Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 5:12

"For I know how manifold are your transgressions, and how mighty are your sins-ye that afflict the just, that take a bribe, and that turn aside the needy in the gate [from their right]." — Amos 5:12 (ASV)

For I know - Literally, “I have known.” They thought that God did not know, because He did not avenge; as the Psalmist says, Your judgments are far above out of his sight (Psalms 10:5). People who do not act with the thought of God, cease to know Him, and forget that He knows them.

Your manifold transgressions; literally, “many are your transgressions and mighty your sins.” Their deeds, they knew, were mighty, strong, vigorous, decided. God says that their “sins” were so, not many and great only, but “mighty, strong,” “issuing not out of ignorance and infirmity, but out of proud strength,” “‘strong’ in the oppression of the poor and in provoking God,” and bringing down His wrath. So Asaph says of the prosperous: Pride encompasses them, as a chain; they are corrupt, they speak oppression wickedly; they speak from on high (Psalms 73:6, 8).

They afflict the just - Literally, “afflicters of the just,” that is, such as habitually afflicted him; whose habit and quality it was to afflict him. Our version mostly renders the word “enemies.” Originally, it signifies “afflicting, persecuting” enemies. Yet it is used also of the enemies of God, perhaps such as persecute Him in His people, or in His Son when in the flesh.

The unjust hate the just, as is said in the book of Wisdom: The ungodly said, Therefore let us lie in wait for the righteous, because he is not for our turn, and is clean contrary to our doings: he upbraids us with our offending the law. He professes to have the knowledge of God, and he calls himself the child of the Lord. He was made to reprove our thoughts. He is grievous unto us even to behold, for his life is not as other people’s, his ways are of another fashion .

So when the Truth and Righteousness came into the world, the Scribes and Pharisees hated Him because He reproved them, denied (Acts 3:14) and crucified the Holy one and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted to them, haters and “enemies of the Just,” and preferring to Him the unjust.

That take a bribe - Literally, “a ransom.” It may be that, contrary to the law, which forbade, in these same words, to take any ransom for the life of a murderer (Numbers 35:22), they took some ransom to set free rich murderers, and so (as we have seen for many years to be the effect of unjust acquittals) blood was shed with impunity, and was shed the more, because it was disregarded. The word, however, is used in one place apparently of any bribe, through which a man connives at injustice (1 Samuel 12:3).