Israel's Delusions. The prophet resumes the subject of Israel's delusions, how she disregards the essential conditions of real welfare. In Amos 5:18-20 he deals with a peculiar example of this, the conception or rather misconception of the day of Yahweh. The current belief was that when the day of Yahweh dawned, He would surely vindicate His people and punish their foes. Amos urges that this belief is a serious and unfortunate mistake, and conceives the day of Yahweh as a day of reckoning for His own people. What good will it do you? Yahweh's day is a day of darkness and not light (Harper). The prudent course would be at once to seek God and live. Simply to long and pray for the day of Yahweh is to flee from one danger and fall into another which may be more deadly (Amos 5:19). After disposing of this peculiar delusion, the prophet denounces again (Amos 5:21-27) a merely formal observance of religious rites and ceremonies. These are really hateful and despicable to Yahweh, if they are combined with a denial of justice and righteousness in everyday life (Amos 5:24). When Israel wandered in the wilderness forty years, she received remarkable tokens of Yahweh's care and favour. And yet there was no elaborate ritual, or, if there was, it could not in the circumstances be practised (Amos 5:25). (Amos 5:24 f. may be regarded as a parenthesis.) Amos 5:26 is supposed to resume the denunciation of vain or false worship and Amos 5:27 to indicate the penalty. Amos 5:26 is difficult. RV seems to assume that the reference is to the past, and that Siccuth and Chiun were idols. But these two words are probably the names of an Assyrian deity, and should be read Sakkuth and Kê wâ n. The verse will then refer to the future, and is not so much a further denunciation of false worship as a prediction of what will happen to the Israelites and their idols. In that case it should be regarded as an editorial insertion. Sakkut and Kaiwâ n are Assyrian by-names of the god Saturn, and are found together in Assyrian texts. If Amos 5:26 is deleted, Amos 5:27 pronounces the penalty incurred by false piety. Therefore because of such idle practices I will carry you away into exile.
Amos 5:20. even very dark, and no brightness in it: Kent, yea, murky darkness, without a ray of light in it.
Amos 5:21. Translate, I hate, I despise your pilgrim feasts (cf. Ar. hajja, to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, and I will not accept (lit. - smell-' with acceptance) your festivals (דṣ?â râ h here a synonym of hâ g, not a technical term as in Deuteronomy 16:8; Leviticus 23:36).
Amos 5:23. viols: render harps.
Amos 5:24. Better, and let right roll on like waters, and righteousness like a perennial stream.
Amos 5:26. Yea, ye have borne, etc.: rather, yea, ye will bear. The star of your god, or better, your star-god, is probably a gloss. Riessler, following LXX, would read melek for malkekem (your king). This gives Sakkuth-melek, for which he compares Adar-melek and Anam-melek in 2 Kings 17:31.