Amos 5:25

Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? HAVE YE OFFERED UNTO ME SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS IN THE WILDERNESS FORTY YEARS, O HOUSE OF ISRAEL? BUT YE HAVE BORNE THE TABERNACLE OF YOUR MOLOCH. Yes; ye have offered unto me sacrifices, etc. "But (all the time with strange inconsistency) ye have borne (aloft in solemn pomp) the tabernacle (i:e., the portable shrine, or model tabernacle: small enough not to be detected by Moses) of your Moloch" (that idol is 'your' god; I am not, though ye go through the form of presenting offerings to me). Similarly Acts 19:24 mentions "silver shrines for Diana made by Demetrius, a silversmith, for her worshippers. The question, "Have ye," better, 'Did ye offer unto me sacrifices?' is not denial (for they did offer in the wilderness to Yahweh sacrifices of th...

The Prophet shows in this place, that he not only reproved hypocrisy in the Israelites in obtruding on God only external display of ceremonies without any true religion in the heart; but that he also condemned them for having departed from the rule of the law. He also shows that this was not a new disease among the people of Israel; for immediately at the beginning their fathers mixed such a leaven as vitiated the worship of God. He therefore proves that the Israelites had ever been given to superstitions, and could not by any means be retained in the true and pure worship of God. _Have ye then caused sacrifices, victims_, or _an oblation to come before me in the desert for forty years? _He addresses them as though _they _had perverted God’s worship in the desert, and yet they were born many ages after; what does he mean? Even this, — the Prophet includes the whole body of the people fro...

18-27 Woe unto those that desire the day of the Lord's judgments, that wish for times of war and confusion; as some who long for changes, hoping to rise upon the ruins of their country! but this should be so great a desolation, that nobody could gain by it. The day of the Lord will be a dark, dismal, gloomy day to all impenitent sinners. When God makes a day dark, all the world cannot make it light. Those who are not reformed by the judgments of God, will be pursued by them; if they escape one, another stands ready to seize them. A pretence of piety is double iniquity, and so it will be found. The people of Israel copied the crimes of their forefathers. The law of worshipping the Lord our God, is, Him only we must serve. Professors thrive so little, because they have little or no communion with God in their duties. They were led captive by Satan into idolatry, therefore God caused them t...

Verse Amos 5:24. _HAVE YE OFFERED UNTO ME SACRIFICES_] Some have been led to think that "during the _forty years_ which the Israelites spent in the wilderness, between Egypt and the promised land, they did _not offer any sacrifices_, as in their circumstances it was impossible; they offered none because they had none." But such people must have forgotten that when the covenant was made at Sinai, there were _burnt-offerings_ and _peace-offerings_ of _oxen_ sacrificed to the Lord, Exodus 24:5; and at the setting up of the tabernacle the _twelve princes_ of the _twelve tribes_ offered each a _young bullock_, a _ram_, and a _lamb_, for a _burnt-offering_; a _kid_ for a _sin-offering_; two _oxen_, five _rams_, five _he-goats,_ and five...

HAVE YE OFFERED - (better, “Did ye offer”) unto Me sacrifices and offerings? Israel justified himself to himself by his half-service. This had been his way from the first. “Their heart was not whole with God, neither abode they in His covenant” Psalms 78:37. He thought to be accepted by God, because he did a certain homage to Him. He acknowledged God in his own way. God sets before him another instance of this half-service and what it issued in; the service of that generation which He brought out of Egypt, and which left their bones in the wilderness. The idolatry of the ten tribes was the revival of the idolatry of the wilderness. The ten tribes owned as the forefathers of their worship those first idolaters . They identified themselves with sin which they did not commit. By approving it and copying it, they made that sin their own. As the Church of God in all

EXPOSITION VERSE 1-CH. 6:14 § 8. _Third address_:_ the prophet utters a lamentation over the fall of Israel_. (Amos 6:1.) He calls her to repentance, while he shows wherein she has declined from the right way. To make this plain, he contrasts God's power and majesty with the people's iniquity, instances of which he gives (Amos 6:4). The only condition of safety is amendment (Amo 6:13 -15); and as they refuse to reform, they shall have cause to lament (verses 16, 17). This threat is enforced by the two emphatic "woes" that follow, the first of which demonstrates the baselessness of their trust in their covenant relation to God (verses 18-27); the second denounces the careless lives of the chiefs, who, revelling in luxury, believed not in the coming judgment ...

HAVE YE OFFERED UNTO ME SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS,.... No; they were not offered to God, but to devils, to the golden calf, and to the host of heaven: so their fathers did IN THE WILDERNESS FORTY YEARS; where sacrifices were omitted during that time, a round number for a broken one, it being about thirty eight years; and these their children were imitators of them, and offered sacrifice to idols too, and therefore deserved punishment as they: even ye, O HOUSE OF ISRAEL? the ten tribes, who are here particularly charged and threatened; Acts 7:42....

Amos 5:4. _For thus saith the LORD unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live:_ And that it just the message of God to professing Christians now: «Seek ye me.» Get away from your mere ceremonies, from trusting in your outward performances, and get to God himself. Get beyond your fellow-worshippers and your ministers, beyond your sanctuaries and your supposed holy places, and get in spirit and in truth to God himself: «Seek ye me, and ye shall live.» Amos 5:5. _But seek not Beth-el, nor enter into Gilgal and pass not to Beersheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Beth-el shall come to nought._ These were the places where the calves and other idols were set up for the worship of God by means of visible symbols. That was the Romanism of that day. Pure spiritual

CHAPTER 5 The Third Discourse _ 1. The lamentation (Amos 5:1) _ 2. Seek the Lord and ye shall live (Amos 5:4) 3. The wailing (Amos 5:16) 4. The captivity announced (Amos 5:21) Amos 5:1. This chapter begins with a lamentation over the fallen daughter of Israel. “She shall no more rise” has been used as an argument against the future and literal restoration of Israel. The prophet has only the present government of God over that generation in view and does not deny at all a future rising as so abundantly predicted in the prophetic Word. “The

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 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,