Amos 2:6

sold the righteous for sliver The venal Israelitish judges, for a bribe, pronounced the innocent guilty, i.e. -sold" them for a consideration to any one whose advantage it might be to have them condemned: in a civil case, by giving judgement in favour of the party really in the wrong, in a criminal case, by condemning the innocent in place of the guilty. Righteousis used here not in an ethical, but in a forensic sense, of one -righteous" in respect of the particular charge brought against him, exactly as Deuteronomy 25:1. Corrupt justice, that most common of Oriental failings, is the sin which Amos censures first; the sin which legislators in vain strove to guard against (Exodus 23:6-8; Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 16:18-20), and which prophet after prophet in vain attacked (Isaiah 1:23; Isaiah 3:14 f., Isaiah 5:23; Isaiah 10:1 f.; Micah 3:9-11; Micah 7:3; Jeremiah 5:28; Jeremiah 22:3; Ezekiel 22:29; Malachi 3:5): the great men, the nobles, in whose hands the administration of justice rests, abuse their office for their own ends, are heedless of the rights of the helpless classes (the "needy," the "poor," and the "meek"), and sell justice to the highest bidder.

and the poor R.V. the needy (exactly as Jeremiah 5:28; Jeremiah 22:16 al.,in the A. V.); a different word from that rendered poorin Amos 2:7.

for the sake of a pair of sandals] named as an article of trifling value. The reference in this clause is not, it seems, to the unjust judge, but to the hard-hearted creditor who, if his debtor could not pay the value of some trifling article, was forthwith sold by him into slavery (2 Kings 4:1; Matthew 18:25). In the use of the word sell, there is a slight -zeugma": for it is used figuratively in the first clause, and literally in the second.