to be or come (causatively · verb, hiphil perfect, 2nd person masculine plural
sacrifices
הַזְּבָחִ֨יםha.ze.va.Chim
H2077
properly · interrogative particle + noun, common masculine plural absolute
offerings
וּמִנְחָ֜הu.min.Chah
H4503
a donation · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular absolute
wilderness
בַמִּדְבָּ֛רva.mid.Bar
H4057
a pasture (i.e. open field · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
forty
אַרְבָּעִ֥ים'ar.ba.'Im
H705
forty · noun, common masculine plural absolute
years
שָׁנָ֖הsha.Nah
H8141
a year (as a revolution of time) · noun, common feminine singular absolute
house
בֵּ֥יתbeit
H1004
a house (in the greatest variation of applications · noun, common masculine singular construct
Israel
יִשְׂרָאֵֽלYis.ra.'El
H3478
Jisrael · proper noun, a place name
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Acts 7:42-43 Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye…
Nehemiah 9:18 Yea, when they had made them a molten calf, and said, This is thy God that brought thee up out of Egypt, and had wrought great provocations;
Ezekiel 20:8 But they rebelled against me, and would not hearken unto me: they did not every man cast away the abominations of their eyes, neither did th…
Leviticus 17:7 And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them t…
Joshua 24:14 Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of t…
Nehemiah 9:21 Yea, forty years didst thou sustain them in the wilderness, so that they lacked nothing; their clothes waxed not old, and their feet swelled…
Ezekiel 20:16 Because they despised my judgments, and walked not in my statutes, but polluted my sabbaths: for their heart went after their idols.
Deuteronomy 32:17-19 They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Amos 5:21–end
The scope of these verses is to show how little God valued their shows of devotion, nay, how much he detested them, while they went on in their sins. Observe,
I. How unpleasing, nay, how displeasing, their hypocritical services were to God. They had their feast-days at Bethel, in imitation of those at Jerusalem, in which they pretended to rejoice before God. They had their solemn assemblies for religious worship, in which they put on the gravity of those who come before God as his people come, and sit before him as his people sit. They offered to God burnt-offerings, to the honour of God, together with the meat-offerings which by the law were to be offered with them; they offered the peace-o…
Have ye offered? &c.--Yes: ye have. "But (all the time with strange inconsistency) ye have borne (aloft in solemn pomp) the tabernacle (that is, the portable shrine, or model tabernacle: small enough not to be detected by Moses; compare Act 19:24) of your Molech" (that idol is "your" god; I am not, though ye go through the form of presenting offerings to Me). The question, "Have ye," is not a denial (for they did offer in the wilderness to Jehovah sacrifices of the cattle which they took with them in their nomad life there, Exo 24:4; Num. 7:1-89; Num 9:1, &c.), but a strong affirmation (compare Sa1 2:27-28; Jer 31:20; Eze 20:4). The sin of Israel in Amos' time is the very sin of their forefa…
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, Exo 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 lambs, for a…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 25 and following) Did you offer to Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness for forty years, O house of Israel? You also took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your god Rephan, the images which you made for yourselves. Therefore I will exile you beyond Damascus, says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts. LXX: Did you offer to Me sacrifices and victims in the desert for forty years, O house of Israel, and take up the tabernacle of Melchom and the star of your god Repham, the figures of them which you made for yourselves. And I will transfer you beyond Damascus, says the Lord: God almighty is his name. From this place we learn that all the sacrifices and offerings that Israel made in the desert were not offered to God, but to their king Moloch, whose tabernacles they carried and worshiped the image of their idols and statues. And in the following statement, it shows what this image or idol is: The star of your God, which is called Chocab in Hebrew, that is, Lucifer, whom the Saracens have been worshiping until now. For what reason did the Lord make them migrate across Damascus, that is, to the Assyrians and Chaldeans: his omnipotence is demonstrated by the fact that he is the Lord God of hosts. We ask why they did not offer sacrifices and offerings to God in the desert; but to their king, whom they call Lucifer? From the time they transformed gold into the head of a calf, saying: These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt (Exod. III, 24), it is shown that everything they did was not for God, but for idols. And what we read afterwards that they offered certain things to the Lord, they did not do so willingly but out of fear of punishment, and by the killing of those who fell because of idols. But the Lord does not look at what is offered, but at the will of the one offering. Finally, wherever the opportunity arose, they always turned back in their hearts to Egypt, desiring garlic and onions, and cucumbers and Egyptian meat, and despising the manna that was given from heaven (Numbers 11). To understand this, let us turn to the story told by the first martyr of the Gospel, Stephen, worthy of his name, in the Acts of the Apostles: 'And they made a calf in those days, and offered a sacrifice to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their hands. But God turned and delivered them up to serve the host of…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Hypocrisy · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
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; See Gill on Acts 7:42.
John Calvin on Amos 5:25-26
Amos 5:25-26
25. Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?
25. An victimas et munus (est mnchh) obtulistis mihi in deserto quadraginta annis, domus Israel?
26. But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.
26. Et sustulistis Sicuth Regem vestrum, et Chion, imagines vestras, stellam deorum vestrorum (vel, deos vestros,) quae fecistis vobis.
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 h…
Their heartless worship would not arrest the flood of divine judgments, since Israel had from time immemorial been addicted to idolatry. Amo 5:25. "Have ye offered me sacrifices and gifts in the desert forty years, O house of Israel? Amo 5:26. But have ye borne the booth of your king and the pedestal of your images, the star of your gods, which ye made for yourselves? Amo 5:27. Then I will carry you beyond Damascus, saith Jehovah; God of hosts is His name." The connection between these verses and what precedes is explained by Hengstenberg thus: "All this (the acts of worship enumerated in Amo 5:21-23) can no more be called a true worship, than the open idolatry in the wilderness. Therefore (…
Although the people of Israel claimed that God had to bless them because of the Sinai covenant, Amos demonstrated that they had been fundamentally pagan from the very earliest days of the covenant.
5:25 Israel’s relationship with God was based on true devotion that yielded obedience (1 Sam 15:22-23). Sacrifices representing repentance and faith could repair a breach made by sin, but they were not a substitute for a life lived in accordance with God’s word. • Forty years in the wilderness was the duration of Israel’s wandering after the rebellion at Kadesh-barnea (see Num 14:32-35).
Rashi on Amos 5:25
Did... sacrifices and meal offerings—Is My desire for sacrifices and meal offerings? Is it not so that in the desert I did not speak with your forefathers to offer up sacrifices to Me? I said: (Lev. 1: 2) “Should a man sacrifice,” when he wishes to sacrifice. And Scripture states: (Num. 9:2) “And the children of Israel shall make the Passover sacrifice in its time.” This tells us that Israel made only that Passover sacrifice. [based on Sifre to Num. 9:2]
