When God Hates Your Church Service
Is it possible for our religious traditions to actually get in the way of what God wants from us?
The study notes for this passage are still being written. The passage itself is below — read it now, and the notes will be here when you return.
Amos 5:1-6:14
Read the whole passage before anything else. Everything below exists to help you understand what you just read.
1Listen to this word which I take up for a lamentation over you, O house of Israel:
2“The virgin of Israel has fallen; She shall rise no more. She is cast down on her land; there is no one to raise her up.”
3For the Lord GOD says: “The city that went out a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which went out one hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.”
4For the LORD says to the house of Israel: “Seek me, and you will live;
5but don’t seek Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and don’t pass to Beersheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing.
6Seek the LORD, and you will live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, and there be no one to quench it in Bethel.
7You who turn justice to wormwood, and cast down righteousness to the earth!
8Seek him who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns the shadow of death into the morning, and makes the day dark with night; who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the LORD is his name,
9who brings sudden destruction on the strong, so that destruction comes on the fortress.
10They hate him who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks blamelessly.
11Therefore, because you trample on the poor and take taxes from him of wheat, you have built houses of cut stone, but you will not dwell in them. You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.
12For I know how many are your offenses, and how great are your sins— you who afflict the just, who take a bribe, and who turn away the needy in the courts.
13Therefore a prudent person keeps silent in such a time, for it is an evil time.
14Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the LORD, the God of Armies, will be with you, as you say.
15Hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the courts. It may be that the LORD, the God of Armies, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.”
16Therefore the LORD, the God of Armies, the Lord, says: “Wailing will be in all the wide ways. They will say in all the streets, ‘Alas! Alas!’ They will call the farmer to mourning, and those who are skillful in lamentation to wailing.
17In all vineyards there will be wailing, for I will pass through the middle of you,” says the LORD.
18“Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD! Why do you long for the day of the LORD? It is darkness, and not light.
19As if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him; or he went into the house and leaned his hand on the wall, and a snake bit him.
20Won’t the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? Even very dark, and no brightness in it?
21I hate, I despise your feasts, and I can’t stand your solemn assemblies.
22Yes, though you offer me your burnt offerings and meal offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat animals.
23Take away from me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24But let justice roll on like rivers, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
25“Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, house of Israel?
26You also carried the tent of your king and the shrine of your images, the star of your god, which you made for yourselves.
27Therefore I will cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus,” says the LORD, whose name is the God of Armies.
1Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who are secure on the mountain of Samaria, the notable men of the chief of the nations, to whom the house of Israel come!
2Go to Calneh, and see. From there go to Hamath the great. Then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are they better than these kingdoms? Is their border greater than your border?
3Alas for you who put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near,
4who lie on beds of ivory, and stretch themselves on their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the middle of the stall,
5who strum on the strings of a harp, who invent for themselves instruments of music, like David;
6who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the best oils, but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.
7Therefore they will now go captive with the first who go captive. The feasting and lounging will end.
8“The Lord GOD has sworn by himself,” says the LORD, the God of Armies: “I abhor the pride of Jacob, and detest his fortresses. Therefore I will deliver up the city with all that is in it.
9It will happen that if ten men remain in one house, they will die.
10“When a man’s relative carries him, even he who burns him, to bring bodies out of the house, and asks him who is in the innermost parts of the house, ‘Is there yet any with you?’ And he says, ‘No;’ then he will say, ‘Hush! Indeed we must not mention the LORD’s name.’
11“For, behold, the LORD commands, and the great house will be smashed to pieces, and the little house into bits.
12Do horses run on the rocky crags? Does one plow there with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness,
13you who rejoice in a thing of nothing, who say, ‘Haven’t we taken for ourselves horns by our own strength?’
14For, behold, I will raise up against you a nation, house of Israel,” says the LORD, the God of Armies; “and they will afflict you from the entrance of Hamath to the brook of the Arabah.”