Amos 4:4

Cometo Beth-el, and transgress&c. The words are meant of course ironically. Amos bids the people come to Beth-el, the principal and most splendid centre of their worship, and transgress, to Gilgal, another representative centre, and multiply transgression:their religious services, partly on account of the moral unfitness of the worshippers (Amos 2:6-9), partly on account of the unspiritual character of their worship, have no value in Jehovah's eyes, they are but transgression, or, more exactly (see on Amos 1:3), rebellion.

Gilgal alluded to also in ch. Amos 5:5; Hosea 4:15; Hosea 9:15; Hosea 12:11, as a seat of the idolatrous worship of Jehovah. It was the first camping-spot of the Israelites on the west of Jordan (Joshua 4:19-20), and it is alluded to frequently as an important place (1 Samuel 7:16; 1 Samuel 11:14-15; 1 Samuel 15:12; 1 Samuel 15:21; 2 Samuel 19:15). That it lay in the Jordan valley, between the Jordan and Jericho, is evident from Joshua 4:19; Joshua 5:10; but the actual site of Gilgal was only recovered by Zschokke in 1865, at Tell Jiljûl, 4½ miles from the Jordan, and 1½ mile from Erîḥa(Jericho) [152]. In Joshua 5:9 the name is connected with gâlal, to roll away; but it means really a wheel(Isaiah 28:28), or circle, in particular, a circle of stones, or, as we might say, a cromlech, such as Joshua 4:20 shews must have stood there in historical times. (In the Heb., the word has always the article, implying that the appellative sense, "the Circle," was still felt).

[152] This is the ordinary view; but G. A. Smith (The Book of the Twelve, p. 79: cf. p. 37) and Buhl (Geogr. des alten Pal., 1896, p. 202 f.) think that the Gilgal of Am. and Hos. is the modern Julêjîl, on the E. of the plain in front of Ebal and Gerizim (cf. Deuteronomy 11:30).

every morning… every three days] Generally understood as an ironical exaggeration: bring your sacrifices every morning, instead of, as the practice was, once a year (1 Samuel 1:3; 1 Samuel 1:7; 1 Samuel 1:21); and your tithes every three days, instead of, as it may be inferred from Deuteronomy 14:28; Deuteronomy 26:12 was an ancient custom, every three years. Still the exaggeration thus implied would be somewhat extreme; and Wellhausen (who is followed by Nowack, Heb. Arch.ii. 258) adopts another rendering (which the Hebrew equally permits), viz. "in the morning … on the third day," supposing it to have been the custom of the pilgrims to bring their sacrifices on the morning after their arrival at Beth-el, and to pay their tithes on the third day. The routine of sacrifice is punctiliously observed: but the moral and spiritual temper of which it should be the expression is absent.

The custom of paying tithes was not peculiar to the Hebrews, but prevailed widely in antiquity: the Greeks, for instance, often rendered a tithe to the gods, on spoil taken in war, on the annual crops, on profits made by commerce, &c. By religious minds it was regarded as an expression of gratitude to the Deity, for the good things sent by Him to man; but it was often exacted as a fixed impost, payable, for instance, by the inhabitants of a particular district, for the maintenance of a priesthood or sanctuary. In the oldest Hebrew legislation, the "Book of the Covenant" (Exodus 21-23), no mention is made of tithes; but in the Deuteronomic legislation (7th cent. b.c.) the payment of tithes upon vegetableproduce appears as an established custom, which the legislator partly presupposes, and partly regulates (Deuteronomy 12:6; Deuteronomy 12:11; Deuteronomy 12:17; Deuteronomy 14:22-29; Deuteronomy 26:12). In Deut., in accordance with one of the fundamental aims of the book, payment at the central sanctuary (i.e. Jerusalem) is strongly insisted on: this passage shews that, at least in the Northern kingdom, it was customary to pay tithes at Beth-el. Probably, as Beth-el was an ancient sanctuary, this was a long-established practice there, the origin of which it seems to be the intention of Genesis 28:22 to attribute to the vow of the patriarch, Jacob. See further, on Hebrew tithe, and especially on the discrepancies between the Deuteronomic and the priestly legislation on the subject, the writer's Commentary on Deuteronomy, pp. 168 173.