Charles Ellicott Commentary Amos 5:25-26

"Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? Yea, ye have borne the tabernacle of your king and the shrine of your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." — Amos 5:25-26 (ASV)

Much uncertainty belongs to the interpretation of verses 25 and 26 and their connection in thought. Some commentators would treat Amos 5:25 as a statement, and not a question, the first word being read as a definite article, and not an interrogative prefix in the Hebrew. But the construction of the following words forbids this supposition, and nearly all exegetes follow the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Targum, in taking the sentence as interrogative. Is the expected answer negative or affirmative? Hebrew usage points to the former.

Ewald and Keil, for example, support this view. According to the latter, the words apply to the nation as a whole, or to the great mass of the people, individual exceptions being passed by. The following verse is then taken in an adversative sense, “To me you have offered no sacrifices, but you have borne,” etc. The opposition is between the Jehovah-worship, which they suspended, and the idol-worship which they carried on. This is a possible interpretation, as Driver (in Hebrew Tenses, § 119a, footnote) admits.

But as that writer also shows, it is more consistent with grammatical usage to translate Amos 5:26 with a future, as Ewald does: “So you shall carry away the tabernacle,” etc., i.e., when driven into exile. To this thought Amos 5:27 forms a natural development: And I will carry you away captive, etc.

Moreover, in the light of this interpretation the logical connection of Amos 5:21-27 becomes much simpler: “I, Jehovah, abhor the mechanical round of corrupt and hollow ceremonial cloaking wickedness of conduct. Live righteously. Did I exact punctilious discharge of ceremonial in the desert wanderings? [No.] Therefore I shall submit you once more to the discipline of exile wanderings.”

On the meaning of the difficult clause, Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made for yourselves, as well as on the rendering of the Septuagint and Saint Stephen’s quotation of the passage, see Excursus B. Kuenen is scarcely justified in founding an argument on this passage as to the origin of the Sabbath.