Albert Barnes Commentary Amos 8:5

"saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell grain? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit;" — Amos 8:5 (ASV)

When will the new moon be gone? They observed their festivals, though weary and impatient for them to end. They kept the Sabbath and festival with their bodies, not with their minds. The Psalmist said, When shall I come to appear before the presence of God? (Psalms 42:2). These people said, perhaps only in their hearts, which God reads, “When will this service be over, so that we may be our own masters again?” They loathed the rest of the Sabbath because on it they had to rest from their frauds. He cites as examples “the new moons” and “Sabbaths” because these, recurring weekly or monthly, were a regular hindrance to their covetousness.

The “ephah” was a measure containing 72 Roman pints, or nearly one and one-tenth of an English bushel. The shekel was a fixed weight by which money was still weighed up to the time of the captivity (2 Samuel 18:12; 1 Kings 20:39; Jeremiah 32:9), including for determining the price of bread (Isaiah 55:2).

They increased the price in two ways, dishonestly and hypocritically: by reducing the quantity they sold, and by obtaining more silver through fictitious weights and weighing with uneven balances.

All such dealings had been expressly forbidden by God, and this honesty was a condition for their remaining in the land God had given them: You shall not have in your bag different weights, a great and a small. You shall not have in your house different measures, a great and a small. But you shall have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure you shall have, that your days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord your God gives you (Deuteronomy 25:13–15).

Sin involving wrong measures, once begun, is continuous. All sin perpetuates itself. It is done again because it has been done before. But sins related to a person’s daily occupation are necessarily continued, beyond the simple force of habit and the ever-increasing disease of covetousness. To interrupt such sin is to risk detection.

But then how countless are the sins which their poor slaves were forced to commit hourly, whenever the opportunity arose! And yet, although among us human law recognizes the divine law and prescribes punishment for its violation, covetousness disregards both. When human law was enforced in a city after a time of negligence, scarcely a weight was found to be honest. Prayer went up to God on “the Sabbath,” and fraud against the poor went up to God in every transaction on the other six days.

We admire the denunciations of Amos and condemn the make-believe service of God. Amos denounces us, and we condemn ourselves. Righteous dealing in weights and measures was one of the conditions for the existence of God’s former people. What then must be our national condition before God, when, from this one sin, so many thousands upon thousands of sins go up daily to plead against us to God?