means a young woman not yet married, whose death before her time is a tragedy. The prophet speaks of the nation as already dead because the verdict has been given. The numbers in verse 3 show a military disaster: a city that sends a thousand will keep a hundred.

Verses 4–6

The mood changes to a command. 'Seek Me and live!' It is set against the sanctuaries the people loved: Bethel, Gilgal and Beersheba. These were old, holy places, linked to Jacob and Abraham, and the pilgrimages were enthusiastic. Amos says the places will fail: Gilgal will go into exile, and Bethel will come to nothing. The Hebrew plays on the names: Gilgal sounds like the word for exile, and Bethel, 'house of God', becomes aven, a word for trouble or nothingness that Hosea uses in the name Beth-aven (Hosea 4:15). Life is found by seeking a person, not a place.

Verses 7–9

Those who turn justice into wormwood, a bitter plant, and throw righteousness to the ground are accused. Then, without warning, Amos names the God who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns darkness into dawn and day into night, who calls the waters of the sea and pours them over the land: 'the LORD is His name'. The hymn sets the injustice in its true scale. The people are treating the poor as if no one is watching, but the God who rules the cosmos is.

Verses 10–13

The gate is the town's court, and the people there hate whoever reproves them and despise whoever speaks the truth. The charge is that they trample the poor and exact a tax of grain from them, and they take bribes and push the poor aside. The punishment fits the crime: they will not live in the stone houses they built or drink the wine from the vineyards they planted. Verse 13 is bleak: the prudent keep silent in such times, because the days are evil. It describes a society in which speaking is dangerous.

Verses 14–15

'Seek good, not evil, so that you may live.' 'Hate evil and love good; establish justice in the gate.' The command repeats the life promised in verse 4 and ties it to conduct. The people who say the LORD is with them (verse 14) are told that he will be with them if they seek good. Then comes a note of restraint: 'Perhaps the LORD, the God of Hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.' The 'perhaps' is honest. The sentence has been pronounced, but repentance is not shut out.

Verses 16–17

The funeral song returns: wailing in the squares, farmers summoned to mourn, mourning in the vineyards, which were usually the place of joy. The LORD says, 'I will pass through your midst.' This recalls the Passover night in Egypt (Exodus 12:12), but now the LORD's passing is judgment on his own people.

Verses 18–20

'Woe to you who long for the Day of the LORD!' The people wanted the day to vindicate them. Amos says it will be darkness and not light. The pictures are of a man who flees a lion and meets a bear, or who gets into his house, leans on the wall, and is bitten by a snake: there is no safe place.

Verses 21–24

The LORD speaks: 'I hate, I despise your feasts!' He rejects the festivals, the solemn assemblies, the burnt, grain and peace offerings, and the songs and harps. They are offered in a form the law required, but they are empty. 'But let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.' The picture is of a wadi that always has water, in contrast with the seasonal streams of the land, which run dry in summer. Justice is not a rival to worship. It is what worship is for.

Verses 25–27

The rhetorical question about sacrifices in the wilderness is hard. The question expects the answer no, or at least not as it should have been, and interpreters take it in different ways: that the wilderness generation offered sacrifice but also carried idols, or that what mattered then was obedience and not offerings. Verse 26 names Sakkuth and Kaiwan, probably the names of Mesopotamian star-gods, though the Hebrew is difficult. The result is exile 'beyond Damascus', which means Assyria.

Amos 5 teaches that God's concern is the whole of life: how people worship and how they treat each other. The two cannot be separated. The same Law that commands sacrifices commands protection for the poor, the stranger and the widow (Exodus 22:21-27; Deuteronomy 24:14-22). Worship that ignores justice is rejected, not because worship is wrong but because it is false. The theme runs through the prophets and the Psalms (Psalm 50; 51:16-17).

It also teaches that election carries responsibility, not immunity. Israel is the nation the LORD brought out of Egypt, and Amos says in 3:2 that for this reason he will hold them accountable for their sins. The Day of the LORD is not a guarantee. It is a day on which the LORD acts according to his character, and for those who hold his name falsely it is darkness.

The chapter teaches that God is Creator of all and Judge of all. The hymn of verses 8-9 does not leave the injustice of Israel as a local matter. And it teaches that hope remains: 'Seek me and live' is the offer, and 'perhaps' is the door. The Bible's later answer is the promise of a righteous king who will bring justice (Isaiah 11:3-5; 42:1-4) and of a day when justice and righteousness will fill the earth.

The connection is mainly fulfilment, and Jesus draws it himself. He tells the scribes and Pharisees that they tithe the smallest herbs and neglect the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23). That is the concern of Amos 5:24. He twice quotes Hosea 6:6, where God desires mercy and not sacrifice (Matthew 9:13; 12:7). In Luke 4:18-19 he reads from Isaiah that he has been anointed to bring good news to the poor, and in Matthew 5:6 he blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, a word which can mean justice.

Matthew applies Isaiah 42:1-4 to Jesus: the servant who will bring justice to the nations (Matthew 12:18-21). The justice that Amos says Israel did not do is done by the true King. In the cross, Paul says, God shows his own righteousness, being both just and the one who justifies (Romans 3:25-26). The sacrifices Amos criticises find their meaning in the one sacrifice that does what the others could not do (Hebrews 10:1-14).

The Day of the LORD is also applied to Christ. Paul says that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief and speaks of those who are in darkness and those who are of the light (1 Thessalonians 5:2-5), a close echo of Amos 5:18-20. Stephen quotes Amos 5:25-27 in his speech to the council (Acts 7:42-43), following the Greek form of the text, which reads 'Babylon' where the Hebrew has 'Damascus'. He uses it to show that Israel had a long history of resisting the LORD, which leads to his charge about the Righteous One whom they killed (Acts 7:52).