Amos 8:4

"Hear this, O ye that would swallow up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to fail."

Well, what has this to do with worshipping other gods? It was a condition brought about by the rejection on the part of Israel of the allocation of the land on the basis of inheritance, in order to prevent the very type of landed aristocracy with a heartless disregard of the poor, which had replaced the theocratic arrangement given by the Lord when Israel entered Canaan. Their rebellion against God by their rejection of the theocracy and the elevation of a monarch, "like the nations surrounding them," was the beginning of their sorrows. What is in view in this verse is the end result and ripened fruit of that original departure from the Word of God.